31 



Railroad rights- of way can usually be kept cleaned and 

 burned at a cost far less than the resulting cost of damages 

 from fires which result if the right-of-way is not cleaned. 



Fire Lines 



Fire lines are necessary if all railroad forest 

 fires ate to be eliminated. It is very rarely that a fire 

 will get over a well constructed fire line. From careful 

 observations it has been found that most of the sparks, and 

 especially the larger ones, fall between thirty-five and one 

 hundred feet from the center of the track, and that 95 per 

 cent of all railroad fires originate within one hundred feet 

 of the track. It is therefore plain to see that a one 

 hundred foot right-of-way (i.e., fifty feet from the center of 

 the track on each side) is not wide enough to catch all of the 

 sparks. An additional fifty feet on each side of the right- 

 of-way should also be cleaned and all brush, dead logs, grass 

 and debris burned. The trees which are three inches in dia- 

 meter and six feet apart do not have to be removed - in fact 

 they aid in deadening the sparks before they reach the ground. 

 Along the outer edge of this cleared strip a fire line ten 

 feet wide should be plowed and then harrowed each year to 

 prevent, it from being over grown with grass, weeds or brush. 



/Ithough the New Jersey fire line law has been de- 

 clared unconstitutional, several of the railroads continue to 

 build fire lines for they have seen the advantage of them. 

 The follom^ing diagram shows the construction of a Hew Jersey 

 fire line. 



