coal, coke, ore, timber and other coarse articles for the return journey. On this account it is common to put small end doors in American box cars, through which timber and rails may be loaded. independent unit complete in itself. It is necessary that the voltage of the current shall be constant whatever be the increase of the speed of the train, and therefore of the dynamo. In most of the systems that have been proposed this result is attained by electrical regulation; in one, however, a mech- The fundamental difference between American freight cars anical method is adopted, the dynamo being so hung that it and the goods wagons of Europe and other lands is in carrying allows the driving belt to slip when the speed of the axle exceeds capacity. In Great Britain the mineral trucks can ordinarily a certain limit, the armature thus being rotated at an approxim- hold from 8 to 10 tons (long tons, 2240 lb), and the goods ately constant speed. In all the systems accumulators are trucks rather less, though there are wagons in use holding required to maintain the light when the train is at rest or is 12 or 15 tons, and the specifications agreed to by the railway moving too slowly to generate current. companies associated in the Railway Clearing House permit In all countries passenger trains must vary in weight accord-private wagon owners (who own about 45% of the wagon ing to the different services they have to perform; suburban stock run on the railways of the United Kingdom) to build also Weight trains, for example, meant to hold as many pas- wagons holding 20, 30, 40 and 56 tons. On the continent of and sengers as possible, and travelling at low speeds, do not Europe the average carrying capacity is rather higher; though speed, weigh so much as long-distance expresses, which include wagons of less than 10 tons capacity are in use, many of those dining and sleeping cars, and on which, from considerations of originally rated at 10 tons have been rebuilt to hold 15, and the comfort, more space must be allowed each occupant. The speed tendency is towards wagons of 15-20 tons as a standard, with at which the journey has to be completed is obviously another others for special purposes holding 40 or 45 tons. important factor, though the increased power of modern locomotives permits trains to be heavier and at the same time to run as fast, and often faster, than was formerly possible, and in consequence the general tendency is towards increased weight as well as increased speed. An ordinary slow suburban train may weigh about 100 tons exclusive of the engine, and may be timed at an inclusive speed, from the beginning to the end of its journey, as low as 12 or 15 m. an hour; while usually the fastest express trains maintaining inclusive speeds of say 45 m. an hour, and made up of the heaviest and strongest rolling stock, do not much exceed 300 tons in any country, and are often less. The inclusive speed over a long journey is of course a different thing from the average running speed, on account of the time consumed in intermediate stops; the fewer the stops the more easily is the inclusive speed increased, hence the advantage of the non-stop runs of 150 and 200 m. or more which are now performed by several railways in Great Britain, and on which average speeds of 54 or 55 m. per hour are attained between stopping-places. Over shorter distances still more rapid running is occasionally arranged, and in Great Britain, France and the United States there are instances of trains scheduled to maintain an average speed of 60 m. an hour or more between stops. Still higher speeds, up to 75 or even 80 m. an hour, are reached, and sustained for shorter or longer distances every day by express trains whose average speed between any two stoppingplaces is very much less. But isolated examples of high speeds do not give the traveller much information as to the train service at his disposal, for on the whole he is better off with a large number of trains all maintaining a good average of speed than with a service mostly consisting of poor trains, but leavened with one or two exceptionally fast ones. If both the number and the speed of the trains be taken into account, Great Britain is generally admitted still to remain well ahead of any other country. The majority of the wagons referred to above are comparatively short, are carried on four wheels, and are often made of wood. American cars, on the other hand, have long bodies mounted on two swivelling bogie-trucks of four wheels each, and are commonly constructed of steel. About 1875 their average capacity differed little from that of British wagons of the present day, but by 1885 it had grown to 20 or 22 short tons (2000 lb) and now it is probably at least three times that of European wagons. For years the standard freight cars have held 60,000 th and now many carry 80,000 tb or 100,000 lb; a few coal cars have even been built to contain 200,000 lb. This high carrying capacity has worked in several ways to reduce the cost of transportation. An ordinary British 10-ton wagon often weighs about 6 tons empty, and rarely much less than 5 tons; that is, the ratio of its possible paying load to its tare weight is at the best about 2 to 1. But an American car with a capacity of 100,000 lb may weigh only 40,000 lb, and thus the ratio of its capacity to its tare weight is only about 5 to 2. Hence less dead weight has to be hauled for each ton of paying load. In addition the increased size of the American freight car has diminished the interest on the first cost and the expenses of maintenance relatively to the work done; it has diminished to some extent the amount of track and yard room required to perform a unit of work; it has diminished journal and rolling friction relatively to the tons hauled, since these elements of train resistance grow relatively less as the load per wheel rises; and finally, it has tended to reduce the labour costs as the train loads have become greater, because no more men are required to handle a heavy train than a light one. It is sometimes argued that if these things are true for one country they must be true for another, and that in Great Britain, for example, the use of more capacious cars would bring down the cost of carriage. It may be pointed out, however, that the Goods Trains.