Nearly 100 different materials and designs for cross-ties have been tested by the engineering representatives of the railroads in the past 40 years. In 2 cross-tie proving grounds operated by the railroads for more than 30 years past the service performance of 20 kinds of wood and three different preservative methods has been closely checked. In all these tests no cross-tie material so satisfactory as the familiar wooden cross-tie has been developed, but the wooden tie itself and its curing and chemical treatment have been greatly improved. The net result of all this research, both laboratory and service, is that whereas the railroads required 110,000,000 new cross-ties in 1910, they laid in 1940 only 43,600,000-a saving not only of forest products but of time and labor.

While not so definitely measurable in results as the cross-tie research, the same analytical methods have been applied to all features of the fixed roadway and structures of railroads, with comparable improvement in performance. These researches go beyond details of design and material of rail, track fastenings, ties, ballast, subgrade and drainage, to the relations between all these different elements in a complete track, and beyond that to the relations between the track itself and the equipment, and to the whole subject of the economics of railway location and design.

An outline of the research work of the American Railway Engineering Association, functioning as the construction and maintenance section, engineering division of the Association of American Railroads, is given in exhibit No. 1.

MECHANICAL, OR EQUIPMENT, RESEARCH

When cooperative mechanical research began on the railroads with the formation of the Master Car Builders Association in 1867 and the Master Mechanics Association in the following year, 500 tons gross was a heavy train, while the carrying capacity of the cars in the train was little more than half their own weight.

Today there are locomotives which can handle successfully freight trains of ten, twelve, even fourteen thousand tons, gross weight, with the carrying capacity of the cars in the train three times their own weight.

When cooperative mechanical research began, few freight cars ran through from railroad to railroad. Now every ordinary freight car is so standardized that it may be run in any train, coupled to any other car, and may be serviced and repaired with standard parts at any repair point of any railroad-a fact which is basic to the continent-wide commerce of this country.

Such accomplishments are typical of the results secured by practical research on railroad rolling stock. There was research, of course, before the formation of the Master Car Builders and Master Mechanics Associations. It started, in fact, with the very beginning of railroads but was carried on by each road more or less separately and individually until, at the time of the War between the States, equipment began to be run from one railroad to another. This new and desirable practice created a new necessity for uniformity and standardization, which called for joint organization to handle mechanical research and developments.

The organizations formed more than 75 years ago merged in 1919 to become the mechanical division of the American Railway Association, which, in 1934, combined with other organizations to form the Association of American Railroads. Research carried on by these organizations, with the cooperation of inventors, laboratory technicians, and manufacturers, and, of equal importance, that of the railroad men who have outlined the needs, contributed to the designs, and done the field testing in service, is responsible for the modern car and locomotive. The modern freight car is an efficient vehicle for the purposes for which it is used. It is adapted to use in long trains, producing great quantities of transportation at low cost. It is "legal tender," circulating among the railroads wherever there is a load to be had or hauled. It is strong, durable, and serviceable. The freight car, for example, will have a hot box, on the average, not more than once in over 20 years of service. It stays out of the shop and on the road. At present some 971⁄2 percent of all freight cars are in serviceable operating condition.

The freight car will be further improved in detail as a result of research now under way and research to be undertaken in the future. But it is today the vehicle in which there is produced the lowest-cost all-purpose common carrier transportation in the world.

What is true of the freight car is true in like degree of the locomotive. The greatest horsepower developed by any freight locomotive on the test plant at the St. Louis Exposition 40 years ago was 1,258 horsepower on five driving axles.

There are steam locomotives in service today which produce for each driving axle as much power as was turned up by all five axles of this 1904 locomotive.

This multiplication of the horsepower output of steam locomotives has made possible not only heavier trains but higher sustained speeds in freight service. The transportation output of the average train on the road has been more than doubled in 25 years. The modern steam locomotive, moreover, burns only about ago, and gets nearly twice as much work out of each pound of steam after it is half as much coal to make a pound of steam as did the locomotive of 40 years made.

Nor is reciprocating steam the only source of railroad power. Extensive, though as yet inconclusive, experiments have been made with steam turbine locomotives.

