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URING the course of a year every large railroad accumulates several thousand tons of scrap iron which is sold to the junk dealer for what it will bring. The price ranges from a dollar and a half to eight dollars a ton. This is material which does not seem worth while repairing.

Believing that a part of the scrap might be salvaged to good advantage, the Frisco Lines opened a reclamation plant at Springfield, Missouri, to give the theory a trial. They owned some idle shop buildings and old machinery which were deserted upon the opening of their model shops in another part of the city, so the department did not require a large initial outlay of money.

The results during the first few months proved so encouraging that the officials increased the capacity of the plant by

erecting additional small buildings out of scrap material from the car repair yards and equipped them with tools brought from various places on their lines.

The plant has handled on an average about four thousand tons of metal scrap per month. By the use of oxweld cutting burners the large pieces, such as old boilers and fire boxes, have been reduced to sizes convenient for handling. Junk dealers allow about a dollar and a half to two dollars and a half per ton for very large iron scrap, as they have to break it up before it can be sent to the furnace; but at a cost not exceeding a dollar and a half a ton, the large pieces are cut up at the reclamation plant into strips of convenient size, in which shape they command a price of from six dollars to seven dollars per ton.

The scrap is unloaded at the plant by a hoist equipped with electric magnet.

serviceable equipment which belongs to the railroad.

All of the bolts obtained from the scrap pile are sent to the bolt house, where the damaged ends and cracked heads are cut off, the crooked bolts and rods straightened under hammers, and then taken to the machine shop where they are rethreaded, and new heads made. They are then assorted into standard lengths and diameters.

All worn switch frogs are taken to the frog and rail shop, where each part

is taken off and the serviceable parts saved for future use. Such pieces as

can be used in reassembling the frogs and switches are incorporated into new ones, and, if necessary, the worn parts are built up by the oxweld process, or planed down to a smaller size. The average cost of reclaiming frogs is seven dollars and fifty cents, while a new frog costs forty-three dollars and twenty-five cents, so there is considerable profit in working over the old material which once was sold as junk.

Konollman's house is a three-story structure and on the property, without making use of a back yard, he raises all the requisites of a good meal. All anyone needs, he says, to do the same thing is flat roof and a little nerve.

The entire first floor is used by Konollman as a garage and automobile manufacturing plant. The second floor is occupied by his family. On the third floor are the chickens, more than four hundred of them. There are brooders and incubators and all the appurtenances of a chicken farm.

The rear of the second floor extends some distance back of the third floor and on the roof of this portion Konollman has fenced in a chicken run. This he keeps well sodded and here the chickens can exercise and pick worms and scratch in the earth although many miles away from their country

cousins.

Then comes the real roof garden. This is on the flat flat roof, which Konollman has covered.

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with earth to a depth sufficient to grow virtually every vegetable. During the summer he garnered corn, egg plants, spinach, tomatoes, carrots, beans, peas, and cabbage.

One corner of the roof is given over to a small flower garden. A water service pipe has been run to the roof, so that a hose may be played on the garden to keep it in condition. Every bit of ground or rather roof space is utilized, and intensive farming, such as is practiced on a large scale in Europe and Asia, has a chance to show how results can be obtained in this way with a little hard work.

So Konollman only smiles when the talk turns to the cost of living.