-The vehicles used for the transportation of social and geographical conditions are different in the United goods are known as goods wagons or trucks in Great Britain, Kingdom and the United States, and in each country the and as freight cars in America. The principal types to methods of carrying goods and passengers have developed be found in the United Kingdom and on the continent of in accordance with the requirements of those conditions. In Europe are open wagons (the lading often protected from the the one country the population is dense, large towns are weather by tarpaulin sheets), mineral wagons, covered or box numerous and close to one another, the greatest distances wagons for cotton, grain, &c., sheep and cattle trucks, &c. to be travelled are short, and relatively a large part of the The principal types of American freight cars are box cars, freight to be carried is merchandise and manufactured material gondola cars, coal cars, stock cars, tank cars and refrigerator consigned in small quantities. In the other country precisely cars, with, as in other countries, various special cars for special the opposite conditions exist. Under the first set of conditions purposes. Most of these terms explain themselves. The quickness and flexibility of service are relatively more important gondola or flat car corresponds to the European open wagons than under the second set. Goods therefore are collected and and is used to carry goods not liable to be injured by the weather; despatched promptly, and, to secure rapid transit, are packed but in the United States the practice of covering the load with in numerous wagons, each of which goes right through to its tarpaulins is unknown, and therefore the proportion of box destination, with the consequence that, so far as general mercars is much greater than in Europe. The long hauls in the chandise is concerned, the weight carried in each is a quarter United States make it specially important that the cars should or less of its capacity. But if full loads cannot be arranged for carry a load in both directions, and so box cars which have small wagons, there is obviously no economy in introducing carried grain or merchandise one way are filled with wool, larger ones. On the other hand, where, as in America, the great volume of freight is raw material and crude food-stuffs, and | swings on the pivot B, and has an arm which extends backwards, the distances are great, a low charge per unit of transportation practically at right angles with the working face of the hook, is more important than any consideration such as quickness of delivery; therefore full car-loads of freight are massed into enormous trains, which run unbroken for distances of perhaps 1000 m. to a seaport or distributing centre. and The weight and speed of goods trains vary enormously according to local conditions, but the following figures, which Weight refer to traffic on the London & North-Western railway between London and Rugby, may be taken speed. as representative of good English practice. Coal trains, excluding the engine, weigh up to 800 or 900 tons, and travel at from 18 to 22 m. an hour; ordinary goods or merchandise trains, weighing 430 tons, travel at from 25 to 30 m. an hour; and quick merchandise trains with limited loads of 300 tons make 35 to 40 m. an hour. In the United States mineral and grain trains, running at perhaps 12 m. an hour, may weigh up to about 4000 tons, and loads of 2000 tons are common. Merchandise trains run faster and carry less. Their speed must obviously depend greatly on topographical conditions. In the great continental basin there are long lines with easy gradients and curves, while in the Allegheny and Rocky Mountains the gradients are stiff, and the curves numerous and of short radius. Such trains, therefore, range in weight from 600 to 1800 tons or even more, and the journey speeds from terminus to terminus, including stops, vary from 15 to 30 m. an hour, the rate of running rising in favourable circumstances to 40 or even 60 m. an hour. Couplers. The means by which vehicles are joined together into trains are of two kinds-automatic and non-automatic, the difference between them being that with the former the impact of two vehicles one on the other is sufficient to couple them without any human intervention such as is required with the latter. The common form of non-automatic coupler, used in Great Britain for goods wagons, consists of a chain and hook; the chain hangs loosely from a slot in the draw-bar, which terminates in a hook, and coupling is effected by slipping the chain of one vehicle over the hook of the next. For this operation, or its reverse, a man has to go in between the wagons, unless, as in Great Britain, he is provided with a coupling-stick that is, a pole having a peculiarly shaped hook at one end by which the chain can be caught and thrown on or off the drawbat hook. This coupling gear is placed centrally between a pair of buffers; formerly these were often left "dead"-that is, consisted of solid prolongations of the frame of the vehicle, but now they are made to work against springs which take up the shocks that occur when the wagons are thrown violently against one another in shunting. In British practice the chains consist of three links, and are of such a length that when fully extended there is a space of a few inches between