The modern railroad

THE MODERN RAILROAD

READY FOR THE DAY'S RUN

THE
MODERN RAILROAD

BY

EDWARD HUNGERFORD

fj

AUTHOR OF "LITTLE CORKY," "THE MAN WHO STOLE A

RAILROAD," ETC.

WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS

CHICAGO

A. C. McCLURG & CO.

1911

-V

COPYRIGHT

A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1911

Published November, 1911
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England

**! •"*• \/ i ". »*i : I

PRESS OF THE VAIL COMPANY
COSHOCTON, U. S. A.

TO MY FATHER

IN RECOGNITION OF HIS
INTEREST AND APPRECIATION

THIS BOOK
IS DEDICATED

227154

PREFACE

TO bring to the great lay mind some slight idea of the
intricacy and the involved detail of railroad opera-
tion is the purpose of this book. Of the intricacies and
involved details of railroad finance and railroad politics;
of the quarrels between the railroads, the organizations of
their employees, the governmental commissions, or the
shippers, it says little or nothing. These difficult and
pertinent questions have been and still are being com-
petently discussed by other writers.

The author wishes to acknowledge the courtesy of the
editors and publishers of Harper's Monthly, Harper's
Weekly, The Saturday Evening Post, and Outing in per-
mitting the introduction into this work of portions or
entire articles which he has written for them in the past.
He would also feel remiss if he did not publish his sincere
acknowledgments to " The American Railway," a compila-
tion from Scribner*s Magazine, published in 1887, Mr.
Logan G. McPherson's " The Workings of the Railroad,"
Mr. C. F. Carter's " When Railroads Were New," and
Mr. Frank H. Spearman's " The Strategy of Great Rail-
roads." Out of a sizable reference library of railroad
works, these volumes were the most helpful to him in the
preparation of certain chapters of this book.

E. H.

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK,
August i, 191 1.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

THE RAILROADS AND THEIR BEGINNINGS i

Two great groups of railroads; East to West, and North to
South — Some of the giant roads — Canals — Development of
the country's natural resources — Railroad projects — Locomo-
tives imported — First locomotive of American manufacture

— Opposition of canal-owners to railroads — Development of
Pennsylvania's anthracite mines — The merging of small lines
into systems.

CHAPTER II

THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILROAD 15

Alarm of canal-owners at the success of railroads — The mak-
ing of the Baltimore & Ohio — The " Tom Thumb " engine —
Difficulties in crossing the Appalachians — Extension to Pitts-
burgh — Troubles of the Erie Railroad — This road the first to
use the telegraph — The prairies begin to be crossed by rail-
ways — Chicago's first railroad, the Galena & Chicago Union

— Illinois Central — Rock Island, the first to span the Missis-
sippi — Proposals to run railroads to the Pacific — The Central
Pacific organized — It and the Union Pacific meet — Other
Pacific roads.

CHAPTER III

THE BUILDING OF A RAILROAD 34 -

Cost of a single-track road — Financing — Securing a char-
ter — Survey-work and its dangers — Grades — Construction —
Track-laying.

CHAPTER IV

TUNNELS 48

Their use in reducing grades — The Hoosac Tunnel — The use
of shafts — Tunnelling under water — -The Detroit River tun-
nel.

CHAPTER V

BRIDGES 56

Bridges of timber, then stone, then steel — The Starucca
Viaduct — The first iron bridge in the United States —

IX

x CONTENTS

PAGE

Steel bridges — Engineering triumphs — Different types of
railroad bridge — The deck span and the truss span — Suspen-
sion bridges — Cantilever bridges — Reaching the solid rock
with caissons — The work of " sand-hogs " — The cantilever
over the Pend Oreille River — Variety of problems in bridge-
building — Points in favor of the stone bridge — Bridges over
the Keys of Florida.

CHAPTER VI

THE PASSENGER STATIONS 80

Early trains for suburbanites — Importance of the towerman —
Automatic switch systems — The interlocking machine —
Capacities of the largest passenger terminals — Room for
locomotives, car-storage, etc. — Storing and cleaning cars —
The concourse — Waiting-rooms — Baggage accommodations —
Heating — Great development of passenger stations — Some
notable stations in America.

CHAPTER VII

THE FREIGHT TERMINALS AND THE YARDS 107

Convenience of having freight stations at several points in a
city — The Pennsylvania Railroad's scheme at New York as an
example — Coal handled apart from other freight — Assorting
the cars — The transfer house — Charges for the use of cars
not promptly returned to their home roads — The hard work of
the yard-master.

CHAPTER VIII

THE LOCOMOTIVES AND THE CARS 119

Honor required in the building of a locomotive — Some of the
early locomotives — Some notable locomotive-builders — In-
crease of the size of engines — Stephenson's air-brake — The
workshops — The various parts of the engine — Cars of the
old-time — Improvements by Winans and others — Steel cars
for freight.

CHAPTER IX

REBUILDING A RAILROAD 138

Reconstruction necessary in many cases — Old grades too heavy
— Curves straightened — Tunnels avoided — These improve-
ments required especially by freight lines.

CHAPTER X

THE RAILROAD AND ITS PRESIDENT 152

Supervision of the classified activities — Engineering, operating,
maintenance of way, etc. — The divisional system as followed
in the Pennsylvania Road — The departmental plan as followed
in the New York Central — Need for vice-presidents — The

CONTENTS xi

PAGE

board of directors — Harriman a model president — How the
Pennsylvania forced itself into New York City — Action of a
president to save the life of a laborer's child — " Keep right on
obeying orders " — Some railroad presidents compared — High
salaries of presidents.

CHAPTER XI

THE LEGAL AND FINANCIAL DEPARTMENTS 170

Functions of general counsel, and those of general attorney —
A shrewd legal mind's worth to a railroad — The function of
the claim-agent — Men and women who feign injury — The
secret service as an aid to the claim-agent — Wages of em-
ployees the greatest of a railroad's expenditures — The pay-
car — The comptroller or auditor — Division of the income
from through tickets — Claims for lost or damaged freight —
Purchasing-agent and store-keeper.

CHAPTER XII

THE GENERAL MANAGER 187

His duty to keep employees in harmonious actions — "The su-
perintendent deals with men; the general manager with super-
intendents " — " The general manager is really king " — Cases
in which his power is almost despotic — He must know men.

CHAPTER XIII

THE SUPERINTENDENT 202

His headship of the transportation organism — His manner of
dealing with an offended shipper — His manner with com-
muters — His manner with a spiteful " kicker " — A dishonest
conductor who had a "pull" — A system of demerits for em-
ployees— Dealing with drunkards — With selfish and covetous
men.

CHAPTER XIV

OPERATING THE RAILROAD 220

Authority of the chief clerk and that of the assistant super-
intendent— Responsibilities of engineers, firemen, master me-
chanic, train-master, train-despatcher — Arranging the time-
table — Fundamental rules of operation — Signals — Selecting
engine and cars for a train — Clerical work of conductors —
A trip with the conductor — The despatcher's authority — Sig-
nals along the line — Maintenance of way — Superintendent of
bridges and buildings — Road-master — Section boss.

CHAPTER XV

THE FELLOWS OUT UPON THE LINE 243

Men who run the trains must have brain as well as muscle —
Their training — From farmer's boy to engineer — The brake-

xii CONTENTS

PAGE

man's dangerous work — Baggagemen and mail clerks — Hand-
switchmen — The multifarious duties of country station-agents.

CHAPTER XVI

KEEPING THE LINE OPEN 256

The wrecking train and its supplies — Floods dammed by an
embankment — Right of way always given to the wrecking-
train — Expeditious work in repairing the track — Collapse of
the roof of a tunnel — Telegraph crippled by storms — Winter
storms the severest test — Trains in quick succession help to
keep the line open in snowstorms — The rotary plough.

CHAPTER XVII

THE G. P. A. AND His OFFICE 276

He has to keep the road advertised — Must be an after-dinner
orator, and many-sided — His geniality, urbanity, courtesy —
Excessive rivalry for passenger traffic — Increasing luxury in
Pullman cars — Many printed forms of tickets, etc.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE LUXURY OF MODERN RAILROAD TRAVEL 292

Special trains provided — Private cars — Specials for actors,
actresses, and musicians — Crude coaches on early railroads —
Luxurious old-time sleeping-cars — Pullman's sleepers made at
first from old coaches — His pioneer — The first dining-cars
— The present-day dining-cars — Dinners, table d' hote and
a la carte — Ca/e-cars — Buffet-cars — Care for the comfort
of women.

CHAPTER XIX

GETTING THE CITY OUT INTO THE COUNTRY 311

Commuters' trains in many towns — Rapid increase in the vol-
ume of suburban travel — Electrification of the lines — Long
Island Railroad almost exclusively suburban — Varied dis-
tances of suburban homes from the cities — Club-cars for com-
muters — Staterooms in the suburban cars — Special transfer
commuters.

CHAPTER XX

FREIGHT TRAFFIC 325

Income from freight traffic greater than from passenger —
Competition in freight rates — Afterwards a standard rate-
sheet — Rate-wars virtually ended by the Interstate Commerce
Commission classification of freight into groups — Differential
freight rates — Demurrage for delay in emptying cars — Coal
traffic — Modern methods of handling lard and other freight.

CONTENTS xiii

CHAPTER XXI

PAGE

THE DRAMA OF THE FREIGHT 343

Fast trains for precious and perishable goods — Cars invented
for fruits and for fish — Milk trains — Systematic handling of
the cans — Auctioning garden-truck at midnight — A historic
city freight-house.

CHAPTER XXII

MAKING TRAFFIC 355

Enticing settlers to the virgin lands of the West — Emigration
bureaus — Railways extended for the benefit of emigrants —
The first continuous railroad across the American continent —
Campaigns for developing sparsely settled places in the West

— Unprofitable branch railroads in the East — Development of
scientific farming — Improved farms are traffic-makers — New
factories being opened — How railroad managers have de-
veloped Atlantic City.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE EXPRESS SERVICE AND THE RAILROAD MAIL 369

Development of express business — Railroad conductors the
first mail and express messengers — William F. Harnden's ex-
press service — Postage rates — Establishment and organization
of great express companies — Collection and distribution of
express matter — Relation between express companies and rail-
roads — Beginnings of post-office department — Statistics —
Railroad mail service — Newspaper delivery — Handling of
mail matter — Growth of the service.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE MECHANICAL DEPARTMENTS 388

Care and repair of cars and engines — The locomotive cleaned
and inspected after each long journey — Frequent visits of
engines to, the shops and foundries at Altoona — The table for
testing the power and speed of locomotives — The car shops —
Steel cars beginning to supersede wooden ones — Painting a
freight car — Lack of method in early repair shops — Search
for flaws in wheels.

CHAPTER XXV

THE RAILROAD MARINE 4°4

Steamship lines under railroad control — Fleet of New York
Central — Tugs — Railroad connections at New York harbor

— Handling of freight — Ferry-boats — Tunnel under Detroit
River — Car-ferries and lake routes — Great Lakes steamship
lines under railroad control.

xiv CONTENTS

CHAPTER XXVI

PAGE

KEEPING IN TOUCH WITH THE MEN 418

The first organized branch of the Railroad Y. M. C. A. — Cor-
nelius Vanderbilt's gift of a club-house — Growth of the Rail-
road Y. M. C. A. — Plans by the railways to care for the sick
and the crippled — The pension system — Entertainments —
Model restaurants — Free legal advice — Employees' magazines
— The Order of the Red Spot.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE COMING OF ELECTRICITY 432

Electric street cars — Suburban cars — Electric third-rail from
Utica to Syracuse — Some railroads partially adopt electric
power — The benefit of electric power in tunnels — Also at
terminal stations — Conditions which make electric traction
practical and economical — Hopeful outlook for electric trac-
tion— The monorail and the gyroscope car, invented by Louis
Brennan — A similar invention by August Scherl.

APPENDIX 449

Efficiency through Organization.

INDEX :. . » .......... 465

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Ready for the day's run Frontispiece

An early locomotive built by William Norris for the Philadelphia &

Reading Railroad 18

The historic "John Bull" of the Camden & Amboy Railroad —

and its train 18

A heavy-grade type of locomotive built for the Baltimore & Ohio

Railroad in 1864. Its flaring stack was typical of those years 19
Construction engineers blaze their way across the face of new

country 38

The making of an embankment by dump-train 39

" Small temporary railroads peopled with hordes of restless en-
gines " 39

Cutting a path for the railroad through the crest of the high hills 44

A giant fill — in the making . v ."." 44

The finishing touches to the track 45

This machine can lay a mile of track a day 45

" Sometimes the construction engineer . . . brings his line face

to face with a mountain " 52

Finishing the lining of a tunnel 52

The busiest tunnel point in the world — at the west portals of the

Bergen tunnels, six Erie tracks below, four Lackawanna above 53
The Hackensack portals of the Pennsylvania's great tunnels under

New York City 53

Concrete affords wonderful opportunities for the bridge-builders . 68
The Lackawanna is building the largest concrete bridge in the

world across the Delaware River at Slateford, Pa 68

The bridge-builder lays out an assembling-yard for gathering to-
gether the different parts of his new construction 69

The new Brandywine Viaduct of the Baltimore & Ohio, at Wil-
mington, Del 69

The Northwestern's monumental new terminal on the West Side

of Chicago 82

XV

xvi ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

The Union Station at Washington 83

A model American railroad station — the Union Station of the
New York Central, Boston & Albany, Delaware & Hudson,

and West Shore railroads at Albany . 102

The classic portal of the Pennsylvania's new station in New York . 102
The beautiful concourse of the new Pennsylvania Station, in New

York 103

"The waiting-room is the monumental and artistic expression of
the station " — the waiting-room of the Union Depot at Troy,

New York 103

Something over a million dollars' worth of passenger cars are con-
stantly stored in this yard 114

A scene in the great freight-yards that surround Chicago . . .114
The intricacy of tracks and the "throat" of a modern terminal

yard: South Station, Boston, and its approaches . . . .115
One of the " diamond-stack " locomotives used on the Pennsylvania

Railroad in the early seventies 126

Prairie type passenger locomotive of the Lake Shore Railroad . . 126
Pacific type passenger locomotive of the New York Central lines . 126
Atlantic type passenger locomotive, built by the Pennsylvania Rail-
road at its Altoona shops 126

One of the great Mallet pushing engines of the Delaware & Hudson

Company 127

A ten-wheeled switching locomotive of the Lake Shore Railroad . 127
Suburban passenger locomotive of the New York Central lines . . 127
Consolidation freight locomotive of the Pennsylvania system . . 127
Where Harriman stretched the Southern Pacific in a straight line

across the Great Salt Lake 140

Line revision on the New York Central — tunnelling through the
bases of these jutting peaks along the Hudson River does away

with sharp and dangerous curves 140

Impressive grade revision on the Union Pacific jn the Black Hills

of Wyoming. The discarded line may be seen at the right . 141
The old and the new on the Great Northern — the "William
Crooks," the first engine of the Hill system, and one of the

newest Mallets 154

The Southern Pacific finds direct entrance into San Francisco for
one of its branch lines by tunnels piercing the heart of the

suburbs 155

Portal of the abandoned tunnel of the Alleghany Portage Railroad

ILLUSTRATIONS xvfi

PAGX

near Johnstown, Pa., the first railroad tunnel in the United

States 155

The freight department of the modern railroad requires a veritable

army of clerks 176

The farmer who sued the railroad for permanent injuries — as the

detectives with their cameras found him 177

Oil-burning locomotive on the Southern Pacific system .... 190
The steel passenger coach such as has become standard upon the

American railroad 190

Electric car, generating its own power by a gasoline engine . . . 190
Both locomotive and train — gasoline motor car designed for

branch line service 190

The biggest locomotive in the world: built by the Santa Fe Rail-
road at its Topeka shops 191

The conductor is a high type of railroad employee 208

The engineer — oil-can in hand — is forever fussing at his machine 208
Railroad responsibility does not end even with the track walker . 209

The fireman has a hard job and a steady one 209

How the real timetable of the division looks — the one used in

headquarters 222

The electro-pneumatic signal-box in the control tower of a mod-
ern terminal 228

The responsible men who stand at the switch-tower of a modern

terminal : a large tower of the " manual " type 228

" When winter comes upon the lines the superintendent will have

full use for every one of his wits" 229

Watchful signals guarding the main line of a busy railroad . . . 229
" When the train comes to a water station the fireman gets out and

fills the tank" :.,>,,. , 248

A freight-crew and its "hack" 248

A view through the span of a modern truss bridge gives an idea

of its strength and solidity 249

The New York Central is adopting the new form of " Upper quad-
rant " signal 249

The wrecking train ready to start out from the yard 262

"Two of these great cranes can grab a wounded Mogul locomo-
tive and put her out of the way " 262

"The shop-men form no mean brigade in this industrial army of
America" 263

xviii ILLUSTRATIONS

PACK

" Winter days when the wind-blown snow forms mountains upon

the tracks " 272

" The despatcher may have come from some lonely country station " 273
" The superintendent is not above getting out and bossing the

wrecking-gang once in a great while" 273

The New York Central Railroad is building a new Grand Central
Station in New York City, for itself and its tenant, the New

York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad . 284

The concourse of the new Grand Central Station, New York, will

be one of the largest rooms in the world 284

South Station, Boston, is the busiest railroad terminal in the world 285
The train-shed and approach tracks of Broad Street Station, Phil-
adelphia, still one of the finest of American railroad passenger

terminals 285

Connecting drawing-room and stateroom 296

" A man may have as fine a bed in a sleeping-car as in the best

hotel in all the land " 296

" You may have the manicure upon the modern train " . . . . 297

" The dining-car is a sociable sort of place " 297

An interior view of one of the earliest Pullman sleeping-cars . . 302

Interior of a standard sleeping-car of to-day 303

" Even in winter there is a homely, homey air about the commuter's

station" 314

Entrance to the great four-track open cut which the Erie has built

for the commuter's comfort at Jersey City 314

A model way-station on the lines of the Boston & Albany Railroad 315
The yardmaster's office — in an abandoned switch-tower . . . .315

" The inside of any freight-house is a busy place " 328

St. John's Park, the great freight-house of the New York Central

Railroad in down-town New York 328

The great ore-docks of the West Shore Railroad at Buffalo . . . 329
The great bridge of the New York Central at Watkins Glen . . 340
Building the wonderful bridge of the Idaho & Washington North-
ern over the Pend Oreille River, Washington 341

Inside the West Albany shops of the New York Central: picking

up a locomotive with the travelling crane 350

A locomotive upon the testing-table at the Altoona shops of the

Pennsylvania 350

" The roundhouse is a sprawling thing " 351

ILLUSTRATIONS xix

PAGE

Denizens of the roundhouse 351

" In the Far West the farm-train has long since come into its own " 360

" Even in New York State the interest in these itinerant agricul-
tural schools is keen, indeed" 361

Interior of the dairy demonstration car of an agricultural train . 361

The famous Thomas Viaduct, on the Baltimore & Ohio at Relay,
Md., built by B. H. Latrobe in 1835, and still in use . . . . 366

The historic Starucca Viaduct upon the Erie 366

The cylinders of the Delaware & Hudson Mallet 367

The interior of this gasoline-motor-car on the Union Pacific pre-
sents a most unusual effect, yet a maximum of view of the
outer world 367

A portion of the great double-track Susquehanna River bridge of
the Baltimore & Ohio — a giant among American railroad
bridges 372

" In summer the brakemen have pleasant enough times of rail-
roading" 373

A famous cantilever rapidly disappearing — the substitution of a
new Kentucky river bridge for the old, on the Queen & Cres-
cent system 373

Triple-phase, alternating current locomotive built by the General
Electric Co. for use in the Cascade Tunnel, of the Great
Northern Railway 390

Heavy service, alternating and direct current freight locomotive
built by the Westinghouse Company for the New York, New
Haven & Hartford Railroad 390

The monoroad in practical use for carrying passengers at City
Island, New York 391

The cigar-shaped car of the monoroad 391

A modern railroad freight and passenger terminal: the terminal
of the West Shore Railroad at Weehauken, opposite New
York City 406

High-speed, direct-current passenger locomotive built by the Gen-
eral Electric Company for terminal service of the New York
Central at the Grand Central Station 407

This is what New York Central McCrea did for the men of the
Canadian Pacific up at Kenora 420

A clubhouse built by the Southern Pacific for its men at Roseville,
California 420

xx ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

The B. & O. boys enjoying the Railroad Y. M. C. A., Chicago
Junction 421

" The Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company has organized a brass
band for its employees " 421

A high-speed electric locomotive on the Pennsylvania bringing a
through train out of the tunnel underneath the Hudson River
and into the New York City terminal 434

High-speed, direct-current locomotive built by the Westinghouse
Company for the terminal service of the Pennsylvania Rail-
road, in New York 434

Two triple-phase locomotives of the Great Northern Railway help-
ing a double-header steam train up the grade into the Cas-
cade Tunnel 435

The outer shell of the New Haven's freight locomotive removed,
showing the working parts of the machine 435

The railroad is a monster. His feet are dipped into
the navigable seas, and his many arms reach into the up-
lands. His fingers clutch the treasures of the hills —
coal, iron, timber — all the wealth of Mother Earth.
His busy hands touch the broad prairies of corn, wheat,
fruits — the yearly produce of the land. With ceaseless
activity he brings the raw material that it may be made
into the finished. He centralizes industry. He fills the
ships that sail the seas. He brings the remote town in
quick touch with the busy city. He stimulates life. He
makes life.

His arms stretch through the towns and over the land.
His steel muscles reach across great rivers and deep
valleys, his tireless hands have long since burrowed their
way through God's eternal hills. He is here, there,
everywhere. His great life is part and parcel of the great
life of the nation.

He reaches an arm into an unknown country, and it is
known! Great tracts of land that were untraversed be-
come farms; hillsides yield up their mineral treasure; a
busy town springs into life where there was no habitation
of man a little time before, and the town becomes a city,
Commerce is born. The railroad bids death and stagna-
tion begone. It creates. It reaches forth with its life,
and life is born.

The railroad is life itself!

xxi

THE
MODERN RAILROAD

CHAPTER I

THE RAILROADS AND THEIR BEGINNINGS

Two GREAT GROUPS OF RAILROADS; EAST TO WEST, AND NORTH TO
SOUTH — SOME OF THE GIANT ROADS — CANALS — DEVELOPMENT OF
THE COUNTRY'S NATURAL RESOURCES — RAILROAD PROJECTS — LOCO-
MOTIVES IMPORTED — FIRST LOCOMOTIVE OF AMERICAN MANUFACTURE
— OPPOSITION OF CANAL-OWNERS TO RAILROADS — DEVELOPMENT OF
PENNSYLVANIA'S ANTHRACITE MINES — THE MERGING OF SMALL
LINES INTO SYSTEMS.

PMFTEEN or twenty great railroad systems are the
X/ overland carriers of the United States. Meas-
ured by corporations, known by a vast variety of differing
names, there are many, many more than these. But this
great number is reduced, through common ownership or
through a common purpose in operation, to less than a
score of transportation organisms, each with its own field,
its own purposes, and its own ambitions.

The greater number of these railroads reach from east to
west, and so follow the natural lines of traffic within the
country. Two or three systems — such as the Illinois Cen-
tral and the Delaware & Hudson : — run at variance with
this natural trend, and may be classed as cross-country routes.
A few properties have no long-reaching routes, but derive
their incomes from the transportation business of a com-
paratively small exclusive territory, as the Boston & Maine
in Northern New England, the New Haven in Southern
New England, both of them recently brought under a
more or less direct single control, and the Long Island.
Still other properties find their greatest revenue in bring-

V- i--1 ;:i C-':IIHE- 'MODERN RAILROAD

ing anthracite coal from the Pennsylvania mountains to
the seaboard, and among these are the Lackawanna, the
Lehigh Valley, the Central Railroad of New Jersey, and
the Philadelphia & Reading systems.

The very great railroads of America are the east and
west lines. These break themselves quite naturally into
two divisions — one group east of the Mississippi River,
the other west of that stream. The easterly group aim
to find an eastern terminal in and about New York.
Their western arms reach Chicago and St. Louis, where
the other group of transcontinentals begin.

Giants among these eastern roads are the Pennsylvania
and the New York Central. Of lesser size, but still rank-
ing as great railroads within this territory are the Chesa-
peake & Ohio, the Baltimore & Ohio, and the Erie.
Several of the anthracite roads enjoy through connections
to Chicago and St. Louis, breaking at Buffalo as an inter-
change point, about half way between New York and
Chicago. There are important roads in the South, reach-
ing between Gulf points and New York and taking care
of the traffic of the centres of the section, now rapidly
increasing its industrial importance.

The western group of transcontinental routes are the
giants in point of mileage. The eastern roads, serving
a closely-built country, carry an almost incredible ton-
nage ; but the long, gaunt western lines are reaching into
a country that has its to-morrow still ahead. Of these,
the so-called Harriman lines — the Southern Pacific and
the Union Pacific — occupy the centre of the country,
and reach from the Mississippi to the Pacific. The
Santa Fe and the Gould roads share this territory.

To the north of the Harriman lines, J. J. Hill has his
wonderful group of railroads, the Burlington, the Great
Northern, and the Northern Pacific, together reaching
from Chicago to the north Pacific coast. Still farther
north Canada has her own transcontinental in the Cana-
dian Pacific Railway, another approaching completion in

RAILROADS AND THEIR BEGINNINGS 3

the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. The " Grangers "
(so called from their original purpose as grain carriers),
that occupy the eastern end of this western territory, —
the St. Paul, the Gould lines, the Northwestern and the
Rock Island — are just now showing pertinent interest in
reaching the Pacific, with its great Oriental trade in its
infancy. The first two of these have already laid their
rails over the great slopes of the Rocky Mountains and so
it is that the building of railroads in the United States is
nowhere near a closed book at the present time.

The better to understand the causes that went to the
making of these great systems, it may be well to go back
into the past, to examine the eighty years that the rail-
road has been in the making. These busy years are il-
luminating. They tell with precise accuracy the develop-
ment of American transportation. Yet, as we can devote
to them only a few brief pages, our review of them must
be cursory.

When the Revolution was completed and the United
States of America firmly established as a nation, the
people began to give earnest attention to internal im-
provement and development. Under the control of a
distant and unsympathetic nation there had been very
little encouragement for development; but with an inde-
pendent nation all was very different. The United States
began vaguely to realize their vast inherent wealth.
How to develop that wealth was the surpassing problem.
It became evident from the first that it must depend
almost wholly on transportation facilities. To appreciate
the dimensions of this problem it must be understood that
at the beginning of the last century a barrel of flour
was worth five dollars at Baltimore. It cost four dol-
lars to transport it to that seaport from Wheeling; so it
follows, that flour must be sold at Wheeling at one dollar
a barrel for the Baltimore market. With a better form
of transportation it would cost a dollar a barrel to carry
the flour from Wheeling to Baltimore, making the price

4 THE MODERN RAILROAD

of the commodity at the first of these points under transit
facilities four dollars a barrel. It did not take much of
that sort of reasoning to make the States appreciate from
the very first that a great effort must be made toward
development. That effort, having been made, brought its
own reward.

The very first efforts toward transportation develop-
ment lay in the canal works. Canals had already
proved their success in England and within Continental
Europe, and their introduction into the United States es-
tablished their value from the beginning. Some of the
earliest of these were built in New England before the
Revolution. After the close of that conflict many others
were planned and built. The great enterprise of the
State of New York in planning and building the Erie,
or Grand Canal, as it was at first called, from Albany to
Buffalo — from Atlantic tidewater to the navigable Great
Lakes was a tremendous stimulus to similar enterprises
along the entire seaboard. Canals were built for many
hundreds of miles, and in nearly every case they proved
their worth at the outset. Canals were also projected
for many, many hundreds of additional miles, for the
success of the earliest of these ditches was a great encour-
agement to other investments of the sort, even where
there existed far less necessity for their construction.
Then there was a halt to canal-building for a little time.

The invention of the steamboat just a century ago was
an incentive indirectly to canal growth but there were
other things that halted the minds of farsighted and con-
servative men. Canals were fearfully expensive things;
likewise, they were delicate works, in need of constant
and expensive repairs to keep them in order. Moreover,
there were many winter months in which they were
frozen and useless. It was quite clear to these farsighted
men from the outset that the canal was not the real solu-
tion of the transportation problem upon which rested
the internal development of the United States.

RAILROADS AND THEIR BEGINNINGS 5

They turned their attention to roads. But, while roads
were comparatively easy to maintain and were possible
routes of communication the entire year round, they could
not begin to compare with the canals in point of tonnage
capacity, because of the limitations of the drawing power
of animals. Some visionary souls experimented with sail
wagons, but of course with no practical results.

At this time there came distinct rumors from across
the sea of a new transportation method in England — the
railroad. The English railroads were crude affairs built
to handle the products of the collieries in the northeast
corner of the country, to bring the coal down to the docks.
But there came more rumors — of a young engineer, one
Stephenson, who had perfected some sort of a steam
wagon that would run on rails — a locomotive he called
it, — and there was to be one of these railroads built
from Stockton to Darlington to carry passengers and also
freight. These reports were of vast interest to the ear-
nest men who were trying to solve this perplexing problem
of internal transportation. Some of them, who owned
collieries up in the northeastern portion of Pennsylvania
and who were concerned with the proposition of getting
their product to tidewater, were particularly interested.
These gentlemen were called the Delaware & Hudson
Company, and they had already accomplished much in
building a hundred miles of canal from Honesdale, an
interior town, across a mountainous land to Kingston on
the navigable Hudson River. But the canal, considered
a monumental work in its day, solved only a part of the
problem. There still remained the stiff ridge of the
Moosic Mountain that no canal work might ever possibly
climb.

To the Delaware & Hudson Company, then, the rail-
road proposition was of absorbing interest, of sufficient
interest to warrant it in sending Horatio Allen, one of
the canal engineers, all the way to England for investiga-
tion and report. Allen was filled with the enthusiasm of

6 THE MODERN RAILROAD

youth. He went prepared to look into a new era in trans-
portation.

