Above all, men must be secured, thousands of men for train and engine service, switchmen, car-riders, clerks, telegraph operators, dispatchers and a number of other occupations. The added force must, of necessity, be temporary, since the grain movement only lasts for three months, yet the men must be sufficiently experienced to handle the business at an unusually difficult time, when the equipment and facilities are being taxed to their utmost capacity. The fluctuations in the traffic present another serious problem. The movement of wheat is dependent entirely upon the weather conditions. Heavy rain or snow render harvesting impossible and have a corresponding effect on car loading which makes necessary the constant readjustment of the forces if operating economy is to be secured. Maintaining this huge temporary force is an expensive business at best. The low rates received for the transportation of the grain make economy imperative if the business is to be handled at a profit.

possible before the winter closes navigation of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence system of inland waterways. There is nothing more impressive in Canada's commercial life than the precision and smoothness with which the machinery of the grain trade performs its huge task. Railways and other interests work at top speed to receive, clean, grade and forward in constant flow the great stream of grain. The rapidity of the movement is astonishing."

Railway Problems Increasing

The wheat acreage of the prairie provinces has been increasing steadily for years, having more than doubled in the last decade. The annual production has also doubled during the same period, although the increase in production has been somewhat less regular than the grain in acreage, owing to the variations in yield per acre and weather conditions which have affected the crop adversely in some years. The detailed

The result is that the force must be of such a nature as to permit increasing or decreasing it promptly to correspond with heavy or relatively light traffic.

Migratory labor of a sort is more or less readily available during the wheat season, in the form of woodsmen, harvest hands, and "drifters" from the United States. Experience has taught the Canadian railways, however, that this type of labor is seldom reliable and, as far is possible, the employment of "boomers" is avoided. The roads adopt somewhat different methods of obtaining necessary labor, which are described in detail in the succeeding articles.

Expenditures and Experience

The railways have spent millions of dollars in developing facilities adequate to meet the situation, many of which are unused except during the grain season. Developments in operating methods, brought about by the experience of years, have also resulted in increasing the efficiency with which this traffic is handled, until the entire operation now presents an unusual study in efficiency and skill in meeting a succession of difficult situations.

The Department of the Interior of Canada recently paid the railways a well-merited tribute, in an official publication, which is quoted in part: "The grain trade itself excites wonder, not by its remarkable growth alone. Its transportation calls for a marvel of organization. The volume of wheat to be marketed is immense, the wheat fields are far removed from the seaboard, and the Pacific ports as yet are equipped to handle only a small share of the movement. The great problem is to forward as much of the crop as

the present time is 15,354, of which 1,985 miles are main lines and 13,389 miles are secondary main lines or branches. Manitoba has 3,883 miles of railroads in the wheat growing territory west of Winnipeg, Saskatchewan has 7,230 miles and Alberta 4,261 miles. Except for the main line of the Canadian Pacific and some secondary main lines, all of this vast mileage has been built in the present century, the large majority of it since 1910 and, as may be imagined, this construction has played an important part in increasing the grain acreage and production.

The largely increased crop has in turn required the railways to add more facilities and increase their operating efficiency to take care of the greater burden. Another factor which has added to the railways' prob. lem has been the steady movement westward of the wheat producing territory. The farmers of Manitoba, formerly one of the chief wheat producing territories, are turning more and more to general farming and the production of wheat is declining. Conversely, the production of wheat in Saskatchewan and particularly in Alberta has increased tremendously, involving a readjustment of operations and necessitating a longer haul to the lake ports each year. The recent rapid development of Vancouver and to a lesser extent of Prince Rupert as grain ports has also added to the railways' problems, since, while it diverts some of the traffic from the busy lines to the lake ports, it presents additional operating problems in that the tonnage that can be handled westbound over the mountains is materially less per train than can be handled over the relatively flat country to the lake ports. The following table indi cates the distance the wheat must be hauled to reach the more important ports, from the centers of the wheat producing territories:

although, in the past few years, a growing market for wheat has developed in China and Japan, whose staple grain hitherto has been rice. The accompanying diagram gives a graphic illustration of the normal movement of the crop and represents the total movement during the crop year from August 1, 1926 to August 1, 1927. Table 2 shows the total crop, together with its distribution and a comparison with the previous crop year.

There are some 2,000 shipping stations for wheat on the lines of the railways in the prairie provinces. Some 4,000 or more elevators are situated at the stations. In accordance with the provisions of the Canada Grain Act each of these stations is equipped with loading platforms so that the farmers may load grain directly into the cars without utilizing the service of the elevators. There are some 2,500 such platforms distributed at the various loading stations. The loading platforms are wood structures with ramps leading to platforms level with the car floor, on which wagons may be driven and the grain shoveled directly into the cars.

Table 2. Canada's Wheat Supplies and Exports, 1926-7 Crop*

Fort William

Calgary, Alta.

