charged are low, 10 centimos (11⁄2 cents) being the fare for a run of 5 or 6 miles. The cars are well patronized, and the company is in a flourishing condition, with a capital given at 15,000,000 pesetas ($2,400,000), subscribed for almost exclusively in England. This road has a mileage of about 12 miles through the most frequented streets of the city.

Compañia de Tranvias de Barcelona à San Andres.-This concern about five months since changed hands, and now, under the able management of a Belgian engineer-Mr. Oscar Schmidt-Corr-is about to effect several important improvements. The traction is to be altered from steam to electricity, and the line prolonged from its present terminus at the outlying township of San Andres, 5 miles distant, to the manufacturing town of Sabodell, which lies 15 miles north of Barcelona. Another branch line is to be built from Barcelona to Horta, about 5 miles. The present subscribed capital of this company is given as 3,250,000 pesetas ($520,000).

Compañia de Tranvias de Barcelona à Sans.-This company has a line running from the center of Barcelona to the suburb of Sans, a distance of about 3 miles. The cars are at present drawn by mules, but the company has asked permission from the town authorities to use electricity as motive power. The capital of this company. is 3,000,000 pesetas ($470,000). Manager, Mr. Francisco Esdeve.

Compañia de Tranvias de Barcelona à Badalona.-This line of steam tramways connects Barcelona with the neighboring town of Badalona, a distance of about 6 miles, the rails being laid along the high road. I have been unable to ascertain whether or not this company intends changing its motive power. The capital of the company as given is 2,000,000 pesetas ($320,000). Manager, Mr. F. Gillis.

Compañia General de Tranvias.-This road has a mileage of about 4 miles between Barcelona and the suburb of Sarria. Trains of four cars are drawn by powerful steam locomotives, which are rendered necessary owing to the sharp curves and steep gradients in the narrow streets of Sarria. I am informed that electric power on this road is soon to supersede steam.

In connection with the tramways of Barcelona, I should mention a small railroad company called the Ferrocarril de Barcelona à Sarria, the only double-track railroad in Spain, about 3 miles in length, with a capital of 3,000,000 pesetas ($470,000), that has also recently applied for permission to adopt electricity as its motive power in the place of steam.

SAN SEBASTIAN.

Compañia del Tranvia Electrico de San Sebastian.-The president is D. Antanasio Osacar; manager, M. L. Carlier. This electric road runs for a distance of about 5 miles through the town of Pasages, No. 231—2.

which is the commercial port for San Sebastian, as far as the small manufacturing town of Rentiri. All the electrical plant was supplied by La Compagnie Générale d'Electricité, of Geneva, Switzerland. The cars were made in Saragossa, Spain.

BILBAO.

There is only one tramway company in Bilbao, which runs two lines with an aggregate mileage of about 19 miles. The motive power is electricity. During last year, 2,700,000 passengers were carried; but, as the service is being improved and increased, a better result is looked for this year. The capital of this company is 4,500,000 pesetas ($725,000).

VALENCIA.

All the city and suburban tramways in Valencia have been bought up by a French company. The plant is now being erected to run the cars by electricity, but the contracts have all been placed with French firms.

There are a few other tramways and railroads in the Province of Catalonia, particulars about which I have not yet been able to ob

The foregoing remarks will, however, serve to show that there is undoubtedly a market in Spain for American electrical equipment. If our manufacturers and street-railway journals will send me their names and addresses, I shall be glad to furnish them with the names of the chief contractors of all new companies, when they are formed for building tramway lines, and information regarding any movement toward the purchase of electrical supplies by the older

ones.

BARCELONA, October 3, 1899.

JULIUS G. LAY,

Consul-General.

STEEL ROADWAY IN SPAIN.*

The road between Valencia and Grao is 2 miles in length, and an average of 3, 200 vehicles pass over it daily. Until 1892, it was constructed of flint stone. The annual cost of keeping it in repair was about 35,000 pesetas. At the rate of exchange at that date, this amounted to $5,470.

The construction of a steel roadway was determined on, and the annual cost of keeping in repair the central zone of road thus relieved from heavy traffic-which proceeds over the steel rails-—is now only 2,500 pesetas, or about $380 at the present rate of exchange.

*This report was made in answer to an instruction sent at the request of the Department of Agriculture, to which Advance Sheets have been sent. See also "Steel-plate roadway in Great Britain,' CONSULAR REPORTS No. 230 (November, 1899), p. 495,

A Belgian firm received the contract to furnish the steel work, having bid less than Spanish firms at Barcelona and Bilbao.

The length of road so built is 3.2 kilometers (1.988 miles). The cost per kilometer (0.62137 mile) was 44,100 pesetas ($6,890). The total cost of the road laid was 60,950 pesetas ($9,506). The expense in detail was:

Steel construction......

Transportation and laying steel construction.........

Binding-stone construction between rails and lateral zones...

Total

Pesetas.

44, 100 $6, 890 3,250= 507 13, 600= 2, 109

60, 950= 9, 506

The rails, during the seven years they have been in position, exhibit a wear of one decimal of a millimeter yearly, and have not required repairing.

