upport for the pan to be riveted
to it. To reduce friction each link is provided with three rollers, as
will be seen in the engraving. This outfit makes a fireproof conveyer
which will handle hot ore from roasting kiln to crusher, and convey
coal, broken stone, or other gritty and coarse material. The Link Belt
Machinery Company, of Chicago, is now erecting for Mr. Charles E.
Coffin, of Muirkirk, Md., about 450 ft. of this conveyer, which is to
carry the hot roasted iron ore from the kilns on an incline of about
one foot in twelve up to the crusher. This dispenses with the
barrow-men, and at an expenditure of a few more horsepower becomes a
faithful servant, ready for work in all weather and at all times of
day or night. This company also manufactures ore elevators of any
capacity, which, used in connection with this apparatus, will handle
perfectly anything in the shape of coarse, gritty material. It might
be added that the endless trough conveyer is no experiment. Although
comparatively new in this country, the American _Engineering and
Mining Journal_ says it has been in successful operation for some time
in England, the English manufacturers of link-belting having had great
success with it.

[Illustration: ENDLESS TROUGH CONVEYER.]

* * * * *

RAILROAD GRADES OF TRUNK LINES.

On the West Shore and Buffalo road its limit of grade is 30 feet to
the mile going west and north, and 20 feet to the mile going east and
south. Next for easy grades comes the New York Central and Hudson
River road. From New York to Albany, then up the valley of the Mohawk,
till it gradually reaches the elevation of Lake Erie, it is all the
time within the 500 foot level, and this is maintained by its
connections on the lake borders to Chicago, by the "Nickel Plate," the
Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, and the Canada Southern and Michigan
Central.

The Erie, the Pennsylvania, and the Baltimore and Ohio roads pass
through a country so mountainous that, much as they have expended to
improve their grades, it is practically impossible for them to attain
the easy grades so much more readily obtained by the trunk lines
following the great natural waterways originally extending almost from
Chicago to New York.

* * * * *

ENGLISH EXPRESS TRAINS.

The _Journal of the Statistical Society_ for September contains an
elaborate paper by Mr. E. Foxwell on "English Expr