Montreal 2,190

12,577,324 335,874

The figures given represent bushels.

Winnipeg, Man.

Prince Rupert, B. C. St. John, N. B. Halifax, N. S.

Other Canadian Ports

Portland, Me.

How the Grain Moves

In the prairie provinces, the main line of the Canadian Pacific takes a southerly route, passing through Winnipeg, Regina, and Calgary, while the main line of the Canadian National, passing through Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and Edmonton, serves more northerly territory. However, there is a veritable network of branches of both lines serving the wheat territory. In general, the C. P. serves the southern part of the provinces and the C. N. the central part, although a considerable portion of the territory is served by both lines.

Only a relatively small percentage of the wheat grown in western Canada is milled in the territory in which it is grown. By far the bulk of the crop is moved by rail to Fort William or Port Arthur. The wheat produced in western Canada is of the so-called "hard" variety, which is quite suitable for export. A large percentage of the total crop is exported to Europe, particularly to the British Isles. The all

water export route is from Fort William through the Welland Canal and down the St. Lawrence waterway to Montreal. While considerable grain moves by this route, much greater amounts are shipped lake and rail, moving down the lake to Georgian Bay ports or Buffalo, then by rail to Montreal or Atlantic seaports. Much of the grain that goes to the Pacific Coast ports is intended for export via the Panama Canal to Europe,

Distribution of Empty Cars

The distribution of empty cars for grain loading is governed by the provisions of the Canada Grain Act. It is based upon the principle that in the distribution of such equipment every shipper of grain shall count as one unit regardless of the amount of grain which he has to ship., The agents at all country stations from which grain is shipped keep car record books in which applications for cars are entered in the order in which they are received, and these books are open to the public at all times. Any grain shipper may order a car or cars according to his requirement, specifying the size of the car desired. The cars are awarded applicants according to the order in time in which such orders appear in the order book, without discrimination between the country elevator, loading platform, or otherwise. As each applicant is allotted a car, in good order and condition, he must declare his intention and ability to load the car within the ensuing 24 hours, otherwise his application is cancelled.

If the cars available at the shipping point fail to fill all the orders as entered, the agent begins at the top of the list in his order book and proceeds downward to the last name entered on the list, each applicant receiving a car in that order as quickly as the cars are available. When a shipper has loaded or cancelled a car alloted to him he may, if he requires another car, become eligible there for by placing his

name and residence at the bottom of the list, and when the second car has been allotted to him and he has loaded or cancelled it, he may again write his name at the bottom of the list as it exists at that time and continue to do so in similar fashion until his requirements have been filled. However no applicant is allowed to have more than one unfilled order on the order book at one time.

During car shortages, the Canadian Grain Board may at its discretion direct the railways to make an equitable distribution of empty grain cars to all shipping points in proportion to the amount of grain ready for shipment. Special distribution of cars is also sometimes arranged for places where the grain is known to be damp and liable to become damaged or to other stations where elevators have heating grain in store or are in danger of collapse.

An elaborate system of grading and inspection of the grain is provided by the government and government inspection stations are situated at Winnipeg, Man., Calgary, Alta., and Moose Jaw, Sask., and Ŝaskatoon. The largest proportion of the grain is inspected at Winnipeg. The inspection is performed by government inspectors in the railroad yards as soon

development of these ports. The first elevator built at the lake front was erected by the Canadian Pacific in 1883. In the following 20 years five more elevators were built by the same company, in addition to others built by the Canadian Northern and the Grand Trunk Pacific. With the passage of the Canadian Grain Act, however, and for other good reasons, these elevators were turned over to lessees and are now operated as private enterprises. The transshipment of grain from cars to boats is controlled by an organization of the grain trade known as the Lake Shippers' Clearance Association. This organization was formed 15 years ago in order to facilitate the loading of grain into boats and the dispatch of boats from the head of the lakes to the various eastern ports. The captains of the boats arriving at Fort William and Port Arthur report to the association for instructions. The association, acting in the capacity of a dispatcher, allots the boats to the various elevators for loading, and after being loaded, they are cleared under the supervision of the association. The association maintains a close touch with the entire grain trade and particularly with grain firms having grain in elevators at the lake ports. The grain firms and elevator companies file their

as the cars come in from the country stations in trains and before they have been switched. The inspection is made by pushing a hollow tube containing several compartments, which may be opened and closed at will, into the grain at several places in the car. In this manner some of the grain from practically every section of the car is secured and the grain may be graded accordingly..

Fort William-Port Arthur Terminal The large proportion of the grain moving from the prairie provinces is transported to the lake ports of Fort William and Port Arthur to be transhipped to boats at those points. This movement continues throughout the season of navigation and storage grain moves to these ports for some weeks after navigation closes until the capacity of the elevators has been reached. At the beginning of the present grain season this capacity amounted to 187,810,000 bushels but large elevator construction projects are nearing completion at these ports so that the elevator capacity will be materially increased.

