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Show RAILROADS OF GERMANY H II BAD CONDITION Freight Cars Deteriorating From Month to Month; Repair Shops Used to Make War Munitions. TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM SERIOUS Most of Rivers and All the Canals Frozen Over; Food Shortage Becomes More Acute. BERXE, Switzerland, Feb. 17, via Paris. (By a staff correspondent of the Associated Press.) Although the most serious of the great problems which today occupy the attention of the German Ger-man leaders is the food question, of almost equal importance is the situation situa-tion presented by transportation difficulties. diffi-culties. Until the present winter these difficulties were felt but little and were not recognized generally as constituting constitut-ing a major problem until the shortage of food became more acute by reason of the lack of rolling stock, the depreciation depre-ciation of freight ears and the sudden cold spell, which froze the rivers and canals, hindering or preventing transportation trans-portation of the most necessary foods to centers of population. At the beginning of the war Germany had a surplus of railway carriages, freight cars and locomotives, which had been provided expressly against emergency. emer-gency. In consequence, transportation in the first two years of the war was adequate for all the unusual demands made upon it, notwithstanding the .extension .ex-tension of the territory served. Surplus Gone to Pieces. The conquest of Belgium resulted in the capture of a comparatively large number of Belgian freight cars, which todav mav be seen everywhere in Ger many, Poland, Lithuania, Austria, Hungary, Hun-gary, Siberia and even Russia. The factories fac-tories in which rolling stock ordinarily is produced and repaired, however, are needed urgently at present for other purposes. Moreover, the shortage of oils has made it impossible to keep the cars in proper condition. Such few cars as were captured in Russia have been found unavailable, because they are of broader gauge. The German surplus sur-plus deteriorating from month to month has gradually gone to pieces. Shortly before the correspondent left Berlin it was described by an unusually outspoken German railway official "as "miserable." "miser-able." From time to time passenger service in all parts of Germany has been reduced, re-duced, until at the present time the trains, which at this season are cold to the freezing point, are terribly overcrowded, over-crowded, frequently late and seldom complete even short journeys without at least one hot box. Troops Come First. From the beginning of the war the government has proceeded on the basis that the troops must be supplied with all kinds of necessities at the expense of everything else, and even the magnificent mag-nificent German trackage system is loaded load-ed down constantly with trains carrying carry-ing troops, supplies and ammunition. Not only is it impossible for civilians behind the front to travel without difficulty, dif-ficulty, but food supplies often are jeopardized. jeop-ardized. The problem has been increased by the necessity of shifting troops frequently fre-quently between the western and eastern east-ern fronts to counteract offensive movements move-ments of the allies. Beginning with last fall, the canals and rivers had come to be used more and more for the transportation trans-portation of foodstuffs, partly because Doats have a longer life than cars. Then ! came the cold, which froze everything but the largest rivers and even stopped transportation on the Rhine for a time. Every city in Germany had long felt the pinch from the lack of horses, automobiles auto-mobiles and other means of short haul transportation. ' This, in combination with the stoppage stop-page of water traffic and the Treat reduction re-duction in the number of trains, has brought trying need to the larger cities. Centers like Berlin have not bad even I : .. their scant allotment of potatoes, flour and other commodities. The arrival of spring and warmer weather will help the situation, but not greatly, because it will merely make water transportation again possible. Thoroughgoing repairs for the re-establishment of railroad equipment would be possible only by cutting down the output of ammunition from factories that in peace times were car shops, but were reorganized for war purposes. All that applies to Germany is doubly true of Austria, and especially of Hungary, Hun-gary, where the gradually increasing shortage of cars and depreciation of rolling stock in general are added to the difficulties imposed by the tremendous tremen-dous stretches that are single-tracked; for instance, from points only a short distance from Budapest all the way to Transylvania. Whereas the Germans in the earlv days of the war had men and materials to reconstruct hundreds of miles of broad gauge tracks in Russia, the process of double-tracking lines of communication to Rumania. Serbia and Albania is increasingly difficult. Austria-Hungary, which is less ready than Germany to resort to stringent measures, meas-ures, refuses for the time being to consider con-sider a plau proposed by Germany for lightening the transportation problem bv preventing prospective travelers 1'fom using trains unnecessarily. It was pointed out that the train service might be reduced still further if travel were regulated by a card system. The transportation problem is complicated compli-cated by the employment of substitute workers", chiefly women, who have been introduced everywhere in Germany and Austria, not only on railroads, but also on street car line in the cities. Roughly, Rough-ly, 50 per cent of the women thus employed em-ployed have been strong enough to endure en-dure the strain, but even these women have been much less efficient than the men. The number of railroad accidents, such as derailments, mistakes in switching switch-ing and collisions, ..has increa.-ed to an alarming extent, notwithstanding the great reduction in train service. |