Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1897 — The Kind of a Road It Is. [ARTICLE]

The Kind of a Road It Is.

. The following is an extract from a letter written by A. C. Machette, secretary of the Mich., Ind. & St. Louis Electric Railway Co., to Editor Simons of the Monticello Democrat. The road is to bo standard guage, so as to subchange both passenger and freight traffic with all roads. Electric trains can be so readily started and stopped, that passengers can be taken on and left off at almost any point on the line‘or at least on all prominent cross roads, or important points on the road. Spurs will be allowed at extensive farms, so as to allow cars to be dropped off, for stock and farm produce, in full car lots and these points will be of great convenience to farmers along the route. Their passenger rates will be but about one cent a mile and all the freight traffic proportionately low. The grain elevators will be built by the company and all' grain merchants on the line will be permitted to ship grain through them on equally liberal terms, thus giving a free competition in the grain markets. The company proposes to make your survey, if your township will pay the expenses of the survey and the office work of profiles etc. etc. and donate the right of way through your county if the location of the road is made on your line, including a lot for depot and power plant. The right of way is to be 50 feet and will run on as straight lines along the farms as practical. The survey ©tc. will bo $lO per mile. Farms are not to be badly cut up by any diagonal surveys if it is possible to avoid suoh work. It is thought that if all goes as promising as now; ',’nat by earliest frost leaving the ground, that the right ot way can all have been secured and work will be pushed toward the rapid completion of the road. By midsummer, it is hoped that the cars will be run on the road for a considerable distance from this city, in both directions.

A. C. MATCHETTE.