Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 283, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1917 — FORTUNE IS SAVED [ARTICLE]

FORTUNE IS SAVED

One Railroad Division Conserves Big Quantity of Coal. ELECTRIFICATION IS CHEAP I Tremendous Supply of Coal and Fuel Oir Unconsumed Because Traips Receive Their Energy From *_ Power Plants. Electrification of railroads as a means of war economy hard to beat by any other method yet devised for saving energy and material was described by an official of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul road. The abolition of locomotives on one division of the coast line of that railroad is shown to have saved enough coal in one year to send a United States torpedo boat destroyer on 2,368 trips about the British isles in the Search for German submarines. Forty-five such destroyers on the coal conserved in the Rocky Mountain division alone could be kept steaming in a constant procession, week in and week out, for the whole year on the circuit about England, Ireland and Scotland. The annual saving on this division is sufficient to send 90 ocean liners of 13,000 tons displacement on the voyage from the United States to France. Yet this conservation ctf fuel is dhly half of that already effected on the electrified divisions, and one-third of what will be accomplished when the Cascade Mountain zone is added to the electrified mileage next year. Great Saving in Fuel.

On the Rocky Mountain division more than 200,000 tons of coal would have been required this year to haul the traffic moving over the continental divide by electricity. On the Missoula division, also electrically operated now, but formerly burning fuel oil, the requirement this year would have been 425,000 barrels of oil. The third saving, to come, when 1 electrification under way is completed in the Cascades, will add 375,000 barrels of fuel oil to the annual conservation. Extensive reductions in passenger train service throughout the United States, aggregating at a recent date 16,267,028 miles of train service, have resulted in the saving of 1,120,000 tons of coal a year. The permanent saving by electrification on the St. Paul’s Rocky Mountain division, disregarding the saving of oil on the Missoula division, is 18 per cent of the total effected by all the railways of the United States through elimination- of train mileage. Big Supply Unconsumed. “A tremendous supply of coal and fuel oil,” said an official of the St. Paul road, 1 “is still unconsumed because our trains have received their energy from power plants instead of from steam locomotives and because the power plants have derived their energy from water power instead of coal or oil. Here are two natural resources of the highest importance actually conserved at a time when they are most essential to the welfare of the nation. “Under present conditions, with the heaviest movement of traffic in history, the St. Paul would have found it necessary to purchase a Targe number of steam locomotives. It takes about the same time to build an electric as a steam locomotive, but when built one electric is approximately the equal in hauling power of three stearh engines. The St. Paul has in operation fortyfour electric locomotives.”