To Lay New Rails on Washington Street
Tuesday, February 14th, 1911Plans of Street Railway Company to Better Main Line of its System.
On that memorable day when Phoenix starts to pave her streets, the Phoenix Street Railway company will start to relay its tracks from Ninth street to Thirteenth avenue. “We do not want to stand in the line of progress and if the city paves we will do our part,” said Manager S.H. Mitchell of the street railway company yesterday. “It is going to cost us a lot of money but it must be done. The Washington street line, however, will be reconstructed whether the city decides to pave or not. All the old rails now in use will be taken up and replaced with 60-pound steel.”
The machine which has been brought here to bond the rails of the system is now working on the Lincoln place extension. It will not be used at all on Washington street, since that line is to be reconstructed at an early date.
Every bond that the machine makes between two rails costs $1. It makes [between] seventy and seventy-two bonds a day, so it is costing the company all of $75 a day to keep it in operation. The end is not in sight, as it has hardly begun.
Mr. Mitchell says that his company is laying low and waiting the action of the city on the paving proposition. It was long ago decided to tear out the old rails on Washington street, from Ninth street to Seventh avenue, and probably to Thirteenth avenue. While th street is being paved will be a very auspicious time to do the work.
The company’s share of the cost of paving the streets is going to amount to some few thousand dollars. No one except Mr. Mitchell has taken the trouble to to figure out the exact amount and he confesses that it imakes his head swim. Paved streets and new lines are going to make quite a dent in General Sherman’s bank account, but Mr. Mitchell says that he is as anxious as anyone to see Phoenix progress and will do everything possible to improve the city, as well as his street car system.
Rapid progress is being made on the new line to Glendale. When the two crews, working west from Central avenue and east from Glendale, knocked off work Saturday night they were within a mile and a half of each other. Two or three weeks more will see the line in shape for operation.
[Note: Words like "street" and "avenue" were not capitalized even when used in proper names.]
– Arizona Republican, 1911-02-14, p.10
On the bonding of street car rails
Under “New Addition and a New City Physician”, Arizona Republican, 1911-01-18, p.10
The city recorder stated that he had received a number of replies from various cities regarding methods of protecting water mains from electrolysis. All these replies were ordered turned over to the superintendent of the water department, who will confer with Manager S.H. Mitchell of the street railway company regarding the proper bonding of the system. The company is already making arrangements to bond its lines, not only to prevent the electrolysis of water mains but to save the electricity that now escapes into the ground.
