IRONING OUT RAILWAYS.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 August 1919, Page 6

IRONING OUT RAILWAYS.

iiEAPER TO GO THROUGH HILLS THAN ROUND. When that most enterprising of rail-v.-»y millionaires, Mr. Harriman, took "over the Union and Central Pacific sysItem in America, he found that this great railway, spanning the-whole of the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, had been so hurriedly and badly built.that it could never pay. In some places the gradients were so steep that the trains'had to stop to pick up extra engines so as to climb the hiils; in others the line went miles out of the way round lakes or swamps..

[SHORTENED LINE BY 300 MILKS. | The Sherman hill was so steep that three, four or even five extra engines hud to be harnessed ■ to pull a train up the elope, while at Salt Lake the line inn in a curve of fifty-miles radius, so is to avoid the lake. Harriman cut right through Sherman :i>ill. It cost £200,000. Then he paralysed his engineers by ordering them to bridge the Salt Lake. This coat a million sterling. Wherever there was a hill he drcve a tunnel or made a cutting; wherever there was a curve lie straightened' it. The result was that lie cut'the actual length of the line by 300 miles, while the running was so much improved that the coal bill fell 20 per cent., and the actual running time between the Atlantic and Pacific was reduced by twelve hours. The saving was so great it not, only paid good interest on'the outlay, but enables enough to be. laid away to pay off the principal in a generation of so. Besides, the line itself is far btttcr'afcle to hold its own with its competitors.The same process is going on all over the world.

Over fifty millions Jui? been spent in piercing great tunnels through • the Alps. :

There is ample room for some profitable "ironing out" in the New Zealand p vetem.