opposing buffers; this slack facilitates the starting of a heavy train, since the engine is able to start the wagons one by one and the weight of the train is not thrown on it all at once. For passenger trains and occasionally for fast goods trains screw couplings are substituted for the simple chains. In these the central bar which connects the two end links has screw threads cut upon it, and by means of a lever can be turned so as either to shorten the coupling and bring the vehicles together till their buffers are firmly pressed together, or to lengthen it to permit the end link to be lifted off the hook. Another form of coupler, which used to be universal in the United States, though it has now been almost entirely superseded by the automatic coupler, was the "link and pin," which differed fundamentally from the couplers commonly used in Europe, in the fact that it was a buffer as well as a coupler, no side buffers being fitted. In it the draw-bar, connected through a spring to the frame of the car, had at its outboard end a socket into which one end of a solid link was inserted and secured by a pin. The essential change from the link and pin to the automatic coupler is in the outboard end or head of the draw-bar. The socket that received the link is replaced by a hook, shown at A in fig. 28, which is usually called the knuckle. This hook FIG. 28.-Automatic Coupling for Freight Cars (U.S.A.). in a cavity in the head, and engages with the locking-pin C. This locking-pin is lifted by a suitable lever which extends to one or both sides of the car; lifting it releases the knuckle, which is then free to swing open, disconnecting the two cars. The knuckle stands open until the coupling is pushed against another coupling, when the two hooks turn on their pivots to the position shown in fig. 28, and, the locking-pin dropping into place, the couplers are made fast. This arrangement is only partly automatic, since it often happens that when two cars are brought together to couple the knuckles are closed and must be opened by hand. There are various contrivances by which this may be done by a man standing clear of the cars, but often he must go in between their ends to reach the knuckle. This form of automatic coupler has now gained practically universal acceptance in the United States. To effect this result required many years of discussion and experiment. The Master Car Builders' Association, a great body of mechanical officers organized especially to being about improvement and uniformity in details of construction and operation, expressed its sense of the importance of "self-coupling" so far back as 1874, but no device of the kind that could be considered useful had then been invented. At that time a member of the Association referred to the disappearance of automatic couplers which had been introduced thirty or forty years before. This body pursued the subject with more or less diligence, and in 1884 laid down the principle that the automatic coupler should be one acting in a vertical plane-that is, the engaging faces should be free to move up and down within a considerable range, in order to provide for the differences in the height of cars. By the fixing of this principle the task of the inventor was considerably simplified. In 1887 a committee reported that the coupler question was the "knottiest mechanical problem that had ever been presented to the railroad," and over 4000 attempted solutions were on record in the United States Patent Office. The committee had not found one that did not possess grave disadvantages, but concluded that the "principle of contact of the surfaces of vertical surfaces embodied in the Janney coupler afforded the best connexion for cars on curves and tangents "; and in 1887 the Association recommended the adoption of a coupler of the Janney type, which, as developed later, is shown in fig. 28. The method of constructing the working faces of this coupler is shown in fig. 29. The principle was patented, but the company owning the patent undertook to permit its free use by railway companies which were members of the Master Car Builders' Association, and thus threw open the underlying principle to competition. From that time the numerous patents have had reference merely to details. Many different couplers of the Janney type are patented and made by different firms, but the tendency is to equip new cars with one of only four or five standard makes. The adoption of automatic couplers was stimulated in some degree by laws enacted by the various states and by the United States; and the Safety Appliance Act passed by Congress in 1893 made it unlawful for railways to permit to be hauled on their lines after the 1st of January 1898 any car used for interstate commerce that was not equipped with couplers which coupled automatically by impact, and which could be uncoupled without the necessity for men going in between the ends of the cars. The limit was extended to the 1st of August 1900 by the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was given discretion in the matter. Automatic couplers resembling the Janney are adopted in | railways were laid round the boundaries of areas approximately a few special cases in Great Britain and other European countries, circular, the theory being that the short walk from the circumference of the circle to any point within it would be no serious detention. It has been found, however, in the case of such circular or belt railways, that the time lost in traversing the circle and in walking from the circumference to the centre is so great that the gain in journey speed over a direct surface tramway or omnibus is entirely lost. Later intra-urban railways in nearly every case have been built, so far as possible, on straight lines, radiating from the business centre or point of maximum congestion of travel to the outer limits of the city; and, while not attempting to serve all the population through the agency of the line, make an effort to serve a portion in the best possible manner-that is, with direct transit The actual beginning of the construction of intra-urban railways was in 1853, when powers were obtained to build a line, 24 m. long, from Edgware Road to King's Cross, in London, from which beginning the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District railways developed. These railways, which in part are operated jointly, were given a circular location, but the shortcomings of this plan soon became apparent. It was found that there was not sufficient traffic to support them as purely FIG. 29.