In the meantime other railroad projects were also un-
der way in the country, short and crude affairs though
they were. As early as 1807 Silas Whitney built a short
line on Beacon Hill, Boston, which is accredited as being
the first American railroad. It was a simple affair with
an inclined plane which was used to handle brick; and it
is said that it was preceded twelve years by an even more
crude tramway, built for the same purpose. Another
early short length of railroad was built by Thomas Leiper
at his quarry in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. It has
its chief interest from the fact that it was designed by
John Thomson, father of J. Edgar Thomson, who be-
came at a much later day president of the Pennsylvania
Railroad Company, and who is known as one of the mas-
ter minds in American transportation progress. Similar
records remain of the existence of a short line near Rich-
mond, Va., built to carry supplies to a powder mill, and
other lines at Bear Creek Furnace, Pennsylvania, and at
Nashua, N. H. But the only one of these roads that
seems to have attained a lasting distinction was one built
by Gridley Bryant in 1826 to carry granite for the
Bunker Hill Monument from the quarries at Quincy,
Mass., to the docks four miles distant. This road was
built of heavy wooden rails attached in a substantial way
to stone sleepers imbedded in the earth. It attained con-
siderable distinction and became of such general interest
that a public house was opened alongside its rails to ac-
commodate sightseers from afar who came to see it.
This railroad continued in service for more than a
quarter of a century.

But the motive power of all these railroads was the
horse; and it was patent from the outset that the horse
had neither the staying nor the hauling powers to make
him a real factor in the railroad situation. So when
Horatio Allen returned to New York from England in

RAILROADS AND THEIR BEGINNINGS 7

January, 1829, with glowing accounts of the success of
the English railroads, he found the progressive men of
the Delaware & Hudson anxiously awaiting an inspec-
tion of the Stourbridge Lion, the first of four locomo-
tives purchased by Allen for importation into the United
States. Three of these machines were from the works
of Foster, Rastrick & Co., of Stourbridge; the fourth was
the creation of Stephenson's master hand. The Lion
arrived in May of that year, and after having been set
up on blocks and fired for the benefit of a group of
scientific men in New York it was shipped by river and
canal to Honesdale.

Allen placed the Stourbridge Lion — which resem-
bled a giant grasshopper with its mass of exterior valves,
and joints — on the crude wooden track of the railroad,
which extended over the mountain to Carbondale, seven-
teen miles distant. A few days later — the ninth of
August, to be exact — he ran the Lion, the first turn-
ing of an engine wheel upon American soil. Details
of that scene have come easily down to to-day. The
track was built of heavy hemlock stringers on which
bars of iron, two and a quarter inches wide and one-half
an inch thick were spiked. The engine weighed seven
tons, instead of three tons, as had been expected. It so
happened that the rails had become slightly warped just
above the terminal of the railroad, where the track
crossed the Lackawaxen Creek on a bending trestle.
Allen had been warned against this trestle and his only
response was to call for passengers upon the initial ride.
No one accepted. There was a precious Pennsylvania
regard shown for the safety of one's neck. So, after
running the engine up and down the coal dock for a few
minutes, Allen waved good-bye to the crowd, opened his
throttle wide open and dashed away from the village
around the abrupt curve and over the trembling trestle
at a rate of ten miles an hour. The crowd which had
expected to see the engine derailed, broke into resound-

8 THE MODERN RAILROAD

ing cheers. The initial trial of a locomotive in the
United States had served to prove its worth.

The career of the Stourbridge Lion was short lived.
It hauled coal cars for a little time at Honesdale;
but it was too big an engine for so slight a railroad, and
it was soon dismantled. Its boiler continued to serve
the Delaware & Hudson Company for many years at its
shops on the hillside above Carbondale. The fate of the
three other imported English locomotives remains a
mystery. They were brought to New York and stored,
eventually to find their way to the scrap heap in some
unknown fashion.

Mr. Allen held no short-lived career. His experi-
ments with the locomotive ranked him as a railroad en-
gineer of the highest class, and before the year 1829
closed he was made chief engineer of what was at first
known as the Charleston & Hamburg Railroad, and
afterwards as the South Carolina Railroad. This was an
ambitious project, designed to connect the old Carolina
seaport with the Savannah River, one hundred and thirty-
six miles distant. It achieved its greatest fame as the
railroad which first operated a locomotive of American
manufacture.

This engine, called the 'Best Friend of Charleston,
was built at the West Point Foundry in New York City
and was shipped to Charleston in the Fall of 1830. It
was a crude affair, and on its trial trip, on November 2,
of that year, it sprung a wheel out of shape and became
derailed. Still it was a beginning; and after the wheels
had been put in good shape it entered into regular serv-
ice, which was more than the Stourbridge Lion had
ever done. It could haul four or five cars with forty or
fifty passengers at a speed of from fifteen to twenty-five
miles an hour, so the Charleston & Hamburg became the
first of our steam railroads with a regular passenger serv-
ice. A little later, a bigger and better engine, also of

RAILROADS AND THEIR BEGINNINGS 9

American manufacture and called the West Point, was
sent down from New York.

Word of these early railroad experiments travelled
across the country as if by some magic predecessor of
the telegraph. Other railroad projects found themselves
under way. Another colliery railroad, a marvellous thing
of planes and gravity descents, was built at Mauch Chunk
in the Lehigh Valley, and this stout old road is in use
to-day as a passenger-carrier.

But it was already seen that the future of the railroad
was not to be limited to quarries or collieries. Up in
New England the railroad fever had taken hold with
force; and in 1831, construction was begun on the Boston
& Lowell Railroad. This line was analogous to the
Manchester & Liverpool, which proved itself from the
beginning a tremendous money-earner. Boston, a seaport
of sixty thousand inhabitants was to be linked with
Lowell, then possessing but six thousand inhabitants.
Still, even in those days, Lowell had developed to a point
that saw fifteen thousand tons of freight and thirty-seven
thousand passengers handled between the two cities over
the Middlesex Canal in 1829.

Then there developed the first of a new sort of an-
tagonism that the railroad was to face. The owners of
the canals were keen-sighted enough to discover a danger-
ous new antagonist in the railroads. They protested to
the Legislature that their charter gave them a monopoly
of the carrying privileges between Boston and Lowell,
and for two years they were able to strangle the ambi-
tions of the proposed railroad. This fight was a type
of other battles that were to follow between the canals
and the railroads. The various lines that reached across
New York State from Albany to Buffalo, paralleling the
Erie Canal, were once prohibited from carrying freight,
for fear that the canal's supremacy as a carrier might be
disturbed. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, struggling to

io THE MODERN RAILROAD

blaze a path toward the West, was for a long time halted
by the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, which proposed to hold
to its monopoly of the valley of the Potomac.

The Boston & Lowell, however, conquered its ob-
stacles and was finally opened to traffic, June 26, 1835.
Within a few months similar lines reaching from Boston
to Worcester on the west, and Providence on the south
had also been opened. By 1839 tne Boston & Wor-
cester had been extended through to Springfield on the
Connecticut River, where it connected with the Western
Railroad, extending over the Berkshires to Greenbush,
opposite Albany. The Providence Road was rapidly
extended through to Stonington, Connecticut. From that
point fast steamboats were operated through to New
York, and a quick line of communication was established
between Boston and New York. Before that time the
fastest route between these two cities had been by steam-
boat to Norwich, then by coach over the post-road up to
Boston. Norwich saw the railroad take away its suprem-
acy in the through traffic. Finally it awoke to its neces-
sity, and arranged to build a railroad to reach the existing
line at Providence.

Between New York and Philadelphia railroad com-
munication came quickly into being, the first route opened
being the Camden & Amboy, which terminated at the
end of a long ferry ride from New York. Even after
more direct routes had been established and the Delaware
crossed at Trenton, it was many years before the trains
ran direct from Jersey City into the heart of the Quaker
City. The cars from New York used to stop at Tacony,
considerably above the city and there was still a steam-
boat ride down the river.

The railroad route to Baltimore was only a partial
one. A steamboat took the traveller to New Castle,
Delaware, where a short pioneer railroad crossed to
French Town, Maryland. After that there was another
long steamboat ride down the flat reaches of the Chesa-

RAILROADS AND THEIR BEGINNINGS n

peake Bay before Baltimore was finally reached. A lit-
tle later there developed an all-rail route between Phila-
delphia and Baltimore although not upon the line of the
present most direct route.

From Philadelphia an early double-track railroad ex-
tended west to Columbia, upon the Susquehanna River.
An early route extended due north from Baltimore to
York, and then to Harrisburg; the parent stem of what
afterwards became the Northern Central. A branch
from this line was extended through to Columbia, and the
New Castle and French Town route lost popularity.

But the Columbia and Philadelphia route was destined
to more important things than merely affording an all-rail
route to Baltimore. At Columbia it connected with the
important Pennsylvania State system of internal canals and
railroads, affording a direct line of communication with
Pittsburgh and the headwaters of the Ohio River.

This was accomplished by use of a canal through to
Hollidaysburgh upon the east slope of the Alleghanies, and
the well-famed Alleghany Portage Railroad over the
summit of those mountains to Johnstown, where another
canal reached down into Pittsburgh and enjoyed unexam-
pled prosperity from 1834 to 1854. The Alleghany
Portage railroad was a solidly constructed affair and its
rails after the fashion of almost all railroads of that day
were laid upon stone sleepers, rows of which may still be
seen where the long-since abandoned railroad found its
path across the mountains. The Portage Railroad was
operated by the most elaborate system of inclined planes
ever put to service within the United States ; one has only
to turn to the pages of Dickens's " American Notes " to
read:

"We left Harrisburg on Friday. On Sunday morning we
arrived at the foot of the mountain, which is crossed by rail-
road. There are ten inclined planes, five ascending and five de-
scending; the carriages are dragged up the former and slowly let
down the latter by means of stationary engines, the comparatively

12 THE MODERN RAILROAD

level spaces between being traversed sometimes by horse and some-
times by engine power, as the case demands. . . . The jour-
ney is very carefully made, however, only two carriages travelling
together; and while proper precaution is taken, is not to be
dreaded for its dangers."

The Portage Railroad was the first to surmount the
Alleghanies although in course of time its elaborate sys-
tem of planes disappeared, as they disappeared elsewhere,
under the development of the locomotive.

An interesting feature of the operation of the eastern
end of this route of communication across the Keystone
State, which was afterwards to develop into the mighty
Pennsylvania Railroad, was the communal nature of the
enterprise. The railroad was regarded as a highway.
Any person was supposedly free to use its rails for the
hauling of his produce in his own cars. The theory of the
Columbia & Philadelphia Railroad was simply that of
an improved turnpike. For ten years after the opening
of the line in 1834, the horse-teams of private freight
haulers alternated upon the tracks between steam locomo-
tives hauling trains. A team of worn-out horses hauling
a four-wheeled car, loaded with farm produce could, and
frequently did keep a passenger train hauled by a steam
locomotive fretting along for hours behind it. In the end
the use of horses was abolished on the Philadelphia &
Columbia — the name of the road had been reversed —
and in 1857 the road was sold by the State to the newly
organized Pennsylvania Railroad Company. The Penn-
sylvania had already built a through rail route from
Columbia over the Alleghanies, and, by the aid of the
wonderful Horse Shoe Curve and the Gallitzin Tunnel,
through to Pittsburgh; it had created its shop-town of
Altoona and abandoned for all time the Alleghany Port-
age Railroad. But before the consolidation came to
pass, two companies had been organized to control freight-
carrying upon the tracks of the Philadelphia & Columbia
Railroad. One of these was the People's line, the other

RAILROADS AND THEIR BEGINNINGS 13

the Union line; and in them was the germ of the private
car lines, which in recent years have become so vexed a
problem to the Interstate Commerce Commission.

There were other short railroad lines in Pennsylvania,
most of them built to bring the products of the rapidly
developing anthracite district down to tidewater. Across
New York State another chain of little railroads, which
were in their turn to become the main stem of one of
America's mightiest systems, was under construction.
The first of this chain to be built was the Mohawk &
Hudson, extending from the capital city of Albany, by
means of a sharply graded plane, to a tableland which
brought it in turn to a descending plane at Schenectady.
At this last city it enjoyed a connection with the Erie
Canal, and for a time the packet-boat men hailed the new
railroad as a great help to their trade. It shortened a
great time-taking bend in the canal, and helped to popu-
larize that waterway just so much as a passenger carrier.

Afterwards the packet-boat men thought differently.
Hardly had the Mohawk & Hudson been opened on
August 9, 1831, by an excursion trip behind the American
built locomotive DeWitt Clinton, when the railroad fever
took hold of New York State as hard as the canal fever
had taken hold of it but a few years before. Rail-
roads were planned everywhere and some of them were
built. Men began to dream of a link of railroads all the
way through from Albany to Buffalo and even the troubles
of a decade, marked with a monumental financial crash,
could not entirely avail to stop railroad-building. The
railroads came, step by step; one railroad from Schenec-
tady to Utica, another from that pent-up city to Syracuse,
still another from Syracuse to Rochester. From Roches-
ter separate railroads led to Tonawanda and Niagara
Falls; to Batavia, Attica, and Buffalo. But the panic of
'37 was a hard blow to ambitious financial schemes, and
it was six years thereafter before the all-rail route from
Albany to Buffalo was a reality.

I4 THE MODERN RAILROAD

Even after that it was a crude sort of affair. At sev-,
eral of the large towns across the State the continuity of
the rails was broken. Utica was jealous of this privi-
lege and defended it on one occasion through a committee
of eminent draymen, 'bus-drivers, and inn-keepers, who
went down to Albany to keep two of the early routes
from making rail connections within her boundaries. At
Rochester there was a similar break, wherein both pas-
sengers and freight had to be transported by horses across
the city from the railroad that led from the east to the
railroad that led towards the west. This matter of carry-
ing passengers across a city has always stimulated local
pride. Along in the fifties Erie, Pa., waged a bitter war
to prevent the Lake Shore Railroad from making its
gauge uniform through that city and abandoning a time-
honored transfer of passengers and freight there.

But there seems to be no stopping of the hand of ul-
timate destiny in railroading. The little weak roads
across the Empire State were first gathered into the power-
ful New York Central, and after a time they were per-
mitted to carry freight, the privilege denied them a long
time because of the power of the Erie Canal. After a
little longer time there was a great bridge built across the
Hudson River at Albany, and soon after the close of the
Civil War shrewd old Commodore Vanderbilt brought
the railroad that had been built up the east shore of the
Hudson, his pet New York & Harlem, and the merged
chain of railroads across the State, into the New York
Central & Hudson River Railroad, his great lifework.
That system spread itself steadily. It built a new short
line from Syracuse to Rochester, another from Batavia
to Buffalo. It absorbed and it consolidated; gradually
it sent its tentacles over the entire imperial strength of
New York State.

CHAPTER II

THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILROAD

ALARM OF CANAL-OWNERS AT THE SUCCESS OF RAILROADS — THE MAK-
ING OF THE BALTIMORE & OHIO — THE "TOM THUMB" ENGINE —
DIFFICULTIES IN CROSSING THE APPALACHIANS — EXTENSION TO PITTS-
BURGH — TROUBLES OF THE ERIE RAILROAD — THIS ROAD THE FIRST TO
USE THE TELEGRAPH — THE PRAIRIES BEGIN TO BE CROSSED BY RAIL-
WAYS— CHICAGO'S FIRST RAILROAD, THE GALENA & CHICAGO UNION
— ILLINOIS CENTRAL— ROCK ISLAND, THE FIRST TO SPAN THE MISSIS-
SIPPI— PROPOSALS TO RUN RAILROADS TO THE PACIFIC — THE CENTRAL
PACIFIC ORGANIZED — IT AND THE UNION PACIFIC MEET — OTHER
PACIFIC ROADS.

ALL the railroad projects already related were timid
projects in the beginning, with hardly a thought of
ultimate greatness. Yet there were men, even in the earli-
est days of railroading, whose minds winged to great
enterprises, whose dreams were empire-wide. Of such
men was the Baltimore & Ohio born.

Baltimore, like Philadelphia, had greedily watched the
success of the Erie Canal upon its completion, and noted
with alarm its possible effects upon its own wharves.
Philadelphia, with the wealth of the great State of Penn-
sylvania behind, had sought to protect herself by the con-
struction of the long links of canal and railroad to Pitts-
burgh, of which you have already read. But Baltimore
had no great State to call to her support. She must look
to herself for strength. Out of her eminent necessity for
self-preservation came men of the strength and the fibre
to meet the emergency. Baltimore might have retreated
from the situation, as some of the New England towns
had retreated from it, and become a somnolent reminis-
cence of a prosperous Colonial seaport. She did nothing
of the sort. Instead she made herself the terminal and

15

1 6 THE MODERN RAILROAD

inspiration of a great railroad, laid the foundations of a
great and lasting growth.

The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was born February 12,
1827. On the evening of that day, a little group of
citizens of the sturdy old Southern metropolis gathered
at the house of George Brown. Mr. Brown together
with Philip E. Thomas, a distinguished merchant and
philanthropist of Baltimore, had been making investiga-
tion into the possibilities of railroads. The fact that the
Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, which was already well ad-
vanced in construction, would have its eastern terminus
at the Potomac River, near Washington, brought no com-
fort to the merchants of Baltimore. Wonder not then,
that the stern old traders of that city assembled to con-
sider " the best means of restoring to the city of Baltimore
that portion of the western trade which has lately been
diverted from it by the introduction of steam navigation
and other causes." From that February day to this the
corporate title of the Baltimore & Ohio has been un-
changed, despite the career of the most extreme vicissi-
tudes — long years of shadows that were almost complete
despair, other years that were brilliant with success.

It was decided at the outset that the commercial su-
premacy of Baltimore rested on her conquest of the Ap-
palachian Mountains, of her reaching by an easy artificial
highway the almost limitless waterways of the West that
linked themselves with the navigable Ohio. But for the
beginning it was agreed that Cumberland, long an impor-
tant point on the well-famed National Highway, and even
then a centre in the coal traffic, was a far enough distant
goal to be worthy of the most ambitious enterprise. In-
deed a long cutting through a hill in the first section of
the road proved a serious financial obstacle to the di-
rectors of the struggling railroad. But these last were
men who persevered. They started to lay their track for
the thirteen miles from Baltimore to Ellicott's Mills on
July 4, 1828. That occasion was honored by an old-

DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILROAD 17

time celebration in which the chief figure was Charles
Carroll, of Carrollton, who laid the first stone of the new
line. After his services were finished he said to a friend :

" I consider this among the most important things of
my life, second only to the signing of the Declaration of
Independence, if even it be second to that." Of that act
President Hadley, of Yale, has written : " One man's
life formed the connecting link between the political rev-
olution of the one century and the industrial revolution
of the other."

No sooner had actual construction begun on the new
line, than the directors found themselves beset by many
difficulties. Their enterprise was then so unusual, that
they went blindly, stumbling ahead in the dark. Even
the construction of the track itself was experimental. It
was first planned to use wooden rails hewn from oak, and
these were to be mounted upon stone sleepers set in a
rock ballast. The money spent in such track was ob-
viously wasted. All such construction had to be torn out
before the traffic was at all sizable, and replaced by iron
rails and wooden sleepers.

But the track was the least of the company's problems.
It had gone ahead to build a railroad with a very vague
conception as to its permanent motive-power. It was
soon seen there, too, that horses were out of the question
for hauling the passengers and freight any considerable
distance. The Baltimore & Ohio Company gravely ex-
perimented at one time with a car which was carried be-
fore the wind by means of mast and sail.

Sturdy old Peter Cooper, of New York, finally solved
that motive-power problem. He had been induced to
buy three thousand acres of land in the outskirts of
Baltimore for speculation. Requests sent by his Balti-
more partners for remittances, for taxes and other
charges, became so frequent that he went to the Maryland
city to investigate. One glance showed him that the
future of his investment rested upon the future of the

1 8 THE MODERN RAILROAD

struggling little railroad which was trying to poke its nose
west from Baltimore. He came to the aid of its directors
in their problem of motive-power.

That problem consisted, for one thing, in the practical
use of a locomotive around curves of 400 feet radius.
Cooper went back to New York, bought an engine with
a single cylinder, rigged it on a car — not larger than a
hand-car, geared it to the wheels of that car and solved
the chief problem of the B. & O. His little engine —
the Tom Thumb — was a primitive enough affair, but it
pointed the way to these Baltimore merchants who were
pinning their entire faith to their railroad project.

Two years after the beginning of the work, " brigades "
of horse-cars were in regular service to Ellicott's Mills;
by the first of December, 1831, trains — steam-drawn —
ran through to Frederick, Md. ; five months later, to a
day, they had reached Point of Rocks on the Potomac,
seventy miles from Baltimore. At Point of Rocks the
road was halted for a long time. The power of the
powerful Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, which had been
great enough to keep State or national grants from
struggling railroads, was raised to defend its claim to a
monopoly of the Potomac Valley, by right of priority.
This right was sustained in the courts, and the railroad
held back two years, until it could buy a compromise.

In 1835, a highly profitable branch was opened to
Washington, while early in the following year, trains were
running through to Harpers Ferry, at the mouth of the
Shenandoah.

During that same Summer of 1835, definite steps were
taken toward the extension of the railroad to Pittsburgh,
as well as Wheeling. But it was three years later before
the struggling company was ready to make a surveying
reconnaissance of these extensions of the road. All
through that time actual construction work was slowly but
quite surely progressing westward from Harpers Ferry,

AN EARLY LOCOMOTIVE BUILT BY WlLLIAM NoRRIS FOR THE
PHILADELPHIA & READING RAILROAD

THE HISTORIC " JOHN BULL " OF THE CAMDEN & AMBOY
RAILROAD — AND ITS TRAIN

A HEAVY-GRADE TYPE OF LOCOMOTIVE BUILT FOR THE BALTIMORE
& OHIO RAILROAD IN 1864. ITS FLARING STACK WAS TYPICAL OF

THOSE YEARS

DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILROAD 19

and on November 5, 1842, trains entered Cumberland,
the one-time objective point of the enterprise.

But beyond Cumberland the road gradually left the
comfortable valley of the Potomac, and these early rail-
road builders found themselves confronted with new
difficulties. To build a railroad across the range of the
Appalachians, with the primitive methods and machinery
of those days was no simple task. For nine years the
construction work dragged. In 1851 the line had only
been finished to Piedmont, twenty-nine miles west of
Cumberland, and its builders were well-nigh discouraged.
Let us quote from the ancient history of the B. & O., from
which we derive these facts, in an exact paragraph:

" In the Fall of 1851, the Board found themselves, almost with-
out warning, in the midst of a financial crisis, with a family of
more than 5,000 laborers and 1,200 horses to be provided for,
while their treasury was rapidly growing weaker. The commer-
cial existence of the city of Baltimore depended on the prompt and
successful prosecution of the unfinished road."

In October, 1852, it was found that there had been
expended for construction west of Cumberland, $7,217,-
732.51. But the road was going ahead once more. Its
Board had dug deep into their pockets and the commer-
cial crisis that hovered over Baltimore was passed. Two
years later the road entered Wheeling, and its corporate
title was no longer a misnomer.

A little later, a more direct line was built to Parkers-
burg, West Virginia, and direct connection entered with
the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad, which reached St. Louis.
The railroad was beginning to feel its way out across the
land.

War between North and South had been declared be-
fore the long delayed extension to Pittsburgh was finished.
In that time a real master-hand had come to the Baltimore
& Ohio. In its early days the names of Philip E.
Thomas, Peter Cooper, Ross Winans, and B. H. Latrobe

20 THE MODERN RAILROAD

were indissolubly linked with this pioneer railroad; in its
second era John W. Garrett gave brilliancy to its adminis-
tration. Even before, as well as throughout the four
trying years of the war, when the road's tracks were being
repeatedly torn up and its bridges burned, Mr. Garrett
was laying down his masterly policy of expansion. It was
a discouraging beginning that confronted him. The two
expensive extensions to the Ohio River had been a se-
vere drain on the company's treasury, traffic was at low
ebb, the great financial panic of 1857 had been hard to
surmount.

But Mr. Garrett was one of the first of American rail-
roaders to see that a trunk-line should start at the seaboard
and end at Chicago or the Mississippi. He pushed his
line to Pittsburgh, to Cleveland, to Sandusky, to Chicago.
It began to reach new and growing traffic centres. The
Baltimore & Ohio entered upon an era of magnificent
prosperity.

The first cloud upon that era came in the early seventies,
when its powerful rival, the Pennsylvania, secured control
of the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore, the B. &
O.'s connecting link on its immensely profitable through
route from New York to Washington. Pennsylvania in-
terests tunnelled for long miles through the rocky founda-
tions of Baltimore, purchased an independent line to Wash-
ington — the Baltimore & Potomac — and the B. & O.
found itself deprived of its best congested traffic district.
For eleven years it was unable to retaliate, though not a
soul believed the Baltimore & Ohio to be other than a
splendid, conservative property. It owned its own sleep-
ing-car company, its own express company, its own tele-
graph company. The name of Garrett was behind it.
Logan G. McPherson says :

" When it was desired to obtain additional funds, bonds were
always issued instead of the capital stock being increased. In-
terest on bonds has always to be met, whereas dividends on stocks
can be passed. It was announced, however, that the retention

DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILROAD 21

of the stock capitalization at less than fifteen millions of dollars
was an evidence of conservatism, as the continuance of semi-annual
dividends of five per cent was thereby permitted."

John W. Garrett died in 1884, and was succeeded in
the presidency by his son Robert Garrett, who announced
himself ready to continue a policy of expansion. The
younger Garrett sought to regain an entrance for his traffic
to New York. To that end he built a line into Philadel-
phia and prepared to strike across the State of New Jersey.
He failed in that end by the failure of one of his confi-
dential aides ; the line that he had counted on for entrance
into the American metropolis was snapped up by his great-
est rival just as his own fingers were almost upon it. Later
the B. & O. was permitted a trackage entrance into Jersey
City, but the terms of that entrance were so stringent as
to mean a practical surrender upon its part.

If Baltimore & Ohio had won that battle, a different
story might have been chronicled. As it was, it stood a
loser in a fearfully expensive fight; the English investors
in the property became investigators — of a sudden the
bottom dropped out of things. The stock went slipping
down as only a mob-chased stock in Wall Street can drop ;
the road that had been the pride of Baltimore became,
for the moment, her shame. It was shown, upon investi-
gation, that the road had long gone upon a slender stand-
ing: millions of dollars that should actually have been
charged to loss had been charged against its capital and
included in the surplus. Ten years after Mr. Garrett's
death the road found itself in even more bitter straits. It
was a laughing stock and a reproach among railroad men.
Its profitable side-properties — the sleeping-car company,
the express company, the telegraph company, — the first
two of which should never be permitted to go outside of
the control of any really great railroad company — had
been sold, one after another, in attempts to save the day of
reckoning. Just before the Chicago Fair the road reached

22 THE MODERN RAILROAD

low-water mark. Its passenger cars were weather-beaten
and ravaged almost beyond hope of paint-shops; it was
sometimes necessary to hold outgoing trains in the famous
old Camden station at Baltimore, until the lamps and
drinking glasses could be secured from some incoming
train. In that day of low-water mark it was actually and
seriously proposed to abandon the passenger service of the
road!

Out of that chaos came the B. & O. of to-day, a substan-
tial and well-managed railroad property. Mr. Garrett
was the first of the railroaders to construct a single prop-
erty from the Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi; John
F. Cowan, L. F. Loree, Oscar G. Murray, and Daniel
Willard have been his successors in the revamping of the
B. & O., eliminating its costly grades, enlarging yard and
terminal facilities, and making the historic road a carrier
of the first class.

The history of the Erie Railroad is hardly less dra-
matic than that of the Baltimore & Ohio; its financial dis-
asters were not owing to the errors that come of crass
stupidity. For the Erie did its good part in the making
of railroad law. Built and operated in the earliest rail-
road days as a single enterprise through the southern tier
of counties of New York State from the Hudson River
to Lake Erie, while the roads to the north that were event-
ually to be welded by Commodore Vanderbilt into the great
New York Central were still quarrelling among them-
selves, it was wrecked time and time again by unscrupulous
schemes of high finance. It was made to wear mill-stones
in the shape of outrageous bonded indebtednesses that
acted as a fearful handicap for many years and prevented
a remarkably well located property from standing to-day
as the peer of the Pennsylvania or of the New York Cen-
tral. The story of these outrages has been told and re-
told — they are integral parts of the financial history of
the country. Suffice it to say here and now that the Erie

DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILROAD 23

has been operated with more or less success by no less than
four struggling corporations ; that it has never come closer
to achieving success than under its present president, F. D.
Underwood; and that no one save those who have stood
close to Underwood has known or appreciated the heritage
of handicap that was given to him to shoulder. For it
has been part of our railroad principle in this country —
a mighty sad part, too — that no matter how villainously
stocks and bonds may have been issued at any time — only
to bring failure swiftly and inevitably, — such bogus paper
has always been protected in reorganization. A railroad
which becomes bankrupt cannot be abandoned. That
has been done only in rare cases. Even the Baltimore
& Ohio, at the end of its rope less than twenty years ago,
was not permitted to abandon its passenger service. It
must pull itself up out of the difficulties, and — in America
at least — it must pull its trashy paper up too, in order
that no holder of such paper may be unprotected. The
paper can no more be abandoned than the right-of-way.
The result is seen in railroads staggering under vast and
questionable capitalization (there is no cleaning of the
slate) ; but the sins of those that have gone before are truly
visited upon the third and the fourth generation, as well
as upon the poor humans who, under such burdens, are
trying to operate a railroad property.

From the beginning the story of Erie has been a story
of difficulties. The original scheme of building a New
York railroad from Piermont-on-Hudson to Dunkirk on
Lake Erie — some 450 miles — seems in the face of the
resources of the State at that time and the engineering
difficulties to be solved, almost quixotic. But the road was
built step by step, section by section, until in May, 1851,
a triumphal first train was operated over its entire length.
President Fillmore was the guest of honor on the train,
but shared attention with Daniel Webster on the trip.
Webster, in order that he might see the country, insisted
on making the entire tedious journey in a rocking-chair,

24 THE MODERN RAILROAD

which was lashed upon a flat-car. Another flat-car was
occupied by a railroad officer who was designated to re-
ceive the flags. C. F. Carter, in his interesting sketch on
the early days of the Erie, writes :

" By a singular coincidence, the ladies at every one of the more
than sixty stations between Piermont and Dunkirk had conceived
the idea that it would be as original as it was appropriate to
present a flag wrought by their own fair hands to the railroad
company when the first train passed through to Lake Erie. As
it would have consumed altogether too much time to make a stop
for each of these flag presentations, the engineer merely slowed
down at three-fourths of the stations long enough to permit the
man on the flat-car to scoop up the banners in his arms, much
like the hands on the old-fashioned Marsh harvesters gathered
up armfuls of grain for binding. At the end of the journey the
Erie Railroad had a collection of flags that would have done credit
to a victorious army."