The railways have been largely responsible for the

warehouse receipts with the association and that body then takes care of the remainder of the transaction by seeing that necessary boats are secured to handle the cargo, and this is arranged in an impartial manner.

Under normal conditions, there is no restriction upon the movement of grain into the lake ports, except that the railways reserve the right to deliver grain to any elevator that may receive it in case the elevator to which it is consigned happens to be full. This provision in the bill of lading has had the effect of preventing serious breakdowns of the transportation system, as, under the intensive operation required, any cars that would have to be held awaiting disposition would materially complicate the situation. In view of the relatively limited terminal facilities at Vancouver, however, and the additional handicap of heavy mountain grades requiring smaller train loads in that direction, all grain moving through the port of Vancouver is handled under the permit system. In other words, the railways keep in constant touch with the terminal situation at Vancouver and know at all times the capacity of the various elevators there. If there is room for grain in the elevators at Vancouver, as is

usually the case, shippers desiring to ship through that port are given permits for a certain specified amount. As soon as the elevators are full, however, these permits are no longer issued and no shipments are made until the boats have removed a sufficient quantity of grain from the port elevators to warrant a resumption of shipping to these elevators.

Grain Handling Important

Despite the fact that, because of the low rates, the grain movement itself is not particularly profitable, the prompt and efficient transportation of the grain by the railways is highly important because the wheat fields. are the principal source of western Canada's prosperity. Much of the traffic in manufactured products and in any of the commodities used by the farmers, depends, of course, upon large and profitable wheat crops. If the railways were unable to move the wheat promptly and render the utmost in service, the profits of even an unusually large wheat crop would be cut down and the general traffic would suffer accordingly. The rates in effect on wheat are low, as for example 26 cents per 100 lb. from Calgary to Ft. William, a distance of 1,243 miles, or 25 cents from Lethbridge, Alta., to Ft. William, 1,155 miles.

Parts II and III, describing in detail the operating methods used in transporting the grain crop on the Canadian Pacific and the Canadian National respectively, will appear in following issues.

Sub-Committee of Senators

I

to Consider Consolidation

WASHINGTON, D. C.

NSTEAD of holding further occasional hearings on the railway consolidation bill, the Senate committee on interstate commerce on March 3 decided upon the appointment of a sub-committee of three to consider the bill introduced by Chairman Parker of the House committee on interstate and foreign commerce and that introduced by Senator Fess, which represents an earlier stage of progress of the same bill, and the hearings that have already been held on them, in an endeavor to "whip a bill into shape" for consideration by the full committee. Senators Fees, of Ohio; Sackett, of Kentucky; and Smith, of South Carolina, were appointed as the sub-committee and it was left to them to decide whether further hearings will be necessary. Extensive hearings have been held before the House committee, which has been working on the bill in executive session. for about two weeks, and less extensive hearings had been held by the Senate committee, at which most of the same witnesses who had appeared before the House committee had testified before or been questioned by a few members of the Senate committee.

The decision to appoint a sub-committee came after Ben B. Cain, vice-president and general counsel of the American Short Line Railroad Association, had testified briefly before the committee, urging the importance of early action on a bill in order to relieve the uncertainty of the existing situation, and Elihu Root, Jr., representing minority stockholders of the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis, had asked for an opportunity to be heard.

Chairman Watson of the committee then said that hearings had been held on railway consolidation bills. for years "without getting anywhere" because of the indifference of members of Congress and that he thought

the only way to make progress, in view of the large number of other subjects before the committee, would be for a sub-committee to take the bills introduced and endeavor to "whip a bill into shape" in the light of the hearings already held or further hearings if necessary. He said he had thought that railway consolidation would be the first subject to be taken up this session but that the attention of the committee members had been diverted to various investigations. The other members present agreed with the suggestion and Senator Fess suggested that it might be possible to take advantage of some of the work done on the bill by the House committee and that some 20 amendments had been considered by it.

The latter committee has been much more diligent in attendance both at hearings and at executive sessions on the bill, because most of the Representatives are members of but one major committee, while Senators divide their time between various committees.

Mr. Cain told the committee that the short lines are "up in the air and don't know how to proceed"; that applications for important mergers made to the Interstate Commerce Commission under paragraph 2 of section 5 have not made provision for including the connecting short lines, and that, although the commission in the Nickel Plate case laid down the principle that such provision should be made, it has thus far dismissed applications instead of dealing with them in a constructive manner and is "very meticulous."

