A short calculation will show the superiority, in point of economy, of light and good rails to heavy rails of an inferior quality. A seventy-pound rail requires 110 tons to the mile, costing, at 860 per ton, $6,600. At the end of four years this has to be re-rolled at a cost of $30 per ton, or $3,300 more. This is equal in eight years to an annual depreciation of $1,237 per mile. A sixty-pound rail requires 94 tons to a mile, costing for the best iron that can be rolled $80 per ton, or $7,520 per mile. This would last eight years, and the annual depreciation would be $940 per mile, or $297 less than the other. The 30,000 miles of American railways are thus taxed annually nearly nine millions of dollars for preferring quantity to quality.
In England, it is the custom to retain the best engineering talent upon railways, after as well as during construction. In this country, as soon as the engineer has made out his "final estimate," he is dismissed with as little ceremony as a daylaborer. We employ the best mechanical engineers that we can find to look after the repairs of our engines and cars; while the road, which is more important, and upon the good condition of which we have seen that the success or failure of a railway as a commercial enterprise may depend, is handed over to some ignorant fellow whose only qualifications are industry and obedience.
There are no unmixed evils in this world. The impecuniosity of American railways, besides causing the bad results which we have described, has had a good effect upon the training of American engineers. Being obliged to do a great deal with a little money, they have steered clear of those enormous extravagances which have characterized the works of such engineers as the late Mr. Brunel, colossal less in proportions than cost. It has been well observed, that there was more talent shown on a certain division of the New-York and Erie Railway, in avoiding the necessity for viaducts, than could possibly have been exhibited in constructing them. This remark is a key to the difference between the old English and the American systems of civil engineering. The one is for show, the other for use. We say the _old_ English system, because a better practice has now arisen. Cost is looked to as well as splendor; and there is no engineer now in England whose reputation, would sustain him in constructing such monuments of extravagance as the Great Western Railway or the Britannia Bridge. American civil engineers have not been fairly treated. The wretched construction of many of our railways, and the uneconomical condition of all, have been cast against them by their English brethren as a reproach. But the faults of construction, we have shown, are attributable to another cause. No engineer of standing would lend himself to many of the schemes that have been pushed through in the West. But in order to build a "cheap" road, it is only necessary to get a "cheap" engineer, and that is a commodity easily picked up. If their ignorance and blunders tarnish the fair fame of the profession, it cannot be helped. But if American engineers of standing had been allowed to finish the railways begun by them, and to take care of them and see that they were not abused after they were finished, our railway securities would be quoted at higher rates than they now are.