Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 110, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 May 1911 — FOR TRACK GRADING [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FOR TRACK GRADING

MECHANICAL DEVICE THAT DOES AWAY WITH LABOR, Idea of Duluth Man Means Great Saving 4n Expense of Building Rall- / roads—Method Is Simple, but * Highly Efficient. While machines have been steadily taking the place of ordinary labor-

ers in most branches of work, the man with the shovel has held his. position unchallenged in the work of grading and ballasting railroad track. Now, however, a railroad builder of Duluth, Minn., has devised a machine that he believes is destined to do the work of lifting jacks and the gangs of shovelers and tampers.

It consists of a self-propelled car, from one end of which extends a 34foot trussed boom carrying the track lifting device and a carriage* on which are the shovel arms. The track lifting device consists of two traveling grappling arms which engage the ■rails at the joints and midpoints, and lift them until there is sufficient clear space beneath the ties for the shovels to operate, A battery of shovel arms is provided on each side. The battery on one side, or even the individual shovels in each battery, may be operated Independently. The shovel arms have both a lateral and vertical motion, and a joint at the point where the shovels are connected with the arms makes it possible to move them at any desired angle with the arms. This is to provide a horizontal instead of radial motion of the shovels while under the ties. In operating the car Is run out to a point where the boom overhangs a depressed portion of the track. The gripping devices are then attached to the track and raise a section of it. The shovels are pushed out, the sashes lowered until the shovels engage with

the earth, and then are raised again, the shovels pushing the earth beneath the ties, thus completing the first stages of the operation. The empty shovels may then be operated back and forth to tamp the earth. This operation Is repeated continually, the grader moving forward on the batterylength of track it has just finished. The machine builds embankments without the use of trestle, and with but five men composing its crew, is said to be capable of doing the work of a hundred men with shovels. —Popular Mechanics.

New Rival to the Track Gang.