should be made adjustable on the yokes, to the extent of at least once and a half the width of the opening. These rails, of whatever pattern, should be strong, straight and properly lined.

Of the many devices for preventing the slot closing in extremely cold and changeable weather, there are none perfect and none that have not allowed the slot rails to move more or less at times. The space between the slot rails and the track rails should be well paved, rammed and fitted, so that accumulation of water will be prevented. Freezing of water in the interstices of the paving in this space is the frequent cause of slot closure.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Other conditions and elements entering into the cable system and affecting it financially, such as equipment, car houses, machine shops, accident signal service, methods for handling old and new cables, and running trains by time cards, methods of preventing blockades on account of fires, snow, etc., cover so large a field and are of so much interest and importance that any treatment of them in this report would be necessarily so brief that it would be valueless and tire

some.

Finally, your Committee begs the indulgence of the Association, and trusts that a sufficient number of points have been touched upon to draw out a discussion that will develop some definite and valuable knowledge concerning the conditions necessary to the financial success of the cable power.

Respectfully,

WM. D. HENRY,

Committee.

DISCUSSION ENSUING ON THE CABLE POWER.

The President: This whole question is now open for discussion, or any other action that you may be pleased to take.

Mr. Wm. Richardson: I would move you, sir, that the President of the Association, who from his long and full experience on this question must be able to instruct any and all of us, be requested to speak first on this report.

The motion was seconded by Mr. Frayser.

The Secretary put the question that the President, Mr. Holmes, be requested to make the first statement on the subject of cable motive power. Unanimously carried.

The President called Vice-President Frayser to the Chair.

REMARKS OF PRESIDENT CHARLES B. HOLMES ON THE CABLE POWER.

The President, Mr. Charles B. Holmes, of Chicago: Mr. President, please shut me off when the time comes, for this subject is so large and it involves so much; it touches so nearly the

powers which must come to help us out in this work, that when I get started there is no saying how far I will go. The report submitted this morning is a full and exhaustive one; one that is full of exceedingly interesting matter, especially to those who have had any experience in the building and operation of cable lines. One of the most important suggestions made in that paper is on the matter of engines. You take an ordinary engine, one of the old-fashioned valve engines, and it is of very little worth on a cable line. The fluctuations of power and strain come so quickly, that we need an engine for that purpose which will operate as quickly as the flash of the eye, and something that will be true in its operation and control the power, so that when a strain comes quickly one way, and there is a corresponding relaxation the other, the engine will respond at once to the work which it has to do. In connection with the question of the engine comes the matter of the boiler. It requires a much larger amount of boiler capacity, than of engine power, for the successful operation of a cable line. Mention was made of the cable or haulage rope. So far as I know, all cable lines in this country are now operated with a six-strand rope made of sixteen wires to the strand, sometimes with nineteen wires to the strand. From our experience in Chicago, having operated a cable line since 1882, we have settled down on a sixteen-wire strand, the outer wires of the strand being larger than the inner, so as to take the abrasion of the grips, without wearing away too rapidly. The inner portion of the rope has a hemp center, so that the strands fit down into the hemp center, and thus do not grind on each other. As we all know, there is a great deal of elasticity in a new wire rope. I have heard it stated by a gentleman who is a wire rope manufacturer, that a wire rope four thousand feet long will stretch two hundred feet. I know that there is a great deal of elasticity to a wire rope when it is first put in and commences its operation. It will stretch within two weeks to a distance of a hundred feet, and for the next two or three weeks it will stretch perhaps thirty, fifty or sixty feet more. This is all provided for by the winding of the slack on the drum and tension carriage, which is a device operating back and forth to keep the tension correct. In 1881 the Chicago City Railway Company operated two hundred and sixty-three cars and carried nineteen millions of people. This present year, 1888,

we are operating one thousand cars and carrying fifty-seven millions of people. I know of nothing in the history of the world which has shown a development of street-railway interest equal to that; from two hundred and sixty-three cars to one thousand cars in the short space of seven years; and we do not put on the cars just for fun and run them empty either.

