Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 84, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1914 — MEANS OUTLAY OF MILLIONS [ARTICLE]

MEANS OUTLAY OF MILLIONS

What It Would Cost the Country's Railroads to Replace Wooden Cars With Steel, Ones. /■ That it will cost the railroads $614,619,10(1 to comply with the proposed federal law requiring them to replace their present wooden passenger equipment with steel cars is the statement contained in a bulletin issued by a special committee on relations of railway operation to legislation which represents all of the leading rail lines in the country.. The annual interest charge on this amount at 5 per cent, would total $30,730,955. According to the committee, the construction of wooden passenger equipment practically has ceased, rapid strides are being made toward fuHy equipping railways with either steel or steel underframe cars.

Reports received by the from 247 companies Operating 227,754 miles of track, disclose that between January 1 and July 1 of the present year orders were placed for 1,140 passenger equipment vehicles, including postal, mail, baggage, passenger, express, parlor, sleeping, dining and business cars, says the Railway Reporter and Traveler’s News. Specifications for 1,064, or 93.3 per cent., of these cars provide for all steel construction, while the remaining car® have steel underframes.

A table prepared by the comml(M shows that of 1,880 passenger equipment vehicles acquired in 1909 by the rail lines, 26 per cent, were built of steel, 22.6 per cent, had steel underframes and 51.4 per cent, were constructed of wood.

In 1912 the railroads purchased 2,660 cars for passenger service, and of the total 68.7 per cent, were of steel and only 10.4 per cent, of wood. A comparison of the number of steel passenger equipment cars in use January 1, 1910, and January 1, 1913, shows that there was an increase during that period of 1.055 per cent.