Popular Science Monthly 



829 



A New Way of Loading Steamers 

 from Freight Cars 



AN unusual handling plant designed 

 L to reduce the time in transferring 

 pig-iron, coal, steel and various other 

 bulk materials from gondola cars 

 to boats, has been installed by a 

 large steamship company at Cleve- 

 land, Ohio. 



profit by experience. Writing of the bad 

 condition of the roads in England in 

 1685, Macaulay says: 



"The chief cause which made the 

 fusion of the different elements of society 

 so imperfect was the extreme difificulty 

 which our ancestors found in passing 

 from place to place. ... In the seven- 

 teenth century the inhabitants of Lon- 



A gigantic locomotive-crane empties coal into the one-hundred-ton concrete bin from 

 which it is loaded into carts through three hand-operated gates 



A one-hundred-ton concrete bin, held 

 above the ground by steel beams, is 

 situated midway between the freight 

 tracks and the steamship. A locomotive 

 crane on the tracks transfers the material 

 from the cars into the bin. Two-ton 

 carts are hauled under the bin, and the 

 coal drops into them through three 

 hand-operated gates. As soon as the 

 carts are filled, they are drawn to the 

 steamship by means of electric trucks 

 equipped with storage batteries. It 

 is said that this plant has proved a 

 decided success and has largely reduced 

 the handling costs of i)ulk materials. 



I 



Bad Roads Make Bad Going 

 T is no truer that history repeats itself 

 than that men, in general, do not 



don were for almost every practical pur- 

 pose, farther from Reading than they 

 now are from Edinburgh, and farther 

 from Edinburgh than they now are from 

 Vienna. . . . When Prince George of 

 Denmark visited the stately mansion of 

 Petworth in wet weather, he was six 

 hours going nine miles. 



All this was the condition of highway 

 traffic in England two hundred and 

 thirty-one years ago and it can be 

 duplicated in many parts of the United 

 States today. It has been estimated 

 by careful government experts that only 

 about 150,000 miles of really first-rate 

 modern highways are to be found in the 

 United States; the total mileage of 

 public roads in January, 1915, was 

 2,273,131. 



