bridges of short spans, from fourteen to thirty feet, built of King post, Queen post, Bowe's truss, and joists. There are also several small iron and wooden bridges.

There are four tunnels on the road. The longest of these is near Phoenixville, one thousand nine hundred and thirty-four feet cut through solid rock, worked from five shafts and two end breasts; deepest shaft one hundred and forty feet; size of tunnels, nineteen feet wide, by seventeen and one-quarter high; total cost, $153,000. Another tunnel at Port Clinton, is one thousand six hundred feet long, worked from the two ends only; material, loose and solid rock mixed; one thousand three hundred feet are arched; depth below the surface of the ground, one hundred and nineteen feet; total cost $138,000. The Manayunk tunnel is nine hundred and sixty feet long, through very hard solid rock, worked from two ends; depth below surface, ninety-five feet; total cost $10,000. Another tunnel under the grade of the Norristown Railroad, and through an embankment of the latter, is one hundred and seventy-two feet long, formed of a brick arch, with cut stone façades.

The depôts on this road are all substantially built, but with a view to use, rather than ornament. At Schuylkill Haven, four miles from Pottsville, is erected a spacious engine house, round, with a semicircular dome roof, one hundred and twenty feet diameter, and ninetysix feet high; with a forty feet turning platform in the centre, and tracks radiating therefrom, capable of housing sixteen second class engines and tenders. The principal depôts for making up the coal trains are at Mount Carbon, Palo Alto, (situate on the Schuylkill, about one mile, in an angle, from Pottsville and Mount Carbon;) Schuylkill Haven, and Port Clinton. At all of these places, there is extensive side-railway to arrange the cars in trains, as they arrive from the numerous branch roads. Sometimes upward of one hundred and fifty loaded cars are attached to a single locomotive, which, at five tons to each car, gives an aggregate tonnage of seven hundred and fifty tons! No other road in the world can do this!

At Reading are located the most extensive and efficient workshops and railroad buildings of every description to be found in the country. The company's property covers, altogether, besides the railway tracks, some thirty-six acres, the greater part of which is in use for the various occupations required to keep this vast thoroughfare in life and active motion. These shops embrace various departments, in

which every description of mechanical work required for the ma chinery of the road, can be supplied. A description of the dimensions of the several buildings is probably unnecessary—the reader will be good enough to take our assurance that they are large, very large, enormously large, and, in point of interest and extent, are second to no iron establishment in the United States. About four hundred hands (including men and boys) are employed in the establishment, which embraces an iron foundry and machine shop, brass foundry and machine shop, carpenter's shops, furnaces, smiths, and various other subordinate shops. In short, the establishment builds and repairs all the running-machinery of the road, as locomotives, cars, tenders, smoke pipes, etc., for which purpose all its waste scrap iron is consumed, being remelted and puddled, and thereby a great saving is effected, probably equivalent to some fifty thousand dollars per annum, besides the accommodation and perfect adaptation of the machinery to the road, which it affords. We do not know the items of cost of this establishment; but it must be regarded as one of the company's most valuable features, and it is now in complete and successful organization. To arrange the vast details of this road required many years of patient and persevering toil; and no words can express too strong a compliment upon the business talents of those persons under whose auspices it has finally attained its present admirable working condition.

For many years the company have been extremely anxious to introduce anthracite coal, instead of wood, as fuel for their locomotives. In point of economy, over one hundred thousand dollars would annually be saved, could coal be successfully substituted. Various and numerous experiments have been made, and latterly with success. Several engines, calculated to use coal, are now being constructed at their own workshops at Reading, under the direction of Mr. Mulholland. They will be completed and put on the road in a few weeks hence. They are of great capacity, and built with a view, also, to swiftness. Wood is getting scarce along the line of the road, and the introduction of coal, which can be had on the beds at a mere trifle, will prove highly advantageous to the interests of the company. The difficulty hitherto in the way of using anthracite, we may add, was the intense concentrated heat it would create, materially injuring the works of the fire-box, as well as the boiler. There never was much difficulty in burning the coal-but, under its destructive effects, there was no

advantage in using it, and all coals are very nearly similar in this respect. They emit a heat which eats into the iron of the boiler, and, in time, rerders it unfit for use. Thus a boiler, heated with anthracite, will last, say six months; one heated with bituminous coal will last nine months, and heated with wood, twelve, fifteen, or eighteen months. Now, all the money saved in the cheaper cost of coal over wood, is lost by the injury entailed on the locomotive, for the cost of a new boiler may be stated to be some two or three hundred dollars, besides the loss of time required to repair. But the difficulty can, will, and must be overcome. We know it can, and we will aver that it will, for the Reading Railroad Company have undertaken to do it, and with them there never has "been such word as fail."

