- The Round House
The Round House is the place where the railroad engines are kept when they are not working. The engines are turned around on a big turn table so each can be run on the different tracks which all lead to the turn-table in the centre. - The water tank
The water tank is seen frequently along the route of the railroads and plenty of water must be taken on and carried in the engine tender to make steam which is the power used to drive the big engines. - An observation train
An observation train is often made up to follow the great college boat races, where the railroad runs along the river bank. Flat cars are used with seats fixed on them for the spectators. - The Train Ferry
The Train Ferry carries entire trains across rivers where there are no bridges. Some of the largest train boats have several tracks and carry a train on each. The boats are tied in slips at the shore so that the tracks meet exactly those on the land. - The Stage coach
The Stage coach is used in the country where towns are few. The stages meet trains at the stations and take on passengers to be carried to their homes away from the railroad. Some of the stage routes are several hundred miles long. - The tunnels
The tunnels are passages for trains under mountains, hills and rivers. The tunnels are dark but the trains are well lighted. Electric motors are often used, this avoids the smoke of steam engines which is very unpleasant in the tunnels. - C. P. R. grain elevator at Fort William, Ontario
The farmer sells his crop of wheat to the grain-dealer, and carts it, say, to Brandon, where the purchaser takes delivery of it at his elevator. Let us examine this thing somewhat minutely, taking by way of illustration one of the elevators belonging to the Canadian Pacific Railway Company at Montreal. It is a medium-sized one, having capacity for storing about 600,000 bushels of grain. The same company’s elevators at Fort William and Port Arthur are much larger, having capacity for 1,500,000 bushels. In Chicago and Buffalo there are elevators of three millions of bushels capacity; but, whether larger or smaller, in their main features they are all alike. The elevator is a wooden structure of great strength. Its massive stone foundations rest on piles imbedded in concrete. The framework is so thoroughly braced and bolted together as to give it the rigidity of a solid cube, enabling it to resist the enormous pressure to which it is subjected when filled with 18,000 tons of wheat. The building is 210 feet long, 80 feet wide, and 142 feet in height from basement to the peak of the roof. Including the steam-engine (built at the C. P. R. works) of 240 horse-power, the entire cost of this elevator was $150,000. It consists of three distinct compartments—for receiving, storing, and delivering grain. On the ground floor are two lines of rails by which the cars have ingress and egress. The general appearance of this flat is that of a bewildering array of ponderous posts and beams, shafting, cog-wheels, pulleys and belts, blocks and tackle, chutes, and the windlasses for hauling in and out the cars, for a locomotive with its dangerous sparks may not cross the threshold. Beneath this, in the basement, are the receiving tanks, thirty-five feet apart from centre to centre, corresponding to the length of the cars. Of these there are nine, enabling that number of cars to be simultaneously unloaded. This is quickly done by a shovel worked by machinery, with the aid of two men, the grain falling through an iron grating in the floor into the tank. The elevator has nine “legs.” The leg is an upright box, 12 inches by 24 inches, extending from the bottom of the tank to the top of the building; inside of it is a revolving belt with buckets attached 15½ inches apart. The belt is 256 feet long, and as it makes 36 revolutions per minute, each bucket containing one-third of a bushel, each leg is able to raise 5,250 bushels per hour. A car is unloaded and its contents hoisted into the upper regions in fifteen minutes. When all the legs are at work 30,000 bushels are handled in an hour.