218 POWER DISTRIBUTION FOR ELECTRIC RAILROADS. 
To meet the need of small places for transportation 
facilities one must cut his coat according to his cloth. A 
little hard common sense applied to the problem will result 
in the establishment of many a most useful line, giving 
greatly increased facilities for intercommunication, and 
yielding good returns on a small investment. 
A standard gauge (4 ft. 84 ins.) electric railway track 
can, if the grading is trivial and the route is generally easy, 
be put in position for a total cost of as little as $5000 per 
mile of single track, exclusive of bridges and other special 
construction and right of way, using ordinary cars and car 
equipments. This supposes T rail of forty to forty-five 
pounds per yard and economy everywhere. The cost of . 
overhead wire, bonding, equipment and station per mile, 
of course, depends entirely on the service. For a road, 
say, ten miles in length, very economically equipped, $4000 
© to $5000 per mile may be enough. In other words, the 
cheapest feasible price for building and equipping a stand- 
ard gauge electric road is somewhere about $gooo to 
$10,000 per mile, anything under $10,000 being extraordi- 
narily low. 
Now for the work properly belonging to cross country 
roads that figure is often prohibitively high. In order to 
do the work at a less price, radical changes have to be 
made in the structure. For localities where grading is 
slight, and there is not likely to be much trouble from snow, 
light, narrow gauge roads meet the conditions fairly well. 
Foreign practice gives valuable data in this line. 
For a gauge of 0.6 metre frequently used abroad (practically 
two feet), a rail weighing about twelve kilos per metre 
(twenty-five pounds per yard) is freely used. The sub- 
structure can be light in proportion, for the rolling stock 
is'also light, albeit the locomotives are decidedly heavier 
than a loaded motor car would usually be. We must re- 
member that with light cars, comparatively low speeds and 
rather infrequent service, a light rail can be safely used, 
and will give no more trouble than heavy track under ordi- 
nary street railway service.