The coaling plants at the two terminals will be the crowning features of the terminal facilities. With an immense storage capacity, and with every possible facility for the rapid handling of coal, both in shipping and unshipping it, no other canal in the world will be so well equipped. The coal storage basin at the Atlantic end will hold nearly 300,000 tons. This basin will be built of reinforced concrete, and will permit the flooding of the coal pile so that one-half of it will be stored under water for war purposes. It is said that deterioration in coal is not as great in subaqueous storage, and at the same time the pile is less subject to fire. The plant will be able to discharge a thousand tons of coal an hour and to load 2,000 tons an hour. Ships will not go alongside the wharves to be coaled, but will lie out in the ship basin and be coaled from barges with reloader outfits. Special efforts have been made to provide for the quick loading of colliers in case of war. The coal handling plant at the Pacific entrance will have a normal capacity of 135,000 tons and will be able to handle half as much coal in a given time as the one at the Atlantic end. There will be big supply depots where ships can get any kind of stores they need from a few buckets of white lead to an anchor or a hawser; a laundry in which a ship's wash can be accepted at the hour it begins its transit of the canal, for delivery by railroad at the other end before it is ready to resume its ocean journey; an ice plant which will replenish the cold storage compartments of ships lacking such facilities. In short, it is proposed to attempt to do everything that may be done to make more attractive the bid of the canal for its share of business. CHAPTER VIII THE PANAMA RAILROAD When the United States acquired the properties of the new French Canal Company it found itself in the possession of a railroad for which it had allowed the canal company $7,000,000. This road, in the high tide of its history, had proved a bonanza for its stockholders, and during the 43 years between 1855 and 1898 it showed net profits five times as great as the original cost of its construction.