Mr. Carter has also told how in that same eventful year
1851 the telegraph came into use on the Erie, first of all
railroads: A crude telegraph line, built for commercial
purposes, had been stretched along the eastern end of the
road. People did not think very much of the telegraph in
those days. It was only seven years old ; and when a man
wired another man he wrote his message like a letter, be-
ginning with " Dear sir " and ending with u Yours truly."
The railroads scorned its use. Their trains ran by hard
and fast train rules. Then, as now, north and east-bound
trains held the right-of-way over those south and west-
bound, and the meeting places on single-track lines were
each carefully designated on the time-card. If a train
was waiting for another coming in an opposite direction,
and the train came not after an hour, the first train pro-
ceeded forward " under flag." That meant that a man,
walking with a flag in his hand preceded the train to pro-
tect it. The locomotive and its train of cars necessarily
proceeded at snail's pace.

It was not so very long after that observation-car trip

DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILROAD 25

that Daniel Webster took in the rocking-chair up to Dun-
kirk, before the Erie's superintendent, Charles Minot,
was taking a trip up over the east end of the road. The
train on which he was riding was due to meet a west-
bound express at Turner's. After waiting nearly an hour
there, without seeing the opposing train, Minot was seized
with an inspiration. He telegraphed up the line fourteen
miles to Goshen to hold that west-bound train until he
should arrive there. He then ordered his train-crew to
proceed. They rebelled. Engineer Isaac Lewis had too
much regard for his own precious neck to break the time-
card rules, even under the superintendent's orders. So
finally Minot took charge of the engine himself, while
Lewis cautiously seated himself in the last seat of the last
car and awaited the worst.

It never came, of course. When they reached Goshen,
the agent had received the message, and was prepared to
hold the west-bound train. But it had not arrived, and
Minot by repeating his method was enabled first to reach
Middletown and then Port Jervis before meeting the de-
layed train. By the use of the telegraph he had saved
his own train some three hours in running time; and it
was not long thereafter until the operation of trains by tele-
graph Order became standard on the Erie and all others of
the early railroads.

At the beginning, one of the promoters of the Erie an-
nounced his belief that the road would eventually earn, by
freight alone, " some two hundred thousand dollars in a
year," and his neighbors laughed at him for his extrava-
gant promise. Yet, in the first six months' operation of
the road the receipts — mostly from freight — were $i,-
755.285.

To tell the full story of Erie would require a sizable
book. It has not yet been told. It is a story of intrigue
and deceit, of trickery and of scheming; the story of Dan-
iel Drew and Jim Fisk and Jay Gould; the monumental
tragedy of the wrecking of a great railroad property —

26 THE MODERN RAILROAD

a property with possibilities that probably will never now
be realized. The present management of the road has
labored valiantly and well. It has seen the future of Erie
as a great freighting road, has carefully laid its lines for
the full development of the property as a carrier of goods,
rather than of through passengers.

The history of the railroad divides itself sharply into
epochs. In the beginning, the different roads — such as
Erie, Pennsylvania, Baltimore & Ohio, and New York
Central — were being pushed west over the Alleghany
Mountains to the Great Lakes and the Ohio River.
There followed an era where the railroads were reach-
ing Chicago and St. Louis. That was the era which saw
the weird railroads of the Middle West, the strange stock-
watering companies that made the very names of Ohio,
Michigan, and Illinois financial bywords in the late forties
and the early fifties. The first railroad in Ohio was the
old Mad River & Lake Erie, which was built in 1835,
from Sandusky, south about a hundred miles to Columbus,
the State capital. The pioneer engine on the road, the
Sandusky, was the first locomotive ever equipped with
a whistle.

The first railroad of the prairies was the Northern
Cross railroad — now a part of the Wabash — extend-
ing from Merodosia on the Illinois River, to Springfield.
It was started in 1837, and late in the following fall a
locomotive built by Rogers, Grosvenor, and Ketchum of
Paterson, N. J., — the founders of a famous locomotive
works — was landed from a packet-steamer at Merodosia.
Then was the first puff of a locomotive heard upon the
prairies of the great West. A contemporary account says :

' The little locomotive had no whistle, no spark-arrester, no
cow-catcher, and the cab was open to the sky. Its speed was
about six miles an hour, and where the railroad and the highway
lay parallel to each other there was frequently a trial of speed
between the locomotive with its ' pleasure cars ' and the stage-

DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILROAD 27

coaches. Sometimes the stage-coaches came in ahead. Six inches
of snow were sufficient to blockade the trains drawn by this Amer-
ican engine."

In 1846 James M. Forbes was building the Michigan
Central west from Detroit, 145 miles to Kalamazoo. A
little later it was extended to the east shore of Lake Michi-
gan, at New Buffalo; eventually it reached Chicago with
its own rails. While the Michigan Central was pushing
its rails, its chief competitor to the south, the Michigan
Southern, — afterwards a part of the Lake Shore, and
eventually united with its traditional rival in the extended
New York Central system — was also pushing toward Chi-
cago as a goal. Both roads reached Chicago in 1852.
But railroad building was slow work. The country ex-
panded too quickly after the golden promises of the rail-
road promoters. Money came too easily; then there
would come a fearful financial time, and the reputable
railroad enterprises would be halted beside the " fly-by-
night " schemes. As late as 1850, Ohio had only the
single trunk-line connecting Sandusky and Cincinnati; but
the railroad to Cleveland that was afterwards the main
stem of the Big Four and the trunk-line connection east
to the Baltimore & Ohio, were nearing completion.

Chicago's first railroad was the Galena & Chicago
Union, and it was the cornerstone of the great Chicago
and Northwestern system, one of the really great railroads
of America. The Galena & Chicago Union was incor-
porated in 1836, but not until eleven years later was work
begun in laying tracks, for a short ten-mile stretch from the
Chicago River to Des Plaines ; and its first locomotive, the
Pioneer, had been bought second-hand from the Buffalo
& Attica Railroad, away east in New York State. The
rails were second-hand, too, of the strap variety, which the
Western railroads were already discarding in favor of
solid rails. But it was a railroad, and it was with a deal

28 THE MODERN RAILROAD

of pride that John B. Turner, its president, used to ascend
to an observatory on the second floor of the old Halsted
Street depot to sight with a telescope the smoke of his
morning train coming across the prairie. The Chicago
and Northwestern, itself, was organized in 1859. For a
time it was so desperately poor that it could not pay the
interest on its bonds, and there was a time when its officers
had to meet the pay-roll out of their own pockets; but it
succeeded in absorbing about six hundred miles of railroad
at the beginning. In another decade the Union Pacific
Railroad, first uniting the Far West with the populous
Middle and Eastern States, was completed. The Chicago
and Northwestern formed one of the most direct links be-
tween the Lakes and the eastern terminal of the Union
Pacific at Council Bluffs. The business that came to it
because of that linking was the first strong impulse that
led to the ultimate greatness of the Northwestern.

The distinctive mid-Western road was and always has
been the Illinois Central. Originally incorporated in
1836, it was nearly twenty years later when, through
substantial aid from the State whose name it bears, con-
struction actually began. The first track was laid from
Chicago to Calumet to give an entrance to the Michi-
gan Central in its heart-breaking race to the Western me-
tropolis against the Michigan Southern. The main line
through to Cairo was pushed forward rapidly, however,
and was ready for traffic at the end of 1855. A large
number of Kentucky slaves promptly showed their appre-
ciation of the new railroad enterprise by using it to effect
their escape to the North.

Of course with the railroad pushing its way westward
all the while (the Rock Island in April, 1859, was the first
to span the Mississippi with a bridge), it was only a ques-
tion of time when some adventurous soul should seek to
reach the Pacific coast. Indeed it was away back in 1832,
while there was still less than a hundred miles of track

DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILROAD 29

in the United States, that Judge Dexter of Ann Arbor,
Michigan, proposed a railroad through to the Pacific
Ocean, through thousands of miles of untrodden forest.
Six years later, a Welsh engineer, John Plumbe, held a con-
vention at Dubuque, Iowa, for the same purpose. The
idea would not down. Hardly had Plumbe and his con-
vention disappeared from the public notice when Asa
Whitney, a New York merchant of considerable reputa-
tion, began to agitate the Pacific railroad. Whitney was a
good deal of a theorist and a dreamer; but he was a
shrewd publicity man, and he held widely attended meet-
ings for the propagation of his idea, in all the Eastern
cities. Eventually, like Judge Dexter and John Plumbe,
he was doomed to disappointment. After Whitney had
died broken-hearted and bankrupt because of his devotion
to an idea, came Josiah Perham, of Boston. Josiah Per-
ham was the Raymond & Whitcomb of the fifties. He be-
gan by organizing excursions for New England folk to
come to Boston to see the Boston Museum and the pan-
oramas, which were the gay diversion of that day. In
one year he brought two hundred thousand folk into that
sacred Massachusetts town, and he began to be rated as a
rich man. He absorbed the Pacific railroad idea and
freely spent his money in its propagation. He organized
the People's Pacific Railroad, — and a part of his scheme
formed the foundation of the Northern Pacific. Perham,
like the others, spent his money and failed to see the
fruition of his plan. There seemed to be something ill-
fated about that plan of a railroad to the Pacific. Even
the citizens of St. Louis, who had gathered on the Fourth
of July, 1851, to see soil broken for the first real trans-
continental railroad, found that it could only manage to
reach Kansas City by 1856. That particular railroad -
the Missouri Pacific — through its western connection, the
Western Pacific, only succeeded in reaching the coast
within the past year.

When Theodore D. Judah brought himself to the seem-

30 THE MODERN RAILROAD

ingly hopeless task of trying to build a Pacific railroad,
he brought with him all the enthusiasm of Asa Whitney,
and with it the experience of a trained railroad engineer.
The thing was beginning to take shape. The men, like
Whitney and Perham, who had been before Congress
at session after session, finally brought that august body,
even when the nation stood on the verge of civil war, into
making an appropriation for a survey for a scheme, which
nine out of ten men regarded as a mere visionary dream.
Theodore D. Judah, filled with enthusiasm for his mighty
plan, went West that he might roughly plan the location
of the railroad. He went to San Francisco and he went
to Sacramento, where the little twenty-two-mile Sacra-
mento Valley Railroad had been running since 1856. The
Californians listened to him with interest, but they prof-
fered him no financial aid. Then Judah went up into the
high passes of the Sierras, through which a railroad to the
east would certainly have to reach, to find a crossing for
the line in which he believed so earnestly. He found it
— making a route that would save 148 miles and $13,-
500,000 over that proposed by the Government authori-
ties. When he went back to Sacramento, to the hardware
store of his old friends, Huntington & Hopkins, in K
Street, it was with a rough profile of that pass in his pocket.
What Judah said to Collis P. Huntington and Mark Hop-
kins has never been known, but certain it is that in a little
time they were sending for the three other capitalists of
Sacramento — the Crocker brothers, who had a dry-goods
store down the street, and Leland Stanford, a wholesale
grocer. Out of the efforts of those six men the Central
Pacific Railroad was organized with a capital of $125,-
ooo. Work began on the new line at Sacramento on the
first day of 1863, while California shook with laughter at
the idea of a parcel of country store-keepers building a
railroad across the crest of the Sierras.

How they built their railroad successfully and amassed

DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILROAD 31

six really great American fortunes is all history now.
Sufficient is it that they turned a deaf ear to the ridicule
(the project was considered so visionary that bankers dared
not subscribe to the stock of the road for fear of injuring
their credit) , found their route through the mountains just
as Judah had promised, brought their materials around
the Horn, imported ten thousand Chinese laborers, hurled
thousands of tons of solid rock down among the pines by
a single charge of nitro-glycerine, bolted their snow-sheds
to the mountains, and filled up or bridged hundreds of
chasms and valleys. ' Two thousand feet of granite
barred the way upon the mountain-top where eagles were
at home. The Chinese wall was a toy beside it. It could
neither be surmounted nor doubled; and so they tunnelled
what looks like a bank swallow's hole from a thousand
feet below. Powder enough was expended in persuad-
ing the iron crags and cliffs to be a thoroughfare, to fight
half the battles of the Revolution."

While the Central Pacific was being built east from the
coast, the Union Pacific was pushing its rails west from the
Missouri River to meet it. A Federal subsidy was paid to
each road for each mile of transcontinental track it laid,
and the result was the Credit Mobilier, the worst financial
blot upon the pages of American government transactions.
Early in the Spring of 1868 the companies were on equal
terms in this great game of subsidy getting. Each finally
had ample funds and each was about 530 miles away
from the Great Salt Lake. So in 1868 a construction
campaign began that has never been approached in the his-
tory of railroad building. Twenty-five thousand men, and
6,000 teams, together with whole brigades of locomotives
and work-trains, were engaged in the work; in a single day
ten miles of track was laid and that was a world-beating
record. The result of such speed was that the two rail-
roads met, May 9, 1869. Leland Stanford, who was
ridiculed when he first turned earth for the Central Pacific

32 THE MODERN RAILROAD

at Sacramento six years before, drove the last spike, and
was for that moment the central figure in an attention that
was world-wide.

After the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific came the
Southern Pacific, and after them came Collis P. Hunting-
ton binding them into a tight single railroad. But close
on the heels of the Southern Pacific, and right into its own
territory, reached the Santa Fe, while to the north, first
the Northern Pacific and then the Great Northern was built
from the lake country straight to Puget Sound. On a
November day in 1885 the last spike was driven in the
great transcontinental Canadian Pacific, the first and so far
the only railroad to lay its rails from the North Atlantic
to the Pacific. Within a year the Western Pacific — the
westernmost of the chain of Gould roads — has begun to
run its through trains to the Golden Gate. As this vol-
ume goes to press finishing touches are being placed upon
the Puget Sound extension of the Chicago, Milwaukee &
St. Paul, probably the last transcontinental to be stretched
across these United States for a number of years to come.
Far to the north, the Grand Trunk Pacific is finding its
way across the wilderness of the Canadian Rockies, creat-
ing a great city — Prince Rupert — at its western ter-
minal. It should be ready for its through traffic within
the next three years.

This then, in brief, is the history of American railroad-
ing — an eighty-year struggle from East to West. The
railroad has passed through many vicissitudes; days of
wild-cat financing, and days when men refused to invest
their money under any inducements whatsoever. It has
been assailed by legislatures and by Congress; it has been
scourged because of the so-called " pooling agreements,"
and it has cut its own strong arms by building foolish com-
peting lines. But it has survived masterfully, while the
highroads have become grass-grown, and the once proud

DEVELOPMENT OF THE RAILROAD 33

canals have fallen into decay. Railroading is to-day in
the full flush of successful existence. Science has been
brought to each of the infinite details of the business; and
for the first time the country sees practically every line,
large or small, honestly earning its way. The railroad
receiver has all but passed into history.

CHAPTER III

THE BUILDING OF A RAILROAD

COST OF A SINGLE-TRACK ROAD — FINANCING — SECURING A CHARTER —
SURVEY- WORK AND ITS DANGERS — GRADES — CONSTRUCTION — TRACK-
LAYING.

THE railroad has its beginning in the inspiration and
in the imagination of men. Perchance a great
tract of country, rich in possibilities, stands undeveloped
for lack of transportation facilities. The living arm of
the railroad will bring to it both strength and growth.
It will bring to it the materials, the men, and the ma-
chinery needed for its development. It will take from
it its products seeking markets in communities already
established.

In that way the first railroads began, reaching their arms
carefully in from the Atlantic and the navigable rivers
and bays that emptied into it. In the beginning there
was hardly any inland country. All the important towns
were spread along the sea-coast or along those same navi-
gable tributaries, and it was sorry shrift for any commu-
nity that did not possess a wharf to which vessels of con-
siderable tonnage might attain. Where such communities
did not possess natural water-ways, they sought to obtain
artificial ones ; and the result was the extraordinary impetus
that was given to the building of canals during the first
half of the nineteenth century — a page of American in-
dustrial history that has been told in another chapter.

It was found quite impossible to handle bulky freight
economically by wagon, no matter how romantic the turn-
pike might be for passenger traffic in the old-time coaches.
The canal was so much better as a carrier that it was

34

THE BUILDING OF A RAILROAD 35

hailed with acclaim, and waxed powerful. In the height
of its power it laughed at the puny efforts of the railroad,
and then, as you have seen, sought by every possible
means to throttle the growth of the steel highway.
Within eighty years it was powerless, and the railroad
was conqueror. There were hundreds of miles of aban-
doned canal within the country, many of them being con-
verted into roadbeds of railroads ; and the water-highway,
with its slow transit and its utter helplessness during the
frozen months of the year, was not able to exist except
where quantities of the coarsest sort of freight were to be
moved.

Without railroads, the United States to-day would, in
all probability, not be radically different from the United
States of a hundred years ago. All the large towns and
cities would still be clustered upon the coast and waterways,
and back of them would still rest many, many square miles
of undeveloped country; the nation would have remained
a sprawling, helpless thing, weakened by its very size,
and subject both to internal conflict and to attacks of for-
eign invaders. It has been repeatedly said that if there had
been a through railroad development in the South during
the fifties, there would have been no Civil War. France
for five hundred years before the signing of our Declara-
tion, was a civilized and progressive nation. Yet century
after century passed without her inland towns showing
material change ; and her seaports, lacking the impetus of
interior growth, remained quiescent. Such a metropolis
as Marseilles is to-day, became possible only when the
railroad made this seaport the south gate of a mightily
developing nation.

Let us assume that we are about to build a railroad. If
we are going to strike our road in from some existing line
or some accessible port into virgin country, we may hope
for land or money grants from the State, county, town,
or city Government. That is a faint hope, however, in

36 THE MODERN RAILROAD

these piping days of the twentieth century. So much scan-
dal once attached itself to these grants that they have be-
come all but obsolete. We shall have to fall back upon
the individual enterprise and help of the persons who are
to benefit by the coming of the railroad. They may be
folk who simply regard our project as a good investment,
and place their money in it with hopes of a fair return.

Even if we are not going into virgin territory to give
whole townships and counties their first sight of the loco-
motive, but are going to strike into a community already
provided with railroad facilities but seemingly offering fair
opportunity for profit in a competitive traffic, we shall find
capital ready to stand back of us. A railroad will cost
much money, the mere cost of single-track construction gen-
erally running far in excess of $35,000 a mile; and it
should have resources, particularly in a highly competitive
territory, to enable it to carry on a losing fight at the first.

For the money it receives it will issue securities, upon
incorporation and legal organization, almost invariably in
the form of capital stock and of mortgage-bonds. The
stock will probably be held by the men who wish to control
the construction and the operation of the line; the bonds
will be issued to those persons who invest their money in
it, either for profit or as an aid to the community it seeks to
enter. The bonds are, in almost all cases, the preferable
security. They pay a guaranteed interest at a certain rate,
and at the end of a designated term of years they are re-
deemable at face value, in cash or in the capital stock of
the company. There are other forms of loan obligations
which the railroad issues — debenture bonds, second-mort-
gage bonds, short-term notes, and the like. To enter upon
a description of these would mean a detour into the de-
vious highways and byways of railroad finance — an excur-
sion which we have no desire to make in this book.

In building our line we will issue as few bonds in pro-
portion to our stock as will make our company fairly stable
in organization, and its proposition attractive to investors.

THE BUILDING OF A RAILROAD 37

For we shall have to pay our interest coupons upon the
bonds from the beginning. We can begin even moderate
dividends upon our stock after our enterprise has entered
upon fair sailing. The all-important initial problem of
financing having been at least partly settled, we will go
before the Legislature and secure a charter for our road.
In these modern days we shall probably have also to make
application to some State railroad or public utility com-
mission. It will consider our case with great care, grant-
ing hearings so that we may state our plans, and that
folk living in the territory which we are about to tap may
urge the necessity of our coming, and that rival railroads
or other opponents may state their objections. After the
entire evidence has been sifted down and weighed in
truly judicial fashion, we may hope for word to " go
ahead," from the official commission, which, though it as-
sumes none of our risk of loss in projecting the line, will
gratuitously assume many of the details of its manage-
ment.

Perhaps the politicians will poke their noses into our
plan; they sometimes do. If we have plenty of capital
behind us ; if it becomes rumored that the P — or the N —
or the X — , one of the big existing properties, is back of
us, or some " big Wall Street fellow " is guiding our
bonds, we can almost confidently expect their interference.
After that it becomes a matter of diplomacy — and may
the best man win!

Let us assume that some of these big obstacles have al-
ready been passed, that the politicians have been placed at
arm's length, that the money needed is in sight — we are
ready to begin the construction of our line. The location
is the thing that next vexes us. A few errors in the plac-
ing of our line may spell failure for the whole enterprise.
Obviously, these errors will be of the sort that admit of no
easy correction.

If our line is to link two important traffic centres and

3 8 THE MODERN RAILROAD

is to make a specialty of through traffic it will have to be
very much of a town that will bend the straightness of our
route. If, on the other hand, the line is to pick up its traf-
fic from the territory it traverses we can afford to neglect
no place of possibilities. We must make concessions, even
if we make many twists and turns and climb steep grades ;
we cannot afford to pass business by. Perhaps we may
even have to worm our way into the hearts of towns al-
ready grown and closely built, and this will be expensive
work. But it will be worth every cent of that expense to
go after competitive business.

We roughly outline our route, and the engineers get
their camping duds ready, particularly in these days when
new railroads almost invariably go into a new country.
Their first trip over the route will be known as the recon-
naissance. On it they will make rough plotting of the ter-
ritory through which the new line is to place its rails.
Our engineers are experienced. They survey the country
with practised eyes. The line must go on this side of
that ridge, because of the prevailing winds and their in-
fluence upon snowdrifts (it costs a mint of money to run
ploughs through a long winter) , and on the other side of
the next ridge, because the other side has easily worked
loam, and this side heavy rock. There must be passes
through hills and through mountains to be selected now and
then, and all the while the engineer must bear in mind
that the amount of his excavation should very nearly bal-
ance the amount of embankment-fill. Bridges are to be
avoided and tunnels must come only in case of absolute
necessity.

There will be several of these reconnaissances and from
them the engineers who are to build the line, and the men
who are to own and operate it, will finally pick a route
close to what will be the permanent way.

Then the real survey-work begins. The engineers di-
vide the line, if it is of any great length, and the several di-
visions prosecute their work simultaneously. Each sur-

§>

THE MAKING OF AN EMBANKMENT BY DUMP-TRAIN

" SMALL TEMPORARY RAILROADS PEOPLED WITH HORDES
OF RESTLESS ENGINES "

THE BUILDING OF A RAILROAD 39

veying party consists of a front Bag-man, who is a captain
and commands a brigade of axe-men in their work of cut-
ting away trees and bushes ; the transit-man, who makes his
record of distances and angles and commands his brigade
of chain-men and flag-men; and the leveller, who studies
contour all the while, and supervisors, rod-men and more
axe-men. Topographers are carried, their big drawing
boards being strapped with the camp equipment; and a
good cook is a big detail not likely to be overlooked.

In soft and rolling country this is a form of camp life
that turns back the scoffer: busy summer days and indo-
lent summer nights around the camp-fire, pipes drawing
well and plans being set for the morrow's work. An-
other summer all this will be changed. The resistless
path of the railroad will be stepped through here, the
group of nodding pines will be gone, for a culvert will
span the creek at this very point.

Sometimes the work of these parties becomes intense and
dramatic. The chief, lowered into a deep and rocky river
canon, is making rough notes and sketches, following the
character of the rock formation, and dreaming the great
dreams that all great engineers, great architects, great cre-
ators must dream perforce. He is dreaming of the day
when, a year or two hence, the railroad's path shall have
crowded itself into this impasse, and when the folk who
dine luxuriously in the showy cars will fret because
of the curve that spills their soup, and who never know of
the man who was slipped down over a six-hundred-foot
cliff in order that the railroad might find its way.

It is then that the surveying party begins to have its
thrills. Perhaps to put that line through the canon the
party will have to descend the river in canoes. If the
river be too rough, then there is the alternative of being
lowered over the cliffsides. Talk of your dangers of Al-
pine climbing! The engineers who plan and build rail-
roads through any mountainous country miss not a single
one of them. Everywhere the lines must find a foothold.

40 THE MODERN RAILROAD

This is the proposition that admits of but one answer —
solution. Sometimes the men who follow the chief in
the deep river canons, the men with heavy instruments to
carry and to operate — transits, levels, and the like —
must have lines of logs strung together for their precarious
foothold as they work. Sometimes the foothold is lost;
the rope that lowers the engineer down over the cliffside
snaps, and the folk in the cheerful dining-room do not
know of the graves that are dug beside the railroad's re-
sistless path.

It is all new and wonderful, blazing this path for civili-
zation; sometimes it is even accidental. An engineer,
baffled to find a crossing over the Rockies for a trans-
continental route saw an eagle disappear through a cleft
in the hills that his eye had not before detected. He
followed the course of the eagle; to-day the rails of the
transcontinental reach through that cleft, and the time-
table shows it as Eagle Pass.

Possibly there are still alternative routes when the sur-
veyers return in the fall and begin to make their finished
drawings. Final choices must now be made, and land-
maps that show the property that the railroad will have to
acquire, prepared. The details, of infinite number, are
being worked out with infinite care.

The great problem of all is the problem of grades;
in a mountainous stretch of line this is almost the entire
problem. Obviously a perfect stretch of railroad would
be straight and without grades. The railroad that comes
nearest that practically impossible standard comes nearest
to perfection. But as it comes near this perfection, the cost
of construction multiplies many times. Most new lines
must feel their way carefully at the outset. Moreover it
is not an impossible thing to reconstruct it after years of
affluence — of which more in another chapter.

A three-per-cent grade is almost the extreme limit for

THE BUILDING OF A RAILROAD 41

anything like a profitable operation; even a two-per-cent
grade is one in which the operating people look forward
to reconstruction and elimination. Yet there are short
lengths of line up in the mining camps of Colorado,
where grades of more than four per cent are operated; and
it is a matter of railroad history that away back in 1852,
when the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was being pushed
through toward Parkersburg, and the great Kingwood
tunnel was being dug, B. H. Latrobe, the chief engineer
of the company, built and successfully operated a tempo-
rary line over the divide at a grade of ten per cent — 528
feet to the mile. A locomotive which weighed 28 tons
on its driving-wheels carried a single passenger car, weigh-
ing 15 tons, in safety and in regular operation over this
stupendous grade for more than six months. The ascent
was made by means of zigzag tracks on the so-called
switchback principle. That scheme succeeded earlier
planes operated by endless chains; an instance of which is
the quite famous road of Mauch Chunk, originally op-
erated for coal, and now a side scenic trip for passengers.
Other planes of this sort, you will remember, were in opera-
tion at Albany and Schenectady on the old Mohawk &
Hudson route, now a part of the New York Central lines;
but all of them involved a change of passengers and freight
to and from their cars, and the zigzag switchback was con-
sidered quite an advance in its day. Two of these an-
cient switchbacks are still in regular use for passengers and
freight — one at Honesdale, Pa., and the other at Ithaca,
N.Y.

The matter of grades being settled, and with it as a cor-
rollary the question of minor curves, minor details next
claim attention. Perhaps the water supply along the new
line is defective. Then arrangements must be made for
impounding, and perhaps suitable dams and waterworks
will be built for this purpose. The water must be soft,
to protect the locomotive boilers; if hard, an apparatus

42 THE MODERN RAILROAD

is erected for the softening process. Grade crossings are
to be avoided, highway crossings being built, wherever
possible, over or under the railroad.

A railroad crossing another railroad at grade is an abom-
ination not to be permitted nowadays. The universal use
of the air-brake has permitted a reduction of the " head-
room,"— the necessary clearance between the rail and
overhead obstruction — from 20 feet to 14 feet. The
old " head-room " was necessary to protect the brakeman
who worked atop of the box-cars. This reduction of six
feet in clearance was a matter of infinite relief to en-
gineers, particularly in the bridging of one railroad over
another.

The entire problem of bridges is so intricate a phase
of American railroad construction as to demand attention
in a subsequent chapter. In actual railroad practice it is
apt to demand a separate branch of engineering skill, both
in construction and in maintenance. We turn our atten-
tion back to the main problem of the building of our
railroad.

When all plans are finished, contracts remain to be di-
vided and sub-divided ; for it would be a brave contractor,
indeed, who in these days would consent to essay himself,
any considerable length of railroad line. In fact, in recent
work of heavy nature, the price is almost invariably placed
at an indefinite figure, a certain definite percentage of profit
being allowed the contractor on each cubic yard of rock
or soil. In such a case the contractor's business becomes
far less a game of chance; he is, in effect, the railroad's
agent supervising its construction at a certain set stipend.

Let us say that the construction on our railroad begins
in the early spring. As a matter of real fact it would
not be halted long because of adverse weather conditions.
Even up in the frozen and uninhabitable wilds of the
Canadian Northwest, work has been prosecuted on the
new Grand Trunk Pacific throughout the entire twelve

THE BUILDING OF A RAILROAD 43

months. But in summer the construction gangs rejoice.
The great proposition of bringing mile after mile of future
railroad to sub-grade — the level upon which the cross-
ties are to be set — fairly sweeps forward under the ge-
nial warmth of the sun. The construction is under the su-
pervision of competent engineers, who are, of course, under
the direct supervision of the railroad's own organization.
Every six to twelve or fifteen miles of new line is divided
into sections, better known as residencies, for each is under
the eye of its own resident engineer. He reports to the
construction engineer, who in turn reports to the chief en-
gineer of the railroad, an officer who reports to no less per-
son than the president of the company.

This great force — for each engineer has gathered
about him a competent staff of young men as expert with
compass, with level, and with transit as were the men who
first projected the line — is in the field as quickly as the
contractor. They are to see him bring the line to sub-
grade; to see him place bridges and culverts, bisect
high hills with cuttings, bore tunnels through even higher
hills and mountains, span deep valleys with great em-
bankments. To facilitate quick construction the residen-
cies are made numerous; work begins at as many initial
points as possible. These points, of course, are situated,
where possible, close to water communication or existing
railroad lines, in order that material may be brought with
the least possible delay and expense.

Of course, if the country has a sharp contour, the or-
dinary difficulties of line-construction multiply very rapidly.
The great cuttings through the hills may have to be carved
out of resisting rock, a work that is carried on through
many levels, known to the engineers as ledges or as
benches. If there are high hills to be notched there will
probably be great hollows where the circumstances do not
justify carrying the line on bridge or trestle. In these
cases come the fills, or embankments. We have already

44 THE MODERN RAILROAD

shown how the locating engineer in the first instance has
tried to plan his line so that the earth or rock from his
cutting will be as nearly as possible sufficient to form the
near-by embankments. Sometimes it is not, and then
the resident engineers must locate borrow-pits, where the
hungry demand of the railroad for dirt will cause a great
hollow to show itself on the face of the earth. The bor-
row-pit must be carefully located — convenient of access,
far enough from the track not to be a danger spot to it.
This is one of the infinity of problems that come to the
construction engineer.