-Development of the Working Faces of the Janney Coupler. The sides of the square are 6 in., and the centres AA are taken at 2 in. from the top and bottom of the square. The circles A'A', which are struck with 2-inch radius, define the first portion of the knuckle. The inner circle B has a radius of 1 in. From its intersection with A'A' arcs are struck cutting B in two points. These intersections determine the centres of the semi-intra-urban lines, and they have since been extended into the circles CC which form the ends of the respective knuckles. These outskirts of London to reach the suburban traffic. semicircles and the circles A'A' are joined by tangents and short arcs struck from the centre of the figure. but the great majority of couplings remain non-automatic. It may be pointed out that the general employment of side buffers in Europe greatly complicates the problem of designing a satisfactory automatic coupling, while to do away with them and substitute the combined buffer-coupling, such as is used in the United States, would entail enormous difficulties in carrying on the traffic during the transition stage. Brakes. In the United States the Safety Appliance Act of 1893 also forbade the railways, after the 1st of January 1898, to run trains which did not contain a "sufficient number " of cars equipped with continuous brakes to enable the speed to be controlled from the engine. This law, however, did not serve in practice to secure so general a use of power brakes on freight trains as was thought desirable, and another act was passed in 1903 to give the Interstate Commerce Commission authority to prescribe what should be the minimum number of power-braked cars in each train. This minimum was at first fixed at 50%, but on and after the 1st of August 1906 it was raised to 75%, with the result that soon after that date practically all the rolling stock of American railways, whether passenger or freight, was provided with compressed air brakes. In the United Kingdom the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 empowered the Board of Trade to require all passenger trains, within a reasonable period, to be fitted with automatic continuous brakes, and now all the passenger stock, with a few trifling exceptions, is provided with either compressed-air or vacuum brakes (see BRAKE), and sometimes with both. But goods and mineral trains so fitted are rare, and the same is the case on the continent of Europe, where, however, such brakes are generally employed on passenger trains. (H. M. R.) INTRA-URBAN RAILWAYS The great concentration of population in cities during the 19th century brought into existence a class of railways to ment. which the name of intra-urban may be applied. Such Develop lines are primarily intended to supply quick means of passenger communication within the limits of cities, and are to be distinguished on the one hand from surface tramways, and on the other from those portions of trunk or other lines which lie within city boundaries, although the latter may incidentally do a local or intra-urban business. Intra-urban railways, as compared with ordinary railways, are characterized by shortness of length, great cost per mile, and by a traffic almost exclusively passenger, the burden of which is enormously heavy. For the purpose of connecting the greatest possible number of points of concentrated travel, the first The Metropolitan and Metropolitan District railways followed the art of railway building as it existed at the time they were laid out. Wherever possible the lines were constructed in open cutting, to ensure adequate ventilation; and where this was not possible they were built by a method suggestively named "cut and cover." A trench was first excavated to the proper depth, then the side walls and arched roof of brick were put in place, earth was filled in behind and over the arch, and the surface of the ground restored, either by paving where streets were followed, or by actually being built over with houses where the lines passed under private property. Where the depth to rail-level was too great for cut-and-cover methods, ordinary tunnelling processes were used; and where the trench was too shallow for the arched roof, heavy girders, sometimes of cast iron, bridged it between the side walls, longitudinal arches being turned between them (fig. 30). aslo 111,0 RAD 25:0 FIG. 30.