Railroad station in New York, the cost per ton was 89 cents per truck per month, which is very low indeed, considering the mileage they cover. This is based on using their own power, figuring about 22 cents per kilowatt hour. The maintenance cost, as I have said before, we figure about three mills over the record of six years' maintenance on a number of these baggage trucks. We could not get it on the freight trucks, as we have not had long enough time to find any maintenance on them at all as yet. We figure the depreciation there is 9 mills, that is, depreciation and the interest on the investment, so that their total cost for handling of freight on this pier amounted to approximately 101⁄2 cents per ton."

Mr. W. P. Coria, of Baltimore, Superintendent of Agencies of the Merchants' and Miners' Transportation Company, gave some figures in the practical operation of 20 electric trucks, which are now in use at the Savannah terminals of this company. He stated that labor units have been reduced about 25 per cent. to prevent waste, as one electric truck will carry approximately five times the load of one hand truck. further stated as follows:

He

"I will give you some figures prepared after the trucks had been in operation about four weeks. I have taken 13 electric truck loads and 13 hand truck loads of the same commodities, traveling the same round-trip distance.

"The average weight of the electric truck load was 1,531 pounds, distance 748 feet, time 5 minutes and 23 seconds, average feet per minute 138.

"The average weight of the hand truck load was 400 pounds, time four minutes and 46 seconds, average feet per minute 156.

"I want to explain the average time we made by cutting out one electric truck and one hand truck. The electric truck made seven stops, distributing the package freight around the houses. The hand truck made but one stop, which makes the average feet per minute for the electric truck 148 and reduces the hand truck speed to 148, which is the same. This shows a difference of 383 per cent. in weight in favor of the electric truck, while the time was 11.3 per cent, in favor of the hand truck. The per cent. figures are based on the 13 loads.

"Reducing this to tons, the electric truck carried about 8 tons per hour, compared with 21⁄2 tons by the hand truck.

"These averages were, of course, made with individual loads, and this record could not be made with one truck working continuously, as there would naturally be a percentage of time wasted between the truck loads. All of this freight was handled from ships' hatches to freight houses and into cars.

"At Savannah we have merchants' warehouses located in the outlying districts of the yards, and the freight that I will now refer to is first handled from the ship to the freight houses waiting orders of the merchants. The work these trucks perform is taking freight from the freight houses to the warehouses, the average trucking distance being 1,107 feet. This work was performed for a fraction over 9 cents per ton, while the hand trucks on similar work produced a cost of 17 cents per ton, a saving of about 47 per cent. in cost. With the hand trucks we work 18 men, compared with 6 men on the electric.

"The average trucking distance at our Savannah terminal, from the center of the main discharging berth to all of the warehouses, is 637 feet. The varying tides produce grades from the ships' upper decks to the pier surface of from 37 per cent to

zero, and many other conditions prevail there, such as labor, rail connections, variety of ships and cargoes, etc., which prompted us to select that terminal as the most practical of all the ports touched by our line, for a severe test, and I can say that they have had it. If any tool ever got a test. they have had it at Savannah.

"Our incline drop elevators are worked successfully in connection with the electric trucks, but are used for power economy alone, as the trucks only require assistance, when taking the maximum 37 per cent. grade. These elevators were primarily installed to assist hand trucks with their loads up heavy grades. Up to the present time we have found it possible to handle 70 per cent. of the freight with the electric truck, and on the balance, or 30 per cent., it is necessary to employ hand trucks; thus the full efficiency of the electric truck is not obtained on cargo work. The cost for current during the entire period since trucks have been in operation has averaged about II cents per day per car."

The electric trucks of the Automatic Transportation Company have been used also for handling mail and baggage at passenger stations; for freight service they have been installed by the following railroad and steamship lines in addition to those already mentioned: Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad....

Seaboard Air Line Railway.

Panama Railroad..

Boston Terminal Company.

Baltimore Steam Packet Company.

Old Dominion Steamship Company.

Silvis, Ill. Portsmouth, Va. Colon, Panama .Boston, Mass. Norfolk, Va.

.New York and Norfolk, Va.

