A manual of the principles and practice of road-making: comprising the location, construction, and improvement of roads, (common, macadam, paved, plank, etc.) and rail-roads. By W. M. Gillespie ...

WORKING EXPENSES, 329
Upon the Eastern Railroad (Boston to Portsmouth, 54
miles) the expenses were thus classified for the year ending June 30, 1850: 1,037,000 passengers, and 71,000
tons of freight having been carried:*
Eastern Railroad. Per mile run. Per cent.
Machine shop........... 0.3
Maintenance of way..... 12.5 20
Locomotive power..... 22.9 37
Train expenses.......... 9.9 16
Office expenses......... 6.0 10
Station do......... 8.3 13
Mail.................. 0.3
Ferry................ 2.3 4
62.5 100
With careful management in every department, trains
carrying average loads of from 100 to 150 tons can be
moved, on ordinary grades, at a cost of 80 cents per mile.
Such economy of transport depends mainly, however,
upon the certainty of always carrying full loads. For this
reason the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad carried coal, by
contract, for 13 cents per ton, while their ordinary traffic,
giving the engines only half a load, cost them over 2~ cents.
The Reading Railroad is said to be able to carry coal for
6 mills per ton per mile, because fully loaded on the down
trips.
The present cost of transport on the Erie Canal is 1 -6
cents per ton per mile, of which the State receives J7 cent,
or nearly one-half. On the Enlarged Canal, the cost is
estimated at 7 mills, 3 of these being tolls.f
* Report of the President, D. A. Neal.
t N. Y. State Engineer's Report on Canals, Feb. 7, 1851.