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22 TAE MarRINE REVIEW NEW ORE DOCK AT MARQUETTE With one exception, that of the Great Northern at Allouez at the head of the lakes, the new ore dock to be built at Marquette by the Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic railway will be the highest on Lake Superior. The height given in the plans, which were only recently completed, being 7o ft. 8 in. From the water's edge to the terminus of the dock, the structure will be 1,350 ft. long, and con- tain 200 pockets with a capacity of 250 tons of ore each, or an aggregate total storage capacity of 50,000 tons. The estimated cost of the structure is $400,000. The ground work approach to the dock will begin at Third street, where two retaining walls will be constructed 72 it, apart, varying from 2% to 6 ft. in thickness, and terminating at Front street, where solid concrete abut- ments will be built. The space between the two retaining walls will be filled in with rock and other material from the point on Third street where the approach begins, to the first abutment on the west side of Front street. The dock will be 19 ft. "in the clear" above Front street, and will rest on a steel plate girder 72% ft. long. An abut- ment will also be built on the east side of Front street, and crossing Lake street there will be another steel girder 35, ft. above the thoroughfare, and still another girder 75 ft. long over the James Pickands company coal sheds. The girders will rest on concrete abutments, and from the point where the last girder is built over the Pickands property the dock will be built on piles. The grade for the approach to the dock is given as 2 percent. The amount of lumber used in building the dock repre- sents an amount almost the equivalent of the cut of a small saw mill for an entire season. The engineer esti- mates a total of 6,000,000 of plank and boards for cross- bracing and platforms, and to be used in the entire con- struction work. Owing to its great tensile strength, the specifications name Washington fir as the lumber to be used, and contracts have already been made for shipment of the required amount of lumber of this kind from the Pacific coast. Five thousand Norway pine and tamarack piles will be used for the underpinning of the structure. These will be driven by means of pile drivers, the clay bottom in the lake precluding the possibility of driving them by water jets, as in the case where sand bottoms are encoun- tered. Without exception, the long timbers for piling | will be the Michigan product. With the exception of furnishing the steel girders, the South Shore will have nothing to do with the building of the dock. Two contracts, covering every detail of the work, were given to Minneapolis firms. Nelson Bros. Paving & Concrete Co. has the contract for all the con- crete work, and the superstructure and dock proper, in- cluding the supplying of ore pockets, and everything con- nected with or pertaining to the operation of the dock, was let Dy contract to M. J. Peppard. The structure is to be finished and ready for use at the opening of naviga- tion in the spring of 1906. The ore pockets will differ little from the model of the pockets in No. 4 dock. Although there has been great strides taken in the size of ore shipping piers in the past twenty years, the changes have not extended to the improvement of ore pockets, strange as it may seem, and in the most modern docks it is necessary to have a crew of men armed with long steel-shod poles to prod the ore through the car, and the same men later aid in running it through the door at the base of the dock pocket to ' the ship. The new dock will be 23 ft. higher than the No. 4 dock, which is the largest and most modern of the South Shore docks. Its location is on the site of what was known as "Dock No. 3," which was one of the first docks built here, but abandoned as useless and inadequate fifteen years ago by the present company. In the year 1872 the railway system for the Lake Superior iron trade was "completed,' as was then an- nounced by the building of the Chicago & Northwestern to Escanaba, and the consolidation of the Marquette & Ontonagon, and their extension as far as L'Anse, thus establishing railway communication from Chicago to the head of Keweenaw bay on Lake Superior. The con- solidated road had an ore shipping pier at Marquette, and, in. that year built a second one at L'Anse. The former was the beginning of the system that has since become : the terminus of the Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic rail- way, and the latter was long ago abandoned, and only last week leased as a merchandise shipping dock to the village of L'Anse. It was partially, but not wholly de- stroyed by fire many years ago. Thirty years ago. the L'Anse dock was the most modern pier in existence. It was 546 ft. long, 36 ft. wide, and built. on forty-three bents of piling 36 ft. high. Each pocket held about 75 tons of ore, the total capacity of the dock 6,000 tons, and the base of the pockets only 20 ft. above the water. As the ore slides by gravity from the pocket to the ship's hold, the hinge-hold, to which the chute is attached, must be.so high above the vessel's side' that ore will readily slide down the chute. So low were the: decks of ships thirty years ago that a height of 20 ft. was ample to give sufficient incline to the chute. The new dock of the South Shore will have the hinge-hold 4o ft. above the water level. In the older days referred to operations were at such a rate of speed that it is recorded that 6,000 tons were shipped from the L'Anse dock in a single day, and that one vessel of 476 tons, marvelous to relate, was loaded in 75 minutes. At that time the average capacity of ships was about 650 tons, ranging from 400 to I,100. In 1904 the ship Augustus B. Wolvin, then the largest ship on the lakes, loaded 10,245 gross tons of ore in 89 minutes at the Allouez ore docks, and was at the dock a total period of 180 minutes. Nine thousand tons of this load were put on in 34 minutes. The same year the ship J. H. Peavey loaded 6,585 gross tons in 51 minutes, and the preceding season the J. H. Hoyt loaded 5,250 tons in 30.5 minutes. The modern ore shipping pier is not the least complex and interesting factor in the transportation situation. Its foundation is frequently 40 ft. below water level, and con- sists of a series of piling that cannot have much cross- bracing until the surface of the water is reached. About the water there is a height of 60 to 7o ft. more, and away on top of this is the enormous moving load of trains and locomotives, for an average of which 4,000,000 lbs. is a low estimate. Air brakes on the cars stop them in a yard or two, and there is a pressure of up to 2,500,000 foot- pounds to be taken up every time a train stops, or hun- dreds of times daily by the longitudinal bracing of the pier. Added to this is the fact that the center of per- manent load may be 90 to 95 ft. above foundations. Docks require an enormous amount of timber, probably from 6,000,000 to 7,000,000 ft. for an average pier, nowadays, and problems met by the construction engineer are serious. The demand, is on one hand, for more bracing, and on the other for less severe switching and lighter locomotives at docks. The building of a new dock by the South Shore will furnish employment to a large number of men during the coming winter. The cement work 'will have to be done before the advent of winter weather, and it is understood that a large force of men will rush this part of the work