APPENDIX I TECHNISCHE RUNDSCHAU NEUES PESTER JOURNAL FREDERIC LIST, the far-seeing thinker and great economist, said long ago that the ideal railway would make it possible for the trader to transport his goods with the same certainty and despatch as he now conducts his correspondence. More than eighty years have passed since then, and while considerable progress is evident not only in engineering but also in administration and tariffs as applied to railways, the transport of goods still leaves very much to be desired. The great terminal stations have proved insufficient to deal regularly with the enormous and ever-increasing traffic, and, as an American railway magnate has observed, their very size will bring about their extinction. This problem has occupied the attention of the technical world for many years, but it is only recently that two English engineers, Gattie and Seaman, by means of a highly interesting invention, have succeeded once for all in solving its difficulties. The Gattie-Seaman system has received the approval and admiration of some of the first engineers both in England and abroad, as it will in the future save money and space and time, and generally speed up the traffic. Up to the present time, with the exception of the employment of locomotives for haulage and shunting, and the use of cranes for unloading heavy pieces of goods, the work in goods stations has been done by hand with hand-trucks. With increasing traffic the economic efficiency both of the locomotive and of the length of line on which it works increases; while the efficiency of the goods station and the shunting yard, which in consequence of the increasing traffic have to be enlarged, directly decreases. This arises from the fact that in the larger goods station, on the one hand, the porter with his hand-truck has to make on the average a much longer journey; and on the other hand the locomotive also has in shunting, on the average, a longer distance to cover and more turnouts to pass; and the number of locomotives that can shunt at the same time is very limited. On the Gattie-Seaman system the shunting yard is done away with, as goods can be directly transferred from a railway wagon to a road vehicle, or vice versa, by one crane lift, while further, the sorting of miscellaneous goods is done by means of automatic machinery. The Central Goods Clearing House for London has been laid out as follows: About thirty feet below the street level run twenty-four railway tracks which are crossed by twelve road bridges. This arrangement makes it possible for any road vehicle to be brought within a distance of thirty to forty feet of a railway wagon, and a load can be shifted from one to the other by means of a travelling crane. Below the railway levels, in the "crypt," loads of half to twenty tons can be sorted, and, if necessary, stored, until the arrival of their particular train. Above the road level are four sorting rooms, two for parcels under fifty pounds, and two for bales of from fifty pounds to half a ton. Above this again are floors containing workshops and offices. The machinery equipment of the Clearing House consists of travelling cranes and sorting machinery. The sorting machinery consists of automatically controlled trucks, which are coupled together to form endless conveyors running continuously on annular tracks. In order that packets, cases, barrels, etc., which may be of entirely different dimensions and shapes, may be handled by this machinery, they are placed on trays of uniform size. APPENDIX II ANALYSIS OF LADEN TRAIN-MILES, UNITED KINGDOM, 1913 226,936,000 Tons of Coal per annum. 732,000 Tons of Coal per diem. 81,400 Wagon loads (9 tons), per diem. 30 Miles average haul. 21,960,000 Ton-miles, per diem. 2,442,000 Wagon-miles, per diem. 97,680 Train-miles, per diem. 72,193,000 Tons of " Other Minerals " per annum. 30 Miles average haul. 6,990,000 Ton-miles, per diem. 55,980 Train-miles, per diem. 1,398,000 Wagon-miles, per diem. 72,908,000 Tons of General Merchandise per annum. 94,000 Wagon loads (2 tons), per diem. 50 Miles average haul. 11,750,000 Ton-miles, per diem. 188,000 Train-miles, per diem. 4,700,000 Wagon-miles, per diem. |