Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 171, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 July 1914 — MUST ALL BE MADE STANDARD [ARTICLE]

MUST ALL BE MADE STANDARD

Engineers Have Come to Realize That Narrow Gauge Railroad Lines . yVill Have to Go. , Is in the entire world nearly one hundred and sixty-five thousand miles of narrow gauge, railroad lines, says the Engineering News. The great bulk of thie mileage must eventually be converted to standard gauge, as the narrow gauge railroad lines of the United States hr.ve been. The cost of this alteration, enormous as it is, is but a small fraction of the financial loss j which the world has suffered through j its belief in this economic and en-' gineering fallacy. A comparison of the freight rates per ton mile on United States railroads and on the narrow gauge fhllroad systems of other countries is most instructive as showing the inefficiency of the narrow gauge system as a transportation machine. If a fair estimate were made of the cost to the world resulting from the narrow gauge fallacy, the total would probably reach several billions of dollars., The cost In Japan alone of changing 5,000 miles of narrow gauge railroad to standardgaugeis estimatedat $150,000,000; In Argentina tn„e net earnings of the narrow gauge railroads are only about half as much on the capital invested as the net earnings of the standard gauge lines and this, notwithstanding the fact that the capitalization per mile of the standard gauge lines is much heavier.