Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 273, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1916 — PUT MOTOR TRUCKS ON RAILS [ARTICLE]

PUT MOTOR TRUCKS ON RAILS

An Engineering Journal Buggeot* the Feasibility of ‘‘Automobilizfng" the Railroad*.

Motor trucks are already “stealing , much of the short-haui freight traffic. Why not automobllize the railroads? Because Carranza would not permit American troops to use Mexican railway equipment, some genius in oor army temporarily transformed motor trucks Into railroad rolling stock by fastening steel flanges to the motor-truck wheels. Thus the trucks were driven over the railroads, where there were railroads available, nnd over dirt roads when no railroads were available. The change from a rail vehicle to a dirt-road Vehicle Is quickly made, and thus the problem of automoblllzing one railroad system was speedily effected in part. Innumerable rnll lines carry only a few trains daily, and the train’oads are not great at best. There is every reason to believe that much of the freight traffic over such lines could be more cheaply handled by motor trucks adapted to run on rails as well as on roads. . . . May not the pressing and perplexing problems of furnishing adequate terminal facilities In large cities be solved by automobilizing the terminals? Why will It not be economic to transfer nearly all freight from cars to motor trucks outside the limits of large cities, run the trucks into the cities on rails, remove their temporary wheel flanges, and thus enable them to run over paved streets to their destination? Railway managers, wake up! Come out ot your narrow path, nnd beyond Its extremities, into all the highways of transportation. View transportation in its entirety as your field of action, and you will add more to human wealth than you have already added—which is a vast deal.— Engineering and Contracting.