There are, also, the great developments in the electric locomotive, both those powered by wires from central stations and those which make their own power with Diesel engines. American railroads are by far the world's greatest users of the light-weight, high-speed Diesel motor. There is a single railroad company in this country which has in service more Diesel horsepower than is used by all the railroads outside the United States combined.

An outline of some of the research work which has helped to bring about such results, and some of the work now in progress or projected, appears in exhibit No. 2.

ELECTRICAL RESEARCH ON THE RAILROADS

Probably no industry makes a wider and more diversified use of electrical devices than the American railroads. From the propulsion and control of 6,000 horsepower locomotives down to such things as opening and closing doors by photo-electric cells, the railroads use the power of electricity, transmitted and applied through wires, by wireless, or by magnetic induction, to move trains, to transmit communications, to operate safety devices, to receive and record information, and to perform an ever-increasing list of necessary and useful tasks.

The first successful application of electricity to the affairs of everyday life was in a message transmitted just a hundred years ago over a telegraph line built on a railroad right-of-way. As early as 1851, the telegraph began to be used in the dispatching of trains-the first use of electricity in railroad operations. As soon as the telephone came into being, in 1876, railroads began to use it also, and since that time the two means of communication have developed together on the railroads, making use of the general improvements in the art of communication, with special research directed to meeting the needs and conditions of railroad cperation.

In the meanwhile, there has developed on the railroads still another form of electrical communication-the automatic signal system, which took its start from the closed track circuit developed in 1871. Upon that foundation there has been built a specialized means of communicating automatically and without human intervention, virtually all the information needed for the safe operation of trains on the road and through terminals, and most of the information needed for their expeditious operation, as well.

Approximately 73 percent of the track-miles of American railroads are protected with block signals, two-thirds of this protected mileage being covered by automatic blocks. This percentage, however, gives no adequate conception of the percentage of train-miles operated under the protection of automatic blocks, since it is the heavy traffic lines on which the overwhelmingly great proportion of the traffic is carried which are so protected.

In the specialized field of signals, manual or automatic, railroad research is carried on not only by the individual railroads but through the signal section of the Association of American Railroads, in all cases in cooperation with manufacturers and inventors interested in the improvement of signal devices.

Great improvements have been made in the closed track circuit, which is the basis of all automatic signaling, the latest being the development of the so-called coded circuit by which it is possible to transmit a variety of "messages" through the rails and signal devices. In all the research which has been devoted to the subject, however, no substitute has been found for the continuous closed track circuit as an automatic safety measure.

The closed track circuit, has made possible also the development of centralized traffic control. Under this system, one man at a central point controls and directs the movement of all trains on as much as 100 miles, or even more, of busy railroad. To him, the trains automatically and electrically report

their presence and movements through lights on an illuminated diagram of the controlled section of railroad before his eyes, while through push buttons and levers he is able to direct the movements of the trains by throwing the switches and setting the signals at distant points—the whole operation being so interlocked and controlled that it is impossible to set signals and switches in conflicting positions.

There are now in the United States more than 4,000 miles of railroad equipped with centralized traffic control, and additional installations are being made by the railroads as materials and labor become available. Since January 1, 1944, the Interstate Commerce Commission has approved eight installations on seven roads covering 400 road-miles.

Still a fourth form of electrical communication, that transmitted by radio, or by a mixture of radio, rails, and wires, was first tried out on the railroads as far back as 1914, and has been the subject of investigation, test, and research ever since. It has not yet come into such wide and general use on the railroads as the systems of communication by wire, or by the closed track circuit, probably because the latter are so complete and so well adapted to the needs of railroad operation. However, the railroads have assisted in the research and testing involved in systems of communication by wireless telephone where no wire system is possible, such as between dispatchers offices and tugs in harbors, between yard offices and switch engines in terminals, between moving trains and fixed points, between train and train, and between the front and rear of a train. Some of these systems are developed and in use, others still are in the experimental and development stage.

In the field of communications, the railroads have the benefit of the research carried on by the commercial communications companies and manufacturers of equipment, and also the specialized research necessary to adapt this equipment to railroad purposes, carried on by the individual railroads and jointly by the research committees of the telegraph and telephone section of the Association of American Railroads.

