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Show Track Proves Weakest Point o! Railway Line "Every' building In the world was, according lo Alfred Henry Lewis, evidently evi-dently built from the ground up. not from the roof down," said a railroad official In Ogden yesterday. "Eut this does not apply to modern railroading, so far as I can see." he continued. "Tho foundation of the railroad Is the track, and today our track Is only a makeshift, the same old track used when the first little toy steam kettles and toy wagons ran over them and were called trains. The rails are heavier, stone Is used for I ballast, bigger and more ties are used, ' but still the fact remains that the track Is a back number compared with the engines, the sleeping and d'nlng cars, the block signals and the telegraph and telephone. ' Our tracks of today are not a fraction frac-tion of an inch wider than they were when our engines were only half as will and do roll over on to the outer lower flange or base. Then we get hundreds of broken rail.', which ! foi In excess of failure by breaking lu any other class of railway equipment, equip-ment, yet they are. to a great extent, ex-tent, the standard sectVn adopted by the American society of civil engineers. en-gineers. "They are not a bit letter tha'i the old ones What we really need is a rail that will stand tip in Its place and do Its work with sufficient suffic-ient weight and stability p0 as not lo squirm under Its load as If It .were made of rubber. Then wc wo want a Joint fastening that will support the rail ends from underneath under-neath (there are several of those n the market that do this fairly well) then so long as we use wooden I ties we must put enough of the in under the rails to support them wneiner no plates are used or not. "I am perlectly safe In sayln;that tbe track of railways M the'r very weak member compared w ith other equipment of all classes, and track will never be what it should be until un-til there Is epua'.lzar ion given to the against the Inside of it, and this, ran never be done with the present ruil section; and bef re we get any mure track devices to do track work with iw; should get track to work on different dif-ferent to what we have at present. "One great trouble with track l- spreading. Numerous derailment? have taken place from this cause, and requires, during the winter season, sea-son, constant vlgllauee to avoid accidents. ac-cidents. "Entire pas-enger trains, with the exception of the engine and some of the forward cars, have been ditched by spreading. The cause of this !s lack of stability in the track, showing show-ing clearly that our trucks are not all In koeplnt; with olhor appliances on our railways." high and less than one-third as heavv. Today an engine practically . ba.nncoi on a light wire called a railroad track. "The rails are nailed to wood, r,nd this construction is expected to stand the strain of hundreds of thousands of pounds applied like a blow In the ( small fraction of a second for thou sands of times. Such principles went out of use In buildings long ago Sup- pose the modern 6ky scraper or a bridge were merely nailed together! Yet a railroad track today Is In Just this condition. "The situation seems almost impossible impos-sible to change. Everything is tody tiillt on the basis of the standard hack, and radically lo change tlm track would work nn almost prohibitive prohibi-tive revolution all along the line. Hundreds Hun-dreds of millions of dollars are invested in-vested in locomotive shops to make engines along certain general lines. The samo truo of our ahoi and the rail mills. To try to change the track from what It now Is into something new would- change all these things and many others. "The railroad Is by far the largest and most yltal business of the nation It directly affects the dally life of every citizen, and lo upset railroad affairs, as a radical change In track construction would do. Is hardly to be thought of. "Rut what is to be done? Moil accidents ac-cidents are due to the track. We have already practically passed the limit of the preseut track design. The greatest problem before the railroad man of the near future one might almost al-most say of the present timeIs the track." In the Railroad Age Gazette ap-pear.t ap-pear.t a letter by J. Drlnkwjter dls-ti dls-ti let roadmaster of the Temlskarulng &. Northern Ontario, to which this leading publication of the rallioad world devotes considerable editorial space, beginning: "The geuei-al indictment in-dictment of some features of the American railroad permanent way made by Mr. Drinkwater, m it letter in another column, Is Interesting. It. escapes being common olac although it formulates what everybody knows. A part of Mr. DrlnUwater'h letter follow s: "Wbhoiit being tejo pessimistic or preaching bluo ruin, and while 1 believe be-lieve In making use m' every known device that will accr.mp'lsn cur's expediently ex-pediently and save labo. nevertneles I bellevo there are matters of Importance Import-ance lacing every one interested in the maintenance of our way on the Canadian railways. At least I am inclined in-clined to believe that we have nothing noth-ing that should he called permanent way, a term that Is very often annlcJ to what we call track." I have seen track for the last thirty-five years being built and put up In what was called first-class rbape. and In a very short time It had gone to pieces only to done over and rebuilt. "The old r.t and 60-pound rail have ghen place to the So and SVpound. ptjund. and In some places the Impound Im-pound rail, hut we find the same lack of pernvanenetcy exists as did with the lighter rail and our track Is practically prac-tically no better thau It was twenty-five twenty-five years ago "The plates have been introduced to save ties, but they do mt save them. They only Increase the llto of tbe tie ioslMy 13 or - Ppr ff'nt-The ff'nt-The rail of the heaviest weight docs not do its work ' "We find after a few ninths' ser- J vice it. l.s canted over on its outer I corner and the remedy-Is to cut the tie to pieces and straighten It up again. Every day we here talk of adzing , down on this curve and that curve before the rail gets too badly canted. "Every year It Is necessary' totaki a piece hero and there on a division and practically rebuild It ln order to keep It In shape to do business. Every five or six years It is necessary nec-essary to relay rails, taking out rail that should have been good r twenty twen-ty five years. 'This, to 'a great extent, is for the want of a proper Joint fastening. Th. n our rallg are made symmetrical, symmetri-cal, while all the force against thera is the Inner fide, and tber must, and , |