The Railroad Problem Part 10

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ADAPTABLE MOTOR-TRACTOR

Equipped with f.l.a.n.g.e wheels and hitched to a flat-car train on a logging railroad, it makes a bully motor-truck of real hauling capacity.]

These ideas may seem visionary--advanced, perhaps. They are nothing of the kind. They are new, but they do represent the practical working of the great opportunity in branch-line railroading. And the gasoline-propelled unit railroad coach is no longer visionary, no longer even to be cla.s.sed as a mere novelty. This adaptation of the automobile idea in the form of a single gasoline-propelled car, which combines baggage and express and smoking and day-coach compartments in an efficient compactness, has been a tremendous help to many railroads on their branch-line problems. These cars require a crew of but three men against a minimum crew of five men on the old-style steam train for branch-line service. They are clean and they are fast. And they have aided many railroads to increase their branch-line operation without increasing their operating cost--in many cases making actual savings. It is well for the big men who own and operate the steam railroad to remember that no matter how rapid may be the spread of the automobile or how permanent its extensive use, there will always be a large cla.s.s of travel-hungry folk who must ride upon some form of railroad. There are people who, if financially capable of owning a car, are incapable of running it, and cannot afford a chauffeur. And the difficulties of owning an automobile increase greatly when one comes to live in the larger cities. The local line situation is not nearly as bad as it looks at first glimpse. There is a business for it if the railroader will devote himself carefully to its cultivation. Remember that in many cases he has sought so long for the larger profits of long-distance business between the big cities that he has rather overlooked the smaller, sure profits of the local lines. And it is interesting to know that the railroad of the Middle West which concededly maintains the finest local service is the one road that made no active appearance in a recent hearing in which the roads of its territory sought increased pa.s.senger rates. Despite the fact that many of its compet.i.tors have said that its local service is expensive and generous to an unwarranted degree, it found that its net profits on its pa.s.senger earnings were proportionately higher than those on its freight!

This road runs parlor cars upon almost all of its local trains, sleeping cars where there is even a possibility of their getting traffic. A big eastern road has just begun to follow this parlor-car practice. It builds and maintains its own cars. There are no expensive patent rights to be secured in the making of a parlor car. A double row of comfortable wicker or upholstered chairs, a carpet, lavatory facilities, and a good-humored porter will do the trick. And the train and the road upon which such a simple, cleanly car travels at once gains a new prestige. In an age when travel demands a private bath with every hotel room, a manicure with the haircut, and a taxicab to and from the station, a parlor car is more of a necessity than a luxury. And it is surprising to notice its earning possibilities upon even the simplest of branch lines or on one local train.

One thing more--a rather intimately related thing, if you please. We have spoken of the railroad automobile which runs up the public highway from East Caliph to Caliph and return. Let us consider that particular form of transportation service of the automobile in still another light. A man who went up into one of the great national parks on the very backbone of the United States this last summer was tremendously impressed with both the beauty and the accessibility of the place. The one thing was supplemental to the other. This man was impressed by still another thing, however.

The railroad which had brought him to a certain fine and growing city at the base of the mountains--a most excellent and well-operated railroad it chanced to be--had a branch line which ran much closer to the national park, upon which it was spending many thousands of dollars in advertising, both generously and intelligently. In other days park visitors took this branch--four-in-hands or carriages from its terminal for the thirty-mile run up through the canyon and into the heart of the park. With the coming of the automobile all this was changed. The motor car quickly supplanted the old-time carriages, even the four-in-hands themselves. In a short time it was running from the big city below the base of the mountains and the railroad was taking off one of its two daily trains upon the branch in each direction. Then, after only a little longer time, it was making a truce with its new compet.i.tor--so that its through tickets might be used, in one direction at least, upon the motor cars.

An excellent idea, you say. Perhaps. But I know a better one.

This same man rode last summer upon one of those motor vehicles all the way from the big city up into the heart of the park--some seventy miles all told. He is a man who owns an excellent touring car at his home--back East. Perhaps that is the reason why he did not enjoy this run out in the West. For the car on which he rode was a truck-cha.s.sis upon which had been builded a cross-seat body, with accommodations for some fifteen or sixteen pa.s.sengers. It was the only practical way in which a motor vehicle could be built in order to compete with the railroad at its established rates of fare. Yet he did not enjoy the run, at least not until they were across the long forty-mile stretch of plains and up into the foothills of the Rockies. And then he and his were a little too tired by the slow, if steady, progress of the low-geared truck-cha.s.sis, to really have the keenest enjoyment of the glorious park entrance.

