Our Railroads To-Morrow

by Edward Hungerford

I think I can understand. A little time ago the wisest and most conservative of the railroad operating executives who have Cincinnati among their bailiwicks were wondering how in these days of abnormally low railroad credit they were going to escape vast and almost immediate extensions to their terminals there, both freight and passenger. Now they know that these expenditures will not have to be made—for the freight terminals at least—for a number of years to come. The trap-car elimination has released anywhere from 30 to 40 per cent. of valuable floor-space in each of the present local freight-houses and so of course has added that much to their working capacity. Count that, if you please, to the credit of the motor-truck in terminal service.

Nor is the service itself representative of any cost increase. The motor terminals company is hauling all the transfer and secondary freight at an average cost of eighty cents a ton, which certainly compares well with $1.20 which the former transfer service was compelled to charge for its haul by lorries, or the expense varying from $1.12 to $1.60 a ton which it costs the railroads to haul their own trap-cars by switch-engines. A saving this which goes well alongside of that of box-cars and switch-engines and freight-house space relieved, to say nothing of individual shipments, through and local, vastly expedited; all of which can be translated annually into money savings of real dimensions.

Already the motor terminals company is hauling about one thousand tons of freight through the streets of Cincinnati in nine hours of each business day. Its trucks, with maximum outside dimensions of seventeen feet six inches by eight feet, are both shorter and narrower than the lorries of the old transfer company and infinitely less subject to delays under conditions of inclement weather. Moreover understand, if you will, that the transfer company, with all of its 115 lorries, hauled but 38 per cent. of the through L. C. L. freight between the various terminals of Cincinnati. To handle all of it would have taken at least 250 horse-drawn trucks, while if it had attempted the problem of handling the sub-stations another fleet of at least equal size would have been required.

Yet its motorized successor is now handling every pound of the thousand tons or more of transfer freight at Cincinnati daily as well as all the sub-station work, with the slight increase of twenty-four bodies to the 201 already in service and without the increase of a single chassis to its present operating fleet of fifteen. To perfect and quicken its service the overhead cranes for loading and unloading the box-bodies are being equipped with motor-trolleys, in place of the man-power chain arrangements, which in turn represents a speed of fifty feet a minute as against but seven under the old order of things. And this of course is still further efficiency.

So much then for the situation as it stands to-day in Cincinnati. It does not take very much of a vision to see in the proved success of a terminal plan, which already has ceased to be an experiment, a great enlargement of the freight gathering and distributing scheme for the entire city. No longer will it be necessary or even essential that a freight-house of a railroad be located either at or near rails. It can come far closer to its users. In other words railroad sub-stations for the collection and delivery of package-freight can be established in every industrial section of Cincinnati, thus shortening the haul for individual patrons and so in turn perceptibly lessening the congestion in the city streets.

Do you see now where this is leading us? With sub-stations so established, the principle of standardized interchangeable motor-truck bodies and chasses working to so definite an end, there remains little or no use for downtown freight terminals in a city like Cincinnati, save perhaps an occasional team-track yard for heavy car-load shipments. In the flats at the edge of the town the railroads can, and in my opinion eventually will, establish new and generous-sized freight-houses and other terminal appurtenances. The downtown stations, located in the heart of each industrial district, will do the rest. The expense of building these last will be as nothing. The value of their upper floors as lofts for light manufacturing will far more than offset the cost and upkeep of the ground-floor motor-freight terminal, while the facility of movement, with its multitude of resultant economies, will make the expenditure on outlying main terminals money well spent indeed.

As goes Cincinnati, so must go the land outside. It is from this point of view that its radically new terminal plan assumes a nation-wide interest and importance. As I lingered in its various railroad terminals beside the neat wood and iron motor-body boxes upon the freight-house decks—the original open cage design has long since been discarded in favor of the stronger and more permanent form of carrier—I could not help but be struck again with their resemblance to the small ten-ton goods-wagons of the French and English railways. And I recalled the tremendous efficiency of these same small wagons for the work for which they were best adapted, the hauling of package freight, the sort of things we know in this country as L. C. L. One of the great disagreeable sources of railroad outgo in America, and one that has a constant tendency toward increase, is the list of claims paid for freight damaged in transit. It makes a pretty big annual bill, of which an astoundingly large proportion is gained through breakage in the transfer-houses. Remember that right here is where our French and English cousins can always show us a trick or two. With their little ten-ton cars there is always enough package-freight to “make” a full car even to the smallest communities, while once arrived at one of these, a switching-crew composed of a man and a horse handles the car-load shipment with great care and no little speed.

Then as I stood there upon the big and orderly decks of the Cincinnati freight-houses—orderly upon the coming of the motor-truck into terminal service, and for the first time in many years—it kept coming to me, why could not these stoutly built boxes go through to Dayton or to Columbus or Indianapolis, or for that matter anywhere within reach of the American freight-car? Two of them would go quite easily upon the deck of a flat-car; it ought not to be difficult to find “flats” to accommodate three of the seventeen-foot motor-bodies upon their platforms. But even with but two, there would be nine tons of package-freight, which is fully as much if not more than the average package-freight box-car is carrying to-day across the land. While thirteen tons—three well filled motor-boxes-runs well ahead of that average.

Suppose that this long Big Four flat-car was to run up to Columbus—150 miles or more up the line—with three motor-boxes upon its deck. One might have been filled at the main freight-house of the Big Four, down in the shadow of the big passenger terminal, another at Brighton, the third, let us say at Norwood. The exact stations are immaterial. The point is that the freight would have but one transfer—at the in-house of the Columbus terminals. There an overhead track-crane would pick the three boxes off the “flat” and place them upon the freight-house deck, where they could be quickly unloaded and their contents placed on trucks or lorries for Columbus distribution. While in turn the motor-boxes would be reloaded for shipment back direct to Cincinnati-Downtown, Cincinnati-Brighton, and Cincinnati-Norwood.

There is nothing impracticable or impossible about such a plan. On the contrary, it is most tremendously practical and tremendously efficient withal. Its installation is neither difficult nor expensive, while the savings are vast. A conservative estimate would place these already at $1000 a day in the Cincinnati district. Carry that ratio all the way across the country and you have a possibility of railroad operating economy in the aggregate not to be sneezed at.