-Type-Section of Arched Covered Way, Metropolitan District railway, London. The next development in intra-urban railways was an elevated line in the city of New York. Probably the first suggestion for an elevated railway was made by Colonel Stevens, of Hoboken, New Jersey, as early as 1831, when the whole art of railway construction was in its infancy. He proposed to build an elevated railway on a single line of posts, placed along the curb-line of the street: a suggestion which embodies not only the general plan of an elevated structure, but the most striking feature of it as subsequently built-namely, a railway supported by a single row of columns. The first actual work, however, was not begun till 1870, when the construction of an iron structure on a single row of columns was undertaken. The superiority, so far as the convenience of passengers is concerned, of an elevated over an underground railway, when both are worked by steam locomotives, and the great economy and rapidity of construction, led to the quick development and extension of this general design. By the year 1878 there were four parallel lines in the city of New York, and constructions of the same character had already been projected in Brooklyn and Chicago and, with certain modifications of details, in Berlin. In the year 1894 an elevated railway was built in Liverpool, and in 1900 a similar railway was constructed in Boston, U.S.A., and the construction of a new one undertaken in New York. These elevated railways as a rule follow the lines of streets, and are of two general types. One (fig. 31), the earliest form, consisted of a single row of columns supporting two lines of longitudinal girders carrying the rails, the lateral stability of the structure being obtained by anchoring the feet of the columns to their foundations. The other type (fig. 32) FIG. 31-Single-Column FIG. 32.-Double-Column Elevated has two rows of columns connected at the top by turn carry the longitudinal ments between retaining the metallic structure The next great develop- FIG. 33.-Section of Tunnel and Electric Locomotive, City & South up clear diameter of 10 ft. 2 in. Except at the shafts, which were sunk on proposed station sites, there was no interference with the surface of the streets or with street traffic during construction. Two tunnels were built approximately parallel, each taking a single track. The cross-section of the cars was made to conform approximately to the section of the tunnel, the idea being that each train would act like a piston in a cylinder, expelling in front of it a column of air, to be forced the station shaft next ahead of the train, and sucking down a similar column through the station shaft just behind. This arrangement was expected to ensure a sufficient change in air to keep such railways properly ventilated, but experience has proved it to be ineffective for the purpose. This method of construction has been used for building other railways in Glasgow and London, and in the latter city alone the "tube railways" of this character have a length of some 40 m. The later examples of these railways have a diameter ranging 13 to 15 ft. from The fourth step in the development of intra-urban railways Greathead introduced. In 1893 the construction was comwas to go to the other extreme from the deep tunnel which pleted in Budapest of an underground railway with a thin, flat roof, consisting of steel beams set close together, with small longitudinal jack arches between them, the street pavement 29.8 1886, when J. H. Great head (q.v.) began the City & South London railway, extending under the Thames from the Monument to Stockwell, a distance of 34 m. Its promoters recognized the unsuitability of ordinary steam locomotives for underground railways, and intended to work it by means of a moving cable; but before it was completed, electric traction had developed so far as to be available for use on such lines. Electricity, therefore, and not the cable, was installed (fig. 33). In the details of construction the shield was the novelty. In principle it had been invented by Sir Marc I. Brunel for the construction of the original Thames tunnel, and it was afterwards improved by Beach, of New York, and finally developed by Greathead. (For the details of the shield and method of its operation, see TUNNEL.) By means of the shield Great- resting directly on the roof thus formed (fig. 34). The object head cut a circular hole at a depth ranging from 40 to 80 ft. I was to bring the level of the station platforms as close to the FIG. 34. Electric Underground Railway, Budapest. surface of the street as the height of the car itself would permit; in the case of Budapest the distance is about 9 ft. This principle of construction has since been followed in the construction of the Boston subway, of the Chemin de Fer Métropolitain in Paris, and of the New York underground railway. The Paris line is built with the standard gauge of 4 ft 8 in., but its tunnels are designedly made of such a small crosssection that ordinary main line stock cannot pass through them. The New York underground railway (fig. 35) marks a still further step in advance, in that there are practically two tioa. In the operation of intra-urban railways, steam locomotives, cables and electricity have severally been tried: the first having been used in the earlier examples of underground lines Operaand in the various elevated systems in the United States. The fouling of the air that results from the steam-engine, owing to the production of carbonic acid gas and of sulphurous fumes and aqueous vapour, is well known, and its use is now practically abandoned for underground working. The cable is slow; and unless development along new lines of compressed air or some sort of chemical engine takes place, electricity will monopolize the field. Electricity is applied FIG. 35.