NEW YORK AND ERIE RAILROAD.
422. As a fine specimen of American railroad engineering, and American railroad management, stands the above-named line, extending from Jersey City to Lake Erie, at Dunkirk; embracing with its branches 496 miles of road, employing over 1,000,000 dollars worth of labor per annum, upwards of 200 locomotive engines, and about 3,000 cars; earning annually over 5,000,000, and expending 2,680,000 dollars.
The whole cost of the road up to September 30, 1855, was, with the equipment, nearly $33,750,000. There are 129 truss bridges, amounting in all to 15,692 feet in length; 64 trestle, stringer, and pile bridges, of 5,489 feet total length; 3 viaducts, of length 1,274 feet in all; 167 arch culverts, of from 3 to 30 feet span; 527 box culverts, from 1 to 12 feet span; 92 wood sheds, 14,200 feet total length; 435 buildings; 433 switches, of 387,914 feet available length, and 504,205 feet total length.
Notwithstanding the immense amount of business transacted by such a road, so complete is the organization and management of employees, that the general superintendent, sitting in his New York office, can at any moment tell, within one mile, where each car or engine is, what it is doing, with what loaded, the consignor and consignee, and the time of arriving and departing the several stations, and other trains; and thus at any moment may perceive and correct faults and remissness, and in reality control the whole road.
APPENDIX.
A.
DECIMAL ARITHMETIC.
The advantage of a Decimal system of Arithmetic and of mensuration, as applied to engineering, can hardly be overstated. Civil and mechanical engineers both use “per force” some decimal expressions, as 0.7854, 3.1416, etc., etc. Why not adopt the system entirely? All calculations are much easier made decimally, and measurements made with more exactness. The most perfect system of weights and measures is doubtless that of the French. All lengths are based upon the meter as a unit, and whether the mechanic is making a watch or a locomotive his scale is metrical. The meter is exactly 1
10000000 of the distance from the pole to the equator, and was found, by measuring a meridian line from Rhodes to Dunkirk (France), 570 miles long. The metrical scale is thus,
| Millimetre | .001 | or 1 1000 |
| Centimetre | .01 | or 1 100 |
| Decimetre | .1 | or ⅒ |
| Metre | 1. | |
| Decametre | 10. | |
| Hectometre | 100. | |
| Kilometre | 1000. | |
| Myriametre | 10000. |
The metre is 3.280899 ft., or 39.370788 English inches. The English and American foot is ⅓ of the yard; the yard is 35000
351393 of a pendulum vibrating seconds at the latitude of London, at the level of the sea, in a vacuum. The standard American scale is an eighty-two inch bar made by Troughton of London for the United States Coast Survey. In civil engineering the decimal division is almost entirely adopted; indeed, any other would lead to almost endless calculation. The chain is one hundred feet long and divided into one hundred links. The tape is graduated to feet, tenths, and hundredths. The levelling rod to feet, tenths, hundredths, and thousandths. As the English foot is so universally adopted, and as it may at any time be got from a pendulum, it might not be best to attempt to introduce the metre, but the foot should certainly be divided decimally. The division should be thus,
| .001 | or 1 1000 |
| .01 | or 1 100 |
| .1 | or ⅒ |
| 1. | |
| 10. | |
| 100. | |
| 1000. |