Yet the fact that a size limit could be reached and apparently was reached, was still no sign that the limits of steam locomotive efficiency had even been approached. Because the methods by which these limits may be extended, apparently almost indefinitely, are so complex and withal so fascinating, I am taking them up in a separate chapter of this book. This chapter and the one that follows it are the record of the achievements and the possibilities of the electric locomotive, whether as a separate unit or merely as a compact bundle of energy stowed away in the trucks of a passenger or freight-car. That locomotive shall receive our first consideration.
Now despite all the improvements that we shall see have been made upon him, the American steam locomotive of to-day seemingly remains a laggard. In the days when his fuel was both plentiful and comparatively cheap one might merely say that he was extravagant and let it go at that. But now when coal if not scarcer is far more expensive his extravagance has become totally unwarranted.
In 1918, the most recent year for which the figures are available, our steam locomotive consumed 163,000,000 tons of coal in addition to 45,700,000 barrels of oil. Reducing these last to their coal equivalent, we have a total fuel consumption expressed in terms of coal of 176,000,000. And when we measure that consumption alongside the freight carried—1918 was one of the record years of our American railroads—it will be seen that for every thousand tons of freight that they moved one mile they burned 290 pounds of coal. Through any modern steam-generating electric station—the figures taken from the modern power-houses of the few steam railroads that already have been progressive enough to install electric motive-power—an even hundred pounds of coal may easily move more than 1600 tons of freight one mile—in the accurate phrasing of the railroaders themselves, 1600 ton-miles.
In other words the same freight traffic moved by electricity through steam power houses would have required but a little over fifty million tons of coal. From 120,000,000 to 130,000,000 tons of coal would have been saved—a saving roughly expressed in money at between three-quarters of a billion and a billion dollars, which of itself would be a 4 or 5 per cent. dividend upon the total capitalization of our American railroads.
In the saving that we have just shown we have presupposed an absolutely universal substitution of electric for steam power all the way across the land. This however is not practical to-day; nor is it likely to be practical in any day to come, for every mile of our 275,000 miles of American railroad system. On the other hand this huge estimate of national saving is based entirely upon the coal-consumption basis. The most impressive savings that you shall see before you are finished with this chapter are those accomplished by our lines which have bended water-power, hitherto wasted, to the movement of their trains. I have stood upon the brink of Niagara Falls and there seen train after train arrive and depart, each hauled by a steam locomotive. And all the while I knew that the force and power of that mighty cataract was lighting the homes and driving the street-cars of Toronto and of Syracuse—by land, respectively one hundred and 150 miles distant. What a travesty upon efficiency!
For the moment however we are seeing the question, not in fine, but in large. It is terribly large, terribly wasteful, if you please. For not only is our steam locomotive a laggard in his over-greed for food but he is lazy into the bargain. A fearful proportion of his time he spends in resting or in being refitted for his work. For each hour that he spends out upon the line he spends another hour in the roundhouse—and this of course quite outside of the yearly visit to the shops for complete overhauling and repair. The traffic of Fifth Avenue, New York, or Michigan Avenue, Chicago, would never move if motor-cars were permitted to park alongside their busy curbs. One reason why the traffic upon our railroads has not moved better in times of stress is because there has been too much parking both of locomotives and of cars, particularly of the first.
An Eastern trunk-line railroad which a dozen years ago was having a fearful time moving its freight brought in a consulting engineer for an opinion as to the increase of its facilities. Like most engineers the outside expert saw the problem as a field-day possibility for contracting concerns—and engineers. A new classification-yard here, great additions and rearrangements to others there, at other places a long stretch of additional main-line trackage—the trick might be done anywhere from sixty to one hundred millions of dollars there in yester-year.
These figures staggered the president of the road. He was not satisfied and so turned again for outside consultation, this time with the hard-headed general manager of a Western line.
“Tell me what you can make of it?” he asked.
The Westerner took a hurried trip over the line and had his report ready within sixty minutes thereafter; it was short, concise, verbal.