The distinguished Boston jurist who not so many years ago astounded and startled the entire nation by saying that he could save a million dollars a day in the operation of its railroads was quite right, even though not exactly along the lines that he then suggested. Mr. Justice Brandeis at that time proposed to accomplish his great savings—then roughly estimated at 2 per cent. a year upon the property valuation of the railroads of the United States—by radical operating economies. That these might be accomplished and in a large measure, I do not now doubt. In fact for several chapters past I have been trying to show some of the larger opportunities to be accomplished along these lines; economies that to-day might be effected upon our carriers were they possessed at this moment with the proper imagination and vision, aided by an Interstate Commerce Commission possessed of the same qualities. We have seen how, in a test long enough to be definite, the motorized terminals in the city of Cincinnati have saved the railroads there something more than a thousand dollars a day. This was just one typical congested American city. I have tried also to show how that plan, in the main at least, could be extended to other congested American cities. It would not take very many such terminal savings to make a fair fraction of the national economy once proposed by our distinguished jurist of the Supreme Court bench.
Similarly I have tried to show the economies to be accomplished in the most neglected field of our rail transport system, the branch line and local service: the electrification of lines, the introduction of the gasolene-motor unit, both upon the rails and off, the steady refinement of the locomotive, the development of the all-important container. Yet even these by no means represent the limits of operating economies yet to be attained upon the American railroad. There are many other operating savings that might be made and that are not being made to-day. For instance the field of a more scientific train movement through better signaling is of itself a most fascinating one. The second important function of a railroad signal—second only to its all-important one of safety to human life and to property—is to keep trains moving. It is a poor business man indeed who does not recognize the high value of keeping all of his moving equipment as nearly as possible in constant motion and in this way holding down the cost of his overhead.
There are two ways to direct the movement of trains. The first is the one still most commonly in use upon the railroad of the United States, by the written instructions of the train-order; the other is by the indications of the fixed signal—upon the open line, generally the automatic block. For train-order instructions the moving train must either slow down or stop completely, but with signal indications it may keep moving ahead at a good pace. In the one case time is lost, in the other it is gained.
This may seem in itself a small matter, but much multiplied it comes to a real saving indeed. On a single important division of a single important freight-carrying railroad—the Susquehanna division of the Erie railroad, 140 miles of double-track—a careful test was made of the savings accomplished by the installation of electric block-signals within the first calendar twelvemonth after they had been put in service, supplanting old-fashioned manual block-signals. Over that division in a typical year there move the huge traffic of 2,322,070,451 ton-miles.
Under the manual block the year before, the Erie’s train-despatching was by written train-orders sent by telegraph. The division was divided into two despatchers’ districts, two men for each district, four men for the division, for each of the three eight-hour tricks, or twelve men for the twenty-four hours, in addition to two chief train-despatchers. Moreover the Susquehanna division had employed in the twelvemonth immediately preceding the installation of its automatic electric blocks 136 signalmen at forty-six intermediate stations who had been paid $94,752 on the eight-hour day basis. Even then it had sought to economize by closing down a number of its block stations at night to make a little saving on its pay-roll, even though the net result was to make its blocks excessively long in those hours and so slow up and greatly delay its train movement.
Contrast this with a despatchers’ service of but six men—in addition, of course, to the two chief despatchers—for the entire division with no signalmen whatsoever (aside from the telegraph offices open at seventeen intermediate points instead of forty-six as of old, where the retention of an operator and the written train-order system was imperative), and we begin to see real savings. The Erie people took that first year of their automatic block operation and compared it with the twelve months immediately preceding when they had moved 2,137,868,274 ton miles of freight traffic over the Susquehanna division. With their new kink in scientific railroad operation they were able not only greatly to reduce their operating force but to increase their ton-miles per train from 254,054 to 274,217, a very considerable efficiency increase. In other words they not alone made the valuable saving in time from having fewer trains upon the line—the actual saving in that first year came to 697 trains—but an operating cost of $87,969. At the rate at which money was then worth, this was the interest on a capital investment of $1,759,380.
Project this to the entire main line of that railroad, 999 miles from New York to Chicago; remember that we have been considering but one 140-mile division of that main line, and savings begin to multiply. If the proportion of savings could be maintained the Erie would have been $630,000 ahead on its main line alone; if it could be carried to its branch lines too, the figure would run into a million dollars or more a year. Yet the Erie is less than a hundredth part of the route mileage of the railroads of the United States, of which a comparatively small part is yet equipped with automatic block-signals. To say that our carriers might save a hundred million dollars a year by the use of modern and scientific signaling alone would probably be a conservative guess. A million dollars a day, Mr. Justice Brandeis! It begins to look as if you had understated, not overstated the savings to be accomplished by our national transport.
We have by no means reached our limits in operating economies. That our practical railroaders, under the fearful spur of a terrific demand for great retrenchments, have done much is not to be denied. In some things, notably the creation of the big car, the big locomotive, and the big train, they not only have accomplished marvels but to-day they have probably approached the extreme limits of efficiency, if indeed they have not already actually passed them. Recently they have increased the loading of the average freight-car and have speeded up its movement. On March 1, 1920, when the private operators took their roads back from the Government, they announced that they were going to try to make a “thirty-thirty” record—an average daily mileage of thirty miles (instead of the 22.3 which the United States Railroad Administration was then accomplishing) and an average loading of thirty tons (instead of the 28.3 tons which the Railroad Administration by almost superhuman efforts, including appeals to the patriotism of the shippers, had finally succeeded in reaching). Despite most unpropitious circumstances the railroad executives had virtually reached the mark that they had fixed for themselves when the industrial slump set in upon the land. And in a total movement of a million car-loads of freight a week (a fair standard for good business across the land) savings such as these are the equivalent of many new cars, particularly so at the times when our railroads find themselves short of freight rolling-stock. In an earlier chapter I showed how rapidly our total freight-car equipment has declined—in three years more than 125,000 cars. Yet the saving of but a mile a day in the operation of each car of our existing equipment is equivalent to the addition of 100,000 cars to it.
Our railroaders are expert already in the efficient use of the somewhat antiquated tools which they already possess. I have said long ago that man for man they are not excelled anywhere in the world in the small technical details of rail transportation. Their expertness was won in a hard school. Since that day, fifteen or twenty years ago, when the running expenses of our carriers began their long uphill climb, these men have been forced to great operating economies merely to make both ends meet. They have gone the limit in these savings. Now they must have more tools, bigger tools, finer tools. They must have electrification, better signaling, newer and larger terminals. Remember all the while that if they do not have them, and have them soon, it will not be the railroaders who will suffer primarily. It will be the communities that they aim to serve. Bigger and more modern tools will serve, it is true, to bring vast economies, but they will also help bring the United States a better railroad service, which is a point never to be forgotten.