He said, however, that most of the 167 acquisition applications that have been before the commission have involved short or weak lines and that he thought this indicated a disposition on the part of the big roads to take all the short lines they think they can use to advantage, but that in the cases where combinations of the larger roads are proposed provision has not been made for the short lines, partly because of the question as to which road should take the short lines, and he favored a provision in the bill by which the commission may allocate a short line to a system. He did not think actual compulsion should be exercised but said that if the commission should decide that a certain line should be "allocated" in a particular way and "lay the baby on the door-step," ways could be found "to require the big road to take care of that baby."

Several of the Senators present indicated an interest in legislation to "take care of" the short and weak lines, saying that was one of the primary reasons for the enactment of the Transportation Act, and said they wanted Mr. Cain to point out just wherein the bill is not adequate for the purpose. He said the short lines approve with some few changes the principles of the Parker and Fess bills, and that although they do not include everything they might want he did not think it practicable at this time to get any more. He did, however, favor a more specific declaration of policy in favor of consolidation in the bill so that it might not appear that any backward step was being taken as compared with the provisions of the Transportation Act.

Senator Smith asked if the situation of the short lines could not be relieved by some provision by which the recapture fund could be made more easily accessible to them. Mr. Cain said that that might help the situation but would not cure it, because the recapture fund does not amount to much and if the short lines borrowed from it they would have to pay it back some time.

The House committee, which has been meeting almost daily in executive session since the hearings on the Parker bill were closed, is planning on reporting out a bill by the end of the week or the first part of next.

T

HE best measure of railroad operating perform ance today is condensed in the unit, ton-miles per train-hour. There has been a steady increase in the figures expressed in this unit during the past 30 years. No actual ton-miles-per-train-hour figures have been found for the railroads in Canada, but I recollect that for the railroads in the United States, the gross increase was about 42 per cent from 1906 to 1916. From 1916 to 1925 there was an increase of 57 per cent. No doubt the railroads of Canada have equalled or exceeded this record.

The problem that has confronted locomotive designers toward accomplishing this result has been a very difficult one, for increasing the sustained power of a locomotive by direct methods involves an increase in the physical dimensions and the weight on the drivers. The weight limitation, with few exceptions, is 60,000 to 65,000 lb. per axle. Determined efforts have been made by some of the larger railroad systems in the country to keep the weight below 62,000 lb. per axle, and thus lessen the destructive action of the driving wheel on the track. Our efforts, then, must be directed toward the production of a locomotive which will develop the highest possible power per unit of total weight, or stating it another way, one that will have as small a weight as possible per horsepower developed. Such a locomotive. must, of necessity, have a very high thermal and mechanical efficiency.

There is little hope of increasing the weight on the drivers or of reducing the factor of adhesion below that which has been used on recently designed locomotives. The factor of adhesion usually referred to is the weight on the drivers divided by the maximum tractive force. But we are now recognizing that the true factor of adhesion is the weight on the drivers divided by the maximum turning effort, which may be as high as 30 per cent greater than the average. When the cylinder arrangement is such as to give a nearly uniform turning movement, the true factor of adhesion has been reduced to nearly 32.

In this paper I shall discuss principally the problems of the boiler and superheater, or the steam-producing part of the locomotive. Usually the boiler problems are discussed independently of the balance of the locomotive.

This cannot well be done without some reference to the locomotive in general as the engine and the boiler are so closely related, from the standpoint of construction as well as performance, that one part cannot be easily changed without disturbing its relation to the other.

The design of the boiler and superheater will, in the final analysis, determine not only the efficiency at which

Abstract of a paper presented before the Canadian Railway Club, Montreal, Que., February 14, 1928.

the steam is produced but also the efficiency and capacity of the locomotive, since the steam consumption of the cylinders depends largely on the superheat and pressure of the steam. Briefly this relation works out as follows.

The mean effective pressure in the cylinders determines the capacity of the locomotive for all speeds if there is a sufficient amount of highly superheated steam available. The higher the superheat and the initial boiler pressure, the higher the mean effective pressure and the more efficient and powerful the locomotive will be. After the steam leaves the boiler, it must pass through the superheater, throttle and steam pipes. This reduces the steam pressure, due to the frictional resistance of the steam passing through these parts, and it is of the utmost importance that this pressure drop be kept at the minimum.

Here is where the superheater presents a difficult problem, as the steam area through the superheater as well as the superheating surface that can be installed is determined by the diameter of the boiler. Then again, the horsepower capacity can be raised by reducing the back pressure on the pistons. As the vacuum in the smokebox creates the draft which determines the amount of coal that can be burned, it is of the greatest

importance that the draft loss through the flues be reduced to a minimum by increasing the gas area through the boiler. This again is determined by the boiler diameter and the superheater. It is thus seen that the diameter of the boiler has a greater importance than any dimension of the boiler design and the greatest possible diameter of boiler should be used in every case.

Of course, there are other factors that affect the mean effective pressure of the cylinders-particularly the valve gear, which determines the valve travel. The im