Through all this research there has been developed the system of using repeaters, which make it possible to talk from one end to another of the most extensive railroad system, and over carrier circuits. These carrier circuits, which make it possible to combine several telegraph and telephone messages on one pair of wires, multiply by many times the use and availability of railroad communications systems. There have been developed ingenious selector devices used in the dispatching of trains by telephone, a method which has now largely supplanted the original telegraph dispatching.

Some of the details of railroad research in these fields are outlined in exhibit No. 3, dealing with signals, and exhibit No. 4, dealing with telegraph and telephone communications.

RAILROAD SAFETY AND RESEARCH

To meet railroad needs, numerous safety improvements, such as automatic couplings and air brakes, were developed by mechanical and engineering research prior to the beginning of the present century.

In 1913, however, the railroads pioneered in another field-organized study, research and education for industrial safety.

In that year, the casualty rate among railroad passengers, including both killed and injured, was 42.7 per hundred million passenger-miles traveled.

Thirty years later, in 1943, this casualty rate was down to 6.0, less than oneseventh the rate of 1913 and less than one-half the rate of even 10 years ago in 1933.

In 1913 the casualty rate to employees on duty, including both killed and injured, was 30.86 per million man-hours worked. In 1943 this rate was down to 11.93, only a little more than one-third what it had been in 1913. When the casualty rate to employees is considered in relation to the volume of freight and passenger traffic moved on the railroads, the reduction is still more startlingthe 1943 rate being less than one-ninth what it was 30 years before when organized safety work began on the railroads.

The safety work of the railroads, which over the years has thus added to the strength of America an army of persons, was organized on a cooperative basis in the Safety Section of the American Railway Association in the year 1921. It is carried forward along three main lines of work-safety engineering directed toward safer plant and equipment; better enforcement to secure compliance with safety rules and practices; and education to cultivate a safety state of mind among those who use the railroads. The underlying work of the safety depart

ments of the railroads is one of research in methods of accomplishing these results.

The safety record of the railroads over the past 30 years was the result of diligent and continuous efforts to establish safe conditions, safe methods and safe thinking and action. Some of the details of the research and work behind this remarkable record of accident prevention, carried forward by the railroads and the safety section of the association, are outlined in exhibit No. 5.

RESEARCH IN SAFE TRANSPORTATION OF EXPLOSIVES AND OTCER DANGEROUS ARTICLES

During 14 consecutive years prior to the entry of the United States into the war, the railroads transported each year approximately 500,000,000 pounds, or more, of high explosives without the loss of a single life.

Since the entry of the United States into the war, the quantities of high explosives transported have increased many-fold, although the exact figures are not now available for publication, but the railroads have continued to handle such freight without the loss of a life.

Back of this record there is a long story of research into manufacturing, packing, stowing and handling methods, and a continuing program of education among manufacturers and handlers as well as carriers of such articles. These safety measures were undertaken by the railroads almost 40 years ago, and have been carried forward ever since through wars as well as in peace, in cooperation with the Interstate Commerce Commission and the manufacturers and shippers, through the agency of the Association of American Railroads bureau for the safe transportation of explosives and other dangerous articles. The work of this bureau, in fact, became the basis for the act of Congress which authorized the Interstate Commerce Commission to make regulations to govern the transportation of explosives and other dangerous articles. The bureau, as a result of investigations it conducts, drafts proposed regulations which, when approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission, are published as Interstate Commerce Commission Regulations for the Safe Transportation of Explosives and Other Dangerous Articles, and have the force of law.

In addition to its work with explosives, the bureau has carried on extended research in containers for the shipment of dangerous articles other than explosives, such as wooden boxes, fiberboard boxes, carboys, wooden barrels, metal drums, cylinders for compressed gases and other less-than-carload containers, and has cooperated with the mechanical division of the association in the development of specifications for tank cars for the handling of inflammable liquids, corrosive liquids and compressed gases.

The results accomplished by the bureau are based upon research, upon enforcement of its regulations, and upon an active program of education among railroad men and shippers as to safe handling of dangerous articles. The fact that its familiar warning placards on freight cars are everywhere recognized and respected is a major reason for the safety record of the railroads in the transportation of explosives and other dangerous articles.

Something of the history and work of the organization is given in exhibit No. 6.

