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Show BIG JOB DONE ON MINNESOTA ROADS To transport the surfacing materials used by the Minnesota department of highways during the years 1921 to lOl'o, inclusive beginning when the new state highway program took full effect would require 3,228 trains of steel hopper cars extending a distance of 1,541 miles. Charles M. Babcock, chief of the department, in a recent statement, said that the department has built 3,575 miles of gravel surfacing surfac-ing and 575 miles of paving in addition addi-tion to extensive bridge construction and replacement and maintenance operations op-erations over the entire 7,000-mile highway system. Material involved in the state highway high-way department's surfacing activities during the five-year period mentioned totaled 6,704,000 cubic yards of dry materials, or 9,6S4,000 tons. To transport trans-port this vast quantity would have required re-quired 103,680 steel hopper cars of a capacity of 50 tons each. The department built 575 miles of pavement and there entered into It 1,847,000 cubic yards of material, or a quantity sufficient to construct a wall 472 miles long, 10 feet high and 2 feet thick. This wall would extend from St. Paul to Winnipeg. The department has used for various vari-ous purposes 352,963 tons of cement, 834,428 tons of sand and 1,335,0S6 tons of aggregate gravel or crushed rock. The cement, gravel and crushed rock entered not only into paving but construction con-struction of bridges and culverts. Altogether Al-together there were 82,581,000 cubic feet of dry materials, and these made 1,362,000 cubic yards of concrete. All this work was on the state-wide system of trunk highways serving by ' one or more routes all county seats and nearly all towns of more than 1,000 population. Placed end to end these routes would make an oval line around the outside of the entire Unit-ed Unit-ed States and the improved mileages would cross it once on both its shortest short-est and longest diameters. |