For these big jobs laborers' camps will be established
close to them ; and small temporary railroads peopled with
hordes of restless dummy-engines and forcing their narrow-
gauged rails here and there and everywhere, will be busy
for long weeks and months. There will not be much
hand-cutting in the ledges. Steam shovels, mounted like
locomotives upon the rails, and pushing forward all the
while, will fairly eat out the hillside. One of these will
catch up in a single dip of his giant arm more than a wagon
load of soft earth or of rock that has been blasted
apart for his coming.

To make the fills the engineers must often build rough
wooden trestles out of the permanent level of the line.
The dummy-engines, with their trails of dump-cars, coming
from the back of the steam shovels in the cutting, or
from the nearest borrow-pit, will hardly seem in a single
day to make an appreciable effect upon the fill. But the
days and weeks together count, and the dumping multi-
plies until the rough trestle has completely disappeared,
and the railroad has a firm and permanent path across the
edge of the dizzy embankment. And these embankments
can be made truly dizzy. The passenger going west from
Omaha on the new Lane cut-off of the Union, Pacific finds
his path for almost twenty miles through deep cuttings of
the crests of the rolling Nebraska hills, across the edge
of the long fills over wide valleys. The Lackawanna rail-

CUTTING A PATH FOR THE RAILROAD THROUGH THE CREST OF THE

HIGH HILLS

A GIANT FILL IN THE MAKING

THE FINISHING TOUCHES TO THE TRACK

THIS MACHINE CAN LAY A MILE OF TRACK A DAY

THE BUILDING OF A RAILROAD 45

road building a great cut-off on its main line where it passes
through New Jersey has just finished the largest railroad
embankment ever built — an earthen structure for two
tracks, three miles long and seventy-five to one hundred
and ten feet in height.

As the line goes forward, the track follows. The
new railroad has probably popularized itself from the out-
set by hiring the near-by farmers and their teams to grade
the line through their localities, particularly where an al-
most level country makes the grading a slight matter.
Sometimes in level country, grading machines, drawn by
horses, or by traction engines, have been used to advan-
tage. These machines are equipped with ploughs which
loosen the soil and place it on conveyor belts. Material
can be deposited twenty-two feet away from the line, and a
four-foot excavation can be made by these machines with
ease.

But the laying of the track — the line having been fin-
ished at sub-grade with a top width of from 14 to 20
feet for each standard gauge track to be laid — the line
begins to assume the appearance of a real railroad. Upon
the first stretches of completed track, locomotives and
cars employed in construction service begin to operate. As
the track grows, their field of operation increases. Then
comes the day when the track sections begin to be joined;
the railroad is beginning to be a real pathway of steel.

To build this pathway is comparatively a simple mat-
ter, once the sub-grade is finished. A mile a day is not
too much for any confident contractor to expect of his con-
struction gangs. There was that time, back in '69, when
a world's record of ten miles of track laid in a single day
was established on the Central Pacific. For that mile of
standard track the contractor will need 3,168 ties — eight
carloads; 352 rails — five carloads; and a carload of angle
irons, bolts, and spikes, as fasteners.

The track-layers are as proud of their profession as any
man might be of his. Their skill is a wondrous thing.

46 THE MODERN RAILROAD

Two men who follow the wake of a wagon roughly place
the ties as fast as they are dropped upon the right-of-way.
Another man aligns them with a line that has been strung
by one of the young engineers, a fourth with a notched
board, marks the location of one rail. That rail — the
line side — follows close to the location marks. It is
roughly banded and lightly fastened in place. The
other rail — the gauge side — quickly follows. The
wonderfully accurate gauge representing the 4 feet, 8^
inches that is almost the standard of the work, and which
is tested every morning by the engineers, is in constant
use. The railroad track must be true; there is not room
for even the variation of a fraction of an inch in the gauge
of the two rails.

In fastening the two long lines of rails, the profession
of track-laying rises to almost supreme heights. The
men who fasten the rail with angle iron and a single
roughly-adjusted bolt in each rail-end are head-strappers
and past masters in their art. After them in due season
come the back-strappers, finishing that fine work of solidly
bolting the rail against the vast strain of a thousand-
ton train being shot over it at lightning speed. And after
the back-strappers and the men who have spiked the rail
to the ties, comes the locomotive itself, bringing more ties,
more rails, more angle-bars and bolts, and more spikes to
the front. Then sometime later the road-bed is ballasted
and the line made ready for heavy operation.

But track-laying is frequently machine systematized
these days ; and in this, as in so many smaller things,
the mechanical device has supplanted the man. A real
giant is the track-laying machine. It is mounted upon
railroad tracks and is a form of overhead carrier with
a tremendous overhang. The carrier is fed with the
cross-ties from supply cars just back of the machine and
the ties are dropped, each close to its appointed place,
as a locomotive slowly pushes the entire apparatus for-
ward. In a smaller way the heavy steel rails are de-

THE BUILDING OF A RAILROAD 47

livered from under the overhang of the carrier. A gang
of men make short work of the fastening of the rail to
the cross-ties and the machine moves steadily forward. It
has been known to make two miles a day at this work.

Culverts have been laid for each small run or kill or
creek; the bridge-builders along the new line finish their
work and cart off their kits; the day comes when there is
an unbroken railroad from one end of the new line to
the other. It links new rails and new towns ; its localities
produce for new markets, commerce from strange quar-
ters pours down upon the land that has known it not.
Passenger trains begin regular operation, the fresh-painted
depots are brilliant in their newness, the shriek of the
locomotive sounds where it has never before sounded.

Life is awakened. The railroad, which is life, has
reached forth a new arm, and creation is begun.

CHAPTER IV

TUNNELS

THEIR USE IN REDUCING GRADES — THE HOOSAC TUNNEL — THE USE
OF SHAFTS — TUNNELLING UNDER WATER — THE DETROIT RIVER
TUNNEL.

SOMETIMES the construction engineer of the rail-
road brings his new line face to face with a mountain
too steep to be easily mounted. Then he may prepare
to pierce it. Tunnels are not pleasant things through
which to ride. They are, moreover, expensive to con-
struct, and when once constructed are an unending care,
necessitating expensive and constant inspection. But —
and that " but " in this case is a very large one — they
reduce grades and distances in a wholesale fashion; and
when you reduce grades you are pretty sure to be re-
ducing operating expenses. A railroad man will think
twice in his opposition to a smoky bore of a tunnel that
will cost some three to five million dollars, when his
expert advisers tell him that that same smoky bore will
save him a hundred thousand tons of coal in the course
of a year.

From almost its very beginnings the American rail-
road has been dependent upon tunnels, and thus has
closely followed European precedent. The Alleghany
Portage Railroad, to which reference has already been
made, passed through what is said to have been the first
railroad tunnel in the United States. It pierced a spur
in the Alleghany Mountains, and it was 901 feet in
length, 20 feet wide, and 19 feet high within the arch,
150 feet at each end being arched with cut stone. The
old tunnel, built in 1832, which has not echoed with the
panting of the locomotive for more than half a century,

TUNNELS 49

is still to be found not far from Johnstown, Pa. It sim-
ply serves the purpose to-day of calling attention to the
durable fashion in which the earliest of our railroad-
builders worked.

Of the building of the Baltimore & Ohio, tunnel-con-
struction formed an early part, several paths being found
across the steep profiles of the Alleghanies. The King-
wood Tunnel, which B. H. Latrobe drove, was nearly
a mile long and the chief of these bores. But when
the Hoosac Tunnel was first proposed — piercing the
rocky heart of one of the greatest of the Berkshires
— • the country stood aghast. Four miles and a half of
tunnel! That seemed ridiculous away back in 1854,
when the plan was first broached and folk were not slow
to say what they thought of such an absurd plan. For
twenty years it looked as though these scoffers were in
the right — the work of digging that monumental tunnel
was a fearful drain on the treasury of the commonwealth
of Massachusetts, which was lending its aid to the project.
But the tunnel-diggers finally conquered — they almost
always do — and the Hoosac remains to-day the greatest
of all mountain tunnels in America. The system of con-
tinuous tunnels, by which the Pennsylvania Railroad
recently reached its terminal in New York, stretches from
Bergen Hill in New Jersey to Sunnyside, Long Island, a
distance of some ten miles. In fact the largest feature
of recent tunnel-work in this country has been in connec-
tion with terminal and rapid-transit development in the
larger cities. For a good many years New York and
Baltimore, in particular, have been pierced with these sub-
surface railroads; it is a construction feature that in-
creases as our great cities themselves increase. No river
is to-day too formidable to be conquered by these under-
ground traffic routes. A river such as the Hudson or the
Detroit may sometimes halt the bridge-builders ; it has but
slight terror for the tunnel engineers.

The tunnel-work is apt to be a separate part of the

50 THE MODERN RAILROAD

work of building a railroad. It calls for its own talent,
and that of an exceedingly expert sort. If the tunnel is
more than a half or three-quarters of a mile long it will
probably be dug from a shaft or shafts as well as from
its portals. In this way the work will not only be greatly
hastened but the shafts will continue in use after the work
is completed as vents for the discharge of engine smoke
and gases from the tube. The work must be under the
constant and close supervision of resident engineers.
The survey lines must be corrected daily, for the tunnel
must not go astray. It must drive a true course from
heading to heading. In the shafts plumb lines, with
heavy bobs, to lessen vibration, will be hung. Sometimes
these bobs are immersed in water or in molasses.

From the portals and from the bottoms of the shafts
the headings are driven. If the tunnel is to accommodate
no more than a single track it will be built from 15 to
i6y2 feet wide, and from 21 to 22 feet high, inside of its
lining; so the general method is first to drive a top heading
of about 10 feet in height up under the roof of the bore.
The rest of the material is taken out in its own good
season on two following benches or levels.

Piercing a granite mountain is no rapid work. When
the Pennsylvania Railroad built its second Gallitzin Tun-
nel in 1903, 13 men, working 4 drills in the top heading,
were able to drill 16 holes, each 10 feet deep, in a single
day. The engineers there figured that each blast removed
twenty-three cubic yards of the rock. At night, when
the " hard-rock men " were sleeping and their drills si-
lent, a gang of fourteen " muckers " removed the loosened
material.

Slow work that. The Northern Pacific finding its way
through the crest of the Cascade Mountains by means of
the great Stampede Tunnel, nearly two miles in length,
demanded that the contractor work under pressure and
make 13^ feet of tunnel a day. The contractor, work-
ing under the bonus plan, did better. With his army of

TUNNELS 5I

350 " hard-rock men," " muckers," and their helpers, and
his tireless battery of 36 drills he sometimes made as high
as eighteen feet a day from the two headings. On a
three-year job he beat his contract time by seven days.
The Northern Pacific paid the price, $118 for each lineal
foot of tunnel. That was a high price, occasioned
largely by the fact that the work was carried forward in
what was then an almost unbroken wilderness. The
Wabash finding its way through the great and forbidding
hills of Western Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh a dozen
years later was able to dig its succession of tunnels at an
average cost of $4,509 for 100 feet. Of that amount
$2,527 went for labor; and $260 was the price of a ton
of dynamite.

When the tunnel engineer finds that his bore is not
to pierce hard-rock, of whose solidity he is more than
reasonably assured, he prepares to use cutting-shields.
These shields, proceeding simultaneously from the portals
and from the footings of the shafts, are steel rings of a
circumference only slightly greater than that of the
finished tunnel. With pick and with drill and dynamite,
they constantly clear a path for it, whereupon it is pressed
forward in that path. Dummy tracks follow the cutting-
shield; and dummy locomotives — more likely electric
than steam in these days — are used in removing the
material. Electricity has been a boon to latter-day tunnel-
workers. Its use for light and power keeps the tunnel
quite clear of all gases during the work of boring.

In rare cases, the rock through which the shield has
been forced is strong enough to support itself; in most
works the engineers prefer to line the bore, with brick
and concrete, as a rule. This lining is set in the path
of the cutting-shield before its protection is entirely with-
drawn; and so the heavy roof-timbering which was
formerly a trade-mark of the successful tunnel engineer
is no longer used.

Tunnel-boring becomes doubly difficult when the rail-

52 THE MODERN RAILROAD

road is to be carried under a river or some broad arm of
the sea. Men work in an unnatural environment when
they work below the surface of great waters, and the
record of such work is a record of many tragedies. At
any instant firm rock may cease, silt or sand or an under-
ground stream may make its appearance and the helpless
workmen find a ready grave. In work where there is
even the slightest expectation of such a contingency the
air-lock, with its artificial pressure to hold back the soft
earth and moisture is brought into use. In another chap-
ter we shall see how the caisson is operated. Suffice it
to say now that the necessity of " working under the air,"
brings no comfort to any one. It vastly hinders and com-
plicates the work of construction, and adds greatly to the
expense. Moreover, it has its own record of tragedies.
Still it remains, to the infinite credit of a national per-
sistence, that there is no record in the annals of American
engineering where the workers have finally given up a
tunnel job. Lives have been sacrificed, good-sized for-
tunes swept away, but in the end the resistless railroad
has always found its underground path.

The tunnel-workers can tell you of the accident when
the subway was being driven under the East River from
Manhattan to Brooklyn, three years ago. The cutting-
shield, which was advancing from the Brooklyn side, sud-
denly slipped out from the rock into the unprotected soft
mud of the river bottom. The heavily compressed air
shot a geyser straight up to the surface of the river some
fifty feet above. A workman shot through the geyser,
pirouetted gayly for a fraction of a second above the river,
then dropped, to be picked up by the crew of a passing
ferryboat. In a week he was back at work again inside
the cutting-shield. His fortune was the opposite of that
which generally awaits a man caught in a tunnel accident.

" It ain't as bad as it used to be," one of them informs
you. " When I first got into this profession, they did n't
have the electricity for lights or moving the cars or noth-

*r^ 'if

V5*

" SOMETIMES THE CONSTRUCTION ENGINEER . .

LINE FACE TO FACE WITH A MOUNTAIN

BRINGS HIS

FINISHING THE LINING OF A TUNNEL

THE BUSIEST TUNNEL POINT IN THE WORLD AT THE WEST POR-
TALS OF THE BERGEN TUNNELS, six ERIE TRACKS BELOW, FOUR
LACKAWANNA ABOVE

THE HACKENSACK PORTALS OF THE PENNSYLVANIA'S GREAT
TUNNELS UNDER NEW YORK ClTY

TUNNELS 53

ing. We used to try and get along with safety lamps an'
near choke to death. It was more like hell then than it is

now."

But your interest in the man who was blown from the
tunnel to the surface of the river and escaped with his
life is not entirely satiated, and you ask more questions.
What do they do when they strike soft mud like that?

" We get down and pray," he of the experience in this
weird form of construction engineering tells you. " We
try to get the boys safely back through the air-lock, and
then we quit boring till we can fix things up from outside.
If it Js a real bad case we Ve got to make land to bore
through. It 's generally done by dumping rock and bags
of sand from floats just over where she blows out. It 's
a pretty rough way of doctoring her up, but it has to go,
and generally it does. All we want is to get it to hold
until we can set the rings of the tunnel.

" That ain't always the worst. I Ve been driving a
bore under water this way, when we struck stiff rock over-
head and soft mud underneath the edge. That 's some-
thing that makes the engineers hump. You can't rest a
cast-iron tunnel like this on mud and you get a wondering
if you Ve got to quit after all this work under the durned
old river, and let the boss lose his money.

" The last time we struck a snag of that sort, the boss
did n't give up. He was n't that kind. He had a chief
engineer that was brass tacks from beginning to end.
What do you suppose that fellow did? He bored holes
in the bottom of the lining and drove steel legs right
down to the next ledge of solid rock below. There's
that tunnel to-day, carrying 32,000 people between five
and six o'clock every night perched down there seventy
feet underground like a big caterpillar sprawled under
the wickedest ledge o' rock you ever see."

It takes a real genius of an engineer for this sort of
work. He who drives his bore into the unknown must
be on guard for the unexpected. Emergencies arise upon

54 THE MODERN RAILROAD

the minute, and the tunnel engineer must be ready with
his wits and ingenuity to meet them. Finally the day
does come when the bores from either shore are hard
upon one another. If there has been blasting under the
bed of the river it is reduced to a minimum. The drills
work at half-speed, the fever of expectancy hangs over
the men. Those who are close at the heading catch faint
sounds of the workmen on the other side of the thin
barrier — the last barrier of the river that was supposed
to acknowledge no conqueror.

The first tiny aperture between the two bores is greeted
with wild cheers. On the surface far above, the whistles
of the shaft-houses carry forth the news to the outer
world; it is echoed and reechoed by the noisy river craft.
The aperture grows larger. It is large enough to permit
the passage of a man's body; and a man, enjoying fame
for this one moment in his life, crawls through it. The
men knock off work and have a rough spread in the
tunnel. At night the engineers and contractors banquet
in a hotel. ** Not so bad," the chief engineer says
quietly. " We were y% of an inch out, in 8,000 feet."
It was not so bad. It spoke wonders for his profession.
To carry forth two giant bores from the opposite sides
of a broad river, and have them meet within y% of an
inch of perfect alignment, was an achievement well worth
attention.

After that, the last traces of the rough rock and silt
are removed, the iron rings of the tunnel made fast to-
gether, the air pressure released, the cutting-shields, that
formed so essential a feature of the construction, removed.
Then there remains only the work of installing conduits
and wiring and laying the tracks before the tunnel is
ready for the traffic of the railroad.

The Michigan Central has recently finished a tunnel
under the busy Detroit River, at Detroit, which elimi-
nates the use of a car-ferry at that point. The tunnel

TUNNELS 55

was built in a manner entirely new to engineers. The
river at Detroit is about three-quarters of a mile wide,
and its bed is of soft blue clay, making it difficult to bore
a tunnel safely and economically. To meet this obstacle
a new fashion of tunnel-building was created.

The tunnel itself consists of two tubes, each made from
steel y% of an inch in thickness and reinforced every
twelve feet by outer " fins." The channel was dredged
and a foundation bed of concrete laid. The sections of
the tunnel, each 250 feet long, were then put in position
one at a time. The section-ends were closed at a shore
plant with water-tight wooden bulkheads. They were then
lashed to four floating cylinders of compressed air and
towed out to position. After that it was merely a mat-
ter of detail to drop the sections into place, pour in more
concrete and make the new section fast. The wooden
bulkheads next the completed tube were then removed and
the structure was ready for the track-layers. The sub-
aqueous portion of the new Detroit Tunnel is 2,600 feet
long; it joins on the Detroit side with a land tunnel 2,100
feet long, and on the Canadian side with a land tunnel
of 3,192 feet.

It takes more than a river, carrying through its narrow
throat the vast and growing traffic of the Great Lakes —
a traffic that is comparable with that of the Atlantic
itself — to halt the progress of the railroad.

CHAPTER V

BRIDGES

BRIDGES OF TIMBER, THEN STONE, THEN STEEL — THE STARUCCA VIA-
DUCT — THE FIRST IRON BRIDGE IN THE U. S.— STEEL BRIDGES — EN-
GINEERING TRIUMPHS — DIFFERENT TYPES OF RAILROAD BRIDGE — THE
DECK SPAN AND THE TRUSS SPAN — SUSPENSION BRIDGES — CANTI-
LEVER BRIDGES — REACHING THE SOLID ROCK WITH CAISSONS — THE
WORK OF " SAND-HOGS " — THE CANTILEVER OVER THE PEND OREILLE
RIVER — VARIETY OF PROBLEMS IN BRIDGE-BUILDING — POINTS IN
FAVOR OF THE STONE BRIDGE — BRIDGES OVER THE KEYS OF FLORIDA.

WHEN the habitations of man first began to multi-
ply upon the banks of the water courses, the
profession of the bridge-builder was born. The first
bridge was probably a felled tree spanning some modest
brook. But from that first bridge came a magnificent
development. Bridge-building became an art and a
science. Men wrought gigantic structures in stone, long-
arched viaducts, with which they defied time. Then for
two thousand years the profession of the bridge-builder
stood absolutely still.

With the coming of the iron and steel age it moved
forward again. The development of a fibre of great
strength and without the dead weight of granite gave
engineers new possibilities. They began in simple fash-
ion, and then they developed once again, with marvellous
strides. Steel, the dead thing with a living muscle, could
span waterways from which stone shrank. Steel redrew
the maps of nations. Proud rivers at which the paths
of man had halted, were conquered for the first time.
Routes of traffic of every sort were simplified; the rail-
road made new progress ; and economic saving of millions
of dollars was made to this gray old world.

56

BRIDGES 57

The earliest of the very distinguished list of Ameri-
can bridge-builders erected great timber structures for the
highroads and the post-roads. Some of them went back
many centuries and came to the stone bridge, in many
ways the most wonderful of all the artifices by which man
conquers the obstructive power of a running stream.
But the building of stone bridges took time and money,
and time and money were little known factors in a new
land that had begun to expand rapidly.

So at first the railroad followed the course of the high-
road and the post-road, and took the timber bridge unto
itself. In some cases it actually fastened itself upon the
highroad bridge, as at Trenton, N. J., where a faithful
wooden structure built by Theodore Burr in 1803 was
strengthened and widened in 1848 to take the first
through railroad route from New York. It continued
its heavy dual work until 1875 when it was superseded
by a steel bridge. A dozen years ago the railroad tracks
were moved from that structure to a magnificent and
permanent stone-arch built near-by. Thus the railroad
crossing the Delaware at Trenton has, in this way, typified
step by step every stage of the development of American
bridge-building.

The timber bridges developed the steel truss bridge,
the typically American construction, of to-day. In an
earlier day the timber bridges were the glory of the en-
gineer. Sometimes you see one of these old fellows re-
maining, like the long structure that Mr. Walcott built
across the Connecticut River at Springfield, Mass., in
1805, and which still does good service; but the most of
them have passed away. Fire has been their most persist-
ent enemy. Within the past two years fire destroyed the
staunch toll-bridge at Waterford on the Hudson, just
above Troy. The bridge was a faithful carrier for one
hundred and four years. In many ways it was typical of
those first constructions. It consisted of four clear arch
spans — one 154 feet, another 161 feet, the third 176

5 8 THE MODERN RAILROAD

feet, and the fourth 180 feet in length. It was built of
yellow pine, wonderfully hewn and fitted, hung upon solid
pegs ; and save for the renewal of some of the arch foot-
ings, the roof, and the side coverings, it was unchanged
through all the years — even though the heavy trolley-
cars of a through interurban line were finally turned
upon it.

About the same time, the once-famed Permanent
Bridge across the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia was
built. It had two arches of 150 feet each and one of
195 feet. In its day it was regarded as nothing less than
a triumph. A very old publication says :

"The plan was furnished by Mr. Timothy Palmer, of New-
buryport, Mass., a self-taught architect. He brought with him
five workmen from New England. They at once evinced su-
perior intelligence and adroitness in a business which was found
to be a peculiar art, acquired by habits not promptly gained by
even good workmen in other branches of framing in wood. . . .
The frame is a masterly piece of workmanship, combining in its
principles that of king-post and braces or trusses with those of a
stone arch."

In after years, the Permanent Bridge was also en-
trusted with the carrying of a railroad. It has, however,
disappeared these many years.

The early railroad builders did not neglect the possi-
bilities of the stone bridge. Two notable early examples
of this form of construction still remain — the Starrucca
Viaduct upon the Erie Railroad, near Susquehanna, Pa.,
and an even earlier structure, the stone-arch bridge across
the Patapsco River at Relay, Md., which B. H. Latrobe,
the most distinguished of all American railroad engineers,
built for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, in 1833-35.
The Thomas Viaduct, as it has been known for three-
quarters of a century, was the first stone-arch bridge ever
built to carry railroad traffic. It was erected in a day when
the railroad was just graduating from the use of teams

BRIDGES 59

of horses as motive-power. In this day, when locomo-
tives have begun to reach practical limits of size and
weight, that viaduct is still in use as an integral part of
the main line of the Baltimore & Ohio. It is built on
a curve, and consists of 8 spans of stone arches, 67 feet
6 inches, centre to centre of piers, which, together with
the abutments at each end, make the total length of the
structure 612 feet. It is in as good condition to-day as
upon the day it was built.

When the Erie Railroad was being constructed across
the Southern Tier counties of New York in 1848, its
course was halted near the point where the rails first
reached the beautiful valley of the Susquehanna. A side-
valley, a quarter of a mile in width, stretched itself
squarely across the railroad's path. There was no way it
could be avoided, and it could be crossed only at a high
level. For a time the projectors of the Erie considered
making a solid fill, but the tremendous cost of such an
embankment was prohibitive. While they were at their
wits' ends, James P. Kirkwood, a shrewd Scotchman, who
had been working as a civil engineer upon the Boston &
Albany, appeared. Kirkwood spanned the valley with
the Starucca Viaduct, one of the most beautiful bridges
ever built in America. He opened quarries close at hand
and by indefatigable energy built his stone bridge in a
single summer. It has been in use ever since. The in-
creasing weight of its burdens has never been of conse-
quence to it, and to-day it remains an important link in a
busy trunk-line railroad. It is 1,200 feet in length and
consists of 1 8 arches of 50 feet clear span apiece.

But stone bridges even then cost money, and so the
timber structure still remained the most available. Many
men can still remember the tunnels, into whose darkness
the railroad cars plunged every time they crossed a stream
of any importance whatsoever. They have nearly all
gone. The wooden bridge was ill suited to the ravages
of weather and of fire — ravages that were quickened by

60 THE MODERN RAILROAD

the railroad, rather than hindered. A substitute mate-
rial was demanded. It was found — in iron.

The first iron bridge in the United States is believed
to be the one erected by Trumbull in 1840 over the Erie
Canal at Frankfort, N. Y. Record is also held of one
of these bridges being built for the North Adams branch
of the Boston & Albany Railroad, in 1846. About a
year later, Nathaniel Rider began to build iron bridges
for the New York & Harlem, the Erie, and some others
of the early railroads. His bridges — of the truss type,
of course, that type having been worked out in the timber
bridges of the land — were each composed of cast-iron
top-chords and post, the remaining part of the structure
being fabricated of wrought-iron. The members were
bolted together. Still, the failure of a Rider bridge upon
the Erie in 1850, followed closely by the failure of a
similar structure over the River Dee, in England, influ-
enced officials of that railroad to a conclusion that iron
bridges were unpractical, and to order them to be removed
and replaced by wooden structures. For a time it looked
as if the iron bridge were doomed. That was a dark day
for the bridge engineers. A contemporary account says :

" The first impulse to the general adoption of iron for railroad
bridges was given by Benjamin H. Latrobe, chief engineer of
the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. When the extension of this road
from Cumberland to Wheeling was begun, he decided to use this
material in all the new bridges. Mr. Latrobe had previously
much experience in the construction of wooden bridges in which
iron was extensively used; he had also designed and used the fish-
bellied girder constructed of cast and wrought-iron."

Under the influence of the really great Latrobe, an
iron span of 124 feet was built in 1852 at Harpers Ferry.
In that same year, the B. & O. built its Monongahela
River Bridge, a really pretentious structure of 3 spans of
205 feet each, and the first really great iron railroad
bridge in all the land. The path was set. The conquest

BRIDGES 6l

of iron over wood as a bridge material was merely a
problem of good engineering. The iron bridge quickly
came into its own. The Pennsylvania Railroad began
building cast-iron bridges of from 65 to no feet span at
its Altoona shops for the many creeks and runs along the
western end of its line. The other railroads were follow-
ing in rapid order. Squire Whipple, Bollman, Pratt —
all the others who could design and build iron bridges —
were kept more than busy by the work that poured in
upon them.

And in the day when the iron bridge was coming into
its own, Sir Henry Bessemer, over in England, was bring-
ing the steel age into existence, first making toy cannon
models for the lasting joy of Napoleon III, and then mak-
ing a whole world see that steel — that dead thing with
the living muscle — was no longer to be limited for use
in tools and cutting surface. Steel was to become the
very right-hand of man. And so steel came to the
bridge-builders, at first only in the most important wear-
ing points such as pins and rivets, finally to be the whole
fabric of the modern bridge. The transition was grad-
ual. The early engineers began using less and less of
cast-iron and more and more of wrought, until they had
practically eliminated cast-iron as a bridge material.
Then there came a quick change ; there was another dark
day for the railroad bridge engineers of America. In
1876 — that very year when the land was so joyously
celebrating its Centennial — a passenger train went crash-
ing through a defective bridge at Ashtabula, Ohio.
There was a great property loss — thousands and thou-
sands of dollars, and a loss of lives that could never be
expressed in dollars. An outraged land asked the bridge-
builders if they really knew their business.

Out of that Ashtabula wreck came the scientific testing
of bridges and bridge materials, and the abolition of the
rule-of-thumb in the cheaper sorts of construction. Out
of that miserable wreckage came also the use of steel in

62 THE MODERN RAILROAD

the railroad bridge. Steel had found itself; and how
the steel bridges began to spring up across the landl
They spanned the Ohio, and they spanned the Mississippi,
and they spanned the Missouri; a great structure threw
itself over the deep gorge of the Kentucky River. When
the day came that fire destroyed the famous wooden
viaduct of the Erie over the Genesee River at Portage,
N. Y. (you must remember the pictures of that tremen-
dous structure in the early geographies), steel took its
place.

All this while the bridge engineer attempted more and
more. He built over the deep gorge of the Niagara.
He conquered the St. Lawrence in and about Montreal.
He laughed at the mighty Hudson and flung a dizzy steel
trestle over its bosom at Poughkeepsie. He built at
Cairo, at Thebes, and at Memphis, on the Mississippi,
and again and again and still again at St. Louis. The
East River no longer halted him or compelled him to re-
sort to the alternative of the very expensive types of sus-
pension bridge. He has finally thrown a great cantilever
over it, from Manhattan to Long Island. The steel
bridge has come into its own.

Let us study for a moment the construction of the
different types of railroad bridge. For the tiny creeks
— the little things that are mad torrents in spring, and
run stark-dry in midsummer — where they cannot be
poured through a pipe or a concrete moulded culvert,
the simplest of bridge forms will suffice. And the sim-
plest of bridge forms consists of two wooden beams laid
from abutment to abutment and holding the ties and rails
of the track-structure. As the first development of that
simplest idea comes the substitution of steel for wood, giv-
ing, as we have already seen, protection against fire and
a far greater strength. The steel beam has greater
strength than a wooden beam of the same outside dimen-
sion and yet in its design it effects for itself a great saving

BRIDGES 63

of material, by cutting out superfluous parts and becom-
ing the structural standard of to-day, the I beam. When
the I beam becomes too large to be made in a single pour-
ing or a single rolling, it may be constructed of steel
plates and angles firmly riveted together, and thus still
remains the possibility of the simplest form of bridge.
That single span may be further increased, or the bridge
developed into a succession of increased spans by the sub-
stitution of the lattice-work girder, effecting further sav-
ing in weight without material loss of strength for the
solid-plate girder. The track may be laid atop of such
girders or — to save clearance in overhead crossing —
swung between them at their bases.

