THE PANAMA CANAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 41, 13 February 1912, Page 7

THE PANAMA CANAL.

RELICS OF THE FRENCH VENTURE. Quo of the sights of the ■ Panama Canal zone for several decades lias been an enormous quantity of “junk”, in the form of discarded locomotives, cars, dredges, boilers, barges, and rails. Tens of thousands of tons of iron and steel have been rusting on the Isthmus since the abandonment of tiic work by the French engineers. When the Americans undertook ,to complete the canal, they renovated a largo amount of the machinery that they found upon the spot, and so saved themselves the expenditure of at least a million dollars. Nearly 60,000,0001 b of scrap iron was shipped to the United States and sold to dealers at a good profit. But great piles of useful material remain, and the American Government has just accepted an offer of £43,000 from a Chicago company for the right to clear away as much of the stuff as can be gathered during the next three years. ,Tjie firm is expected to make a very large profit on its venture. It has provided itself with locomotive cranes and a roomy yard! adjacent to a wharf, where vessels may be loaded. Fifty men are at work gathering the “junk” from various"parts of the isthmus, and already the supervising engineers have found that some of the old machinery need not go on the scrap heap .at all. It is capable of being repaired and put into service again. The material is sorted and graded in the yards,', where a shearing machine has been installed for the purpose of cutting waste iron and steel . into convenient sizes. Dealers in secondclass material of this class .recognise ahjont , three hundred, different classifications, and experts are being employed in this branch of the work. It is sad to remember that the costly appliances and materials that,,-the Americans want to have removed were bought with the money that thrifty French people provided at the request of the promoters of the first unfortunate canal scheme.