The point of all this is that the railroad which owns and operates that branch line ought also to own those excellently managed motor routes that radiate from its terminals through one of the loveliest and most rapidly growing playgrounds in all western America--perhaps own and operate a chain of its own hotels as well. It would gain not only prestige by so doing, but traffic as well. For back of its own advertising of the charms of that superior place it would set the guaranty of its name, of its long-established reputation for handling pa.s.sengers well.

There are plenty of places in the United States where this may be done--and done today. The Southern Pacific is widely advertising a motor route through the Apache country and the Salt River valley of Arizona and in connection with its southern main stem between El Paso and Los Angeles.

The success of its radical traffic step on its part may yet lead it to a correlation with its service of many wonderful motor runs over those superb roads of California, as well. Similar opportunities are open to the Burlington, the Milwaukee, the Union Pacific, the Denver and Rio Grande, the Great Northern--all of them railroads not ordinarily blind to traffic opportunities of any sort whatsoever.

In the East, the Boston and Maine, the Maine Central, and the Central Vermont railroads are confronted with dozens of such possibilities of developing through supplemental motor routes in the White Mountains and the Green Mountains; the Adirondacks, the Catskills, and the Alleghenies should be filled with opportunities for the Delaware and Hudson, the New York Central, the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore and Ohio, and the Chesapeake and Ohio railroads. To establish such routes only needs a few things--the detailed and detached attention of an alert young traffic man, with his nose well above conventions and precedents, working with a man schooled in the operation of motor vehicles upon a large scale. To this partners.h.i.+p add a competent advertising man, give a little money at the outset--and the trick will be turned. And I am confident that if it be well turned, the railroad will never wish to turn back again.

CHAPTER X

MORE RAILROAD OPPORTUNITY

Let us now bring the motor truck into consideration. So far we have not taken it into our plans. And yet it is the phase of automobile compet.i.tion that some railroad men frankly confess puzzles them the most. For it hits close to the source of their largest revenue--the earnings from the freight. It is a transport of things rather than of men. But that is no fundamental reason why it should not become as much an ally and a feeder of the railroad--as the pa.s.senger automobile, for instance.

The possibilities of the motor truck, under the development of good roads, which already has grid-ironed the two coastal fronts of the United States with improved highways and placed them here and there and everywhere throughout the interior, are large. A wholesale meat vendor in Philadelphia has used motor trucks with specially designed refrigerator bodies to distribute his wares not only through the immediate suburban territory in southeastern Pennsylvania and in adjacent New Jersey, but right up to the very doors of New York City, itself. Florists, whose greenhouses dot the Illinois prairies for fifty miles roundabout Chicago, today are using fleets of these vehicles to bring their wares at top speed either to suburban railroad stations or down into the heart of the city itself--although this last is somewhat unsatisfactory owing to the crowded streets of downtown Chicago. The motor truck is coming into increasing use in Oregon and in Was.h.i.+ngton and in California. It is proving a disturbing compet.i.tor to the small railroads upon the larger islands of the Hawaiian group. And a company has just been formed to introduce a motor-truck freight service to certain railroadless parts of China--which are supplied with ancient but very pa.s.sable highroads.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHEN FREIGHT IS ON THE MOVE

The past two winters have seen the great black-breasted yards of all our American railroads congested with traffic almost to the breaking point.

Executives, high and low, have lived in the yards for days and weeks and months at a time trying to relieve the congestion. This terminal yard of the West Sh.o.r.e Railroad at Weehawken, N. J., opposite New York City, is typical of many, many others.]

Come back to the United States. Last winter, when the railroads of the East struggled under a perfect flood tide of freight, due to the rush of war munitions toward the seaboard for transs.h.i.+pment, they were compelled to issue embargoes. That means, plainly speaking, that for days and sometimes weeks at a time they were compelled to refuse to accept or deliver many cla.s.ses of freight. They gave their first efforts to moving coal and milk and the other vital necessities for the towns which they served with the rigors of an unusually hard winter to combat. It was a long time before the embargoes were all raised--even with all the big operating men in the East working from eighteen to twenty hours out of twenty-four--in many cases living in their private cars set in the heart of the most congested yards.

