Letters from an old railway official/Letter 17
LETTER XVII.
WHAT THE BIG ENGINE HAS COST.
My Dear Boy:—The progressive president of a rustling railroad has recently gone on record as regretting the too rapid introduction of big engines. To which from many an ancient office, from many a greasy round-house comes a loud amen. The fad for big engines, the slavery to the ton mile, the rack of the comparative statement, have cost the granger roads a pile of good coin. Procrustes, the highwayman of the ancients, fitted all his victims to stone beds, doubtless charging to other expenses the stretching of an arm or the cutting off of a foot. Nowadays we get our brains warped and our legs pulled just the same. The methods are more subtle, the operations more graceful. Our equanimity stands for almost any old thing, provided it is done in the name of progress, or is called a process of analysis. Able men devote their lives to the solution of problems of practical railroad operation, to making maximum net earnings for their employers, only to be discounted by the financial writers. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. The same writers who, to hear them tell it, can save financial panics by sound advice to the country bankers, who can instruct our Uncle Samuel how to handle his navy, who can hurry Russian troops to Manchuria, can tell us just how to run our railroad, just how many tons we should pull per train. Invention is the handmaiden of progress. Inventors are usually laymen or outsiders. Inventors and architects have to be held in check to prevent development from becoming abnormal or one-sided. The man who invented the air brake was not asked to come in and take charge of all transportation. The men who design big engines should not be allowed to forget conditions of track, territory and traffic.
Railroads are run to make money. A motion to manage them like golf links is never in order. The track is built for running trains. To the man with too much ton mile on the brain the running of a train, the very object of the road’s existence, becomes a bugaboo. He will sacrifice business, incur risks of other losses, rather than run a train. In some cases this is all right, in others it is; all wrong. There is a happy medium which all of us should be allowed to work out for ourselves, to suit our own conditions. The trouble is that we are denied a sliding scale. All roads look alike to the critic, the reviewer and the broker.
Roads of dense traffic with much low-class freight, such as coal, coke, ore, pig iron, etc., to move, found it more economical to have large engines and heavy trains. The nature of the business demands a considerable supply always on hand. This permits waiting for full tonnage for every train. A few cars, more or less, at one end or the other of the line make no great difference to the shipper. These roads usually have more than one track and an old solid roadbed. This good thing of economical transportation was pushed along to us of the prairies. Here traffic is relatively thin, the track with dirt ballast is less solid, hauls are many times longer, and single track is the rule. Moreover, we frequently have merchandise, implements, machinery and other high-class freight in one direction, and such perishable stuff as live stock and dressed meats in the other. A dozen years ago we had developed a combination freight and passenger engine, usually a ten-wheeler with fairly high drivers, which handled such business promptly and profitably. We could take out a Raymond excursion or a theatrical special one way, and coming back make a fly run with belated stock for a distant market. We may yet do the same with the compound battleship, but it will first require alterations and a big expenditure on track. When stock shows up you must get it moving. You cannot hold it to club trains, as in the case of coal and pig iron. You miss the market and there is a big claim to pay, to which the financial gentleman in New York does not give sufficient weight when he makes his wonderful analysis of our figures. It does not show up in grate surface, tractive power, or weight on the drivers. It is not complimentary to our wisdom that stock shippers have been compelled to invoke State aid to force us to run stock trains regardless of full tonnage, to do what our own best interests demanded. We should avoid the necessity for even a just regulation of our affairs. It opens the door to much that is unjust and undesirable.
The big engine has made us straighten curves, reduce grades, relay rail, renew bridges, buy land, increase terminals, extend passing tracks, abandon light equipment and increase wages. Its presence on single-track roads has retarded traffic and has increased expenses. It has torn up our track and increased the number of wrecks. Its long hours and trying work have been an element of demoralization among our men. The efficiency of our crews is limited to the endurance of the fireman. This last condition must be remedied by an automatic stoker—the most crying need of the present. Supply usually keeps pretty close to demand and the automatic stoker should not be very long in coming.
Yes, directly and indirectly, the big engine has cost us a lot of dough. It is not an unmixed evil. It has its good points, to be sure. Some of the new conditions it has forced would have come in time anyway. Its advantages would be greater, its operation cheaper, if its coming could have been broken to us more gently. It is now a condition, not a theory, and we must do our best with it, regardless of our personal predilections. Whether or not it has come to stay, is an open question. It probably has, but modified for higher speed, when all conditions permit. We are not yet wise enough to know just what it is costing us. Not even our own statisticians have had time to digest fully the figures of increased equipment due to slower movement; of increased cost of maintenance, both of track and equipment; of unparalleled increase in freight claims; of higher wages; of strengthened power of the labor organizations; of altered trade conditions due to dissatisfaction with transportation; of changed location of industrial plants; of the effect of reduced speed on water competition; of the numerous conditions that go to make a railroad so complex. In the language of the good old funeral hymn, some time we’ll understand.
We must make up our minds to prompter movement of freight, which may mean increased speed. The people demand it and public opinion is king. Here again the shipper steps in to help us out, for promptness simplifies our terminal problems. The art of war has been defined as getting the mostest men there the fustest. The art of railroading comes to mean moving the mostest trains the soonest.