Letters From A Railway Official
live stock and dressed meats in the other. A dozen years ago we had developed a combination freight and passenger engine, usually a ten-wheeler with fairly high drivers, which handled such business promptly and profitably. We could take out a Raymond excursion or a theatrical special one way, and coming back make a fly run with belated stock for a distant market. We may yet do the same with the compound battleship, but it will first require alterations and a big expenditure on track. When stock shows up you must get it moving. You cannot hold it to club trains, as in the case of coal and pig iron. You miss the market and there is a big claim to pay, to which the financial gentleman in New York does not give sufficient weight when he makes his wonderful analysis of our figures. It does not show up in grate surface, tractive power, or weight on the drivers. It is not complimentary to our wisdom that stock shippers have been compelled to invoke State aid to force us to run stock trains regardless of full tonnage, to do what our own best interests demanded. We should avoid the necessity for even a just regula-
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