-New York Rapid Transit railway, showing also the tracks and conduits of the electric surface tramway. different railways in the same structure. One pair of tracks | is used for a local service with stations about one-quarter of a mile apart, following the general plan of operation in vogue on all other intra-urban railways. The other, or central, pair | of tracks is for trains making stops at longer distances. Thus there is a differentiation between the long-distance traveller who desires to be carried from one extreme of the city to the other and the short-distance traveller who is going between points at a much less distance. To sum up, there are of intra-urban railways two distinct classes: the elevated and the underground. The elevated is used where the traffic is so light as not to warrant the expensive underground construction, or where the construction of an elevated line is of no serious detriment to the adjoining property. The underground is used where the congestion of traffic is so great as to demand a railway almost regardless of cost, and where the conditions of surface traffic or of adjoining property are such as to require that the railway shall not obstruct or occupy any ground above the surface. Underground railways are of three general types: the one of extreme depth, built by tunnelling methods, usually with the shield and without regard to the surface topography, where the stations are put at such depth as to require lifts to carry the passengers from the station platform to the street level. This type has the advantage of economy in first construction, there being the minimum amount of material to be excavated, and no interference during construction with street traffic or subsurface structures; it has, however, the disadvantage of the cost of operation of lifts at the stations. The other extreme type is the shallow construction, where the railway is brought to the minimum distance below the street level. This system has the advantage of the greatest convenience in operation, no lifts being required, since the distance from the street surface to the station platform is about 12 to 15 ft.; it has the disadvantages, however, of necessitating the tearing up of the street surface during construction, and the readjustment of sewer, water, gas and electric mains and other subsurface structures, and of having the gradients partially dependent on the surface topography. The third type is the intermediate one between those two, followed by the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District railways, in London, where the railway has an arched roof, built usually at a sufficient distance below the surface of the street to permit the other subsurface structures to lie in the ground above the crown of the arch, and where the station platforms are from 20 to 30 ft. beneath the surface of the street-a depth not sufficient to warrant the introduction of lifts, but enough to be inconvenient. through a separate locomotive attached to the head of the train, or through motor carriages attached either at one end or at both ends of the train, or by putting a motor on every axle and so utilizing the whole weight of the train for traction, all the motors being under a single control at the head of the train, or at any point. of the train for emergency. The distance between stations on intra-urban railways is governed by the density of local traffic and the speed desired to be maintained. As a general rule the interval varies from one-quarter to one-half mile; on the express lines of the New York underground railway, the inter-station interval averages about 1 m. On steam-worked lines the speed of trains is about 11 to 15 m. per hour, according to the distance between stations Later practice takes advantage of the great increase in power that can be temporarily developed by electric motors during the period of acceleration; this, in proportion to the weight of the train to be hauled, gives results much in advance of those obtained on ordinary steam railways. Since high average speed on a line with frequent stops depends largely on rapidity of acceleration, the tendency in modern equipment is to secure as great an output of power as possible during the accelerating period, with corresponding increase in weight available for adhesion. With a steam locomotive all the power is concentrated in one machine, and therefore the weight on the drivers available for adhesion is limited. With electricity, power can be applied to as many axles in the train as desired, and so the whole weight of the train, with its load, may be utilized if necessary. Sometimes, as on the Central London railway, the acceleration of gravity is also utilized; the different stations stand, as it were, on the top of a hill, so that outgoing trains are aided at the start by having a slope to run down, while incoming ones are checked by the rising gradient they encounter. The cost of intra-urban railways depends not only on the type of construction, but more especially upon local conditions, such as the nature of the soil, the presence of subsurface structures, like sewers, water and gas mains, electric conduits, &c.; the necessity of permanent underpinning or temporary supporting of house foundations, the cost of acquiring land passed under or over when street lines are not followed, and, in the case of elevated railways, the cost of acquiring easements of light, air and access, which the courts have held are vested in the abutting property. The cost of building an ordinary two-track elevated railway according to American practice varies from $300,000 to $400,000 a mile, exclusive of equipment, terminals or land damages. The cost of constructing the deep tubular tunnels in London, whose diameter is about 15 ft. exclusive, in like manner, of equipment, terminals or land damages, is about £170,000 to £200,000 a mile. The cost of the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District railways of London varied greatly on account of the variations in construction. The most difficult section-namely, that under Cannon Streetwhere the abutting buildings had to be underpinned, and a very dense traffic maintained during construction, while a network of sewers and mains was readjusted, cost at the rate of about £1,000,000 a mile. The contract price of the New York underground railway, exclusive of the incidentals above mentioned, was $35,000,000 for 21 m., of which 16 m. are underground and 5 are elevated. The most difficult portion of the road, 44 m. of four-track line, cost $15,000,000. (W. B. P.) Cost. |