A merchandize depot, recently completed at Reading, is one hundred and twenty-four by eighty-four feet, to accommodate that rapidly increasing branch of business. About a mile below the Reading depot, where the railroad is nearest the river, most efficient waterworks are constructed, consisting of a reservoir on the Neversink hill side, fifty-one feet above the rails, holding seven hundred thousand gallons of water, supplied by a force pump worked by a small steamengine. Attached to this station are also two separate tracks, with coal chutes beneath, three hundred and four hundred and fifty feet long each, for the use of the town; two wood and water stations; a small portable steam-engine for sawing wood, a refreshment house for crews of engines stopping to wood or water; a brass foundry, passenger car-house, passenger rooms, offices, &c., &c. All the machinery of the main shops and foundry is driven by a very handsomely finished stationary engine, with double cranks, of thirty-five horse power, built entirely on the works.

At Pottstown station, eighteen miles below Reading, extensive and efficient shops have also been erected, chiefly for work connected with the bridges and track of the road, and new work of various descriptions. The principal shops here are one hundred and fifty-one by eighty-one, one hundred and eighty-one by forty-one, and eighty-one by forty-four feet. The first shop is covered with a neat and light roof, built of an arched Howe truss, forming a segment of a circle, seventy-eight and a half feet span by sixteen feet rise.

At Richmond, the lower terminus of the road, at tide water on the river Delaware, are constructed the most extensive and commodious

wharves, in all probability, in the world, for the reception and ship ping, not only of the present, but of the future vast coal tonnage of the railway; forty-nine acres are occupied with the company's wharves and works, extending along twenty-two hundred and seventy-two feet of river front, and accessible to vessels of six or seven hundred tons. The shipping arrangements consist of some twenty wharves or piers, extending from three hundred and forty-two to eleven hundred and thirty-two feet into the river, all built in the most substantial manner, and furnished with chutes at convenient distances, by which the coal flows into the vessel lying alongside,

DIRECTLY FROM THE OPENED BOTTOM OF THE COAL CAR FROM WHICH

IT LEFT THE MINE. See engraving, page 36. As some coal is piled or stacked in winter, or at times when its shipment is not required, the elevation of the tracks by trestlings, above the solid surface or flooring of the piers, affords sufficient room for stowing upwards of two hundred and fifty thousand tons of coal. Capacious docks extend inshore, between each pair of wharves, thus making the whole river front available for shipping purposes; over one hundred vessels can be loading at the same moment, and few places present busier or more interesting scenes, than the wharves of the Reading Railroad at Richmond. A brig of one hundred and fifty-five tons has been loaded with that number of tons of coal in less than three hours time, at these wharves. The whole length of the lateral railways extending over the wharves at Richmond will probably exceed ten miles, and affording a shipping capacity for upwards of three millions of tons! and it will probably not be many years before this amount, extraordinary as it may seem, (as, indeed, it really is,) will be annually transported over this great thoroughfare. The company has laid the foundation for a trade as broad as the future destiny of the coal trade itself.

A very convenient and neat engine-house is erected at this station; it is of a semi-circular shape, with a forty feet turning platform outside; from which tracks radiate into the house, giving a capacity for twenty engines, and their tenders, of the largest class. The building is three hundred and two feet long on the centre line, by fifty-nine feet wide. It is built in the simple Gothic style, the front supported by cast iron clustered pillows, from the tops of which spring pointed arches, and the whole capped with turretted capping. Immediately adjoining are built spacious machine and work shops,

for repairs of engines and cars, all under one roof, two hundred and twenty-one by sixty-three feet. A visit to this chief outlet of the Pennsylvania coal trade will give the best idea of its magnitude, and of the various branches of industry connected with it.

The extraordinary business of this road requires, of course, a large amount of running machinery. The latter consists of about one hundred locomotive engines and tenders, including six or seven in constant use on the lateral railroads in the coal region; about five thousand iron and twelve hundred wooden coal cars, six hundred cars for merchandise, and some thirty elegant passenger cars.

The engines vary from ten to twenty-four tons weight; two very powerful engines, of twenty-seven tons weight each, are used exclusively on the Falls grade, before mentioned. The iron cars weigh over twenty-four tons when empty, and carry five tons of coal. The average load of each engine, during the busy months of the year, is very nearly five hundred tons of coal, (of twenty-two hundred and forty pounds.)

The total length of lateral railroads, connecting with the Reading Railroad, under other charters, and corporations, but all contributing to its business, using its cars, and returning them loaded with coal and merchandize, is over one hundred miles. Some of these railroads are constructed in the most substantial manner, with the best superstructure at present used in the country.

Of these, it connects with the Mount Carbon Railroad, and the Mount Carbon and Port Carbon Railroad, at Mount Carbon one mile below Pottsville, and with the Mine Hill Railroad and its numerous radiating branches, at Schuylkill Haven, (this road is about being extended to connect with the Shamokin Railroad, thus affording a connection with the Susquehanna, and passing through the great Mohanoy coal region:-it will thus bring an incalculable amount of additional tonnage and passengers to the Reading Railroad) also at Port Clinton, with the Little Schuylkill Railroad extending to Tamaqua, and thence into several lateral branches to numerous coal districts adjacent. The roads have each many miles of branches, penetrating all the coal districts of this unparalleled region, and the greater portion of their tonnage is, and always will be, transferred to the Reading Railroad; for so firmly has it established itself into the local arrangements of the lateral railway trade of Schuylkill county, that it can always command a large portion of the trade.