The transmission of power from the engine to the drums, which move the cables, has been alluded to in the report, and reference has been made to cotton ropes. There may be more than one, but I know of only one place where cotton ropes are used for this purpose, and that on the Geary Street line, in San Francisco. It is a beautiful thing; as noiseless as the working of a watch; but I fear that for the heavy work which we have to do in Chicago, the cotton ropes would fail us in the transmission of power. The strains on the cables come so quickly and with such power, that these cotton ropes, not being equal in their tension, would sag more than usual between the drums, and would not be equal to carrying the load; and consequently the ropes would be stretched more in some cases than in others, and there would be more slipping than there ought to be, so that my own faith in cotton ropes for a large plant is weak. We have operated during this Summer as high as two hundred and sixty-three trains at a time, some three cars, and others four cars; and the amount of power which is necessary to move this vast number of trains loaded with people is enormous; for the extensions which we have made to our lines enable us to carry the people from all portions of the division of the city in which our lines are operated out to the park; and on Saturday and Sunday afternoons it would do your hearts good to see the thousands and thousands of the workmen of our city, who have been housed up in their workshops during the week, come out in their best dress with their families with them to go to the park. We have carried from fifty to seventyfive thousand people in a single afternoon on these pleasure trips.

Allusion has been made in the report to the percentage of power." In my mind there is nothing more deceptive than this percentage business. I want to get at this matter in a little different way, and, I think, one that will perhaps convey to you a trifle more tangibly an idea as to what this power is. I hold in my hand a statement taken from cards of our engines, showing

the amount of power that is required to move the engines and the shaft, viz., twenty-three horse power. That is on that section of our road where twenty miles of cable are operated from one set of engines, it required twenty-three horse power to move the engines and the shaft.

Mr. Richardson: Will you please explain what you mean by that?

Mr. Holmes: I mean that in our engine room we have two engines at one end and two engines at the other end of the shaft, five hundred horse power each, two thousand horse power in all. Until recently we had been operating only one thousand, two engines at one end of the shaft, leaving the other engines as reserve. But recently the travel has been so great that we have considered it advisable to operate the four engines at once, making the wear and tear and strain much less. Now, then, not only do we have these engines, but we have a long shaft and gears which convey the power from the engines to the drums, which give the motion to the cable. There are four of these drums, and the cable comes in and passes around these drums, and by their motion, movement is communicated to the cable to haul the cars. To move the cables, which are in the central part of the city, it required one hundred and eighty-eight horse power; that was for the cables, which, with the power necessary to move the engines and the machinery, exclusive of the cables, putting it altogether amounts to two hundred and eleven horse power. This is what you might call the “dead force." We have got to move our engines and drums and cables. before we begin to get any returns from the expenditure of force— two hundred and eleven horse power used up in doing that work. What we have out of the two thousand horse power after that, is all available for the propulsion of the cars. We have found that it costs us just about one-half a horse power per car, so that you can easily reckon the amount of capacity which the plant has. We have not anywhere nearly reached the capacity that we have with that set of machinery. I calculate we can put on three times the number of cars we are now running. Another point in connection with this matter of percentage is this: We were operating in the beginning two hundred and sixty-three cars, and it required two hundred and eleven horse power to do the "dead work" of the business; but when we come to operate a large number of cars, say a thousand cars, the percentage drops down very low.

The paper had special reference to the conditions which are essential to the financial success of the cable. We may be wild and reckless in Chicago in more than one direction, but we did this two years ago the present Summer. We extended our cable line six miles, taking the place of a horse line on which we had been operating at fifteen minute intervals. Some people would say that that was a very unwise thing to do; to put in an expensive plant costing eighty thousand dollars per mile of single track. in order to operate it for a distance of six miles, where horse cars had no more than they could do at fifteen minute intervals. You would be astonished to see how the population has increased on both sides of that line and on the cross streets, on either side, and the volume of travel which we have. It is only two years ago since the cable was put in on that line. Last year, a year ago the present Summer, we built ten miles more of cable road and four miles of that was in territory where there were only four houses. We had a cemetery at the end of the line; that was the objective point; but the amount of travel to the cemetery is very little except on Sundays. That was the only feature there was about the road outside of the ordinary travel, but the population which has filled in during this one year, and the advance in the value of property along that four miles of cable road, is most surprising. Over and over again have men representing property at that point endeavored to sell it at ten dollars a foot. It was hawked about the streets and could not be sold at that price, and to-day it is selling for fifty dollars a foot. This shows the benefit of the cable system in the advance of property wherever it is put and wherever it is operated successfully.

Allusion has been made to the splicing of ropes. That is one of the most important features connected with this cable system. When cables are spliced the point of splice is apt to be larger than the cable is on both sides, and when that larger part at the point of splicing comes to the grip, the jaws of the grip are very apt to tear the cable and draw out a strand; and then, of course, there is serious trouble; but this is avoided in a new splice which has been put in operation on our line. This is successful in putting the rope together in such a way that at that point the portion of the rope where the splice comes is smaller, if any, than the rope on either side, so that when this portion meets the grip, there is no abrasion of the rope by the grip. The metal that we use in the formation of the cable is known as "crucible cast steel."