Ample room is allowed between the rails for two horses to walk abreast. Horses do not appear to slip on rails of this construction. At each side of the rail are layers of binding stones, the paved road being higher than the face of the rails.

The municipality of Valencia is of opinion that the saving in cost of repairs, through a road of this description, pays for its construction in a short time, and other and similar roadways are in contemplation.

From various parts of Spain, inquiries have been made concerning this road. I learn that a similar construction was decided on at Alicante, in 1898, but was temporarily abandoned when events caused exchange to increase.

A toll of (about) eight-tenths of a cent is charged each vehicle passing over this roadway.

A fuller description would have been furnished had it not been believed that the technically accurate working plans transmitted herewith* would themselves prove of much greater information than unprofessional statements.

I am indebted to the mayor of Valencia and to Señor Mesegner, municipal architect, who invented the road, for copies of these plans. HORACE LEE WASHINGTON,

VALENCIA, September 25, 1899.

*Sent to Department of Agriculture.

Consul.

AMERICAN TRADE COMPETITION WITH GREAT BRITAIN.

Under date of August 18, 1899, Consul Marshal Halstead, of Birmingham, says that a strong feeling exists in England over the orders given for American locomotives for use on English railroads. He warns American builders that an effort will be made to find the locomotives inferior to British-built engines, and adds:

The railroad managers who have purchased American locomotives have been under a continuous fire of questions, and it is hardly worth while to add fuel to the flames by boasting that "prices will settle future locomotive orders in America's favor." Why not permit the answer of the railroad managers-that the purchases were made because British shops were too busy to take further orders-to have its soothing influence? The matter of price, or of efficiency, if a change in construction is required, counts for less here than in the United States.

There is a good deal that is protective in this attitude on the part of the British public, in questioning those who dare to buy abroad articles which might be made here. The Atbara Bridge contract, the Birmingham Post says, promises to become "a classical instance of the kind of competition in which English firms have been apt to get the worst recently;" it promises also to be a classical instance of a protest, because British officials in Egypt purchased where they could get the article quickest. The Birmingham Post says:

That the English makers were hopelessly underbid with regard to price has been before explained, but it appears that the principal and, indeed, the sole determining factor was the time of delivery.

The earliest English offer was six months; the Americans accomplished the work, despite a week's delay because of the great snowstorm of last winter, in forty-two days. Parliamentary inquiries were instituted by Sir Alfred Hickman last April with regard to the circumstances under which the contract for the bridge had been given to an American firm, which inquiry has resulted in a full report on the matter by Lord Cromer. An exactly similar case, though with smaller value, has come to my knowledge through the declarations before me, as consul, of apparatus purchased here by the United States War Department for use in Cuban light-houses. I have heard of no protest from the United States.

Mr. Halstead sends a printed account of the history of the Atbara Bridge contract, which is not given, as it has already appeared in American newspapers.

On September 5, 1899, Mr. Halstead writes further:

Under the headlines "Tried and found wanting" and "No repeat orders," the Ironmonger says:

The American locomotives which have been delivered to the Midland Railway Company are naturally being subjected to some very keen criticism by English engineers. The representative of one well-known locomotive-building firm in this country gave me the other day quite a long list of their alleged defects, one of the gravest being the state of the boilers, which are said to leak so badly as to leave a distinct track along the ballast wherever they go. The engines are nothing like so strong as English makes; they are very roughly finished throughout, and when the parts arrived in this country it took the workmen as long to put them together as an English firm would require to build the entire machine.

The comments of English engineering experts who have examined the American locomotives are by no means flattering, and it is confidently asserted that when (in the not far-off future) the engines have to be sent to the repairing shop, the verdict on their construction will be so unfavorable as to bar the placing of further orders. That this opinion is not due to mere insular prejudice on the part of the makers in this country will be conceded when I mention that two French engineers who inspected the Yankee locomotives at Derby fully confirm the conclusions arrived at as to the inferiority of the imported machines to those of British make, alike in point of strength of construction and general excellence of workmanship.

The London Daily Mail to-day quotes Mr. C. Rous-Marten as saying that Mr. Johnson, the mechanical engineer in chief of the Midland line, informed him that—

As soon as all the American engines were erected they would be placed on regular duty in comparison with a like number of British-built engines of approximately equal power, and, after a certain period, the results would be fairly and impartially compared.

Mr. Rous-Marten credits Mr. H. A. Ivatt, locomotive superintendent of the Great Northern Railway, with saying:

I have been examining them and I can not find any important part that ought not, with fair usage, to last as long, or nearly so, as those of our own engines.

EXCESSIVE FREIGHT CHARGES TO GREAT

BRITAIN.

Consul Marshal Halstead, of Birmingham, on August 23, 1899, sends copies of recent correspondence between himself and the freight bureau of the National Association of Manufacturers. It appears that a Birmingham merchant was forced to pay, on a shipment. of goods from Minneapolis valued at $9.30, £2 19s. ($14.35) freight charges; in other words, the Minneapolis concern, says the consul, evidently knew nothing about freight shipments and simply sent the goods through without inquiring as to charges, and the steamship line took advantage of the opportunity and made the excessive charge