Salt Lake Telegram | 1907-03-09 | Page 14 | Bigger Cars, Wider Tracks

adopted instead of the standard gauge of four feet eight and one-half inches. All this looks sensible to us- Narrow gauge and light cars were all right enough "when the country was sparsely settled and its products were correspondingly corre-spondingly small. If the railroads have to keep up with increased traffic there will have to tje radical changes in cars, if not in tracks. About forty years ago there was a. genius who argued for a long time in favor of a four-track railroad, rail-road, his thought being to have two rails on each side. He kept telling the people that by and by passengers would want roomy rooms in cars and that the amount of freight would make it necessary for cars to carry 100 tons. Of . course, his thought never received any great consideration, because be-cause there was -no necessity for the change, but it looks ' now as though on the main lines something of that . kind would have to be done to move the products of half a continent. When the soil is all under cultivation, and roads have to carry coal to those who need it ; we will need such a multiplication of railroads as no one dreams Of now, or an increase in the capacity of the present roads, corresponding to the tremendous jcalls upon them for carrying freights and passengers. BIGGER CARS; WIDER TRACKS. When the great congestion came on the Hill roads ' two months ago, THE TELEGRAM expressed the belief that roads of greater capacity would have to be built in order. to meet the increased traffic of the country. ( We notice that Mr. Harriman dropped into the Interstate Commerce commission office the other day io Washington and when questioned about roads and cars, he expressed the belief that larger steel cars with a capacity of 100,000 pounds each would have to replace the smaller cars, and further, that wooden cars would soon have to be relegated toW background. back-ground. : i He expressed another opinion that it would have been better if a six-foot gauge for railroads had been '.....,; iS'