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But if you ask if he knows that Germany, for instance, with nine times denser population has barely twice as much trackage no, your Canadian business man doesn't know it. He is too busy building his own railroads to care much what other nations are doing with theirs. Likewise of the country's trade increasing faster almost than the Dominion can handle it.
As guns firing with such rapidity wear out their tubes and their springs in a few days, it is necessary to rush entire batteries to the repair-shops at the rear. And that provides another burden for the railways. In addition to the railways of standard gauge, the British have laid down an astonishing trackage of narrow-gauge, Décauville, and monorail systems.
In only ten years the railway trackage has increased from 49,041 to 52,216 miles; the number of locomotives from 18,291 to 26,612; freight-cars from 398,000 to 558,000; the passengers carried from 804,000,000 to 1,457,000,000; and the tons of freight carried from 341,000,000 tons to 519,000,000 tons.
They mean city-owned trackage, so that the tramp steamer seeking cargo at cheap rates shall have every inducement and facility for getting cargo. They mean free sites for manufacturers, not sky-rocket boom prices that keep new industries out of a city. Elevators and terminals have been announced time and again for Vancouver, but up to the present the announcements have not materialized.
"Well, I guess you've gone the right way about it. But are you sure about these Chicago terminals? A legal friend of mine here says you'll never get in." "He was possibly paid to say it," said Ford hotly. "There has never been a shadow of doubt touching our trackage rights on the C. P. & D. contracts, or upon our ability to maintain them.
In both Baltimore and Philadelphia, railroads are spending millions increasing their trackage for the traffic they expect to feed down to the coast cities for Panama steamers. Among the Gulf ports, New Orleans has spent fifteen million dollars putting in a belt line system of railroads and docks with steel and cement sheds, purely to keep her harbor front free of corporate control.
It had been progressive in matters of expansion and had built up its system to meet the needs of modern times. Its trackage and equipment compared favorably with similar systems, and most of its extensions and branches had been wisely planned and had proved profitable.
Although the route is over the same ground which the road followed a generation or two ago, a four-track line runs practically all the way, with long stretches of hundreds of miles of five, six, and eight tracks. Where mountains were climbed thirty years ago, one will now find them bored by tunnels; where sharp curves were necessary before straight trackage only will be encountered today.
Evidently some old misunderstanding of the question came up in his mind by association of ideas, as a rejected paper will be drawn with its related files from a pigeon-hole. "That terminal charge," said he, "has not counted for much against the success of your road, yet; but the contract provides for increasing rentals, and it is already too much. The trackage and depots aren't worth it.
The war and the federal control of the railways interrupted the cycle of reorganization. The road owns 343 miles of track, has 52 miles of branches, and 45 miles of trackage rights over other roads. It goes from Detroit almost due south to Ironton on the Ohio River, thus tapping the West Virginia coal deposits.
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