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The duties of a city water works superintendent or manager and the duties of a superintendent of railway water service are along parallel lines to a certain extent, as they are both charged with the responsibility of providing an adequate supply of water satisfactory in quality for all purposes. There is this difference, however, that the city plants are usually so located that the superintendent of the city water works is in constant touch with them and has direct supervision over their operation, while the water service stations on a railway system, such as the Illinois Central, may be distributed over half a continent and are subject to the varying conditions peculiar to the territory in which they may be located. For this reason in discussing railway water service it is necessary to speak of the water stations, either individually or collectively, in general terms as each particular station has problems peculiar to itself. There has been a great development in Illinois Central System during its seventy-five years of existence and a corresponding increase in the demand for water and improved water facilities. The mileage has increased from 705| miles in 1856, the year the charter lines were completed, to 6500 miles at the present time. The number of locomotives has increased from 83 to 2000, passenger cars from 52 to 2000, freight cars from 1249 to 70,000, while the investment in railway properties has increased from $26,000,000 to more than $600,000,000. The contrast between the first water stations on the Illinois Central is quite as marked as the other developments in the road, as when the railroad was first established water was pumped directly to the tenders of locomotives by hand pumps which were later followed by small tanks from 1000 to 5000 gallons capacity and the water delivered to the locomotives by leather spouts. These roadside tanks were in some cases filled by hand pumps and in others by horse power, de |
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