The limit in this form of bridge is generally in a
65-foot or a loo-foot span. It is not practical to build
the girders up outside of a shop; and the 65-foot length
represents the two flat-cars that must be used to transport
any one of them to the bridge location. Some railroads
have used three cars for the hauling of a single girder,
and so increased these spans to 100 feet; but as a rule,
over 65 feet, and the truss, the most common form of
railroad bridge in this country, comes into use.

The truss is a distinct evolution from those old timber
bridges of which we have already spoken. Burr and
Latrobe and Bollman and Howe and Squire Whipple —
those distinguished engineers of other days — have
evolved it, step by step. It is, in one sense, no more than
an enlarged form of lattice girder, the work of the differ-
ent designers having been to accomplish at all times, a
maximum of strength with a minimum of weight. It is
built of members that stand pulling-strain, and those that
stand pressure-strain; and these are respectively known
as tension and as compression members. In them rests the
real strength of the truss. But in addition to the struc-
ture are the bracing-rods, generally placed as diagonals
and built to sustain the structure against both lateral and
wind-strains. The members that form the trusses are

64 THE MODERN RAILROAD

stoutly riveted together; the rapid rat-a-tap-tap of the
riveter is no longer a novelty in any corner of the land.
Sometimes certain of the important bearing-points are
connected by steel pins instead of rivets — another sur-
vival of the old days of the timber bridge.

As a rule, the railroad is carried through the truss —
and this is known as the through span. Sometimes it is
carried upon the top of the structure, and then the truss
becomes known as a deck span. A long bridge may
effectively combine both of these types of span. The
splendid new double-track truss bridge recently built by
the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad over the Susquehanna
River between Havre-de-Grace and Aiken, Md., to re-
place a single-track bridge in the same location, is a
splendid example of the best type of such structures. At
the point of crossing, the river is divided into channels by
Watson Island; the width of the west channel being ap-
proximately 2,600 feet and that of the east channel be-
ing approximately 1,400 feet. The distance across the
low-lying island is 2,000 feet — making the length of the
entire bridge about 6,000 feet. The bridge, as originally
constructed when the line from Baltimore to Philadelphia
was built, in 1886, had a steel trestle over Watson Island.
In building the new structure, this viaduct was eliminated
in favor of a bridge structure of 9O-foot girder spans,
placed upon concrete piers. Additional piers were placed
in the west channel, shortening the deck spans from 480
to 240 feet; the through span over the main channel was
kept at the original length — 520 feet. In the east
channel, the span lengths remained unchanged, with a
single slight exception. The changes in the span lengths
involved new masonry, and all piers were sunk to solid
rock, those in the west channel being carried by caissons
to a depth of more than seventy feet beneath low-water.
The total amount of new masonry and concrete approxi-
mated 62,000 cubic yards. The long span-lengths of the
deck span over the east channel and the through span over

BRIDGES 65

the navigable portion of the west channel — each 520
feet in length — occasioned heavy construction. The
deck span, for instance, weighed 12,000 pounds to each
foot of bridge. The total weight of this very long
bridge reaches the enormous figure of 32,000,000 pounds.
And yet, even the untechnical observe the extreme sim-
plicity of its lines of construction, and feel that the en-
gineer, A. W. Thompson, has done his work well. The
construction of the giant took two years and a half.
During that time, the trains of the B. & O. were diverted
to the closely adjacent Pennsylvania, so that the bridge-
builders might continue with a minimum of delay.

The truss span reaches its limitations at a little over
500 feet in length — we have just seen how the Susque-
hanna structure had its spans cut in halves in the non-
navigable portions of the river. The spans of two great
railroad bridges over the Ohio at Cincinnati reached 519
and 550 feet, but they were built in a day when the
weights of locomotives and of train-loads had not yet be-
gun to rise. Nowadays the shorter span is the safer
and by far the best. The engineer builds plenty of mid-
stream piers, looking out only for a decent width for any
navigable channels.

And when because of peculiarities of location he can-
not place his pier midstream, then it is time for him to
get out his pencils and begin his drawings all over again.
He can perhaps build a suspension bridge — a clear span
of 1,500 feet will be as nothing to it, — but suspension
bridges take a long time to build and are fearfully ex-
pensive in the building. It is more than likely, then,
that he will turn to the cantilever. In the cantilever, two
giant trusses are cunningly balanced upon string support-
ing towers. They are constructed by being built out
from the towers, evenly, so that the balance of weight
may never be lost for a single hour. The two project-
ing arms are finally caught together in mid-air and over
the very centre of the span — caught and made fast by

66 THE MODERN RAILROAD

the riveters. The result is a bridge of surpassing strength
and fairly low cost, a real triumph for the bridge en-
gineer.

The first of these cantilever bridges built in the United
States was of iron. It was designed and constructed by
C. Shaler Smith across the deep gorge of the Kentucky
River in 1876-77. Mr. Smith also built the second
cantilever, the Minnehaha, across the Mississippi, at
St. Paul, Minn., in 1879-80. The third and fourth
were the Niagara and the Frazer River bridges built in
the early eighties. In their trail came many others —
one of the most notable among them being the great
Poughkeepsie Bridge.

We are going to see something of the construction of
one of these great railroad bridges. Let us begin at
the beginning, and see the men, as they work upon the
foundations of abutments and of piers — many times
hundreds of feet under the waters of the very stream that
they will eventually conquer. For months this important
work of getting a good foothold for the monster will
go forth almost unseen by the workaday world — by the
aid of the great timber footings, which the engineer calls
his caissons. These caissons (they are really nothing
more or less than great wooden boxes), are slowly sunk
into the sand or soft rock under the tremendous weight
of the many courses of masonry. They sink to solid
rock — or something that closely approximates solid
rock.

We are going down into one of the caissons that form
the foothold of a single great pier of a modern railroad
bridge; we are going to stand for a very few 'minutes
under air-pressure with the " sand-hogs " — men whom
we first came to know when we studied the boring of a
tunnel. Air pressure spells danger. It takes a good
nerve to work high up on the exposed steel frame of some
growing bridge, but the bridge-builders have air and sun-

BRIDGES 67

light in which to pursue their hazardous work. The
sand-hog has neither. He toils in a box down in the
depths of the unknown, working with pick and shovel
under artificial light and under a pressure that becomes
all but intolerable. The knowledge that the most pre-
cious and vital of all man's needs — fresh air — is con-
trolled by another, and through delicate and intricate
mechanism, cannot add to his peace of mind.

No wonder, then, that it is the highest paid of all
merely manual work. The sand-hog working 50 feet be-
low datum is paid $3.50 for an eight-hour day. But 50
feet is but the beginning to these human worms, who
burrow deep into the earth. Below it they first begin to
divide their day into two working periods. The air be-
gins to count, and men with steel muscled arms must
rest. As they approach 80 feet below datum — the en-
gineers1 phrase for sea level, — they are working two
periods each day of one hour and a half apiece, while
their daily pay has risen to $4. There is your rough
arithmetical law of sand-hogs. As your caisson goes
down so does the length of your working-day decrease;
inversely, their air pressures and the pay of the men in-
crease. The cost? The cost leaps forward in geomet-
rical progression. It is the owner's turn to groan this
time.

One hundred feet is the limit. At 100 feet the air
pressure is more than 50 pounds to the square inch —
three additional atmospheres — and the limit of human
endurance is reached. The men work two shifts of forty
minutes each as a daily portion and the law steps in to
say that they must rest four hours between the shifts.
They are paid $4.50 for that day's work — which means
something more than $4 an hour for the time that they
are actually at work in the caisson.

You have expressed your interest in the sand-hog, given
vent to a desire to go down into their underworld. You
wonder what three pressures is going to feel like. Per-

68 THE MODERN RAILROAD

mission is given and a physician begins examining you.
You cannot go into the caisson unless you are sound of
heart and stout of body. This is no joking matter. The
sand-hogs' rules read like the training instructions for a
college football team. No drink, regular hours, simple
diet, the donning of heavy clothes after they leave the
pressure, constant reexamination — these rules are in-
flexible when the caissons go to far depths. By their ob-
servance the difficult foundation construction of this new
bridge has been kept free from accident — there have
been few cases of the " bends " brought to the specially
constructed hospital in the bottom of the cavity.

The " bends " sounds complicated, and is, in reality,
almost the simplest of human ailments in its diagnosis.
A " bubble " of high pressure air works its way into the
human structure while a man is in the caisson. When
he comes out into the normal atmosphere the bubble is
caught and remains. If it is caught near any vital organ
that bubble is apt to spell death. Generally the bubbles
are caught in the joints — frequently the elbow or the
knee — where they cause excruciating pain. Then the
specially constructed hospital crowded on the narrow plat-
form formed by the top of the pier, comes into full play.
Its sick room is incased in an air-tight cylinder. The man
suffering from the " bends," together with physicians and
nurses, is put under a pressure that gradually increases
until it reaches that of the caisson. After that it is a
comparatively simple matter to relieve the bubble and
bring the air in the hospital back to a normal pressure.

The path is clear for us to go down into the caisson.
A party of sand-hogs, hot and exhausted after forty min-
utes of work within, come out of the little manhole at
the top of the air-lock. We step through the little man-
hole and into a tiny steel bucket that rests within the
air-lock there at the top of the shaft. A word of com-
mand — farewell to the bright blue sky overhead — the
black manhole cover is replaced. It is suddenly very

CONCRETE AFFORDS WONDERFUL OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE BRIDGE-
BUILDERS

THE LACKAWANNA is BUILDING THE LARGEST CONCRETE BRIDGE IN

THE WORLD ACROSS THE DELAWARE RlVER AT SLATEFORD, PA.

i . *

THE BRIDGE-BUILDER LAYS OUT AN ASSEMBLYING-YARD FOR

GATHERING TOGETHER THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF HIS NEW

CONSTRUCTION

THE NEW BRANDYWINE VIADUCT OF THE BALTIMORE & OHIO, AT
WILMINGTON, DEL.

BRIDGES

69

dark. A single faint incandescent gives a dim glow in
the tiny place.

You are not thinking of that. They are putting the
pressure on. You can feel it. Your eardrums feel as
if they would break; they vibrate. You must show your
distress.

"Pinch your nose and swallow hard," says the man
who stands beside you in the bucket.

He stands so close to you that you can fairly feel the
pulsation of his heart, but his voice sounds miles away.
You swallow hard, the hardest you have ever swallowed,
and you pinch your nose. You feel better. The far-
away voice speaks again in your ear. " Three atmos-
pheres," is all it says. The caisson shaft is no place for
extended conversation. You descend in an express ele-
vator car; in that bucket you just drop. You have all
the eerie sensations that a Coney Island " novelty ride "
might give you. There is a row of dim incandescents
all the way down the smooth side of the shaft, and when
you look you forget that this is vertical traction and think
of an uptown subway tube as you see it recede from the
rear of an express. A final manhole, the gate at the
foot of the shaft and you stop abruptly. It seems as if
you had almost bumped against the under side of China.

' This is it," says the far-away voice.

A timbered room, not larger than a parlor in a city

flat and not near so high. A close and murky place,

filled with a little company of men — shadowy humans

of a real underworld there under the dull electric glow.

;' They 're finding the footing for the shaft," says the
voice. " We 're on rock at last at 94 feet."

When the footings are finished and the caisson's edges
have - ceased to cut its path straight downward, that
timbered construction will rest here far below the city for
long ages. The sand-hogs will come out of their work-
ing chamber for the last time — it will be poured full

70 THE MODERN RAILROAD

of concrete, more solid than rock itself. The air pressure
will be withdrawn — there is no longer mud or shifting
sand for it to withhold. Then, section by section, the
steel lining of the caisson shaft will be withdrawn, while
concrete, tramped into place, makes the shaft a hidden
monolith 100 feet or so in length. Upon the tops of
all these monoliths a close grillage of steel beams will
be laid; upon that grillage will be riveted the steel plates
and columns of the bridge tower. The great structure
is to have sure footing; these giant feet bind and clasp
themselves throughout the years against the mighty river
that has been conquered and humbled by the work of
man.

14 You should have been down in one of the boxes when
they had to burn torches, before they got the electric
light," says one of the bridge engineers. " I worked in
one of those that we left under a stone tower of the
Brooklyn Bridge. Now we 're almost in clover. They
even cool and dry the compressed air before we breathe
it."

An order goes aloft over an electric wire, the engineer
who sits smoking his pipe on the sun-baked platform of
the traveller derrick pulls a lever, and we go slipping up
the shaft toward fresh air and freedom only a little less
rapidly than we descended it. We do not reach it too
quickly. There is a long wait in the air-lock after the
lower manhole has closed, while the pressure is being re-
duced. You begin to worry and you ask your guide as to
the delay. Nothing wrong?

He smiles at your timorous question and explains. It
would be dangerous to come out from the caisson pressure
quickly. He does not want to have to send you to that
air-tight hospital with a bad case of the " bends."

" How long in the air-lock? " you ask.

" Fifty minutes," he answers.

BRIDGES ?I

Then he explains in more detail. You have been un-
der a pressure of 50 pounds to the square inch — that 's
your three atmospheres, and under the rules you must
spend fifty minutes in the tiny air-lock. Up to a pressure
of 36 pounds you must spend two minutes there for every
three pounds of pressure. When you get above that
" law of 36 " it is a minute to the pound.

When that manhole cover overhead finally slides open
you feel blinded by the light, even though the sun is
hidden behind a passing cloud. The air-lock tender
reaches down with his arms and gives you a lift up onto
his narrow perch.

;t Want to be a sand-hog? " he smiles.

" Not yet a while," you answer, in all truth. " Not
until every other job is gone."

You are standing aloft, balancing yourself upon tiny
planks at the steadily advancing end of the bridge, as
it forces itself over a stream of formidable width. Over-
head, a gigantic, ungainly traveller, equipped with steel
derricks at every corner, is advancing foot by foot as the
bridge advances foot by foot. Underneath, through the
thin network of planks, of girder and of supporting false
work, you can see the surface of the river a full hundred
feet below. A steamboat is passing directly beneath you.
From your perch she looks like a great yellow bird.
Those fine black specks upon her back are the humans who
are gathered upon her upper deck.

Whistles call and the derricks groan as they swing the
thousands of bridge-members, that are flying together at
the beck of the engineer, into their final resting-places.
There is the deafening racket of the riveters, here and
there and everywhere. There are crude railroad tracks
upon the temporary flooring of the bridge deck, and the
calls of the dummy locomotives add to the racket. The
railroad tracks lead to the shore, to temporary yards

72 THE MODERN RAILROAD

where the bridge materials are assembled as fast as
they come from the shops in a city three hundred miles
distant.

For, remember that while the sand-hogs were burrow-
ing under the surface of the river to find footholds for
this monster, other men were burrowing into the hillsides
to find the precious ore for the welding of his muscles. A
hundred thousand picks must have fought in his behalf,
furnaces blazed for miles before the crude ore became the
finished, perfect steel. Of the forging and the rolling
of the steel a whole book might be written. It is enough
now to say that of the 50,000,000 pounds of steel, every
pound was made on honor. The railroad had its inspect-
ors everywhere, but the rolling-mill men held to their
formulas for perfect steel, and perfect steel was the result.
A slight flaw in the metal, and possibly at some unexpected
day, a great catastrophe. The safety of human life was
upon the men who forged the steel, and they forged honor
into every great girder, into every rod and bolt and plate.
This conqueror of the river was a warrior built in honor.

The safety of human life depends upon the men who
build this bridge. Study carefully the face of this man
who stands beside you, the man who evolved this bridge
as a season's work of his restless mind. His face is the
face of a man who has high regard for human safety;
that factor creeps to the fore as he talks to you. He is
telling of the method of constructing the upper works of
a bridge of this size.

" We 're getting ahead all the time," he laughs, " and
we 're moving rather forward in our construction methods.
In an older day we did this work with derricks of a
rather simple sort, operated them by small portable steam
engines. You can't handle bridge-members — units that
are only held down by the clearances of tunnels and the
transporting powers of the railroads — that way to-day.
We 've nearly half a million dollars tied up here in con-
structing-appliances. These steel-boom derricks, travel-

BRIDGES 73

lers, and steel-wire hoists, the compressing engines for
handling the riveters, cost big money.

" Our method? That's a simple enough affair as a
rule. We set up this spindly tower on rails, that we
call the ' traveller ' and it moves backwards and for-
wards over the trusses and the timber falsework that we
build before the steel really begins to be set up. When
the steel — the trusses — is up and riveted, then away
with the falsework. Our bridge stands by itself. You
can put up a 500- foot span in no time at all by using the
falsework."

You make bold to ask what the engineer does when
the river is too deep to admit of falsework. He is quick
to answer.

" We generally fall back on a cantilever," he says, with-
out hesitation. Then he begins to tell you about one of
the latest of American problems — the new bridge of the
Idaho & Washington Northern Railroad, just now being
built over the Pend Oreille River, Washington. They
could span that narrow cleft only on the cantilever prin-
ciple, and when they began to balance their cantilever,
there was not enough^room for the back arm. But the
engineers only chewed off fresh, cigars and began forcing
their great span out mid-air. They made the balance
by placing 600 tons of steel rails on the back-arm. For
every foot the span reached out anew over a so-called
" bottomless " they added a few more rails. You can
generally trust an engineer in such a time as that.

Look closely now upon the workmen who are fabrica-
ting this giant bridge. Look closely upon them. They
are different from those whom we saw toiling in the
caissons below. Scandinavians may and do toil as sand-
hogs at the bottom of the stream; Lithuanians may mine
the ore, and Hungarians roll it into steel; Americans
build upon their toil and erect this bridge. These build-
ers speak no unfamiliar tongue. They are the product
of Ohio, the Middle West, the South, the Pacific Coast,

74 THE MODERN RAILROAD

New England; they rise immeasurably superior to every
other class of labor employed upon the work. Some of
them have been sailors, and their talk has the savor of
the sea. All of them are men, clear-headed, cool-headed,
true-headed men.

If you come upon them at the noon-hour, sprawled
along the narrow ledge of a single plank you may be im-
pressed by two things — their Americanism and their
cosmopolitanism. The first of these is writ upon each
man as you look at him ; the second is evident in talk with
him. This big fellow must have been a sheriff out in
Montana, and he must have been a sheriff for bad men to
dodge; his neighbor is talking about his last job, a sky-
high cantilever down in Peru. The two side-partners
over by the tool-box are just back from India. American
bridge-building talent encircles the world. Here is a boss
who got his first training down on the Nile; his assistant
has done some mighty big work on the Trans-Siberian.

These are the men who are building the bridge. In a
little time there will be no advancing ends, finding their
path from pier-top to pier-top. There will be, instead, a
long and slender path for the railroad; the bridgemen
will have done their work well; a great river will have
once again been conquered.

The bridge problem is always different, it constantly
has the fascination of variety. That variety will come
into play at unexpected turns. Once, down in a deep
Colorado canon, whose walls rose precipitously for a
thousand-odd feet, and which was all but filled by a deep
and rapid river, the engineers of the Rio Grande &
Western found absolutely no ledge whatsoever upon which
they might rest their rails. They puzzled upon the prob-
lem for a little while, and then they swung a girder bridge
parallel with the river. The bridge was supported by
braced girders, that fastened their feet in the walls of the
canon, hardly wider there than a narrow city house. The

BRIDGES 75

railroad has been running over that construction for more
than thirty years; it is one of the scenic wonders of the
land, and a triumph for the engineer that built it. In
constructing the expensive West Shore Railroad up the
Hudson River, similar difficulties were experienced south
of West Point, and truss bridges were built parallel with
the steep river banks to carry the tracks from ledge to
ledge. It is not an unusual matter for the construction en-
gineer to spend a quarter of a million dollars to span
some deep, waterless gully in the mountains, which could
not be filled for more than twice that sum.

Many times, in these days of increasing weight of
equipment, it becomes necessary to replace a bridge, with-
out interrupting the traffic. The construction engineer
never fails to meet the problem. Years ago, he took
Roebling's famous suspension bridge at Niagara Falls,
removed the stone towers and replaced them with towers
of steel, without delaying a single train; and a little later
he took that bridge itself, and substituted a heavy canti-
lever for it, while all the time a heavy traffic poured itself
over the structure. The rebuilder of bridges works like
the original builder — with plentiful falsework. He tim-
bers in and around his structure, and then step by step
and with exceeding caution removes the old and substitutes
the new. An old girder is taken out between trains; be-
fore another train of cars shall roll over the structure a
new one is ready, temporarily bolted until the riveters can
make it fast. It sounds complicated, but it is remarkably
simple, under the careful plans of a patient engineer,
who has that infinite thing that we call genius.

Sometimes a bold engineer strikes out into a new
method, quicker and less expensive than these piecemeal
efforts. Of such was the job at Steubenville, O., where
a 205-foot double-track span was erected on heavy false-
work alongside the old bridge. In a carefully chosen in-
terval between a service of frequent trains, both the old
and the new spans — together weighing 1,300 tons —

76 THE MODERN RAILROAD

were fastened together and drawn sideways a distance of
twenty-five feet in one minute and forty seconds. The
new span was then in place, and the old one — ready
to be dismantled — stood on falsework at the side. The
entire job had been accomplished in an interval of seven-
teen minutes between trains.

That is not unusual. The floating method is some-
times adopted with remarkable success — especially in
the case of draw-bridge spans. There the problem com-
plicates itself exceedingly, for both the water and the land
highways must be kept open for traffic; yet it is a matter
of record that the Pennsylvania Railroad, operating a
fearfully heavy suburban service in and out of Jersey
City, recently substituted one draw for another on its
Hackensack River Bridge without delaying a single train.

But even in this high noon of the day of steel, the stone
bridge holds its own. The big chiefs of railroad con-
struction look upon it with favor. Higher priced than
a steel bridge of equal capacity it requires initial outlay.
But forever after, it represents a saving — a saving chiefly
in that very important figure, maintenance. A steel bridge
requires constant attention and constant expense. A stone
bridge requires little of either ; and therein lies its strength
in its old age. Engineers point to such structures as the
Thomas Viaduct down at Relay, or to the wonderful stone
bridges that have stood through the centuries in older
lands; they bear in mind the constant battle that a steel
bridge must make against the ravages of weather and
against the sinister thefts of corrosion, and ofttimes they
rule in favor of the oldest type of sizable bridge.

Two things are all-important in the choice between the
steel bridge and the arch bridge of stone or concrete. The
first is the accessibility of the quarries. If they are not
very near the solid bridge will cost four times that of one
of steel and the average American railroad is not able to
spend money in that fashion, even in the hopes of future

BRIDGES 77

economies in maintenance. If the quarries are close at
hand, as they were years ago when Kirkwood built the
Starucca Viaduct for the Erie, the cost of a masonry
bridge will hardly exceed that of steel trusses, and the
concrete structure may cost a little less. Then there comes
into play the second consideration. The stone or con-
crete bridge has tremendous weight, no ordinary founda-
tion work will serve it. If the river bed and banks be
of sand or poor earth, the engineer had best give up his
hopes of the Roman form of structure. He can build
steel towers and trusses on piles of caissons — hardly solid
stone piers and abutments and aides.

All these things considered, the stone bridge is still more
than holding its own in modern railroad construction.
The Boston & Albany Railroad began building these
splendidly permanent structures along its lines through
the Berkshires more than twenty years ago. More re-
cently both the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore & Ohio
have been looking with favor upon this type of bridge.
The Baltimore & Ohio has just finished building its mas-
sive Brandywine Viaduct, near Wilmington, a splendid
double-track structure, 764 feet in length, and composed of
two Sofoot, two 9O-foot, and three loo-foot arches.

The three great stone bridges that the Pennsylvania
has built upon its main line are all four-tracked. Two
splendid examples of these span the Raritan River at
New Brunswick, and the Delaware at Trenton, New Jer-
sey. The third, spanning the Susquehanna at Rockville,
Pa., just north of Harrisburg, is the largest stone bridge
in the world. It is over a mile in length, and is com-
posed of 48 arches; 220,000 tons of masonry was em-
ployed in its construction.

Concrete viaducts were first employed in interurban
electric railroad construction, and latterly they have been
brought more to the service of the steam railroad. A
splendid example of this very new form of construction
exists in the extension of the Florida East Coast Railroad

78 THE MODERN RAILROAD

over the keys and shallow waters of Southern Florida,
for seventy-five miles between Homestead and Key West.
A considerable portion of the line is over the sea.

The Florida keys are like a series of stepping-stones,
leading into the ocean from the tip of the peninsula to
Key West. They lie in the form of a curve, the channels
separating the islands varying from a few hundred feet
to several miles in width. Nearly thirty of these islands
were used in the construction of the new railroad. More
than fifty miles of rock and earthen embankment have
been built where the intervening waters are shallow, but
where the water is deeper and the openings are exposed to
storms by breaks in the outer reef, concrete arch viaducts
have been used. These viaducts consist of 5O-foot rein-
forced concrete arch spans and piers, with here and there
a 6o-foot span.

There are four of these arch viaducts aggregating 5.78
miles in length. The longest is between Long Key and
Grassy Key, 2.7 miles, and is called the Long Key Via-
duct; across Knight's Key Channel, 7,300 feet; across
Moser's Channel, 7,800 feet, and across Bahia Honda
Channel, 4,950 feet. The material of these islands is
coralline limestone. In many places the embankment for
the roadway is 8 or 9 feet in height, and the roadbed is
ballasted with the same material. The result is one of
the finest and safest railway roadbeds in the world.

Across the Delaware River at Slateford, Pa., the Dela-
ware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad is building the
largest concrete bridge in the world, a few feet longer than
the great structure by which the Illinois Central crosses
the Big Muddy River and just 100 feet longer than the
Connecticut Avenue Bridge, at Washington, D. C. The
Lackawanna's bridge is 1,450 feet long, with five arches
of i5O-foot span, and a number of shorter arches. The
track is carried at an elevation of 75 feet above highwater;
and to find living-rock as a solid foundation for a
structure of so great a weight, the abutments and piers

BRIDGES

79

were carried about 61 feet below the surface of the
ground.

With the bridge-builder at his elbow, the railroad con-
structing engineer hesitates at no river, no arm of the sea,
no deep valley, no wild ravine, no cleft in the mountain-
side. He calls to his aid the magic of the men who have
made this branch of American practical science famous:
a feathery trestle appears, as if by magic. Across its
narrow edge the steel rails follow their resistless path.

CHAPTER VI

THE PASSENGER STATIONS

EARLY TRAINS FOR SUBURBANITES — IMPORTANCE OF THE TOWERMAN —
AUTOMATIC SWITCH SYSTEMS — THE INTERLOCKING MACHINE — CA-
PACITIES OF THE LARGEST PASSENGER TERMINALS — ROOM FOR LOCO-
MOTIVES, CAR-STORAGE, ETC. — STORING AND CLEANING CARS — THE
CONCOURSE — WAITING-ROOMS — BAGGAGE ACCOMMODATIONS — HEAT-
ING — GREAT DEVELOPMENT OF PASSENGER STATIONS — SOME NOTABLE
STATIONS IN AMERICA.

THE railroad terminal is the city gate. Without,
it rises in the superior arrogance of white granite,
as an architectural something. It has broad portals, and
through these portals a host of folk both come and go.
Within, this city gate is a thing of stupendous apartments
and monumental dimensions, a thing not to be grasped in
a moment. In a single great apartment — a vaulted room
so great as to have its dimensions run into distant vistas
— are the steam caravans that come and go. It is a busy
place, a place of an infinite variety of business.

In the early morning the train-shed gives the first sign
of the new-born day. Before the dawn is well upon the
city, the great arcs that run into those distant vistas in
wonderful symmetry are hissing and alight, and the first
of 500 incoming trains is finding its way into the gloom
of the shed. Some few trains have started out with the
early mails and the morning papers. The great rush
into town is yet to begin.

Even before dawn, a thousand little homes without
the city have been awake and fretful. The gray fogs of
the night lie low, and lights begin to twinkle, lines of
shuffling figures to find their way to the nearest suburban
station. It is very early morning when these begin to

80

THE PASSENGER STATIONS 81

pass through the city gate. The earliest suburban trains
slip in from the yards and come to a slow, grinding
stop beneath the shed. Before the wheels have ceased
turning, the first of the workers is off the cars and run-
ning down the platform. In fifteen seconds, the platform
is black with men.

There are many more of these trains, a great multiplica-
tion of men within a little time. Before seven o'clock,
the trains begin to increase; to follow more and more
closely upon one another's heels. After seven, they come
still oftener; two or three of them may stop simultaneously
on different tracks under the great vault of the shed;
they are heavy with people. There is a constant clat-
ter of engines, stamping and puffing, dragging their heavily
laden trains and snapping them quickly out of the way of
others to follow. The electric lights under the shed go
out with a protesting sputter, and you realize that the day
is at hand. This mighty army of those who live without
the city walls is flocking in, in an unceasing current now.
There is an endless procession from the track platforms;
a stream of humans finding its way to the day's work.

Do you want figures so that you may see the might of
this army? Binghamton, N. Y., is a city; a little less than
fifty thousand persons live there. If the whole popula-
tion of Binghamton — every man, woman, and child —
were poured through the portals of this terminal on any
one of six mornings of the week, it would be about equal to
this suburban traffic. In a single hour — from seven to
eight — 45 trains have arrived under the roof of this shed
and discharged their human freight; in the following
hour, 64 trains empty another great brigade of the army
from without the city walls.

The city gate is indeed a busy place. Its concourse
or head platform echoes all day long with the unending
tread of shuffling feet; beyond the fence, with its bulletins
and ticket-examiners, is the vault of the train-shed, a

82 THE MODERN RAILROAD

thing of great shadows, even in midday. Its echoes are
also unending. There seems to be no end of pushing
and shoving and hauling among the engines; there must be
an infinite stock of trains somewhere without. The hu-
man stream flows all the while.

The marvel of all this is that the terminal, which seems
so intricate, so baffling, is under the control of one man —
a man to whom it is as simple as the ten fingers of his
hands. This man is keeper of the city gate. His watch-
house is situated just without the big and squatty train-
shed. It is long and narrow, glass-lined and sun-filled.
Through its windows he keeps track of those who come
and go.

' There 's Second Seventeen, with them school teachers
coming back from the convention out at Kansas City.
Put her in on Twenty-one so 's to give the baggage folks a
chance. Them women travel with lots of duds."

