THE RAILWAYS OF AMERICA.* THE railway systems of the United
States, which make up a total of over 150,000 miles, are, indeed, a cause for wonder, and this vast figure will not be likely to modify the popular belief that American railways revel in long distances and trestle-bridges, and fearful cailons crossed by the most slender of bridges. The success with which the science of engineering has grappled with and overcome difficulties in that continent, is hardly appreciated even by observant travellers. Nor is this a matter for surprise. With our 20,000 miles of line, laid for the most part in easy gradients, and with few bridges and sharp curves, it is difficult to realise the fights which the engineer of the West has waged, and continues to wage, with the giant forces of Nature. The mind grasps with difficulty some of his feats : how a line which clings to the edge of a cliff was surveyed by men hanging in mid-air, and how he obtains uniform gradients by some of the most ingenious and apparently harebrained expedients that the audacity of man ever devised. American bridges have become a by-word, so reckless in construction and fanciful in design do they seem to the ordinary mortal.
There can, then, be no comparison between English and American railways, for this, amongst other reasons. The American who constructs a line some hundreds of miles in length has not the patience, nor, indeed, the capital, to build what one of the writers in this book calls "monumental bridges, lofty stone viaducts, and to make deep cuttings at
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The Railways of America : their Construction, Development, Hanayement,and Appliances. By Various Writers. With an Introduction by Thomas H. Cooley, With Libudzations. London: John Murray. every hill." The line must begin to earn money at once, and the temporary trestle-work can be replaced by stone culverts and iron bridges when the surplus profits allow of it. This method of construction does not fall in with the ideas of English engi- neers at all. The English " locate " their lines too expensively, is the judgment passed on us, we believe, by most American engineers; and English lines probably do cost as many ten- pound notes as American lines do dollars. This, they say, is not true economy. And yet there are few of the older bridges in America which have not been rebuilt. We are too fond of tunnels, they say; more skill is required in avoiding them than can ever be shown in constructing them ; yet look at the difficulties of carrying a track round a mountain-side and preserving it from snow and rain-storms. The significance of our expression, "the permanent way," as compared to what in American parlance is called "the track," can hardly be insisted upon emphatically enough. From the internal evidence of the volume before us, it appears that a vast army of bridge- builders, trackmen, and trackwalkers is barely sufficient to ensure the freedom of what is aptly called, and is, merely a track, from fallen tree-trunks, shifted ballast, and sunken rails. The circumstances which govern the " location " of railroads in the two countries are so entirely different, that a comparison is absurd. In England, such is our population, an expensive and even badly "located" line is scarcely likely to be abandoned ; but this is the fate which overtakes an American line, should it not be ready as soon as possible for running. These are circumstances, indeed, which are peculiar to a country of great extent, and they must be considered. It seems to us that the impossibility of any true comparison between the respective methods has been overlooked by the writers in this volume. One or two remarks on some noticeable peculiarities might be made. In America, the passenger traffic is in undivided "cars," and is entirely first-class; this is the obvious result of longer journeys, but also of a more liberal attitude towards passengers than that prevailing in this country. American first-class fares are half ours, lower even than our second-class, and secure for the passenger comforts which only Royalty and a few private persons can imitate here. (In the table which General Horace Porter gives us, no allowance, as he says, is made for excursion tickets.) The conditions of passenger travel are thus materially different,—we have privacy and they have comfort. The freight-rates in America are remarkably low, if, as a writer says, meat and flour enough to supply one man for a year can be carried fifteen hundred miles for one day's wage of a skilled mechanic, whatever that may be. But we may remind our readers that Mr. F. W. Hewes, in the chapter entitled" Statistical Studies," takes a desponding view of the future of railway profits. The reduction of both traffic and passenger rates has been great, in consequence of "rate-wars" and general competition, and the reduction of working ex- penses has by no means kept pace with it ; the profits, according to him, have been slowly but steadily decreasing.