Another type of storage battery truck, built by the Cleveland-Galion Motor Truck Company, has been used experimentally in the freight station of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway, at Cleveland, Ohio. This is described in the "Railway Age Gazette," October 11, 1912.

Also the Elwell-Parker storage battery truck has been used by the Illinois Central in the handling of cotton at Stuyvesant Docks, New Orleans.

MISCELLANEOUS.

In addition to the above, we find some roads and steamship companies are using inclined elevators, overhead jib cranes, stacking or elevating conveyors, briefly described as follows:

Inclined Elevators.

There is a somewhat extensive use of inclined elevators at piers to assist the moving of loaded hand trucks on the inclines between ships' decks and the pier floor. Some of these are traveling platforms, which carry the men and the trucks. Others are simply endless chains which have lugs to engage the axles of the trucks and push them forward, the men walking the ordinary way. The Otis Elevator Company has built a number of installations of the latter class and some of the former class (all on the Reno patents). The installations of the chain type include piers of the Boston & Maine Railroad at Boston; the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad at Bridgeport, Conn.; the Merchants' & Miners' Transportation Company at Savannah, Ga., and the Metropolitan Steamship Company at Boston. Each of these has two electrically operated machines, except that the last has three machines. It is stated that the last named company estimates a saving of $33,000 in handling its freight for one year, which is approximately six times the cost of the machines. Each machine can handle from 600 to 1,900 trucks per hour, according to the speed of the chain.

Overhead Jib Cranes.

A type of crane which is used extensively in freight houses in Great Britain is a combined traveling and revolving overhead crane. Instead of the usual hoisting trolley on the bridge of the crane, the trolley has suspended from it a frame which carries a horizontal boom or jib, and this frame can be revolved through a complete circle. The freight house of the Great Western Railway at Cardiff, Wales, has a Babcock & Wilcox electric crane of this type; its bridge has a span of 50 feet, and the boom on the traveling trolley has a working radius of 18 feet. The hoisting capacity is one ton, and the speeds are as follows:

Bridge travel

Swinging

Trolley travel

Hoisting

.250 feet per minute

.120 feet per minute

.230 feet per minute (at end of boom) 30 feet per minute

The new freight station of the North British Railway at Glasgow, Scotland, has fifteen overhead traveling cranes for unloading cars. These are of the revolving jib type mentioned above, the jib being 23 feet long. but the trolleys run on narrow parallel runways instead of upon a traveling bridge. Two of these are three tons and the other 11⁄2 tons hoisting capacity. Each of the latter has a 17-hp. motor for hoisting at 100 feet per minute, one of a 2-hp. for swinging at two-thirds of a revolution per minute, and one of 42 hp. for traveling at 360 feet per minute. For hoisting freight from cars to the upper floors of the warehouse, there are two traveling trolley hoists on each floor, with three wells or shafts for interior hoisting, while the top floor has a 12-ton trolley carrier or helper. There are also six elevators at one side of the house. For handling heavy freight, there is a gantry crane, having one end of the bridge supported by a leg with wheels riding on a rail laid on the ground level, while the other end is carried by wheels on a runway built on the freighthouse wall. The bridge is of 50-foot span, and carries a traveling hoist of 40 tons capacity. The bridge has a travel of 200 feet along the front of the freight house and into the yard.

Stacking or Elevating Conveyors,

In pier sheds, cotton sheds, storage warehouses, etc., it is often desirable to stack goods (in bales, sacks, boxes, etc.) to a considerable height, in order to save floor space. Sometimes an overhead traveling crane, or traveling bridge with hoisting trolley, may be installed for this purpose. In many cases, however, a portable machine would have a greater range of usefulness, and several portable elevating and conveying machines of this kind have been installed by the Brown Portable Elevator Company. These installations include the stacking of grain and sugar in sacks, stacking hay in bales, and also handling miscellaneous materials and freight. One installation is for the Central Railroad of Georgia, at Savannah, Ga., for piling bags of material on a pier. The conveyor is carried on a steel frame mounted on a wheeled truck, on which is mounted also the motor and driving mechanism, and this frame can be adjusted to any desired inclination and height. In some machines there is a separate carrier on each side of the truck, so that one may be inclined to raise material from the floor to the heel of the other conveyor, this latter being adjusted to a horizontal or inclined position, according to the point to be reached. These machines are described in an article in "Engineering News," September 28, 1911, in which it was stated that: "The use of portable conveyors presents many opportunities for economy and efficiency in the handling of freight at warehouses, stores, railway freight and steamship piers, etc."

