Unclogging the Railroads to Get Coal 



How New York's coal famine was relieved and 

 how the Government is running the railroads 



By Frank Parker Stockbridge 



Heavy, sea-going 

 tugs break their 

 way through ice 

 jams in New York 

 harbor, pulling im- 

 mense coal barges. 

 An example of con- 

 ditions met this 

 winter in coping 

 with coal shortages 



THE taking over by the United 

 States Government of all the rail- 

 roads of the nation, in December, 

 1917, and their operation as a single 

 system, for the duration of the war, is the 

 most sensational and interesting indus- 

 trial episode of the war to date, so far as 

 the United States is concerned. It will 

 afford an opportunity to test many theo- 

 ries of railroad management and control 

 that the roads under private operating 

 conditions were not in a position to prove. 

 Almost the first action of Secretary of 

 the Treasury William G. McAdoo, in his 

 new official capacity as Director-General 

 of Railroads, was to open up for freight 

 traffic the heretofore unused short-cut 

 between the New Jersey mainland and 

 Manhattan Island, Long Island and the 

 New England states, by directing that 

 coal and other commodities should be 

 hauled through the tunnels of the Penn- 

 sylvania Railroad's New York terminal 

 system. These tunnels, which extend 

 from the Jersey shore under the bed of 

 the Hudson River, beneath Manhattan 

 Island and under the East River to Long 

 Island, were opened for traffic exactly 

 seven years ago. The Pennsylvania spent 

 nearly $100,000,000 on its terminal and 



tunnels, under a franchise that limited 

 their use strictly to passenger traffic. 

 Only the New York Central has ever had 

 free access to New York city for its 

 freight trains. All other freight destined 

 for New York or for New England points 

 can get as far as the New York Harbor 

 terminals of the great trunk lines that 

 converge at tidewater, but to get the cars 

 to New York they had to be loaded on car 

 floats and towed across the Hudson River, 

 or the Bay, to railroad piers where they 

 might be unloaded or whence they might 

 be forwarded over the tracks of the Long 

 Island or the New York, New Haven and 

 Hartford. 



Manhattan — A Cork in a Bottle 



The new Hell Gate bridge, across the 

 narrow neck of water where the East River 

 joins Long Island Sound, owned jointly by 

 the Pennsylvania and New Haven systems 

 enables passenger trains to be run across to 

 Long Island and so through the tunnels to 

 the Pennsylvania terminal and on south- 

 ward. Freight trains were sent over the new 

 Connecting Railway to piers in Brooklyn, 

 whence the water haul to the New Jersey 

 piers was much shorter and safer than the 

 old route. But the prohibition of freight 



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