FREIGHT CONTAINER RESEARCH

Research on what goes on inside freight cars in transit has been carried on cooperatively for the railroad industry, and for the benefit of shippers and receivers of freight since 1925, when the freight container bureau of the American Railway Association was organized.

Its continual studies and research, both in laboratory and in constant service tests, have been directed to the materials, design, and markings of the packages in which goods are shipped, and to the methods of stowing and bracing them in freight cars. The result of this work, carried on in cooperation with shippers and receivers of freight and with container manufacturers, has been a widespread standardization on lighter, stronger, and more serviceable containers constructed with less use of materials.

Special packaging and loading methods for the safe transportation of articles so fragile as mirrors, neon signs, clay sewer pipe, and enameled stoves, to name but a few of many, have been worked out by the bureau and tested in service. The container bureau's incline-impact machine for pretesting new package designs and materials has been widely adopted by manufacturers, shippers, and Government laboratories.

For use in its continual testing of packaging and loading methods of the great variety of perishable products shipped in the United States, the bureau has likewise developed the galvotempmeter, which continually measures tempertatures in various parts of a loaded refrigerator car, whether standing or moving, and transmits the information by electric cable to receiving instruments in the caboose of the freight train of which the car is part.

Slow-motion moving pictures are extensively used by the bureau, both to observe the results of impact and to transmit instruction on improved methods of packaging and loading. Results of the bureau's studies are made available to shippers, railroad men, and others through manuals and booklets.

With the advent of the war, the bureau was called upon by the armed forces for most intensive activity in the development of packing and loading methods for a great variety of delicate instruments, parts and appliances, and for loading methods for odd and out-sized shipments, as well as for aid in the instruction of Army and Navy personnel in such subjects.

An outline of the researches and investigations of the bureau is shown in exhibit No. 7.

RESEARCH AND REDUCTIONS IN LOSS AND DAMAGE TO FREIGHT

Loss and damage to freight is pure loss to all concerned-to shippers and receivers, to carriers, to the whole community.

Direct study and research directed to reduction of loss and damage to freight, through getting at the causes and developing remedial measures, started in 1914 with the Freight Claim Association. In 1920, a special prevention bureau was set up within the freight claim division of the American Railway Association, with the responsibility for study and analysis of the conditions which contribute to loss and damage to freight, and the development of ways and means of prevention.

In that year, 1920, when the present system of reports on this subject was inaugurated, the loss and damage to freight on the United States railroads: amounted to $119,833,127. In 1943, loss and damage amounted to $40,246,817— 66.4 percent less than in 1920, although in 1943 the railroads handled 57.1 percent more freight traffic.

Whereas in 1919 loss and damage to freight cost the railroads 2.95 cents out of each dollar of freight revenue, in 1943 it cost only 0.59 cent-or one-fifth as much per dollar.

In the one item of theft and robbery, there has been a reduction from a loss of approximately $12,000,000 in 1920 to less than $600,000 in 1943, largely as a result of improvements in the prevention work of the railroad police officers, organized for cooperation through the protective section of the Association of American Railroads.

In the general work of reduction of loss and damage, the railroads have had recourse to research in the design of railroad equipment, in methods of handling freight, and in improved loading and packaging practices. This has necessitated not only research in the physical aspects of freight transportation but an aroused interest on the part of railroad men, and cooperation from shippers and receivers of freight. That this interest has been aroused and this cooperation has been received is indicated by the excellent record of reduction of loss and damage. Some of the steps by which these results have been accomplished are outlined in exhibit No. 8.

RESEARCH IN RATE-MAKING AND PUBLISHING

The requirement of the law that railroad rates and charges must be published precisely in tariffs filed with the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Staterailroad commissions, together with the complexity and variety of freight traffic, make inescapable the necessity for very voluminous and detailed "price lists" of the railroads in the form of tariffs.

Since 1935 a special committee of the Association of American Railroads, working in close cooperation with shippers and shippers' organizations, with the railroads of the several regions and with the Bureau of Traffic of the InterstateCommerce Commission, has been engaged in research designed to reduce to the minimum the number and size of tariffs filed, while preserving at all times the essential features of furnishing in convenient form the information needed by: shippers and railroads, and required by law.