Railway Gauges. 161 



EAILWAY GAUGES. 



BY W. J. L. NICODEMUS, A. M., C. E. 

 Professor of Civil Engineering in the University of Wisconsin. 



The great need of this country is cheap transportation. AIT 

 sections would have railway facilities if they had the money 

 or could borrow it at a reasonable rate of interest. As the 

 narrow-gauge will do all the business of any section of the 

 country with a much less bonded debt, it tends to give a 

 better security to the bonds and stock of the roads, making a 

 better sale lor the same, and in that way furnishing many 

 feeders to our present through lines which would not other- 

 wise be constructed, and soon connecting lines so as to make 

 new through lines of the three-feet gauge, north and south aa 

 well as east and west. Experience has shown that in very 

 rough mountainous countries the narrow-gauge can be built 

 for the transportation of ores, such as gold, silver, iron, cop- 

 per and other minerals in bulk, before reduced, so as to col- 

 lect the same at the various smelting works, with the coal, 

 wood and fluxes used in their reduction and manufacture for 

 about one-fifth the cost of such roads as the Erie, Pennsyl- 

 vania Central, and Baltimore and Ohio; that in the broken 

 rolling country, where most of our roads are located, the cost 

 will be about one-half as much as that of present broad- 

 gauge roads; and in the slightly undulating prairie country 

 the cost will be about three fifths. As it is easier to raise- 

 $10,000 per mile than it is $30,000, in the same ratio is it 

 easier to construct the narrow gauge than the broad gauge. 

 Where the light business of a road would not justify the con- 

 struction of a broad-gauge, or if one were constructed, the 



