Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1905 — Pointers from Col. Gifford [ARTICLE]

Pointers from Col. Gifford

Col. B J. Gifford was in town Saturday, and as usual was full of interesting facte, when he had time to impart them. Work on the northern extension of his railroad has been resumed, and the construction gang is now about two miles beyond the Kankakee rivtr. In this construction work he is using a machine that is a combination of and which combination is after Mr. Gifford’s own inventive ideas. And by them he seems to have originated a machine that will revolutionize the work of railroad buildiog. The machine is primarily a steam shovel mounted on a revolving platform, which platform is itself mounted on a flat oar, or something similar. By having an extra drum and and an extra Doom added, he has a combined steam shovel and dredge which works with equal facility in outting [down hills or filling up grades; and by still other appliances is a good pile-driver and a powerful steam orane.

Thns the machine makes the cuts and the fills, builds the bridges, and moreover as soon as a rail length of grade is made, it pioks a ready prepared seotion of track, spiked to guage, from a oar behind, and deposits on the grade in front; then the machue moves up another rail length, and begins the next seotion. By means of this machine and when certain other modifications are completed, he believes that with ten men he oan build a railroad through an ordinary country as fast as 50 teams and a 100 or more men. Regarding the alleged negotiations by the Indianapolis & Chicago Traction people, to purchase his road, he says knows notbiog about them further than that the principal promoter of the eleotrio line wanted to buy his road wi*h the stooks or bonds of the electric road, and he said that the eleotrio people conld sell their bonds or stock, and pay him the oash, as it would be only on a striotly oash basis that he would negotiate.