The morality of American Railway Companies as regards rates, rebates, differentials, and commissions, has always been exceedingly low, lower even than the rates. At one time, indeed, the American railway " boss " was regarded, and justly so, as a perfect type of an irresponsible and non-moral being. Things are much better now, and the several writers speak more hopefully, and, it must be said, with regret and disapprobation of the iniquities which resulted from the struggle for existence. It is significant, however, 'that the writers before us discuss the question from the point of view of policy, not that of morality. English railways, we know, are by no means free from reproach ; there is much about the in-and-out working of rates, and the existence of certain "rings," which is not likely to impress impartial observers. But public opinion has a certain power here, while in America the public have always been, and still are, at the mercy of the Railway Companies. One final difference between American and European Companies generally is the confessed want of " stability " in the former, due to the absence of a proper feeling between employers and employes. Mr. C. F. Adams recommends the formation of those societies which in this country have done so mach to increase the cohesion between Companies and their servants. The want of organisation is shown, we cannot help thinking, by the undermanning of the railways and the signalling arrangements, though the con- ditions of American railway construction are not favourable
for an elaborate organisation of signals. If the train stops at a point not on the schedule, the brakesman must go back some distance, flag in hand, to protect his train, and to the neglect of this precaution is attributed a great many accidents. It is not likely, indeed, that the block system would be used on long stretches of line such as prevail in a vast country. There is not much to choose between the respective per-centages of accidents. The statistics furnished by the different lines are obviously and confessedly doubtful, the State not being able to compel the making of a record; otherwise the slight balance in our favour might be very much increased. This conclusion becomes almost certain, when we consider the peculiar recklessness of Ameri- cans, especially American tramps, as regards tracks and street- crossings. According to the tables, out of the whole number killed by their own carelessness, two-thirds (1,429) were neither passengers nor employes. The speed of American trains is not reckless. We had occasion before to point out the misleading sound of such names as "The Cannon-Ball," "The Thunder- bolt," and "The G-whiz-z." General Porter tells us that these trains do not attain an average of forty miles an hour, and that some English expresses exceed an average of forty- five miles an hour.
It is to be regretted that The Railways of America was not the work of one writer instead of a dozen. There is a great deal of repetition, and the sequence and connection of matter is not properly arranged, a fact not to be wondered at when separate articles, doubtless by experts, are bound together. The whole lacks cohesion and literary and human interest, and the gleams of humour are rare. One writer would have been much more likely to carry readers along with him, and to invest mechanical details with a little colcsr. As it is, the book does not teach us half what we should have liked to know. The account of the bridge-building is instructive, and gives a good picture of the difficulties en- countered and the ingenuity displayed in that art, as shown by a Colorado hanging bridge, a Kentucky cantilever, the New Harlem and Lachine bridges, an old " Burr " wooden bridge, various -cantilevers, and a truss bridge on that marvel of railway engineering, the Oroya Railroad of Peru. The artifices employed in traversing broken and hilly country. like Colorado are illustrated by such contrivances as the George- town Loop, the loop and treatle near Hagermaam's, Denver, and the viaducts of Kinzua, Old and New Portage, Erie, and tie curved Georgetown viaduct. The description of the various engines which have preceded the powerful " Decapod " and "Consolidation" locomotives of to-day, is interesting as showing the necessity for more powerful engines than we have. America, too, is the birthplace of the Westinghouse air-brake and the swivelling truck, an invention which the sharp curves on American lines necessitated, and which it is to be hoped will become more general here. The chapter which discusses the many intricacies of freight-carriage will enable the reader to appreciate the incidents of long-distance traffic, while the list of the varieties of cars will open many eyes to the necessities of a continent, and the possibilities of such resources as the United States possess. "The supply," as one writer some- what ironically puts it, "is always equal to the demand, in this world." We are slowly adopting the necessities of American passenger travel as luxuries, and in course of time their railway-cars may not seem the luxurious palaces they do at present. '
We cannot help thinking that the examples of characteristic American humour would have been more plentiful if General H. Porter had been entrusted with the whole subject. The different writers may be experts, but experts are not very human, and in this case have contributed nothing to the humour of the book. A Texas jury figures in a typical Western story, which is quoted, however, with some doubt. This jury gave damages against a Company because a station- master's wife had given the plaintiff, a tramp, a dinner which disagreed with him. The conductor who lost time with an excursion train on the Fourth of July because the hot weather had elongated the rails, might have been a creation of Mark Twain. Much of the value of the book is due to the numerous illustrations, which are well drawn, and help to relieve the monotony of style, and the dryness of the technicalities.
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