Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 February 1906 — RAILROADS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

RAILROADS

Chairman Shonts of the isthmian canal commission has notified the Senate committee that he is off the salary roll of the Clover Leaf railroad. The famous horseshoe curve on the Pennsylvania railroad in the Allegheny mountains is to be elinynated, and probably will be replaced by one of the longest tunnels in the world. Eighty miles an hour is the speed promised by some of the leading railroads over part of the lines before the year ends. A trial trip showed that an electric locomotive can cover 85 miles an hour. The General Railway Signal Company of Rochester, N. Y., has n $2,000,000 contract sos an interlocking block signal system to equip the part of the New York* Central system which is to be operated by electric motive power. The Duluth, Rainy Lake and Winnipeg railroad has placed nn order for eight locomotives to be used in the immediate extension of its line from its present terminus at Ashawa to Rainy I.Ake. The road is seeking entrance to Fort Frances, Ont. An immense scheme of amalgamation of the companies owning all the trolley roads in Ohio is being promoted by Randal Morgan, financier, of Cincinnati. First the Union Traction Company of Ohio will be formed to absorb the properties outside of Cincinnati; then a $504,000,000 holding company is to be organised to take over the stock of the operating companies. - The disbursement of wages in Reading, Pa., last month was the largest ever known in its history. All of its industries have been working full-handed and some of them on “double turn.” Business concerns employed additional help and everybody had work. A conference of western business men, Including a number of State Governors and general passenger agents, was called at. New York to devise ways and means for keeping at home a part of the vast sum spent by Americans in foreign lands., This sum was estimated oa high, as sloo*000,000 in 1904.