Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/121
A Gasoline Field Kitchen
AMONG the useful and interesting devices of which the origin is directly traceable to the war, the automobile field kitchen in the illustrations is one that is made necessary by the swift- ness with which armies in the field are transported and l)y the promptness with which these armies must be supplied with food. In this field kitchen the army cook raises the canopy on the rear end. Behold! A kitchen of the most compact, yet of the most complete kind, is revealed.
Four high-pressure burners furnish the heat; cleverly concealed pumps force water from the fifty-gallon tank in front of the car to the enamelled sink in the kitchen ; and a variety of utensils, such as jugs, plates, meat-choppers and fish-sHcers are provided for the rapifl and clean prci)aration of food. Like most modern kitchens, too, this one boasts of ventilators, both at the sides and in the roof of the car. Indeed, it would seem as if the English firm which invented this motor-kitchen simply made a i)ractical, miniature edition of a most approved and modern type of hotel kitchen.
The Longest Pipe Line in America
One of the greatest pipe-laying projects ever brought to a successful conclusion in the western part of this conclusion in the western part of this country, and possibly in this entire land, was the laying of one hundred and fifty-three miles of eight-inch steel pipe from the Midway oil fields to Vernon, California, at the expense of three million, five hundred thousand dollars. This line has a daily capacity of between twenty and thirty thousand barrels of oil and represents capital of three nations.
The actual route of the pipe line is as follows : Beginning at Pentland and passing through the southern part of the Midway district, the line enters the Tejon pass. After leaving the pass its course lies through the Castaic country, then through the Xewhall tunnel and the San Fernando vallev, until it meets the Santa Fe tracks.
The army — and the circus — field kitchen, sprawUng over rods of ground, and using its coal out of a load dumped hastily in a pile, is a thing of the past. The modern equipment travels by automobile, and its stoves are all inside, fed by gas at high pressure
Thence it proceeds to Vernon, where there is a double topping plant capable of treating about twenty thousand barrels a day, and finally on to the sea. Along the route there are eleven high- pressure and one low-pressure pumping stations, and beside these there are three chief storage stations and two loading stations. One of the storage stations, consisting of four fifty-five thousand-barrel tanks, is at Pentland, another made up of the same number of tanks is at San I-Vrnando. and a third, consisting of six fifty-five thousand-barrel tanks, is beside the ocean.