These considerations might account for an economy of 30 per cent. as compared with our expenses for maintenance of way, but they cannot account for the great actual economy of 60 per cent. which we have seen. We must seek farther to find the explanation of this, and we soon discover it by comparing the condition of the road-beds and tracks on the railways of the two countries.
The English railways are thoroughly built, are not opened to the public until finished, and no expense is spared to keep them in order. American railways are too often put in operation when half finished. The consequence is, they never are finished, and are continually wearing out,—not lasting, on an average, more than half as long as they should, if once thoroughly constructed. Wooden bridges are allowed to rot down for want of protection. Rails are left to be battered to pieces for want of drainage and ballast. One road spends thirty-four thousand dollars a year for "watching cuts," and fifty-five thousand more for removing slides that should never have taken place. Everything is done for the moment, and nothing thoroughly. Who can wonder that this system tells upon the cost of maintenance of way?
The amount of fuel burned is the exact measure of the resistance to be overcome, and a rough track must necessarily require a larger amount of fuel. The English roads now generally burn bituminous coal; most American roads burn wood; but these being reduced to the same equivalent quantity, it will be found that the American roads burn nearly twice as much as the English.
That the cost of the repairs of American cars and engines is not more is attributable solely to their superior design. An English engine and cars would be battered to pieces in a few months on our rough roads, on account of their rigidity and concentration of weight; while those of America, by yielding to shocks both vertically and horizontally, escape injury. American cars and engines are as much superior in design to the English as their roads excel ours in solidity and finish.
But it will be asked, Shall we imitate the notorious extravagance of British railways built at a cost of one hundred and seventy-three thousand dollars per mile?
The answer is plain. The only thing about them to be imitated is their thorough and permanent construction. That this need not involve extravagance is evident from the fact that the actual cost of construction has been only eighty-eight thousand dollars per mile of double-track railway, including all the costly viaducts, tunnels, and bridges, which in many cases a more judicious location or a bolder use of gradients would have avoided. The remainder of their cost is made up of law and Parliamentary expenses, engineering and management, land and damages, interest on stock, bonuses, dividends paid from capital, etc., etc., amounting to eighty-five thousand dollars per mile. The folly of all this has been seen, and neither the financial nor the engineering errors of that day are now repeated. To show that a better system prevails, it is only necessary to state that between 1848 and 1858, 390 miles of first-class single-track railway have been opened at an average cost of $46.692 per mile, and in all that relates to economical maintenance are not inferior to any in the kingdom.
Such railways as these, costing no more than our own, we would hold up for imitation. How, then, do they differ from ours? or rather, what must be done to put ours into the same condition of economical efficiency?
In the first place, stone culverts and earth embankments should replace wooden structures, wherever possible. As fast as wooden bridges decay, they should be replaced with iron; and if the piers and abutments require it, as is too often the case, they should be rebuilt in a substantial manner.
The tubular iron bridge we do not recommend, on account of its excessive cost. For short spans of sixty feet and under, two riveted boiler-plate girders under the track make a cheap and permanent bridge, and can be manufactured in any part of the country. For large spans there are several excellent forms of iron trusses, Bollman's, Fink's, or, still better, the wrought-iron lattice.
Cuttings should be widened, if not already wide enough, so as to admit of good ditches along the track. The slopes should be dressed off and turfed. This costs little, and prevents the earth from washing down and choking up the ditches, and much of that terrible nuisance, dust.
The secret of all good road-making, whether railways or common roads, lies in thorough drainage. Until our railways are well drained, it is of little use to try to improve the condition of the track. "In an economical view," says Mr. Colburn, "the damage occasioned by water is far greater than the utmost cost of its removal. The track is disturbed, the iron bruised, the fastenings strained, the chairs broken, the ties rotted, the resistance and thereby the consumption of fuel increased, and the whole wear and tear greatly enhanced."
Next to drainage in importance is plenty of good ballast. The New-England roads are well ballasted, as a general thing; but in the West, where gravel is scarce, they do not trouble themselves to find a substitute. Even the great New York and Erie road, after ten years' use, is only half ballasted, which accounts for its being more than half worn out.
Much has been said and written on the necessity of a good joint for the rails, and many are the inventions for securing this object,—"compound rails," "fished joints," "bracket chairs," "sleeve joints," etc., etc. But without better road-beds no form of superstructure will last, and with road-beds as good as they ought to be almost any simple and easily adjusted arrangement will answer well enough.
But a more important matter than all these, so far as the economy of maintenance is concerned, is the quality and shape of the iron rails, forming one-eighth of the whole cost of our railways. Where companies, instead of buying rails, are selling bonds, they have no right to complain, if the iron turn out as worthless as the debentures. But where they pay cash, they can insist on good iron, and will get it, if they will pay the price, which will rule from eighteen to twenty dollars per ton over that of the poorest article. Nor should the shape and weight of the rail be overlooked. Experience, that stern schoolmaster, has taught us, that, while heavy rails of seventy pounds to the yard, and over, of ordinary iron, go to pieces in three or four years, sixty-pound rails of well-worked and good iron will last more than double that time. The extraordinary durability of the forty-five pound rails made for the Reading Railway Company by the Ebbw Vale Company in 1837 is well known to railway men.
A short calculation will show the superiority, in point of economy, of light and good rails to heavy rails of an inferior quality. A seventy-pound rail requires 110 tons to the mile, costing, at 860 per ton, $6,600. At the end of four years this has to be re-rolled at a cost of $30 per ton, or $3,300 more. This is equal in eight years to an annual depreciation of $1,237 per mile. A sixty-pound rail requires 94 tons to a mile, costing for the best iron that can be rolled $80 per ton, or $7,520 per mile. This would last eight years, and the annual depreciation would be $940 per mile, or $297 less than the other. The 30,000 miles of American railways are thus taxed annually nearly nine millions of dollars for preferring quantity to quality.
In England, it is the custom to retain the best engineering talent upon railways, after as well as during construction. In this country, as soon as the engineer has made out his "final estimate," he is dismissed with as little ceremony as a daylaborer. We employ the best mechanical engineers that we can find to look after the repairs of our engines and cars; while the road, which is more important, and upon the good condition of which we have seen that the success or failure of a railway as a commercial enterprise may depend, is handed over to some ignorant fellow whose only qualifications are industry and obedience.
There are no unmixed evils in this world. The impecuniosity of American railways, besides causing the bad results which we have described, has had a good effect upon the training of American engineers. Being obliged to do a great deal with a little money, they have steered clear of those enormous extravagances which have characterized the works of such engineers as the late Mr. Brunel, colossal less in proportions than cost. It has been well observed, that there was more talent shown on a certain division of the New-York and Erie Railway, in avoiding the necessity for viaducts, than could possibly have been exhibited in constructing them. This remark is a key to the difference between the old English and the American systems of civil engineering. The one is for show, the other for use. We say the old English system,