Show MEANS VAST OUTLAY COST OF electrification OF ALL RAIL ROADS estimates made show that a billion and a half dollars would be needed to make the change desired the advisability of wholesale dec ot all the railroads in the country has been formally considered in abstract before the electrical en associations and the ques alon has been found BO great that the meetings were marked more by con argument than by definite results figures presented show the estimated expenditure involved should every mile of railroad in the united states be reconstructed for operation by electricity and the rolling equipment changed to correspond the total cost of such a change Is given at about electrical pow er houses to give a total of kilowatts or 2 horsepower would be required fifteen hundred millions of dollars Is a sum so vast that it means nothing to the average person and yet it represents an invest ment so stupendous that only an ex small portion of it can be con eldered to have any relation to the m mediate future the economy ol 01 such a change has been estimated in prospect as con present operating costs tor the movement of every car and en alne in the country total 1 in one year by electrification this would be reduced by about representing that much actual and net saving this last sum Is indeed enormous but it only emphasizes the magnitude of the project of universal electrification for the most radical advocates of the new power have not yet dared to claim that the saving large as it seems would warrant the change in its entirety under certain special conditions however the new power will stand su preme and it Is by the extension and more general application under these peculiar circumstances that electricity will one day in due time come into its own on the railroads clyde dennl more in the world today to day |