FREIGHT HANDLING EQUIPMENT FOR DOCKS AND STEAMSHIP TERMINALS,

Some freight handling installations at piers have been mentioned above, but in crane equipment for handling ship cargo American ports are notably behind European ports. At the former, reliance is placed mainly on the ship's winches and cargo booms, which can handle material only directly alongside. In European practice there are usually numerous traveling cranes along the quays and sheds. The tower type of crane is a jib crane on a tower mounted on wheels to run on tracks along the piers or docks. The portable type of crane is mounted on a steel tower traveling on a track of wider gage than that of a railway track, and made open so that cars can run beneath the crane, and the crane can move from point to point without interfering with car on the track which it straddles. A semi-portal or semi-gantry crane may span the width of quay between the freight house and water; the outer end of the bridge is supported by a leg traveling on a rail near the edge of the quay, while the inner end is carried by wheels riding on an elevated runway on the freight house, like a traveling crane. On the tower or bridge is a revolving jib crane, which may be fixed in position or may traverse along the bridge. In many modern installations, the cranes travel on the roof of the pier or warehouse, so that they handle cargo between ship, car or warehouse without obstructions to the tracks or driveways between the house and the ships. Several crane installations of these types were described in "Engineering News" of September 12, 1912.

The rail and water terminals at Texas, City, Tex., on the mainland side of Galveston Bay were described in the "Railway Age Gazette" of July 12, 1912. The main pier is 1,400 ft. long and 1,000 ft. wide, with four parallel warehouses: 80x1,120 ft., 118x520 ft., and two 100x750 ft. On shore there are four warehouses in line: One 75x1,000 ft. and three 100x250 ft. One warehouse is equipped with three overhead traveling cranes and an electric conveyor along the floor extending the full length of the building. On one side of the dock are two traveling gentry cranes about 120 ft. long, with hoisting trolleys on the bridge. The inner end of the bridge extends over the warehouse roof, the alternate panels of which are removable so as to form hatchways. The outer end of the bridge projects beyond the dock line, so that freight can be handled directly between the ship's hold and the warehouse.

A paper on "Cargo transference at Steamship Terminals" was read before the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, at New York in November, 1911, by Mr. H. McL. Harding. He also described plans for a new steamship terminal in New York harbor, at Staten Island, in "International Marine Engineering" of September, 1912, and in April, 1912, he made a report to the Commissioner of Docks at New York on the handling of freight at marine terminals.

Respectfully submitted,

YARDS AND TERMINALS COMMITTEE.

To the Members of the American Railway Engineering Association:

Your Special Committee on the Grading of Lumber held one meeting in St. Louis during the year, following discussions by correspondence. Numerous conferences had been held with committees of lumber manufacturers' associations. One of the aims of the Committee was to secure the actual adoption of the rules drawn up jointly by your Committee and the various lumber manufacturers' organizations. Your Committee can report this year that the standard rules for maintenance of way lumber adopted last year by this Association, when submitted back to the lumber organizations interested, were agreed to, with slight modifications, as follows:

For southern yellow pine, by the Yellow Pine Manufacturers' Association.

For hardwoods, by the Hardwood Manufacturers' Association of the United States.

For Douglas fir, by the West Coast Lumber Manufacturers' Association.

The Northern Pine Manufacturers' Association refused to accept the white pine rules. The acceptance of the rules adopted last year by the three associations referred to was made subject to slight modifications in the rules made since the time when these rules were first proposed. These modifications are so slight, however, that your Committee believes that they can be readily adjusted in individual cases.

Your Committee has been engaged in making further studies of rules for classes of lumber not included in the rules already adopted. These considerations are well under way, and it is expected two or three additional sets of rules will be ready for submission next year.

Consideration has also been given to the grading rules for cypress, submitted for information last year. (See Bulletin No. 144; Vol. 13, 1912, pp. 875-884)