These are orders to his assistants and orders in that
watch tower are rarely repeated. The assistants are in
shirt-sleeves like their chief, for the sun-filled tower is
broiling hot. They nod to one another, click small levers,
and Second Seventeen — a long train of sleeping-cars com-
ing into the city in the hot moisture of the early June
morning — is sent easily and carefully in upon track
Twenty-one in the train-shed of the terminal. There you
have the explanation of that order that was meaningless
to you but a moment ago. Track Twenty-one is near-
est the in-baggage room of the station. With two cars,
piled roof-high with heavy trunks, the thoughtfulness of
the towerman in sending the special upon track Twenty-
one will be appreciated by the baggage handlers. A vast
amount of manual labor will be saved; and that counts,
even upon a cool day.

This keeper of the city gate represents the survival of
the fittest, the very cream of his profession. The chances
are that he began his railroading off in some lonely way
station on a branch line, developed qualities that brought

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THE PASSENGER STATIONS 83

him to the quick and favorable attention of his chiefs, then
advanced steadily along the rapid lines of promotion that
railroading holds for some men. He is one of three men,
who, for certain hours, hold the keeping of the compli-
cated city gate within their own well-drilled minds. The
tower is the mind, the brain centre, the ganglion, of that
city gate; but the tower is only wondrously mechanical,
after all; the mind of the careful towerman is the mind
that controls all the mechanism.

To the average traveller, the city gate is a thing that
impresses itself upon his mind by its exterior and interior
beauty, or its convenience of arrangement. He notes the
broad concourses, the ample entrances and exits, the com-
pelling magnificence of the public rooms, the great sweep
of the train-shed roof, but beyond that train-shed roof is a
tangle of tracks and signals about which he does not worry
his busy head. Those tracks and signals represent more
truly the station than the mere architectural magnificence
of its outer shell. They are a tangle and a maze, ap-
parently, but a tangle and maze that must represent skill
and ease in their tremendous operation. They are neither
tangle nor maze to the shirt-sleeved men in the tower.
They must know each track, each switch-point, each sig-
nal as intimately and familiarly as they know the fingers
of their hands.

Every mechanical device is employed to simplify the
tangle for the comfort of the busy minds that must con-
stantly employ themselves in solving it. In the big watch-
tower — the " control " of the terminal — there is a map
that is more than map. It depicts in miniature all the
tracks and switches and signals that lie without and round-
about the tower; but this map shows switches and signals
changing as the switches and signals of the train-yard
change. It brings the distant corners of the terminal
in closer touch with the towermen. In fog or blinding
storm, this track model is invaluable — a veritable com-
pass set within the brain of the terminal.

84 THE MODERN RAILROAD

This illuminated map sets upon the best piece of mech-
anism that has yet been devised for the operation of the
terminal yard. It is a long boxed affair, not entirely un-
like the box of the old-fashioned square piano, but in this
case (the terminal we are watching being of unusual ca-
pacity) more than thirty feet in length. This box is the
very brains of the terminal. It represents the acme of
mechanical condensation. Reduced to its earliest and sim-
plest equivalent — the separate hand operation of a gi-
gantic cluster of switches in a great terminal yard — it
would cover a vast area and result in the employment
of an army of switchmen. Carelessness on the part of any
one member of this army might cause a serious accident.
The margin of safety would be very low in such a case.

The first schemes of automatic switch systems eliminated
the necessity of employing an army of switchmen. A
cluster of levers, in a tower of commanding location, was
connected by steel rods with the switches and the signals
which protected them. A man in the tower operated this
group of levers. In this way, the control of the yard
was simplified, and responsibility was placed upon a better
paid and better trained man than the average hand switch-
man. The margin of safety was considerably broadened.

Then came an amendment to that first system. Some
genius of a mechanic built an interlocking switch machine,
a thing of cogs and clutches, by which a collision in a rail-
road yard became almost a physical impossibility. In these
mechanical interlocking devices the tower levers are so
controlled, one by another, that signals cannot be given for
trains to proceed until all switches in the route governed
are first properly set and locked; and conversely, so that
the switches of a route governed by signal cannot be moved
during the display of a signal giving the right of way over
them. By installation of the interlocking, some of the
responsibility is taken by mechanical device from human
brain and the margin of safety broadened still further.

This " piano box " represents still further condensa-

THE PASSENGER STATIONS 85

tion of the switch and signal control and interlocking de-
vices. The men who designed this particular city gate
designed it to accommodate more than a thousand outgo-
ing and incoming passenger trains each twenty-four hours ;
they had found that the condensations given by earlier
systems were not sufficient for their purpose. After bring-
ing several switches, designed to act in concert, upon a
single lever, they found that they would have a row of 360
levers. Set closely together these would require a tower
about 1 60 feet long. It is roughly figured that it is not
desirable to assign more than twenty of these heavy levers
to a single towerman and that meant eighteen men, work-
ing at a shift. Moreover, the throwing of a heavy switch
half a mile distant from the tower is not a slight manual
exercise.

Then the " piano box " — electro-pneumatic — was in-
stalled; 150 feet of levers was reduced to 30 feet of small
handles hardly larger than faucet handles and quite as
easily turned. The control of a great terminal was
brought down to three towermen, acting under the direc-
tion of their chief, the shirt-sleeved keeper of the city gate.

" We 've got to keep them hustling," he tells you.
" There 's the morning express in from New York. She 's
heavy this morning. That train over there, coming across
the swing-bridge, is the millionaire's special. She 's all
club-cars, comes in every mornin' from the seaside. Her
wheels '11 stop on the same nick as the express. Watch
them both, carefully."

" Is n't it quite a trick handling those trains simulta-
neously? "

" Not much," a smile fixed itself upon the chief tower-
man's features, as he fingered his greasy timetable.
" Here 's four trains pulling out here simultaneously at
5 140. On top of that we get a Forest Hills local in at
5 .-39, a Hudson Upper local at 5 140, an Ogontz at 5 142,
a Readville at 5 143, all incoming, and pull out two more
at 5 143. Ten trains in just four minutes is n't bad, and

86 THE MODERN RAILROAD

we have n't begun to feel the capacity of this terminal
yet.

' That is n't all of it. We get the whole thing criss-
crossed on us sometimes ; and perhaps they '11 put on an
extra getting out of here at 5 .-40, and that '11 bother us
a little, for we have regular tracks assigned for all our
scheduled trains. If they don't run in the extras on us,
or we don't get a breakdown anywhere, it 's pretty plain
sailing. Ring off your 10:10, Jimmy."

Jimmy, the assistant at the far end of the tower, touched
one of the little handles, a blade on a signal bridge opposite
the end of the train-shed dropped, a big locomotive caught
the rails instantly and cautiously led a long train of heavy
cars out through the intricacy of tracks and switches until
it was past the tower, over the " throat " of the yard,
and, striking on the main line, was gaining speed once
more.

u It 's as easy for him as unbroken rail off in the coun-
try," said the chief towerman to me, as he waved salutation
at the engineer passing below him.

Then he fell into a detailed and wondrous explanation
of the intricacies of the " piano-box " mechanism. On the
lower floor of the tower were air condensers, and through
the medium of electricity and compressed air heavy
switches and signals a half-mile off are worked almost by
finger touch. Each switch is guarded by at least one sig-
nal, possibly two — home and distant — and these blades
show an open or a closed path to the engineer. They
are so arranged that normally they stand at danger and
in case of breakdown they return by gravity to danger.
At night the blades, which in various positions show
safety and danger and caution, are replaced by lights —
red for danger, yellow for caution, green for safety —
according to the present standard rules.

This physiology of the passenger terminal has dwelt so
far upon its brain and its nerve structure; the anatomy is

THE PASSENGER STATIONS 87

hardly less interesting. Almost every great passenger
terminal in America is built upon the head-house plan. In
this scheme trains arrive and depart upon a series of
parallel tracks terminating within some sort of train-shed.
It is the ideal scheme from the standpoint of the passen-
ger, for no stairs or bridges or subways are necessary to
reach any track. The tracks are generally laid in pairs,
and between each pair a broad platform is built, which is in
reality a long-armed extension of a common distributing
platform or concourse extending across the head of the
tracks. Sometimes these extension platforms are laid on
both sides of a single track for greater facility in hand-
ling baggage and for the quick unloading of heavy trains.

But in case any number of trains are to be operated
through the terminal, the head-house scheme becomes im-
practicable and an abomination to the operating depart-
ment. It makes necessary all manner of backing and
turning trains and a tremendous amount of energy and
time is spent in so doing. So we find the head-house
stations — the real terminals of America — for the most
part along the seaboard or at the termination of really
important railroad routes. They are an expensive luxury
at any other point.

At the outer end of the train-shed, its tracks begin to con-
verge. They are in rough similarity to the sticks of an
open fan and at the handle they are reduced to anywhere
from two to eight main tracks, the connections with the
through tracks that serve the station. The point of con-
vergence is known to the towerman and all the other work-
ers as the " throat " of the yard. It is by far the most
important point of the terminal, and is the usual loca-
tion of the control tower, with its authority over several
hundred switches and signals.

Upon the number of main tracks in this " throat " de-
pends the capacity of the terminal, quite as much as the
number of tracks in the train-shed or the size of any other
of its facilities. If there are as many as eight tracks in

88 THE MODERN RAILROAD

this " throat " — an unusual number — the signals and
switches will probably be arranged so that in the morning
five tracks may be used for the rush of incoming business,
and three tracks for outgoing business, while in the late
afternoon conditions are exactly reversed, five tracks
being used for hurrying the suburbanites homeward, three
for the lesser business incoming to the terminal. With
four tracks in the " throat " — a usual number — three
may be used in the direction of the volume of greatest
business. Each of these tracks is like a separate entrance
to the terminal, and when five are open from the train-
shed simultaneously, as in this first case, five outgoing
trains may be started simultaneously from as many tracks.
In this connection, a comparative table of the capacity
of several of the largest American passenger terminals may
not be without interest:

Approach Station

Tracks Tracks

Broad Street Station, Philadelphia 4 16

Market Street Station, Philadelphia 4 13

North Station, Boston 8 24

South Station, Boston 8 28

Union Station, St. Louis 6 32

Union Station, Washington 6 33

Northwestern Station, Chicago 6 16

Lackawanna Terminal, Hoboken 4 14

Pennsylvania Station, New York 2 21

Grand Central Station, New York 4 32

But the approach and train-shed tracks are only a part
of the yards that are necessary at every large passenger
terminal. Certain provisions are necessary for mail and
express service (freight of every sort is handled as far as
possible in separate yards and terminals), and extensive
provision for the storage and care of cars and motive
power. In the last case, it becomes advisable to have the
roundhouse, or roundhouses, for locomotive storage within
short striking distance of the terminal station. These
are vast structures, their very form requiring large tracts
of land. The American plan of radiating engine-storage
tracks from a common centre, occupied by a turntable,

THE PASSENGER STATIONS 89

has never prevailed in England. Some few attempts have
been made in this country to build parallel storage tracks,
with the transfer table for an operating arm, but almost
every attempt of this sort has been induced by a necessity
for unusual economy in land-space. We shall need the
turntables as long as we continue to use steam as a motive
power, and the early method of grouping storage tracks
and radii from the table has never lost its favor with
operating officers.

A full-size roundhouse, with a diameter approximating
300 feet, has as its necessary accessories, facilities for coal-
ing the locomotives — several at a time — as well as sup-
plying them with water, sand, and other necessities. Pos-
sibly the terminal will be big enough to demand shop facil-
ities for trifling repairs and maintenance of both cars and
motive power. A big passenger terminal is a much big-
ger thing than that gaudy waiting-room in which you sit,
whilst your train is being made ready to take you out
from the city.

Great as the room assigned to locomotives, greater
must be yard-room for car-storage, in rough proportions,
as the length of the locomotive to the average train length.
It takes something approaching a genius to lay out the car-
yards, particularly in the case of passenger terminals,
which are almost invariably in the heart of great cities
where land values are fabulously high. These yards,
in order to earn the appreciation of the men who must op-
erate them, must be easy of access and be of sufficient size
to meet the heavy demands that are to be put upon them.
To appreciate them, let us consider them in daily use.

The heavy express which has discharged its baggage
and passengers in the train-shed is hauled out to the yards
by one of the sturdy little switch-engines that are eternally
poking their way about the yards. The engine that has
pulled it in from the road backs itself down to the round-
house, without another thought of the train. Its respon-
sibility ended as soon as the run ended in the train-shed.

90 THE MODERN RAILROAD

The engineer simply has to see that his locomotive is care-
fully put away in the roundhouse ; and, on some roads, that
his fireman cleans its upper parts before the next run out
upon the line. The roundhouse crew is then supposed to
take care of the rest of the engine.

In the meantime, the stout little switching-engine has
hauled the cars out to the yards, separating the Pullman
equipment and placing day-coaches, baggage cars, and the
like in a position by themselves. An effort is made to
keep the equipment for the heavy through trains reserved,
allowance being made for occasional changes for repair
and maintenance. In the case of the local and suburban
trains, their varying traffic requires varying lengths ; and it
is possible that two or three of the train-shed tracks con-
tain a supply of extra coaches in order that emergencies of
sudden and unexpected traffic may be met.

The yards must afford full facilities for storing and
cleaning cars. This last is a thorough operation, com-
pressed air being used in many cases and to great advan-
tage. Within, seats are thoroughly dusted, floors swept,
woodwork wiped, while the railroad's pride in the outer
appearance of its equipment is shown by the scrupulous
care with which a small army of cleaners, ladders in hand,
wash down the varnished sides of the coaches. In addi-
tion, both coaches and Pullmans must be stocked with linen
and ice-water, lighting tanks filled and trucks inspected
while in storage yards. Most elaborate provisions are
made for the stocking of dining and buffet cars.

Through equipment will rest in the yards from six to
twenty-four hours, as an average. The local and suburban
trains have a programme of their own, slightly different.
The engine that is to make the run will get its train in the
first place from the storage yard. It is only a big express
run, where the locomotive is privileged to back into the
station, to find its train made ready there for it by some
fag of a switch-engine. The engine that hauls the local
backs its own train into the station, makes its run out upon

THE PASSENGER STATIONS 91

the line, 15, 25, 50 miles, whatever the case may be, and
brings the train back into the station. It kicks the cars
out, just beyond the cover of the train-shed and while it is
hurrying to the turntable the cars are being hastily swept
and dusted. An hour will be allowed the engineer to turn
his engine and get his coal and water supply, and then he
will start out again on his local run. This performance
will be repeated one or more times, before the coaches are
sent to the yard for thorough cleaning and stocking, and
the locomotive housed for a little rest in the programme.

This is not the universal programme, but it is typical.
It seems simple ; but with the multiplicity of local trains in
service, the demands of the regular through traffic, and the
special demands that come unexpectedly day after day, that
car storage yard has got to be arranged for an economy
of operation, as well as with the economy of space in view.
Each storage track must be of convenient access and the
chances are that a separate tower and interlocking may be
set aside for the quick, convenient, and safe operation of
the storage yard. In any event, it must be so built as to
be worked without interference of any sort on the main
line tracks of the terminal.

So much for the terminal, in reference to its operation ;
now let us consider it for a moment from the standpoint of
the passenger. The first point to be considered by the en-
gineers who design it is the point that we have just consid-
ered — safety and convenience in operation. A terminal
might be, and sometimes is, an architectural triumph and a
thing of monumental beauty, but a curse and an extrava-
gance as an operating proposition. The architects, the
mural painters, the furniture designers and the like are
called in last. It is their province to make the setting for
the thing the engineers have already created.

So in considering the terminal station as a building,
we must still give ear to the engineer. He must plan
for the future, anticipate the number of persons who are
to pass through this city's gate fifty years hence, and plan

92 THE MODERN RAILROAD

his concourse, so many square inches for each one of those
future users of the terminal. Exits and entrances to the
trains must be built in order that incoming and outgoing
streams of persons shall not conflict. All these points re-
quire careful study. It is possible to design a baggage-
room so bad as to make the station all but a failure; a
stuffy ticket-office that is almost an impossibility to use
under pressure conditions. The good engineer thinks
two or three thousand times before he begins the design
of a passenger terminal.

The concourse, or head platform, that joins all the
different track platforms is the main feature of the ter-
minal building. Upon it some persons congregate pre-
paratory to going through the gates to their trains, and
other persons congregate awaiting the arrival of trains
— a matter which is carefully bulletined for their conven-
ience. Arriving and departing passengers, with a per-
centage of idlers, must be accommodated upon it. It
must be capacious. Exits to the street should be provided,
without the necessity of passing through the station build-
ing, and the carriage stand should be close at hand.

The waiting-room will be the monumental and artistic
expression of the terminal. It may or may not be a por-
tion of the entrance to the concourse and train-shed, but
it is essential that it be conveniently located, that smoking-
rooms, women's waiting-rooms, parcel-check, telephone,
telegraph, news-stand, and restaurant facilities be close
at hand. It is hardly less desirable that the ticket-offices
adjoin the waiting-room yet the architect who so places his
ticket-offices that the belated traveller has unnecessary
delay in purchasing his tickets, will bring down unnum-
bered curses upon his defenceless head.

The modern station will make provision for numerous
railroad offices — be a complete modern office-building
in fact, although not emblazoning that in its architectural
design — and will have lunch-stand and restaurant facil-
ities, with their necessary addenda of store-rooms, refrig-

THE PASSENGER STATIONS 93

erators and kitchens, as complete as those of the largest
hotels.

The baggage accommodations deserve a paragraph by
themselves. Americans, due to the liberal baggage pro-
visions of our railroads, travel each year with increased
impedimenta. Each year the task of the baggage-hand-
lers multiplies. Making room for trunks has come to be
an important terminal provision. In the large terminals,
this traffic is divided, and in-baggage room receiving from
incoming trains and distributing to various forms of city
baggage delivery and an out-baggage room receiving and
checking baggage for outgoing trains. The in-baggage
room is always much the largest, because of the delays that
almost invariably hold trunks for a time — short or long
— upon their arrival at a terminal.

It is desirable that baggage be handled with as little
inconvenience as possible to passengers ; and for this reason
almost all terminals have subways extending from the
" in " and " out " rooms beneath all train-shed plat-
forms and connected with each of these by elevators, large
enough to receive a full-sized baggage-truck. In this way
annoyance and delay to passengers is minimized. In the
case of heavy through trains, where baggage runs un-
usually heavy, the baggage-cars are frequently detached
and switched in upon special tracks that run alongside
the baggage rooms.

The passenger terminal must also provide mail and ex-
press facilities among these structures, but these, as has
already been intimated, are generally apart and quite sep-
arate from the passenger facilities. A power plant is an-
other necessity. The buildings must be heated, cars
warmed in freezing weather long before the locomotives
are attached, ice-machines operated for the station restau-
rant, power supplied to elevators, dynamos, and lesser
mechanisms about the terminal. This is a feature that
is not radically different from that of other large com-
mercial structures.

94 THE MODERN RAILROAD

The capacity of a modern railroad is measured by the
capacity of its terminals rather than by that of its main
line tracks. The railroads were not quick to realize nor
to appreciate this fact at the first. It was finally forced
upon their attention, and in that way became one of the
fundamental principles of American railroad construction
and operation.

The terminal became recognized as one of the most
efficient possible solutions of the congestion problem, a
little more than a quarter of a century ago. It was then
that the double-tracking and four-tracking devices were
found to measure all out of cost with the relief that was
to be derived from them. It was then that the engineers
were told to meet the situation with a relief that should
be measurably low in cost.

The result of their work has been to put America fore-
most with her railroad terminals. The engineers have
worked against great odds in many cases. The railroads
in the beginning took little or no forethought for their
terminals. They neglected rare opportunities to buy land
for these facilities in the beginning, when the cities were
small and the land cheap. They have paid in millions
of dollars for this neglect. In some cases, the early
railroads had little money to expend upon this city real
estate; but in few cases did any of their managers have
the gift of prophecy that made them foresee the great
cities of to-day or the great tides of traffic they would be
called upon to move.

Nor has this phase of the situation improved within
recent years. A great railroad rebuilt its passenger ter-
minal in an important city ten years ago and blindly im-
agined that the increase in facilities would carry it a
quarter of a century at the least. To-day it is carrying
off the remnants of that station improvement to the scrap-
heap and trying to see far enough into the future to build
a station that shall last it fifty years at least.

There is not an engineer employed by that railroad

THE PASSENGER STATIONS 95

who will assert himself as possessed of the absolute belief
that the new station will be adequate for the traffic of a
half century hence, if indeed the great spreading palace
of steel and marble be in existence at all at that time.
All that they will tell you is to point to the fact that an-
other one of America's greatest passenger carriers has
doubled its traffic within the past ten years.

" How can we gamble with an unknown future of such
dimensions ? " they ask you in return.

When the Park Square Station of the Boston & Provi-
dence Railroad in Boston and the Grand Central Station
in New York were built, in the early seventies, they were
the first railroad passenger terminals of size that the
country had seen. It was thought that they would stand
a hundred years as monuments to the genius of the men
who designed them. To-day they are both gone, each
supplanted by a station that both together might be
packed within.

Do you wonder then that railroad operator and en-
gineer alike stand appalled at the tremendous terminal
problem that our great cities, growing awesome overnight,
are constantly presenting to them?

In the beginning, there were no passenger or freight
terminals, nor, indeed, a traffic that demanded them.
The passenger cars were apt to be hauled by horses from
some downtown depot through the centre of the street
to an " outer depot " at the edge of the town where the
locomotive replaced the horses. When the cars became
heavier, the trains longer and more frequent, the rail-
roads were gradually forced in most cities to remove their
rails from the streets and the use of horses was generally
abandoned. Still, passengers crossing Baltimore, for
some years after the war on their way from the North to
Washington, noticed that the trains were broken into cars
and drawn one by one by horses across the city, through
crowded streets, from one outer railroad station to the

96 THE MODERN RAILROAD

other. A venerable white horse was the switching-engine
in the Rochester depot until the beginning of the eighties.

When the passenger traffic on the railroads had become
a business of extent — about the middle of the past cen-
tury — the construction of sizable railroad stations began.
The Fitchburg Railroad built its stone fortress at Boston,
which still stands and was for many years regarded as
a marvel of its sort. Down in Baltimore, the Susque-
hanna Railroad — afterwards the Northern Central —
built Calvert Station, and stanch old Calvert is still a busy
passenger gateway of the Monumental City. A few
years later the Baltimore & Ohio built Camden Station
there and Camden Station was regarded as something
rather unusually fine for a number of years.

In the sixties, the railroad terminals grew in size, and
the old custom of having separate stations at the far
sides of important towns was disappearing, as the Ameri-
can began to see and to demand the advantages of through
traffic. So Cleveland built at the close of the war a stone
Union Station, of such size that Cleveland folks bragged
of it for many years. The stone Union Station at Cleve-
land is still in use, but the folk of that town do not brag
of it nowadays. Cleveland has grown a good deal since
they built the Union Station there.

The first real passenger terminals of importance in the
country were the Park Square in Boston, and the Grand
Central in New York, to which reference has already been
made. These presented architectural pretensions such as
the railroads of the country had not before offered to the
cities they served. They also served as models for bigger
things that were to follow. In Boston, the Lowell Road
planned and built a large new station, and the era of the
passenger terminal was begun.

When the Pennsylvania Railroad built Broad Street
Station, at Philadelphia, it built a terminal a little finer
than anything accomplished up to that time. Even to-
day, with the dignity of years creeping upon it, Broad

THE PASSENGER STATIONS 97

Street is still one of the foremost American stations. The
policy of its owners has been to keep it abreast of the
demands of the day, and only recently it has been greatly
enlarged again, its protecting, interlocking, and signal sys-
tem being made second to none in the world. To the
traveller, the ivory-white waiting-room, where Philadel-
phians delight to congregate, is an unending source of
admiration; engineers find interest in the intricate system
of tunnels and bridges by which a number of trunk-line
divisions are brought into the station without crossing at
level. Broad Street Station shows a yearly increase in
its passenger traffic of about five per cent. It has a daily
movement of more than 600 loaded trains in and out,
in addition to a heavy switching movement. But because
of the steady increase of its traffic the Pennsylvania has
already planned to relieve it by building a new main for
express trains out at West Philadelphia. When that is
done Broad Street will be used exclusively for suburban
traffic. A short distance away stands the Market Street
Station, of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, a ter-
minal rivalling Broad Street in beauty, and only slightly
inferior in capacity. Philadelphia possesses two distin-
guished city gateways.

But the first big station terminals — in our American
sense that a thing big must be bigger than anything else
of the same kind in the world — were those erected at
Boston and at St. Louis. The first of these handles a
traffic far exceeding that of any other terminal ever built;
the second has a train-shed that is gigantic and over-
whelming; and so each of the cities can, in a measure of
truth, claim for itself the largest railroad station ever
built. Each has enough of novelty and interest to make
it worthy of attention.

The Boston terminal — South Station — was preceded
by a giant structure erected along the bank of the Charles
River to receive a multitude of through and suburban rail-
road lines entering from the north. This terminal —

98 THE MODERN RAILROAD

North Station — embraced the structure of the Boston &
Lowell Railroad and superseded those of the Boston &
Maine and Fitchburg railroads. The merging of these
and other interests into the present Boston & Maine made
the North Station a possibility. It is not a structure of
particular distinction, from either an architectural or an
engineering standpoint, but it has proved itself a mighty
convenience to a travelling public, using a multiplicity of
busy lines.

The convenience of it made the South Station a possi-
bility. Boston, like Philadelphia, spreads out well be-
yond its actual boundaries and measures itself as a vast
community, including many near-by cities and villages.
With the consolidation of a number of railroads in South-
ern New England into the New York, New Haven &
Hartford system, and the popularity of the North Station
so close at hand, the South Station came as a matter of
course. It replaced the stations of the New York & New
England — whose site forms part of its site — the Old
Colony, the Boston & Albany, and the Park Square Sta-
tion. To accommodate the vast traffic of all these rail-
roads, a great terminal was designed and built, a thing
whose bigness is hardly realized by the passenger coming
and going through it and who knows it only as a thing
of some thousands of shuffling feet, giant shadows, and
long distances.

In addition to the 28 sub-tracks in the train-shed, South
Station is, in effect, a through station for electric sub-
urban traffic. This service has not yet been installed, but
the tracks are ready for use upon short notice, when the
facilities of the main train-shed shall become overtaxed.
This through station has been ingeniously devised under-
neath the train-shed and waiting-rooms of the terminal.
It is served by two tracks leading from the main entrance
tracks to the station — guarded by separate interlocking
and tower controls, and consists of two extensive loops.

THE PASSENGER STATIONS 99

For suburban service, with no baggage to be handled,
these loops will some day afford a great accommodation.
Three or four electric trains may be stood upon each.
The time and necessity of reversing the trains is entirely
obviated, and upon the two tracks of this sub-station a
short-haul traffic can be handled almost equal in numbers
to that of the train-shed overhead.

What such a statement means can be better realized by
a recourse to bold statistics. South Station handled
31,831,390 passengers in 1909, who travelled two and
fro in some 800 trains daily. It has handled more than
900 trains in a single day. Its baggage men take care
of more than 2,500,000 trunks in a twelvemonth. The
statistics of a city gate like South Station are, in them-
selves, sizable.

St. Louis has one passenger station to serve as city
gate for the traffic that comes and goes at that important
railroad centre. That gate is the chief through passenger
traffic point of the world. From its train-shed one may
take through trains to every corner of the United States
and a few distant corners of Mexico and Canada. St.
Louis, like most Western cities has no volume of suburban
traffic as New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, but it is a
consequential point for through passengers. The better
to serve the needs of the 22 different railroad systems
entering that city, the Union Station was built a dozen
years ago. It was thought to be big enough to last St.
Louis many years. Before the World's Fair of 1904
opened in that city the Union Station was already judged
inadequate, and an elaborate plan was consummated for
its enlargement.

When the Union Station was originally planned, St.
Louis demanded a gate that would be worthy of her size
and dignity. No type of through station would do, the
head-house terminal was demanded and built, even though
in actual practice it necessitated backing each arriving

ioo THE MODERN RAILROAD

train into the shed. A station of giant size with the
largest train-shed in the world was built and hailed with
a glad acclaim by the Western town.

When the station was found inadequate, the engineers
found their plans for enlarging it would have to be
adapted to a very confined area, proscribed by immovable
railroad properties to the south, highway viaducts to the
east and west, and a granite head-house, costing several
million dollars, to the north. Within that confined area,
they were to correct the evils of insufficient capacity — a
train-shed with a single 4-track throat and some standing
tracks of but 3 cars' length, inadequate baggage arrange-
ments, and lesser evils. Within two years, they had sub-
stituted, without increasing the area of the Union Station
property, a lo-car capacity for each of the 32 tracks of
the train-shed, a double throat with 6 tracks, increased
concourses and distributing platforms for passengers, and
a complete subway system for the handling of baggage.
The prosecution of that work, while the station was in
constant and busy use, ranks as one of the marvels of
latter-day practical engineering.

From the standpoint of the architect, no other station
has yet been built in the United States that can compare
with the new Union Station at Washington. For years,
the overcrowded railroad stations at that city have been
but wretched gateways to the national capitol. Now the
city that is fast becoming the Mecca of all Americans
has an entrance worthy of her dignity, and in keeping
with the increasing magnificence of her architectural
works.

The Washington Station is in full accord with the won-
derful architectural development of that city, and has a
setting in the creation of a great facing plaza, in which
100,000 troops may be gathered in review. Some day
the plaza is to be surrounded by a group of public build-
ings but even in that day the white marble station, ex-
ceeding in size all other Washington buildings save the

THE PASSENGER STATIONS 101

Capitol itself, will remain the dominating feature of that
facing plaza. It has been created in simple classic out-
line, a vaulted train-shed being purposely omitted, in
order that the station should not overshadow the propor-
tions of the near-by Capitol.

Similarly, the vaulted train-shed has been omitted in the
splendid new white granite terminal which the Chicago
and Northwestern Railway has just completed on the West
Side of Chicago. That new terminal is a real addition
to a town which has long boasted two model stations —
one in La Salle Street and the other upon the Lake Front.
The Northwestern terminal is one of the fine archi-
tectural features of Chicago — a structure of classic de-
sign, the dominating feature of which is a colonnaded
portico, monumental in type and towering to a height
of 1 20 feet above the main street entrance.