Bridgeport was one of the towns that was hardest hit by these embargoes.

While it is served by a single railroad, it is upon the main stem of that road--a system that is reputed to be well equipped for the handling of high-grade freight. But the conditions were unusual, to say the least.

Bridgeport found herself transformed almost overnight from a brisk and average Connecticut manufacturing town into one of the world's greatest munition centers. Prosperity hit her between the eyes. For a time people slept all night in the railroad station because they had nowhere else to go. And the fine new county almshouse was hurriedly transformed into a huge hotel. Bridgeport swarmed with people. A single munition factory there employed close to 20,000 people.

The railroad, long since hemmed in by the growing factory town, could not rebuild its yards overnight. Neither could it look for relief toward the other Connecticut towns. They, too, were making munitions and were in turn congested. But by far the worst congestion of all was at Bridgeport. The railroad people worked unceasingly, but for a time to apparently no purpose. And for a time it was almost impossible for a package to reach Bridgeport from New York or the West.

In this emergency the motor truck proved its worth. It so happens that there is a factory in Bridgeport which manufactures a very heavy type of motor truck. It put one of these in service between its plant and New York--fifty-six miles distant over the well-paved historic Boston Post Road. It brought emergency supplies of every sort to the factory doors. So efficient did it prove itself in everyday service that a group of Bridgeport manufacturers and merchants formed themselves into a transportation company and placed other trucks in daily service between their town and New York. And a little later when the New York terminals became glutted with freight and hedged about with embargoes, the manufacturers of Bridgeport began having freight billed to them at the local freight houses in Newark. They extended their motor-truck service to that busy Jersey town and so saved themselves many dollars. When, in the course of a few months, the congestion was removed and freight conditions at Bridgeport were normal once again, the motor-truck service along the Post Road disappeared. It could not compete with the freight rates of the railroad.[12]

But its possibilities as a feeder are enormous. Only a few days ago I stood beside the desk of the traffic vice-president of a big trunk line and looked over his shoulder at a huge map spread there. It showed the main line and the branches of his railroad--from all these, stretching, like a fine moss upon an old oak, the improved highroads. The mapmaker had done more. By use of colors he had shown the automobile stage routes upon these roads--those that carried freight and those that combined two or three of these cla.s.ses of traffic. The vice-president frankly confessed that he was studying to see what practical use he could make of these feeding motor routes.

It was significant that the railroad should be making so careful a study of its new compet.i.tor, that it should be taking the first beginning steps to recognize it not as a compet.i.tor but rather as a friend and an ally, a feeder which eventually may be the means of bringing much traffic to its cars. The motor truck running over a well-paved highway can easily reach a farm or factory situated far from the steel rails.[13] It may save the construction of expensive and eventually unprofitable branch-line railroads just as the pa.s.senger automobile or motor bus has begun to save the building of unprofitable street-car lines. If the farm fails or the factory burns down, never to be rebuilt, the railroad does not find itself with an expensive and utterly useless branch line of track upon its hands.

There is still another great freight-traffic opportunity for the sick man of American business. It lies in the perfection and development of a standard unit container. The idea is not, in itself, entirely new. A good many men have been studying for a long time to develop a practical receptacle that will obviate the necessity of constantly handling and rehandling freight--always a great expense both at terminals and at transfer yards. The remarkable development of the automobile truck during the past five years has only emphasized the vital need of some such universal container.

An ideal receptacle of this sort would be built of fiber or of steel--better still, a combination of the two. Such a container would roughly approximate in size the body of a small motor truck. Two of them would fit comfortably upon the cha.s.sis of a large truck--three or four, upon the frame of an electric car--for either city or interurban use. The regulation freight car of the steam railroad would then consist of trucks and frame--builded to receive from five to seven of the standard containers. These containers would also be able to fit in the low hold decks of a steams.h.i.+p with a great economy of room and therefore with a great efficiency of service.

The manufacturer then would load the containers in his s.h.i.+pping room. Some of them destined through under seal to large cities, such as New York or Chicago or Philadelphia; others, carrying a variety of products to small places, would be addressed to recognized transfer or a.s.sorting points.

