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WITH AND WITHOUT RAILS
W H E N a contractor is called
upon to construct a highway
he often starts wdth a
handicap. This disability
is generally the difficulty
in transporting the stone, sand, cement,
brick, curbing, and other material from
the base of supply to the scene of action,
the place where all of these are to be
used. He either has no roadway for his
transport service or the available road is
of such a nature that the teams and trucks
can do their work only against the odds
comprised in the mud and gullies common
to bad roads. This means loss of time.
The obvious remedy is to construct a
temporary road that will permit an uninterrupted
supply of materials until the
enterprise is completed. The usual form
of such a road is a miniature railroad of
a gage of about twenty-four inches, over
which cars, each containing about one
and one-half yards, or say, two and onethird
tons of bulk material are propelled
either by horse, steam, or mere man
power. The road bed on which these
rails are laid is as narrow as it can be
made adequately to serve its purpose,
thus eliminating any unnecessary grading.
In the vicinity of Sioux City, Iowa,
there is being built a sixteen-foot concrete
highway which is being completed
at the rate of about five hundred to six
388
hundred linear feet a day. This rate of
construction requires a rapid delivery of
material and the ordinary methods were
found too slow. To maintain this speed
the contractors have built a narrow gage
railway such as has been indicated but the
motive power failed to make the round
trips within the required time. To overcome
this difficulty they had recourse to
the powerful auto truck which is shown
in the illustration. This truck is one in
which the power is applied to all four
wheels thus enabling it to move freely on
a roadway that would be all but impossible
for any other tractive power.
THE TRUCK RUNS ON THE GROUND. WHILE THE CARS FOLLOW ON THE RAILS
When this picture was taken the motor
was hitched to twelve loaded cars carrying
a total of twenty-eight tons of
material. To this should be added six or
seven tons of dead weight of the steel
dump cars.
By this method the contractors were
enabled to make from ten to twelve round
trips on a three and one-half mile haul in
a ten-hour day, depending on the length
of the wait for loading at the loading
point. The work was started at the extreme
end of the haul and as it progressed
at the two-mile distributing point
the number of trips was gradually increased
until a movement of six hundred
tons of material was considered a fail
ten hours' effort for the motor and cars
combination.