This new terminal has a possible capacity of a quarter
of a million passengers each day. It has some novel fea-
tures for the comfort of passengers. A great many
travellers cross Chicago in the course of twenty-four
hours; in many cases this is the single break in a weary
and dirty journey. For these, the new terminal not only
provides the customary lounging rooms and barber shops,
but also private baths. There is a series of rooms where
invalids, women with children, or other persons seeking
privacy, may go directly by private elevator where they
may rest while waiting for connecting trains. For women
there are tea-rooms and hospital rooms, with trained
nurses in attendance. That is almost the last note in
comfort for the traveller. There are, in addition to all
these, private rooms where the suburbanite may change
into his evening clothes and proceed in his various
social duties, changing back again before he catches his
late train out into the country.

New York City is still in the process of rebuilding and
readjusting her gateways. Two magnificent terminals in

102 THE MODERN RAILROAD

her metropolitan district have already been finished; the
third is still under construction. The first of these
terminals is a real water-gate, built for the Lackawanna
Railroad and situated in Hoboken, just across the Hudson
River from the corporate New York. It is a handsome
architectural creation in steel and concrete. Its tall clock-
tower dominates the river front by night and day and
those who come and go through its portals find them-
selves in a succession of white and vaulted hallways and
concourses that suggest a library or museum more than
the mere commercial structure of a railroad corporation.

An interesting feature of the Hoboken Station is the
abandonment of the high train-shed such as has come to
be a distinguishing feature of some of the world's great
terminals. Engine smoke and gases work havoc with the
structural steel work of such sheds, and the engineers of
the Hoboken Station fashioned a low-lying roof, slotted
to receive the locomotive stacks. The result is a clean
train-house, yet admirably protected from the stress of
weather. It is a novel note in terminal engineering.

The Pennsylvania Station, opened in November, 1910,
has already become one of the notable landmarks of New
York. Beneath it disappeared the biggest hole ever ex-
cavated at one time in the metropolitan city; for the great
station is not so famed either for its architectural beauty
or for the completeness of its details (although it is in
the foreguard of the world's great terminals in both of
these regards), as for the stupendous engineering project
that was found necessary to connect it with the trunk-line
railroads that it serves. To the west, this takes form in
two parallel tunnels underneath the city, the Hudson
River, and the Jersey Heights ; to the east a still heavier
traffic, composed of empty trains in Pennsylvania service
and a great army of Long Island commuters, is carried
under the very heart of Manhattan Island and under the
East River in four parallel tunnels. Trains run for six
miles under the greatest city of the continent, with its

A MODEL AMERICAN RAILROAD STATION — THE UNION STATION

OF THE NEW YORK CENTRAL, BOSTON & ALBANY, DELAWARE &

HUDSON, AND WEST SHORE RAILROADS AT ALBANY

THE CLASSIC PORTAL OF THE PENNSYLVANIA'S NEW STATION IN

NEW YORK

THE BEAUTIFUL CONCOURSE OF THE NEW PENNSYLVANIA STATION,

IN NEW YORK

" THE WAITING-ROOM IS THE MONUMENTAL AND ARTISTIC EXPRES-
SION OF THE STATION," - — THE WAITING-ROOM OF THE UNION
DEPOT AT TROY, NEW YORK

THE PASSENGER STATIONS 103

flanking rivers and environs, without ever seeing more
than a momentary flash of daylight. The terminal has no
train-shed or other of the familiar external appearances
of the usual railroad station in a large city.

The Pennsylvania terminal also departs radically from
the other great terminals in its track arrangements. The
twenty-one parallel station tracks, with their platforms,
are placed in a basement forty feet below street level. In
fact, the great building is divided into three levels. At
the street level are the broad entrances, the chief of these
forming itself into a broad arcade, lined with shops that
cater particularly to the demands of the traveller. On
this floor are also the railroad's commodious restaurant
and lunch-room.

On the intermediate plane, or level, the real business
of the passenger prefatory to his journey is transacted.
The concourse, the great general waiting-room, with its
subsidiary rooms for men and women, the ticket offices,
and the telegraph offices are there gathered. From the
roomy concourse, covered in steel and glass after the
fashion of the famous train-sheds in Frankfort and Dres-
den, Germany, individual stairs and elevators lead to
each of the track platforms. A sub-concourse, hung di-
rectly underneath the main structure, is reserved for exit
purposes only, and serves to separate the streams of in-
coming and outgoing passengers. The north side of the
station is separated and reserved for the use of the Long
Island passengers, chiefly commuters.

The theory of operation of the station is simplicity
itself. A Pennsylvania through train from the West,
after discharging its passengers and baggage, will not be
backed out of the train-house, but will continue on through
the station, under more tunnels and another river, to the
storage yards just outside of Long Island City. Simi-
larly, trains made ready for a long trip at the yards will
proceed empty under the East River tunnels to the big
station, where they will receive their outbound load.

io4 THE MODERN RAILROAD

This is the theory of the station, an operating theory
which makes it in part like a giant way-station and saves
much terminal congestion. The Long Island trains and
a few short-line Pennsylvania express trains will be
turned in the station. These are the exception.

Of interest fully equal to that of the new Pennsylvania
Station, is the construction of a new Grand Central Sta-
tion upon the site of and during the use of the old. The
Grand Central Station, used by both the New York Cen-
tral and the New York, New Haven, & Hartford Rail-
roads, has been for many years New York's great gate-
way to the east as well as the north and west. It has
developed a great suburban and a great through traffic
since the construction of the first station — away back in
1871. Temporary relief was gained in the early eighties
by the construction of an annex to the east of the original
station. Still further improvement was gained ten years
ago by tearing out a series of ill-arranged public rooms
and substituting for them the single beautiful waiting-
room that has proved so great a delight to travellers.
Now that waiting-room is about to be demolished in the
face of plans for the newer and greater Grand Central.

The building of the new station has offered tremendous
problems to the engineers, for it has demanded a complete
reconstruction within extremely limited area, while not
placing hindrances in the way of the constant operation
of one of the world's greatest terminals. Coincident with
the rebuilding of the new station has come the substitu-
tion of electricity for steam on the terminal lines of its
two tenants, the New York, New Haven, & Hartford,
and the New York Central & Hudson River Railroads.
In order to work the three-mile tunnel through Park
Avenue and the sole entrance for trains to the station
at greatest capacity, it was found necessary to extend the
yards of the new station far north of those of the old.
This work, alone, has necessitated the acquisition of whole
city blocks of tremendously valuable real estate and the

THE PASSENGER STATIONS 105

excavation of several million cubic yards of rock and
earth.

To accomplish the work of reconstruction and still en-
able the station to handle its great traffic without serious
interruption, serious forethought and definite plans of ac-
tion were found necessary. The plan was developed by
constructing a temporary building of brick and plaster
covering a vacant city block in Madison Avenue, at the
west of the station. Into this temporary structure a
branch post office, an important adjunct of the Grand
Central, was moved from the extreme eastern side of the
terminal. Excavation for the new terminal began at its
eastern edge and at that edge the first portions of the new
structure have been completed. A waiting-room was
then established in temporary quarters, the last vestiges
of the old Grand Central removed, and the main front
and centre of the new station fabricated. Similarly, as
the excavation has progressed from the east to the west
side of the terminal, the great bulk of the traffic has been
gradually shifted from the old high-level to the new
low-level.

The new Grand Central complete will have its main
train-shed devoted to through traffic. A second train-
shed of similar arrangement and of slightly smaller di-
mensions will be constructed underneath the main shed
for suburban traffic, and a single head-house will serve
both floors. The head-house will have as its chief archi-
tectural feature, a concourse of mammoth proportions.
The lesser features of the new Grand Central will con-
tribute to make the new terminal, built upon the site of
the historic old, one of the world's greatest gateways.
The fact that steam locomotives are absolutely prohibited
from entering either of the two new stations on Manhattan
Island makes these the cleanest railroad terminals yet
built.

So not only have our railroads begun to build great
stations; they are to-day building really beautiful stations.

io6 THE MODERN RAILROAD

An age in which the American demands the exquisite and
the monumental in his architecture, palatial homes, pala-
tial shops, palatial hotels, demands that the railroad sta-
tion be something more than the mere expression of a
commercial utility. Stone, the sturdy and durable build-
ing material of all the ages, has become the expression
of these buildings from without. Within, they are gay
with rare marbles and mural paintings. There is nothing
too fine for the railroad passenger terminal of to-day in
the United States.

When the master fancy of the architect, Richardson,
designed the splendid stations at Worcester and Spring-
field, as well as a host of smaller attractive stations along
the line of the Boston & Albany Railroad, the beginnings
were made. More recently this rising American desire
for beauty and good taste has shown itself in such elab-
orate and artistic structures as the stations at Albany and
Scranton. The last step has come in the designing of the
palatial terminals in Chicago, in Washington, and in New
York City. It would take a bold prophet to anticipate
what the next step might be.

CHAPTER VII

THE FREIGHT TERMINALS AND THE YARDS

CONVENIENCE OF HAVING FREIGHT STATIONS AT SEVERAL POINTS IN A
CITY — THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD'S SCHEME AT NEW YORK AS AN
EXAMPLE — COAL HANDLED APART FROM OTHER FREIGHT — ASSORTING
THE CARS — THE TRANSFER HOUSE — CHARGES FOR THE USE OF CARS
NOT PROMPTLY RETURNED TO THEIR HOME ROADS — THE HARD WORK
OF THE YARDMASTER.

ALL the folk who come and go upon the railroad
know the passenger stations. Few of them know
the freight terminals. Yet it is from this last source that
the railroad will derive the greater part of its revenue.
The freight terminals of a large city will be a group of
plants, designed for varying purposes. The railroad
handles its passenger business from a single structure, if
possible. It is comparatively simple to gather all its
passengers, even from a broad territory, within a great
city, and so to concentrate this part of its traffic in a
single well-located terminal.

With the freight it is entirely a different question.
The problem of trucking is one of the great problems
of each of our large cities, and, in order to eliminate this
as far as possible, the railroad, under the stimulus of com-
petition, will establish freight stations at each point where
any considerable volume of traffic is likely to originate.
These stations will consist of a freight-house, for handling
package-freight (your traffic expert calls this "LCL,"
meaning " less than carload "), and wagon yards for car-
load lots. Perhaps there will be two freight-houses, one
for inbound, the other for outbound traffic. The wagon
yards will have to be ample for the accommodation of a

107

io8 THE MODERN RAILROAD

host of trucks and drays as well as for the long rows of
freight-cars.

, In addition to these stations, each large manufacturing
plant is apt to be a freight station of itself, with a private
switch running to its shipping-rooms and storage sheds;
and in even a moderate-sized American city there may
be from 300 to 500 of these sidings in active daily use.
So much for the general commodity freight. Then
there are the special commodities.

Coal, for instance, is a freight business of itself. It
is not handled in the regular stations of the railroad, but
in specially designed pockets and storage sheds, which
may be located at from one or two to half a hundred
different accessible points about the city.' One begins to
*see, after a little while, why the railroads now seize with
avidity each opportunity to gain lines through the hearts
of our cities. Each line gained means some appreciable
relief toward the taking up of a traffic burden that in-
creases yearly.

It is most probable that the freight terminals of the
city will have to accommodate much more traffic than
that which originates or terminates there. Important
lines of other railroads may intersect at that point, and
the handling of interchange freight is a busy function
of the terminal scheme. It may be an important point
for lake, river, or ocean traffic; and in such a case, the
industries at docks and docking facilities of every sort
form other busy functions. There will be coal or ore
wharves, elevators, and car-floats to enter into the scheme.

So you see the railroad's freight terminal in any large
city is like the fingers of its extended hand. The long
tendons reach into every productive centre, gathering and
distributing at from a dozen to fifty points, aside from the
private sidings. It is obvious that these must be caught
together somewhere; and generally upon the outskirts of
an important traffic city the railroad creates an inter-
change yard where this freight, incoming and outgoing —

FREIGHT TERMINALS AND YARDS 109

100 trains a day, perhaps — is gathered together and
sorted with system and regularity, very much as the post
office sorts the letters and the mail packages.

To examine more closely this working of a modern
freight terminal scheme, let us take a single plant of a
single system. The great operation by which the Penn-
sylvania Railroad catches up and delivers its freight in
the metropolitan district around New York is typical,
and will illustrate.

The Pennsylvania works with at least 24 freight sta-
tions, in addition to a great number of private sidings
from its lines as they pass through Eastern New Jersey.
These stations handle the freight of Manhattan Island,
Brooklyn, Jersey City, Hoboken, Newark, and smaller
centres; but in addition to them there are vast docks at
which foreign steamers berth, lighterage facilities for both
foreign and coasting steamers, and a tremendous freight
interchange with the railroads running to the north and
east. The coal business is there again, a separate insti-
tution with many piers and pockets; there is a group of
bulky elevators that rise above the smoky, busy Jersey
shore, the whole going to make a sizable freight terminal.
There are coal pockets, piers, elevators, and a local freight
station at Jersey City (the railroad men know it as
Harsemus Cove) , and another much larger plant at Green-
ville on the west bank of the upper harbor, almost be-
hind the Statue of Liberty. This last plant is just now
awaiting its greatest development. The Pennsylvania
Railroad, through its ownership control of the Long Island
Railroad, is building an encircling line, 4 and 6 tracks
wide, around Brooklyn, and crossing its passenger termi-
nal yards at Long Island City. This encircling line —
the New York Connecting Railroad it is called — will be
continued by a splendid bridge over the East River to an
actual connection with the New Haven system reaching
up into New England. When this is done, one of the
bugaboos of the freightmen — the slow and ofttimes

no THE MODERN RAILROAD

dangerous movement of barges and car-floats through the
East River, past the entire length of Manhattan Island —
will be ended. Greenville will become the distributing
point for the bulk of New England freight that comes
and goes from the south and the west through New York.

Even at the present time Greenville is a freight point
of considerable magnitude. Go out to Waverley, the
great sprawling interchange yard that reaches from
Newark almost to Elizabeth along the edge of the Jersey
meadows, and watch the through trains come from Green-
ville. They rank well to-day with the traffic that comes
from Harsemus Cove already; and Harsemus Cove is
soon to be as nothing.

Waverley is more than a mere junction. It was in the
first instance the neck of the bottle where the double-track
line from Greenville, the main line from Jersey City and
Harsemus Cove, and the cut-off freight line that carries
through traffic around the heart of great and growing
Newark, united to form the main line of the busy Penn-
sylvania Railroad. Being a gateway by natural location
the railroad sought to make it a gateway in reality. A
big assorting or classification yard was built there for out-
going freight, and another for the incoming. Storage
tracks were added and one of the great transfer houses
of the country — but of that, more in a moment.

The business day ends at the many freight-houses along
the waterfront of Manhattan and Brooklyn at four
o'clock in the afternoon. At that hour, the railroad re-
fuses to accept any more freight for the day, car-doors
are closed and sealed with rapidity; in a short time the
long and clumsy floats are being hauled by pert little tugs
toward Harsemus or Greenville. There is not much loaf-
ing at either of those points along about supper-time.
Switching crews show feverish activity in snatching the
cars from the floats, and yardmasters bend themselves
nervously toward forming the long trains that are to go
rumbling toward the west throughout the night.

FREIGHT TERMINALS AND YARDS in

Stand in the switch-tower at Waverley, and you will
begin to cultivate a wholesome respect for the freight
traffic that comes out from a great city at nightfall. A
through train from Greenville is billed to Pittsburgh, and
only hesitates long enough at Waverley to take the switch-
points at that busy junction with care. Three minutes
behind it is a through Chicago train from Harsemus
Cove, and it goes stolidly through the gateway yard
without pausing. You wonder why they keep an expert
yardmaster and half a dozen switching crews at Waver-
ley. Within five minutes you wonder no longer. They
are beginning to get the unassorted cars from the termi-
nals, cars that are bound for more than a score of States.
The work of sorting begins. The night yardmaster is
a general, and he has an army of lesser officers in the
field. You can trace them through the night, as, lanterns
in hand, they are running along the trains (these are
pulling in from the waterfront every five minutes now),
cutting out cars, adding cars, vamping and revamping the
freight traffic of the night.

This track receives through freight for Philadelphia,
the next for Pittsburgh, the third for Cincinnati, the
fourth for Washington and the points diverging there-
from. So it goes. When the assorting process has been
in progress for more than an hour at one end of the
classification tracks, there are long trains of cars upon
them ready to run solid to some large city or important
distributing point. After that it is a simple enough mat-
ter to bring engines and cabooses and start the trains
through. Then the sorting of the cars is begun again and
continues until the freight receiving points and the freight
interchange points in the metropolitan district have been
swept clean for the night.

The transfer-house repeats the assorting process, only
upon a smaller scale, for it handles package freight —
" less than carload." It is a long structure, stretching
its way down the yard and served by 8 to 10 long sidings

ii2 THE MODERN RAILROAD

and unloading sheds. It takes the " LCL " stuff coming
by night from the connecting railroads and from the
metropolitan freight-houses, and a little after midnight
its workers begin the sorting of this great mass of matter,
from 200 to 500 carloads a day.

Here is a really great phase of railroad energy. We
find our way to a gaunt freight-house, to whose door no
truck has ever backed, and which is hemmed in by many
rows of sidings and of sheds. In this building one of
the busiest functions of the whole transportation business
goes forth by day and by night.

You ship a box — sixty pounds to one hundred pounds
— from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., to Berlin, Wis. Here comes
another box from Watertown, N. Y., to Norfolk, Va.
A third is bound from Easthampton, Mass., to Chilli-
cothe, O.; a fourth from Terre Haute, Ind., to Plain-
field, N. J., and so on, ad infinitum. You can readily
see how in such cases the railroads have a problem in
freight that closely approximates that of the Government
mail service. Ten thousand currents and cross-currents
of merchandise rising here and there and everywhere,
and crossing and recrossing on their way to destination,
make a puzzle that does not cease when the rate-sheet
experts have finished their difficult work.

If all the freight might be expressed in even multiples
of cars the problem would not be quite so appalling. But
your box is a hundred pounds weight, or less, perhaps
— " LCL " anyway. From its destination it goes with
other boxes in a car to the nearest transfer point. At the
transfer house the car in which it is placed is drilled quickly
into an infreight track, seals are broken, doors opened,
and re-assorting begins. The transfer-house is roomy and
systematic. If it were anything less it would resemble
chaos.

But the chief freight points of that particular system
and its connecting points have regular stands, upon which

FREIGHT TERMINALS AND YARDS 113

nightly are placed cars bound for these points. Each
city (in the case of a large city each freight-house), each
transfer point, has a number, and its through car stands
opposite that number. When the infreight arrives and
is unloaded piece by piece, a checker, who is nothing less
than an animated guide-book, gives each its proper num-
ber, and it is promptly trucked off to the waiting car.
It is mail-sorting on a Titanic scale.

Nor is this an absolute order. Certain towns demand
an occasional through car from time to time, and a car
must be assigned number and place at the transfer-house
against such emergencies. Sometimes there is more than
enough freight to fill the car allotted to any given point,
and then one of the switching crews must drill that out
and find another empty to replace it. Beyond that, the
yardmaster's superiors are all the time demanding that
he show judgment in picking the cars to be filled.

When a freight car gets off the system to which it be-
longs it collects forfeits from the other lines over which
it passes, if they do not expedite its passage; this the
railroaders know as "per diem" The great trick in
operating is to keep per diem down; and so the " foreign "
cars, so called, must be promptly returned to their home
roads.

" We load out of the transfer-house a through car
over the Northwestern from Chicago every day," the man
who has this yard in charge explains. " It 7s up to me
to have a Northwestern empty for that when I can.
When I can't, I do the best I can." He scratches his head.
" Perhaps I '11 use a Canadian Pacific, and so get her
started along toward home. If not, something from the
Sault; just as I am going to start that New Haven car
over toward Connecticut to-night. If I were to send that
New Haven car out beyond Washington there 'd be
trouble, and I Ve got to dig out something empty from
the Boston & Maine to take that stuff over to Lowell.

ii4 THE MODERN RAILROAD

Mos' generally, though, when we Ve got a turn of West-
ern stuff, I Ve got my * empty ' tracks stuffed full o' them
New England cars."

We mention something about the transfer-house being
a mighty good thing.

u It 's a necessary evil," says our guide, correcting us.

He starts to explain. " See here. The X , over

in its Jersey City transfer-house, got near a carload of
that fancy porcelain brick through from Haverstraw las'
week, and that young whelp of a college boy that 's
hangin' round there learnin' the railroad business gets it
into his noodle that it 's somethin' awful, awful for that
stuff to be goin' through to Middle Ohio in a Maine Cen-
tral box, an ' LCL ' at that. So out he dumps it into
a system car right here an' now, and saves his road about
one dollar and fifty cents per diem. Of course they pay
about one hundred and thirty-five dollars for damages
to that brick in the transferrin'. But the boy 's all right
in the transfer-house. If he was out on the engine he
might blow up the biler."

Here is another great railroad yard — this almost fill-
ing a mighty crevice between God's eternal hills. This
is within the mountain country, and the gossip that you
get around the roundhouse is all of grades. You hear
how Smith and the 2,999 pulled seven Pullmans around
the Saddleback without a pusher; how some of the
big preference freights take four engines to mount the
summit; the tales of daring are tales of pushers and
of trains breaking apart on the fearful mountain
stretches.

Randall is yardmaster here, and Randall is the opposite
of the layman's picture of a yardmaster — a slovenly,
worn, profane sort of fellow. Randall does not swear;
he rarely even gets excited; his system of administration
is so perfectly devised that even in a stress he rarely
has to turn to work with his own hands. With him rail-

SOMETHING OVER A MILLION DOLLARS' WORTH OF PASSENGER CARS
ARE CONSTANTLY STORED IN THIS YARD

A SCENE IN THE GREAT FREIGHT-YARDS THAT SURROUND CHICAGO

FREIGHT TERMINALS AND YARDS 115

reading is a fine, practical science. He will tell you of
the methods at Collinwood, at Altoona, at Buffalo, at
Chicago — wherein they differ. He is cool, calculating,
clever, a capital railroader in addition to all these.

You speak of his yard as being overwhelmingly big.
He answers in his deliberate way:

' We've more than 200 miles of track in this yard;
something more than 2,000 switches operate it."

Then he takes you down from his office, elevated in an
abandoned switch-tower, and looking down upon his
domain. He explains with great care that, his yard be-
ing a main-line division point and not a point with many
intersecting branches or " foreign roads," its transfer-
house is inconsequential. The same process that goes for-
ward with the package-freight in the transfer-houses,
Randall carries on in this yard with cars. These opera-
tions are separated for east-bound and west-bound freight
and each is given an entirely separate yard, easily reached
from the group of roundhouses that hold the freight
motive power of that part of the system. Randall's, be-
ing an unusually large yard, further divides these activi-
ties into separate yards for loaded and empty cars on
the west-bound side. No east-bound " empties " are
handled over his road.

We follow him to the nearest operating point, the
west-bound classification yard for loaded cars. In the old
days this was a broad flat reach of about 20 parallel
tracks, terminating at each end in approaches of lead of
" ladder " track. Upon each set of 3 or 4 tracks a
switch-engine is busy in the eternal classification process.
In these more modern days you may see the " hump "
or gravity-yard, although you will still find skilled rail-
roaders who are prejudiced against its use. In the hump-
yard half of the work of the switch-engines is done by
gravity. This new type of railroad facility has an arti-
ficial hill, just above the termination of the parallel tracks
where they cluster together, and upon this hump one

n6 THE MODERN RAILROAD

switch-engine with a trained crew does the work of six
engines and crews in the old type of yard.

A preference freight rolls into the receiving yard for
the west-bound classification. Its engine uncouples and
steams off for a well-earned rest in the smoky roundhouse.
A switch-engine uncouples the caboose that has been
tacked on behind over the division, and it is shunted off
to the near-by caboose track, where its crew will have close
oversight of it — perhaps sleep in it — until it is ready to
accompany some east-bound freight a few hours hence.

Blue flags (blue lights at night) are fastened at each
end of the dismantled cars, and the inspectors have a
quarter of an hour to make sure if the equipment is in
good order. If the car is found with broken running-
gear it is marked, and soon after drilled out from its
fellows, sent to the transfer-house to have its contents
removed, to the shops for repairs, or the " cripple " track
for junk, if its case is well-nigh hopeless.

With the " O. K." of the car inspectors finally pro-
nounced, the train that was comes up to the hump, and
the expert crew that operates there makes short work of
sorting out the cars — this track for u stuff " southwest
of Pittsburgh, this next for Cleveland and Chicago, the
third for transcontinental; and so it goes. Two lines
of cars are drilled at the same time, for just ahead of
the switch-engine is an open-platform car, known as the
" pole-car," and by means of heavy timbers the " pole-
man " guides two rows of heavy cars down the slight
grades to their resting-places.

The cars do not rest long upon the classification-yard
tracks. From the far end of each of these they are being
gathered in solid trains, one for Pittsburgh, another for
Cleveland and Chicago, the third transcontinental, and so
on. Engines of the next division are being hitched to
them, pet u hacks " brought from the caboose tracks, and
the long strings of loaded box-cars are off toward the
West in incredibly short time.

FREIGHT TERMINALS AND YARDS 117

Of course there are some trains that never go upon
the " classification " at Randall's yard. There are solid
coal trains bound in and out of New York, of Phila-
delphia, and of Boston, that pass him empty and filled,
and only change engines and cabooses at his command.
There are through freights, bound from one seaboard to
the other, from the Far East to the Far West, that do
likewise. But the majority of the freight movement has
the sorting out within his domain, his four humps are
busy day and night with an ordinary run of traffic, and
you shudder to think what must be the condition when
business begins to run at high tide.

' We get it a-humming every once in a while," he
finally confesses. " We had one day, a little time ago,
when we received 121 east-bound trains in twenty- four
hours, more than 3,200 cars all told. That meant, on an
average, a train every 1 1 y* minutes. That same day we
got 78 west-bound freights, with more than 3,600 cars.
That meant nearly 7,000 cars handled on the in-freight
in twenty-four hours, or a train coming in to me every
7^2 minutes during day and night. They don't do much
better than that on some of the subway and elevated rail-
roads in the big cities ; and I have n't said a word about
the trains and cars we despatched — just about as much
again, of course."

Through yards such as these there are incoming streams
of merchandise, equal at least to the outgoing, passing
through classification yards in carload lots and the great
transfer-houses in " LCL." These streams must be kept
separate and from clogging one another or themselves.
Cars must carry loads whenever they are moved —
" empties " are the bogy-men of the superintendents of
transportation — and cars from " foreign " systems must
be quickly returned to their home roads. The yardmas-
ter at a busy freight point has his own worries. His
puzzle is unending. To it he must bend the bigness of a
big mind, he must be prepared to handle the unequal

*

n8 THE MODERN RAILROAD

volumes of traffic that pass through his domain with an
equal skill: in dull times he must seek to keep his plant
working under conditions of rare economy; when the
freight rises to flood tide, he must fight in harness to pre-
vent the freight from congesting. The word " failure "
has been stricken out of his vocabulary by his superiors.

It takes a high grade of railroader to serve as yard-
master.

CHAPTER VIII

THE LOCOMOTIVES AND THE CARS

HONOR REQUIRED IN THE BUILDING OF A LOCOMOTIVE — SOME OF THE
EARLY LOCOMOTIVES — SOME NOTABLE LOCOMOTIVE-BUILDERS — IN-
CREASE OF THE SIZE OF ENGINES — STEPHENSON'S AIR-BRAKE — THE
WORKSHOPS — THE VARIOUS PARTS OF THE ENGINE — CARS OF THE
OLD-TIME — IMPROVEMENTS BY WINANS AND OTHERS — STEEL CARS
FOR FREIGHT.

FROM out of the fiery womb of steel comes the loco-
motive. We have already told of the honor that is
forged in the building of the bridge; honor of no less
degree has gone into the forging of the most vital and
most human thing upon the railroad, outside of man him-
self. That man has ever been able to create and build the
locomotive, a giant creature of some 200 tons, perhaps,
built together with infinite care of some 5,000 to 7,000
parts, and these parts acting with the delicacy of the hair-
spring of a watch, almost passes ordinary belief. The
wonder becomes even greater when it is realized that this
monster creature, set upon two slender rails, is capable of
pulling a 4,000 ton train, through every stress of weather
and over considerable grades.

To tell in detail of the locomotive in one chapter is
short allowance to a subject that fairly demands for itself
a whole book, a technical mind for the telling, and at
least a fairly technical mind for the understanding; a
subject that in its history goes hand in hand with that
of the railroad itself. Yet the limitations of this book
forbid a more lengthy description.

We have already told of a very few of the earliest and
most famous American locomotives; the Stourbridge Lion,
which Horatio Allen brought to the Delaware & Hudson

119

120 THE MODERN RAILROAD

Company; the Best Friend, which was built in New York
City, and which went to Charleston, South Carolina, to
be the first American locomotive to run in the United
States, the De Witt Clinton, which awoke the echoes
of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys in a single day; and
the Tom Thumb, built by Peter Cooper, which induced
the directors of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad to change
their motive power from horses to steam, and so opened
a great new development for their property.

A little while after Cooper's Tom Thumb had achieved
the astounding feat of beating a team of horses in hauling
a railroad coach, the directors of the B. & O. offered a
prize of $4,000 " for the most approved engine that shall
be delivered for trial upon the road on or before June i,
1831 ; and $3,500 for the engine which shall be adjudged
the next best." It was determined in this prospectus that
" the engine, when in operation must not exceed three and
one-half tons weight and must, on a level road, be capable
of drawing day by day fifteen tons, inclusive of the weight
of wagons, fifteen miles an hour."

Three locomotives answered this generous offer. Of
them but one, the York, oftener called the Arabian, built
at York, Pa., by Davis & Gartner, and hauled to Balti-
more by horses over the turnpikes, was of practical serv-
ice. Phineas Davis was a watch and clock maker, but
he succeeded in devising a locomotive that was the fore-
runner of the famous Grasshopper upon the Baltimore &
Ohio. Better name was never given to a locomotive, the
rude and ungainly angles formed by rods and levers giv-
ing a distinct resemblance to the long-legged bugs. Yet
the Grasshoppers served their purpose. In the late
eighties, the Arabian was still in service in the Mount
Clare yards at Baltimore. With a single exception, it
never had an accident or even left the rails. That ex-
ception was just before the completion of the Washington
branch, and Davis was a passenger upon the engine. It
was going at a fair rate of speed when suddenly it rolled

LOCOMOTIVES AND CARS 121

over upon its side in the ditch. No one was hurt, save
i)avis, who was instantly killed. It seemed a strange
caprice of Fate, for although careful examination was im-
mediately made, both of the engine and of the track, no
reason could ever be assigned for the accident.