This last method would be exactly similar to that employed by the post-office department or the express companies in handling their daily flood tides of small parcel traffic. The use of the universal container would be directed more particularly, however, to heavier freight, both in individual packages and in bulk. Coal or grain or lumber would hardly be sent in a container. It might be possible, however, to s.h.i.+p flour and sugar in the universal container, and entirely without the expense of wrappings.

From the manufacturer's door--whether it were at street level, or in a community industrial building fifteen floors above the street--the container would go to the railroad frame car. By use of small-wheeled trucks or overhead tractors it would be carried first to the waiting cha.s.sis of the motor truck--in case the manufacturer was not able to command railroad siding facilities for himself. The motor truck would carry it to the freight terminal--overhead crane would make short s.h.i.+ft of loading the container and its fellows upon the frame car.

The rest of the journey would be that of ordinary freight, save that at the destination the s.h.i.+pping process would be exactly reversed--the motor truck performing its part of the work again, if necessary, and the container going direct to the merchant or manufacturer with the least possible delay and with no expensive intermediate handlings, with their consequent labor expense as well as the possible danger from breakage.

This idea is not chimerical. Also, it is not inexpensive. It requires much study to work out the details and when these have been brought into practicability it would require much money for the initial investment in containers. They would have to be built in large quant.i.ties, in order to justify the large immediate expense to adapt any number of freight cars, terminals, and warehouses to their use. But as to their efficiency and their ultimate economy, few transportation men who have given much real thought to the subject, are in doubt.

Such schemes quickly ally themselves with the entire problem of terminals.

"Terminals?" you say, and immediately think of what we were discussing a few minutes ago--the Grand Central station and other monumental structures of its sort. But those were pa.s.senger terminals. And now we have come to the great opportunities to be found in the handling and the development of the freight.

Perhaps you are not impressed with the importance of freight terminals.

They are not the impressive gateways of large cities; but in many, many senses they are the most important. Through them pour the foodstuffs--the meats, the fish, the vegetables, the fruits, the milk, the clothing, the fuel, the thousand and one things, necessary for the comfort of man and his luxury. Bar those gateways but for a single day and then see the panic that would overcome your city.

While we were speaking of the new Grand Central station and the important step it typified in the economic and efficient progress of our country, we called attention to the allied facilities that were springing up roundabout it--hotels, clubs, office buildings, auditorium, all of them more or less closely affiliated with the business of the great north gate of a metropolitan city. Is there any reason why the freight gateways should not be the housing places of affiliated industries--industries, if you please, more or less dependent upon the rapid movement of either their raw material or their finished products? Suppose that the railroads were ever to seek out and solve that fascinating problem of the universal unit container. Would not the most fortunate manufacturer be he whose s.h.i.+pping room, his entire modern and concentrated factory as well, was so close to a comprehensive freight terminal as to permit the handling of his containers, his other freight too, by means of chutes or elevators--with even the motor truck, to say nothing of less modern forms of city truckage, entirely eliminated?

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BUSH TERMINAL

South Brooklyn, New York City.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEW FREIGHT TERMINAL WAREHOUSE AT ROCHESTER

Built by the Buffalo, Rochester, & Pittsburgh Railway. A modern combination of freight house and storage warehouse.]

There is, on one of the harbor-sh.o.r.es of metropolitan New York, a city within a city. It is located in Brooklyn, to be exact, and it occupies somewhat more than a half-mile of waterfront--a waterfront cut into long deep-water piers, of the most modern type and running far out into the harbor. Back of these piers and connected with them by means of an intricate, but extremely well-planned system of industrial railroad, rise many buildings of steel and stone and concrete, almost all of them built to a single type and differing only in the minor details of their construction. On the many floors of this group of buildings are myriad separate industries, widely diverse as to character and product but all of them capable of concentrated location. Together they employ many thousands of men and women and the high-grade freight which they send out each day would pay a king's ransom.

In other days the greater number of these industries were scattered about both Brooklyn and the Manhattan boroughs of New York. As a rule they were remote from both freight houses and sidings. The freight-terminal situation of New York, owing to the peculiar physical formation of the city and its segregation from the mainland by several great navigable rivers, the upper harbor, and the Sound, is most difficult of operation.

All the railroads find it necessary to lighter their freight over these navigable streams, either upon car-floats or in other forms of vessels.