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Show . oo AMERICAN TRAIN DI8PATCHINQ. In railroad operation marvelous dispatching dis-patching ho been attained, more accurate ac-curate than the seasons, more reliable reli-able than the tides, almost equal to tho solar time on which it i6 based. Line6 of track nearly a thousand miles long stretch between New York and Chicago. Every switch, every grade, every curve, Is known, tho line is studdod with Bignal stations and punctuated with stations. In tho. round-house Is a locomotive with boiler boil-er capable of carrying 225 pounds steam pressure, which through the, cylinders and pistons pushes on the' wheels with rims polished like glass, which transmit 400 horsepower through a quarter-Inch square of contact con-tact with a glass-smooth rail. With one load of coal, drinking from tanks as It runs, the locomotive is able to speed 140 miles at tho rate of sixty miles an hour The seventy-two to eighty-four wheel axle under the train must run true in its box, everything in track and equipment, iu men, and above all In spirit, must be In perfect order all the time. On the basis of these conditions a schedule is made out a- schedule of running time, with due allowance for grade and curves and stations, an elgbteen-hour schedule sched-ule from New York to Chicago. The train is then dispatched. The dispatchers Ibsuo orders to tho conductor and to the block-signal men, thus controlling the train from both ends, While under the orders of the conductor, whllo physically under un-der the control of the engineer, It Is the dispatcher who from start to finish fin-ish holds It In the hollow of his hand This Is tho highest degree of dispatching dis-patching that has been reached .In America. It Is perfect in its way, and all Americans are Justly proud of It, although as a marvel of human skill and dispatching excellence It is not to bo compared with the dispatching of the Franco-German war by von Moltke, when over r million men wero dispatched, and empire-making and destroying battles were fought at a predetermined time and place, with predetermined victory for the great dispatcher, predetermined defeat for his less skilled opponent. The big task was carried through because of perfect preparation. The Qerman army had no track, no perfect locomotives, locomo-tives, no built and tested Bignal towers, tow-ers, but It had a perfect working organization or-ganization that had not omitted to give attention to every llttlo detail. Harrington Har-rington Emerbon, in Engineering Magazine. |