Road Making Machinery

Many a community has been scared out of improving its roads by the bugbear of "expensive inachinery." Itis is wh lly a bugbear, f or road mak{ng machinery is not expensive. It is fax less costly than are poor roads. It may be interesting to describe the outfit which would be required, give its cost and estímate the expense of running it. If a town decides that its roads should bo macadamized the first requisito is crushed stona The old method of breaking stone by hand is very expensive and has been generally abandoned in these days of improved and cheap machinery, so a stone crusher is essentiul. On a country road the total width of which may be too great to cover entirely with broken stone there should be at least a macadamized width running through its center of fifteen or eighteen feet, and this roadway should be made with not less a depth of Consolidated and screened broken stone than nine inches. A cubio yard of broken stone will in such case cover an area of about three and a half square yards, and the material named, with a small quantity of good clean sand or fine gravel f or binding material, will be all thatisnecessary, except intelligent labor and intelligent supervisión to complete the work. It is hardly necessary to say that neither the work nor the supervisión can become intelligent or satisfactory without the aid of the proper machinery f or carrying out the construction of the road. A stone crusher costing $1,200 with engine, will break 75 to 100 tons per day. The engine will consume about half a ton of coal daily, costing probably $3. Besides this an engineer will bo required at a daily wage of about $3.50, and two laborera will be necessary to feed the crusher. Their wages will average $1.75 a day. This inakes the daily cost of running the stone crusher, with other incidental expenses, about $10. It is impossible to estímate the cost of getting the unbroken stone to the crusher and the broken stone back to the road agam, for that dependa entirely upon the distance which has to be traversed in cartage and the condition of tho ground over which tho loads are hanled. This is a matter whero a grain or two of common sense in the placing of the crusher, etc, will have a decided effect on the expense, xi mo ïuaa uvc iaj ho uauita a considerable distance to or from the crusher, or if heavy grades have to be climed or rough ground traversed, the time occupied in hauling each load will be increased and less can be hauled in a day, thus lessening the work done by horses and drivers for each day's wages. it is some times even an economical thing to devote the first stono and the lirst labor to preparing a smooth roadway between the quarry and crusher and the road to be improved. In this way time in hauling the loads is saved, and if the Btirface over which they are drawn is smooth the puiling power of each horse is largely increaeed. Where 6tone is to be obtained in more than one place along the line of the projected road, it is eometimes more economical to take the crusher to the stone than to have to haul the broken stone a great distance. For this purpose a stone crusher can be mounted on wheels and the steam roller (mentioned hereafter) be used to haul and drive the crusher without the expense of a fixed plant for crushing stone. In addition to the crusher a heavy steam road roller is more or less necessary. Of course the work can be done if necessary by horse rollers, but the resulta are never so good, and the difference in endurance of a road prepared by a heavy steam roller over one prepared with the comparatively light rollers drawn by horse power is inevitably enough to pay the flrst cost and expense of running tho steam roller over and over again. The first cost of a steam roller weighing from ten to fifteen tons will be from f3,500 to $4,500. To manipúlate this roller only one man will be required, and his pay is not likely to bo more than $2.50 per day. Placing the cost of fuel at $1.50 per day (a large estimate), the roller costs the community only $4 per day of operation. One of these rollers of good make can easily consolídate 1,000 square yards in a day at a cost of less than one cent per yard. Aside from this the roller can be put to other uses, if handled by intelligent men. When not in uso as a roller its engine can furnish power for the crusher, it can, as has been said, haul the stone, or, as was done in an English town, "pull stumps and drag heavily loaded wagons over unfinished portions of the roadway." The only machines, aside from the steam roller and stone crusher, which can be spoken of as absolutely necessary are rook drills to be used in the preparatory duty of blasting the stone, and these are generally to be found in every neighborhood where any quarry work is done. In case it is necessary to buy them they will cost $300 or less each. One man at $3.50 a day will opérate them, and the steam supply will cost but little. If one estimates the cost of improving the roads of a district at $100,000 exclusive of machinery, it is not fair to add more than 10 per cent. to that sum as the sum to be expended on crusher, roller and drills, and this may be materially decreased by co-operation. One crusher and one roller are quite capable of doing the work of several communities if each takes its turn, and thus, providing each district pays its share of the original expense, or if one district buys the machines and rents them to the others at xeasonable ratea when not at work on its own roads, tho expense of machinery becomes really a very minor affair. A mile of good macadamized road is inore easily supported than is a poor horse. Good roads are nnqnestionably cheaper to maintain and use than are poor enea. m4I