So much for the author's views upon the subject under consideration; and now for those of his before-mentioned friends.

In respect to Mr. Loweth's contribution to this symposium, on Feb. 6, 1920, he wrote as follows:

My Dear Dr. Waddell,

Replying to your inquiry regarding "Bridge Maintenance and Repairs," I would refer you to a paper which was somewhat hurriedly written in the fall of 1918 for the annual convention of the American Railway Bridge and Building Association, entitled "Carrying Bridges Over," and which covers in general the matters referred to in your letter. This paper was written during the stress of war times when steelwork was very difficult to get and the need of economies was urgent; hence it was necessarily quite hastily prepared, and I feel that for usual conditions the views expressed therein should in some respects be modified.

My experience on this road* has been generally one in which it was comparatively easy to take care of the replacement of the lighter bridges. We have a great many branch lines on which the traffic is necessarily light and where in many cases it will always remain so. There was little loss, therefore, in taking a light bridge out from a first-class line and placing it in a second-class or third-class line where it would serve just as useful a purpose, at least for many years, as a bridge of the heaviest classification.

To do this involved charges to Capital Account on the lighter lines. During war times we were not in a position to assume the charges to Capital for improvement of the said lighter lines; and the difficulties of getting new steelwork, to say nothing of the very-rapidly-increasing cost, resulted in a new condition, hence we looked into the matter of strengthening bridges in place more fully than we had done previously, with the result that we did more of that work than we had even thought of doing before that time. All of this work was not uniformly satisfactory, as you can readily see, because some structures did not easily lend themselves to strengthening in a manner at all suitable from the designer's standpoint; but by the exercise of judgment and some courage, and at the same time by ignoring some of the refinements of calculation, we arrived at results that produced economies, or what may be equally important, the deferring of major expense even at the loss of ultimate economy.

The curse of the poor is their poverty, and the railroads have sometimes been, and to a large extent are now, in the position where present economy is perhaps more to be considered than ultimate economy.

Just as an illustration of what we are up against, we have on one of our second or third-class lines four rather large bridges which have been carried to their limit. The substructures are very old and small, and the superstructures also are quite old. It is an exceedingly difficult matter to strengthen them—in fact, we can only hope to remove the most glaring defects; and anything we can do in that line will permit of using only slightly heavier power than the quite-light power now being operated over that division.

Our program for strengthening would involve a cost of about $74,000. To replace the bridges with new structures would require probably more than $600,000. It seems too bad to spend so large a sum on these old structures; but assuming that we could carry them along safely for only four years, that would make an annual cost of only $18,500, exclusive of interest, and we should have saved an expenditure of over $500,000, the interest on which would amount to at least $30,000 a year. In this instance a new structure could be credited with a considerable amount for the greater safety and other considerations incident to the better bridge, but I think we shall have to decide favorably on the extraordinary repairs for what will probably be but a short period-of usefulness.

* Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul Railway System.