In that same year, 1831, the John Bull, which was built
by George & Robert Stephenson & Company, of New-
castle-on-Tyne, in England, was received in Philadelphia
for the Camden & Amboy Railroad. As long as the
locomotive continues to serve the railroad the name of
George Stephenson, its inventor, must be indissolubly
linked with it. The John Bull was easily the most famous
Stephenson engine ever sent to the United States. It has
been shown at all our great expositions, and now occupies
a position of honor in the great Smithsonian institution
at Washington. Of these early engines, which it was
found necessary to bring from England, a volume once
issued by the Rogers Locomotive Works, of Paterson,
N. J., has said:

" These locomotives . . . furnished the types and patterns
from which those which were afterwards built here were fash-
ioned. But American designs soon began to depart from their
British prototypes, and a process of adaption to the existing con-
ditions of the railroads in this country followed, which afterwards
differentiated the American locomotives more and more from
those built in Great Britain. A marked feature of difference be-
tween American and English locomotives has been the use of a
forward truck under the former."

As a matter of fact, the English engines, built for use
on long straight stretches of line would never have served
on the early roads in this country with their steep and
curving routes through the mountains. So, in the latter
part of the year 1831, John B. Jervis invented what he
called " a new plan of frame, with a bearing-carriage for
a locomotive engine " for the use of the Mohawk & Hud-
son Railroad, in which he introduced the forward truck

122 THE MODERN RAILROAD

which is to-day a distinctive feature of American engines.
Its effectiveness was at once recognized, and its almost
general adoption immediately followed. Five years later,
Henry R. Campbell, of Philadelphia, had patented his sys-
tem of two driving-wheels and a truck, and the distinctive
type of American locomotive was born.

In the development of that peculiarly successful type,
great names have been written into the history of Ameri-
can locomotive-building — the names of such men as
Rogers and Winans and Hinckley and Mason and Brooks
and Matthias Baldwin and William Norris; the last two
both of Philadelphia. Norris, after some interesting
smaller engines, built the George Washington in 1835.
This engine was not one whit less than a triumph. It
ascended the steep plane of the Columbia Railroad in
Philadelphia, a grade of 7^/2 per cent, carrying two
passenger cars in which were seated 53 persons. It came
to a stop on that grade and started up again by its own
efforts. After reaching the summit, the engine was
turned around and came down, stopping once in its
descent.

That was the only time that a locomotive ever essayed
the Columbia plane, and the performance of the George
Washington has not been attempted in all these years
save in the case of Latrobe's temporary line at Kingwood
Tunnel. The English newspapers of that day ridiculed
the experiment, pronounced it a Baron Munchausen story,
yet in 1839 Norris sent an engine overseas that success-
fully climbed the then famous Lickey plane, in England.
After that he was besieged by foreign orders, sending
1 6 American locomotives to Great Britain in 1840, and,
during the next few years, 170 others to France, Ger-
many, Prussia, Austria, Belgium, Italy, and Saxony.
William Norris did his full part in giving Europe a meas-
ure of respect for the growing nation across the Atlantic.

Matthias Baldwin, like Phineas Davis, of York, was a
watch maker in the beginning of his life. He lived long

LOCOMOTIVES AND CARS 123

enough to lay the foundation of one of the greatest of
American single industries, to give his name to a firm
that has carried the fame of American locomotives around
the world and kept it alive in every nation of the earth.
Baldwin's first locomotive was built in 1832 for the
Philadelphia, Germantown, and Norristown Railroad; and
that it was a good locomotive is proved by the fact that
it performed twenty years of faithful service upon that
line. His second engine, built two years later, went south
to that famous old Charleston & Hamburg Company.
After that his works were regularly established, their head
to give his patience and untiring genius to the perfecting
of the locomotive. The history of Baldwin locomotives
is, in an important sense, the history of the industry in
the United States.

It was not long before the pioneer engines were con-
sidered too small for much practical value, and Mr.
Baldwin was building a much bigger locomotive for the
Vermont Central Railroad. This engine, named the
Governor Paine for a famous executive of that State, was
delivered in 1848, and for it was paid the unprecedented
price of $10,000. It had a pair of driving-wheels, six
and one-half feet in diameter placed just back of the fire-
box, a slightly smaller pair being placed forward. Bald-
win must have given full value, for it is related that the
engine could be started from a state of rest and run a
mile in forty-three seconds. The Pennsylvania Railroad
ordered three of the same sort, and one of these once
hauled a special train carrying President Zachary Taylor
at sixty miles an hour. In weight, the locomotive was
steadily increasing. In the beginning, these engines
weighed from four to seven tons each ; by the late forties
engines of twenty-five tons each were being built for the
Reading Road, and these were regarded as monsters.

Year by year the locomotive was being perfected in
all its details. The cab made its appearance and was
first opposed by the engineers, who imagined that they

i24 THE MODERN RAILROAD

would be badly penned in, in case of accident. The Erie
contributed the bell-rope signal from the train; we have
already heard of that first whistle on the locomotive of
the Sandusky and Mad River Railroad. The Boston &
Worcester devised the headlight, so that time might be
saved by handling freight at night. More important
than these were the experiments by Ross Winans and
by S. M. Felton that led to the substitution of coal for
wood as a fuel, and the development by Rogers at his
Paterson works of the link device, so necessary in stop-
ping, starting, and reversing the locomotive.

Gradually the size of the locomotive increased to 28
and 30 tons in the late fifties. Finally James Milholland,
engineer of machinery for the Philadelphia & Reading
Railroad, built in 1863 a pusher engine for coal trains
that weighed something over 50 tons. When folk saw
that engine they almost gasped, and wondered what the
railroads were coming to. But the wiser men kept silent.
They knew that as long as bridges and roadbeds and
fine steel rails were increased in strength, the limit of size
of the locomotive had not been reached. The greater
grip the locomotive has upon the rail, the greater its
pulling power, the greater its efficiency. Sheer weight,
and weight alone, gives that grip. It certainly takes a
weight of seven tons to give a grip of one ton upon a
dry rail; in the case of wet rails this ratio becomes ten
to one.

Then wonder not that the locomotive steadily increased
in size, that the Moguls with six driving-wheels, and the
Consolidations with eight, came into vogue a few years
after the close of the war, and that these kept increasing in
weight all the while. Height and width were and still
are rigidly limited by the clearance of the line. The
locomotive must stand no more than fourteen or sixteen
feet high and from nine to eleven feet wide; in length
the problem only meets the genius of the designer.

But it is altogether possible that the limit of the size

LOCOMOTIVES AND CARS 125

of the locomotive would have been reached long ago if
it had not been for the coming of the air-brake. This
most important assurance of the safety of the railroad
passenger came into its being in 1869, when George
Westinghouse, its inventor, was permitted to try it on a
Panhandle train. From the beginning of railroads the
necessity for brakes was apparent, and in 1833 Robert
Stephenson patented a steam brake for the driving-wheels.
That same brake, with compressed air substituted for
steam, is essentially the Westinghouse device of to-day.
But Westinghouse made the air do the work of steam.
After he had developed the idea he offered it to leading
Eastern railroads, but they one and all declined it.

Finally, he was permitted to place it on a Panhandle
train, full assurance having been given to the railroad
officials that he would be personally responsible for any in-
jury done to their equipment. Four cars and an engine
were fitted with the new device and the train started forth
from Pittsburgh to Steubenville. On the way its progress
was halted by a farm wagon which was caught in the rail
at a highway crossing. The engineer whistled for the
handbrakes in the good old-fashioned way but he knew
that he was too late. Then he thought of the air-brake.
He had little faith in the contraption, but he gave its
handle a wrench and the train stopped ten feet from the
wagon. Several lives were saved and the air-brake was
proven. From that day forth it was simply a question of
developing the device to its fullest possibility, and Mr.
Westinghouse has proved himself able to do that very
thing.

The air-brake was a fact. Steel had come into use for
axles, driving-wheel tires, frames, and every other vital
or bearing part of the locomotive; and the designers were
again increasing its size. They passed the Consolidation
and built the Mastodon. These were freighters — each
with ten drivers — drivers with tremendous gripping
force. They went through what M. N. Forney has

126 THE MODERN RAILROAD

called a " period of adolescence in railroad progress," and
in that period they experimented with huge driving-wheels
only to discard them once again. Then they built bigger
engines than even the Mastodon; the Decapod, with
twelve driving-wheels ; the El Gobernador which was built
by the Southern Pacific at its Sacramento shops in 1884,
weighing, with engine and tender fully equipped, 113
tons.

Still the locomotive grows and its progenitors talk
of the 5OO-ton machine. They have recently built
the Mallet articulated compound, which because of its
very great weight has splendid gripping force and is
especially adapted for pushing-service on heavy grades.
The Baltimore & Ohio, the Erie, the New York Central,
the Great Northern, and the Santa Fe have already become
committed to this type of engine. The American loco-
motive Company has just completed for the Delaware &
Hudson several Mallet articulated compounds that are
among the most powerful locomotives yet constructed.
They were designed for pusher service, on heavy grades,
north from Carbondale on the main line of the D. & H.,
which average from .81 to 1.36 per cent. Up to recently
the heavy northbound coal traffic up these grades has been
handled by the use of two heavy pusher engines. A single
one of the new Mallets will do the work of the two push-
ers, and therein lies the economy in their use.

These new giants are, in operation, two 8-wheel en-
gines, with individual cylinders, steam chests and supplies
from a single boiler and fire-box. The gripping power
of 1 6 driving-wheels under the enormous weight of 223
tons can be imagined; the designers estimate it at the high
figure of forty-three tons. The exceptional length of
these monster engines — a fraction over ninety feet — is
carried around the curves of mountainous lines by an in-
genious joint in their solid steel frames. This then is
only the latest of American engines; but not quite the
biggest, for the Topeka shops of the Santa Fe Railroad

OXE OF THE "DIAMOND-STACK" LOCOMOTIVES USED ON THE

PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD IN THE EARLY SEVENTIES
PRAIRIE TYPE PASSENGER LOCOMOTIVE OF THE LAKE SHORE
PACIFIC TYPE PASSENGER LOCOMOTIVE OF THE NEW YORK CENTRAL
ATLANTIC TYPE PASSENGER LOCOMOTIVE, BUILT BY THE PENNSYL-
VANIA RAILROAD AT ITS ALTOONA SHOPS

ONE OF THE GREAT MALLET PUSHING ENGINES OF THE DELA-
WARE & HUDSON COMPANY

A TEN-WHEELED SWITCHING LOCOMOTIVE OF THE LAKE SHORE
SUBURBAN PASSENGER LOCOMOTIVE OF THE NEW YORK CENTRAL
CONSOLIDATION FREIGHT LOCOMOTIVE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA

LOCOMOTIVES AND CARS 127

claim that honor with their new Mallets, each 121 feet
long and weighing complete 810,000 pounds. The 500-
ton locomotive does not seem so very far away when one
comes to consider the Santa Fe giants. These engines,
which are operated in pushing freights over the heavy
grades in the Southwest, were built from two of the Santa
Fe's heaviest freight engines. They operate with equal
facility in either direction as there is not a turntable in
the land which would come anywhere near accommodating
them.

In recent years, the rather graceful custom of giving
names to the classification of locomotives has been ex-
tended to the passenger motive-power. In 1895, the Bald-
wins created the Atlantic type of four-driver locomotive
for high-speed service both on the Atlantic Coast Line and
on the Atlantic City Railroad, from Camden to the ocean
— and the name has stuck. The Brooks plant of the
American Locomotive Company at Dunkirk similarly de-
veloped the Pacific type for passenger locomotives with
six drivers instead of four. The Prairie type was ap-
propriately enough sponsored by the Burlington system.
It is like the Pacific type save that the forward or lead
truck (the Englishman would blandly call it the
"bogey") has but two instead of the conventional four
wheels.

Your locomotive-builder is apt to be more systematic
about these types of engine, and he falls back on what is
generally known as Whyte's classification. The basis of
this simple system is in the number of wheels of the engine
itself. Each type is described by a series of three num-
bers, the first of these being the number of wheels in
front of the drivers, the second the number of drivers,
and the third the number of wheels to the rear of these.
The eight-wheel American type, the simplest for illustra-
tion here, would thus be described as " 4-4-0."

The trailer, which is described by the third number in
this series, is a recent addition to the locomotive family

128 THE MODERN RAILROAD

in this country. It came from the constant lengthening of
the fire-box, due to the necessity of providing greater
steam-power for engines of increasing weight and cylinder
capacity. When the fire-box began to overhang too far,
the trailer-wheels were introduced, and a device was affixed
to the locomotive by which they might receive its weight
for hill-climbing purposes. This last device has not proved
particularly successful. But the trailer itself has become
a fixed device in locomotive construction. When the third
figure in Whyte's classification is a cypher it simply means
that there are no trailers. Similarly the first figure a
cypher, indicates the absence of a forward truck or even
wheels, which is common in some forms of switch-engines,
where the weight is entirely concentrated on the drivers
for better gripping power upon the rail.

Such, in brief, is the development of the locomotive. It
has been development rather than change, for while some
designers have fretted about whether the engine's cab
should be in the middle of the boiler or at its end and
others have recently developed the Walsheart gears upon
the outside of the engine frame, where it is of easier access
than the old-style links, the general design of the iron-horse
remains practically the same as that given it by our grand-
daddies. They planned carefully and they planned for
the long years. The essential features of their designs
have not been questioned. It has simply been a problem
of growth.

From out of the fiery womb of steel comes the locomo-
tive. If you would better understand the iron horse, find
your way to any of the great plants in which he is being
built. Begin at the beginning in a factory, which seems,
with dozens of shops and great yards, to be almost a min-
iature city. Begin at the draughting-rooms where each lo-
comotive is given a whole ledger page — sometimes two
or three — for specifications. From those specifications,
the young draughtsmen take their instructions. They

LOCOMOTIVES AND CARS 129

work out their charts and elevations, their detailed plans ;
and the ink is hardly dry upon their drawings before
they are being whisked away to the blueprint rooms.
The blueprints are still damp, when in turn they are hur-
ried to the different construction shops of the plant.

You see these shops, one by one, in care of an expert
guide. You see the wooden patterns going to the blast
furnaces at the foundries and to the sullen tappings of the
trip-hammers. You leave the blacksmiths and stand for
a moment — not long — under the terrific din of the boil-
er-makers. The boiler, the great trunk of the locomotive,
is built of steel plate — plate that is the very pride of the
rolling-mills. In some foreign lands, copper fire-boxes are
demanded; but the real American locomotive has these also
of steel.

The steel plates are rolled to form the boiler itself,
flanged by angle-workers into the square fire-box. Finally
the boiler and the fire-box are riveted together, section
by section — made as fast by steel thread as man's in-
genuity can make them. Together they form a unit.
Another unit is being formed in an adjacent shop, the
solidly welded steel frame in which the boiler shall yet set,
and to which truck and drivers will be firmly fastened.
Forward on this frame will sit the cylinders; in another
corner of this shop they are being made ready. Cast-
iron still remains the best material for the cylinders and
the steam-chests. These are cast in one piece and the rule
holds good where there are two cylinders, as in the case
of the compounds. The cylinders, and steam-chest for
one side and half the " saddle " of the locomotive, upon
which the forward end of the boiler rests, are nowadays
generally made in a single casting. After that it is a
simple enough matter to smooth down the outer surface,
bore the cylinders to perfect surfacing, and line the steam-
chests with a bushing that can be readily removed once it
is worn out.

The driving-wheels are an important detail of the con-

1 30 THE MODERN RAILROAD

struction of the locomotive. They are made in rough cast-
ings — of steel for fast passenger engines, and of iron for
other forms of motive power — and are then made true
in giant lathes. The steel tires are shrunk on the wheels,
a work of astounding nicety; and in turn the wheels them-
selves are heated and shrunk upon the axles — of the best
steel that man can forge. To place these wheels upon the
axles is hair-line work. A 9-inch hub receives an axle just
8.973 inches — no more, no less — in diameter. It is
keyed and then under the slight expansion of a gentle
heat it is rammed upon the axle-end. It goes on to stay,
and stay it must.

From all these shops, a busy industrial railroad brings
the different parts to the great and busy hall of the erect-
ing-shop, a vast place of vast distances and filled always
with the noisy clatter of great industry. Here the dif-
ferent parts, which have been carefully built by skilled arti-
sans, are assembled into the finished whole. The cylinders
and saddle-halves are placed and firmly riveted together.
Into the collar of that saddle a giant overhead crane care-
fully sets the boiler and the fire-box. They are quickly
riveted to the upper flange of the saddle: the locomotive
is coming into a semblance of itself.

The cab is fastened into position ; then the boiler-makers
descend upon the unfinished engine and place the 200 or
more flue-tubes that run from fire-box to smoke-box, just
underneath the stack. They make every tube and joint
fast — put into the growing locomotive all the energy and
all the skill of good workmanship. When they are gone
the giant crane again comes noiselessly down along the ceil-
ing. It reaches down, grasps the engine-trunk, and swings
it high aloft.

Down there, resting on real railroad tracks, are the
driving-wheels and the lead truck, carefully spaced in
anticipation. The crane, lifting the fifty tons of boiler and
frame with no apparent effort whatsoever, places its load

LOCOMOTIVES AND CARS 13 1

squarely upon the wheels that are to carry it. Again the
mechanics are busy; the engine is growing into a solid unit.
Upon their heels follow testers, men who must look for
steam or water leaks. They work under a test of air,
carrying lighted candles into every nook and cranny of the
giant. If the candle flutters, air is escaping, and the leak
must be found.

Finally comes the report " O. K." from the testing
crew. The stacks, the steam and sand domes, and the
air-brakes are being made fast. The engine is hurried off
to the paint-shop. There it may find its companion in life,
the humble useful tender already awaiting it. It came
direct from the tender shop ; for the appendage of the lo-
comotive is no longer a specially rigged flat-car but a solid
steel plate construction built to carry some 9,000 gallons
of water and about 16 tons of coal. Only a little time
ago, a New Yorker, scion of a wealthy and famous family
of railroaders, proved himself worth his oats by design-
ing a tender of great practicability and of great economy
of construction. * •» '?•

When the engine emerges from the paint-shop it is gor-
geous and refulgent — brilliantly new. Unless it is going
to foreign lands, when it must be partly dismantled and
crated, it will ride its own wheels to the road which has
purchased it. A string of new locomotives may be
sprinkled through a freight train — never coupled to-
gether— in charge of an inspector from the locomotive
company, who will bunk in one of the cabs and never leave
his charges until they have been receipted for. After
that the locomotive begins to bend to the work for which
he was created. Unless he is of a very unusual sort or was
built for some very especial purpose, he soon loses his iden-
tity. The days are gone when locomotives were christened
after the fashion of ships. There are too many of them.
Each is given the cold informality of a number, marshalled
for service in a mighty company.

132 THE MODERN RAILROAD

Cars came as corollary to the locomotive. In the begin-
ning the passenger coaches were nothing more or less than
old-time stage-coaches which had been set upon wheels so
flanged as to enable them to stay upon the rail. So it was
that the first cars built for the railroad followed stage-
coach models. It was a practical necessity from the first
to draw more than one small coach at a time, so the
couplings and the bumper devices came as a matter of
development. Then came the day when an aspiring in-
ventor grouped several stage-coaches together on a single
rigid frame and he had really developed a form of rail-
road coach — a form which our English and continental
cousins still cling fondly to, in despite of its most apparent
disadvantages.

Four wheels quickly gave way to eight. In the early
thirties, Ross Winans developed a double-truck car for
use on the Baltimore & Ohio. Compared with anything
that had gone before it was certainly a pretentious vehicle.
It was thirty feet in length, four-wheel trucks being
attached at the ends, very much after the present fashion.
There were seats on the flat roof, which were reached by
a ladder in the corner, and the car itself was divided into
three compartments. A little later Winans tore out the
cross partitions in the car and introduced the end doors
and the centre aisle, thus establishing the American pas-
senger coach of to-day. The Baltimore & Ohio manufac-
tured a number of these coaches at its famous Mount
Clare shops. They were known for years as the " Wash-
ington cars," probably because they were the first run on
the Washington branch.

If Winans had been able to establish his patent rights to
the double-truck car he might have reaped a fortune from
its royalties alone. But when he went to assert his right as
an inventor, it was discovered that the idea was not abso-
lutely new. Gridley Bryant, in his old Quincy Granite
Railroad, just south of Boston, had used the device in
crude form. The four-wheeled flat cars which he had

LOCOMOTIVES AND CARS 133

employed in bringing stone from the quarries down to the
dock were not long enough for granite slabs. He had met
that emergency by fastening two of them together with
coupling-rings, and thus in a way had created the eight-
wheel car. So Winans lost his patent although credit is
given him for having really developed the passenger car
of to-day.

The form, once set, came quickly into vogue. In
a few of the Southern States, old-fashioned gentlemen fol-
lowed the early English fashion of having their private
carriages attached to flat freight-cars whenever they went
on railroad trips, but even this was ar passing fad. At
that time carriages were no novelty, and railroad cars
were. They were stuffy little affairs compared with the
coaches of to-day, miserably lighted and heated and ven-
tilated, but Americans were very proud of them. The
fashion that made early locomotives gay with color, with
brass and burnished metals of other sorts, found full scope
upon the passenger cars, both inside and out. They were
pannelled and striped, ornamented and lettered to the limit
of the skill of gifted painters. A coach, named the Mor-
ris Run, on the old Tioga Railroad, which began run-
ning south from Elmira about 1840, was decorated in red
and green and yellow and blue and gilt and several other
colors. It would have made a modern circus band wagon
inconspicuous. But the day came when the brass stars and
the red stack-bands began to disappear with the names from
the locomotives and in that day the railroad cars became
subdued in colorings. Some of the gay frescoes of the in-
teriors, typical of the taste of an earlier day, were in
use within the present generation.

While the " Washington cars " set a type, there was
much yet to be accomplished in the development both of
the passenger coach and of the freight car, and this much
was chiefly in the line of the development of safety devices.
The old-time passenger rode in a very decent fear of his
life. Sometimes a loosened end of one of the " strap rails "

134 THE MODERN RAILROAD

would come plunging up through the flimsy floor of the
coach and impale some unfortunate passenger upon its
end against the ceiling; other times the cars would go
rolling off the banks and crashing into kindling-wood
against one another. They were lightly built contrivances,
incapable of standing any sort of shock or collision.

But improvements came one by one — better devices for
coupling them together, culminating in the modern auto-
matic " jaw coupler," better framing, better platforms, bet-
ter trucks, improved hand-brakes; and after them the now
universal air-brakes made life safer both for the traveller
and the railroad employee. Finally came the steel-end
vestibule ; and where cars have been equipped with this very
comfortable device, telescoping in collision, a very com-
mon and disastrous accident in which one car-shell en-
veloped another, has been rendered impossible.

The car-platforms for many years remained a menace
and a problem. An early railroad in New Jersey sought
to emphasize their danger by painting on an inner panel of
each car-door a picture of a newly made grave, surmounted
by a tombstone, on which was inscribed : " Sacred to the
memory of a man who stood upon a platform." The
railroad used every method to keep its passengers off the
platforms at first. Afterwards they began to encourage it
and to devise means to promote a general intercourse
between the cars.

The dining-car, of which much more in another chapter,
was a prime factor in this change of attitude on the part
of railroad officers. Its use necessitated passengers going
the length of the train, a movement which, in itself, was
facilitated by the main design of American cars, as differ-
entiated from those of English railroads. When the
English roads began the universal use of dining-cars they
had to revamp the entire plan of their car construc-
tion and produce what are still known across the Atlantic
as " corridor trains."

To make such communication safe, George M. Pullman,

LOCOMOTIVES AND CARS 135

the sleeping-car man, set forth to devise a platform pro-
tection. Back in the fifties there had been something of
the sort on the old Naugatuck Railroad in Connecticut,
rough canvas curtains enclosing the platforms; but these
had been built to facilitate car ventilation, and failing in
this, they were abandoned after three or four years of
trial. Pullman did better. He devised a platform enclo-
sure of folding doors and placed a steel frame at the end of
his vestibule that did more than merely protect passengers
from the stress of weather; these, of course, then served
as effective anti-telescoping devices. The Pennsylvania
Railroad began the use of these vestibules in 1886 and
they were soon universally adopted by American rail-
roads on their fast through trains.

After that a better vestibule was devised by Col. W.
D. Mann, one that extended the full width of the car.
In fact the platform of the car had practically ceased to
exist, the structure being full-framed to include its en-
trances at both ends.

After the vestibule came the steel car, introduced within
the past ten years for freight service, and within the past
five or six for passenger equipment. It has everything to
commend it, save a slightly increased original cost, which
is more than compensated by economy of maintenance,
to say nothing of the intangible but certain raised factor
of safety. It is to become universal; the wooden car will
become extinct upon American railroads almost as soon as
the present equipment is worn out and sent to the scrap-
heap.

Of the forms and varieties of railroad passenger coaches
there are many, and these will be described when we come
to consider in a later chapter the luxury of modern rail-
road travel. But the variety of passenger equipment quite
pales before that of the freight service. Flat-cars, coal-
cars, box-cars, grain-cars, live-stock cars — the list runs
on into catalogue form. There are refrigerator cars that
are kept filled with salt and ice or ice alone, precooled cars

136 THE MODERN RAILROAD

that are merely kept air-tight, and ventilator cars em-
ploying a distinct reverse of that method ; and up in north-
ern climates there are heater-cars which are kept warm by
lamps or by stoves and which are used for the trans-
portation of fresh fruit and vegetables in winter just as
the refrigerator-cars and the precooled cars are used for
that same purpose in summer.

Almost all the safety devices that have been added to
the running-gear of the passenger equipment have been
added to the freight equipment also, to the great safety and
peace of mind of the railroad employee. The car itself re-
mains the simple essential of the very beginnings of the
railroad. Its change has been a change in size, in weight,
and in strength.

The first freight cars of the very old railroad at Mauch
Chunk weighed 1,600 pounds each, and were permitted to
carry a weight or "burden'* of only 3s2OO pounds.
When the Boston & Albany first began using freight cars
30 feet long, it was so confused that it gave each end of
the car a separate number for convenience in billing and
designating consignments. Nowadays 40 tons is the right
load for an efficient car, although they go as high as 55
and 60 tons* capacity; the car itself may weigh approxi-
mately half that figure.

Freight cars by hundreds of thousands go bumping all
over the different railroads of the land, and all the while
they are getting bumped and broken in accidents — large
and small. In such cases they are hauled to the nearest
shop of the railroad upon which they are travelling and
there repaired at the cost of the road that owns them.
In earlier days, the job of master mechanic was no sine-
cure, for each road built its cars upon its own plans and
no two of these plans were alike. A simple broken part
necessitated the manufacture of a new part. It was a
matter of great confusion and expensive to every line.

The organization of the Master Car Builders, in 1867,
solved that problem. This organization, through com-

LOCOMOTIVES AND CARS 137

mittee, made first the freight car standard and then the
passenger standard. Axles, bolts, king-pins — every one
of the intricate car-parts — were brought to standard and
numbered sizes. After that all that a master mechanic
had to do was to keep an assortment of standard car
parts in his store-room, and he could make reasonable re-
pairs to any car that travelled rails. The standardization
has gone steadily forward year by year ; it has included a
variety of things, even such details as systematic number-
ing and lettering of cars. It is one of the evidences of
the constant bettering of the American railroad, the steady
effort to bring it to an economical and scientific basis.
Recently some of the railroads have made intelligent
experiments, seeking to devise a vehicle that should be
both locomotive and car, and that should be especially
adapted for small side-lines, where traffic runs exceedingly
light. Some success has been found in the use of a passen-
ger coach, into which a gasolene engine has been introduced,
and several of these cars are in regular use in the West.
Two or three of them have been employed for three or
four years on Union Pacific branches in and around Den-
ver. They render a possible solution for one railroad
problem — the problem of providing sufficient service for
some branch where local traffic is slight. The gasolene
car requires but two men, as against a minimum crew of five
men for even the smallest steam passenger train. It can
be quickly handled, will make many successive stops read-
ily, and generally provides an efficient addition to the
regular passenger equipment. A few years ago it would
have given the standard steam railroads an excellent
weapon against the constant encroachments of paralleling
electric roads through their good passenger traffic dis-
tricts; even to-day it offers a possible solution of the diffi-
cult problem of the very small branch side-lines.

CHAPTER IX

REBUILDING A RAILROAD

RECONSTRUCTION NECESSARY IN MANY CASES — OLD GRADES TOO HEAVY
— CURVES STRAIGHTENED — TUNNELS AVOIDED — THESE IMPROVEMENTS
REQUIRED ESPECIALLY BY FREIGHT LINES.

TO the operating heads of the great railroad sys-
tems, rebuilding a line is to-day a far more im-
portant problem than the building of new routes. The
country has grown — grown in wealth, among other
things. The causes that demanded the very greatest
economy in the building of early railroad lines no longer
exist. The hill that the early engineer carefully rounded
with his line is now pierced without a second thought.
Grades that were once deemed slight are now classed as im-
possible. The almost infinite development in the opera-
tion of the railroad has seen the grade or the curve, not as
a slight matter, but as a matter which, however slight in
a single instance, becomes in the course of constant opera-
tion a heavy operating expense. To-day the operating
folk of the big railroads are counting the pennies where
they countlessly multiply in these fashions; it is one of the
greatest factors in the grinding operation competition be-
tween the great railroad systems of the country.

It is all quite as it should be. The early builders did
the best that they might do with the opportunities that
were theirs. They got the railroad through. It devel-
oped wealth for itself, as well as for the territory it
served; and with that wealth it is enabled in these piping
days of peace and plenty to correct the alignment errors
of the early builders. Moreover, there are frequent cases
where the steady increase of traffic has rendered it neces-

138

REBUILDING A RAILROAD 139

sary for a railroad to parallel its trunks with new lines,
quite aside from the consideration of grade and curve.
. As far back as the early fifties this great work of re-
building the trunk-line railroads was begun. Certain se-
rious errors in the original alignment of the Baltimore &
Ohio Railroad between Baltimore and the Potomac River
were corrected, even though at a considerable expense. As
time went on, other railroads continued this correction
work. It is still being prosecuted east and west of the
Mississippi. Ten million dollars, fifty million dollars,
looks like a lot of money to the stockholders of any
company, when their president tells them that this is to
be the cost of this new relief line, this reconstruction, that
cut-off; but what is $1,000,000 when it is going to save
more than $100,000 a year in the operation of your rail-
road? It is the big sight of the big situation that the rail-
roads make nowadays at this reconstruction work.

Mr. Harriman, with his transcontinentals from the
Mississippi watersheds west, was almost the pioneer in this
work of wholesale reconstructon. The wholesale opera-
ting benefits that have resulted from it in the case of his
group of Pacifies have been largely responsible for his pre-
eminence in the railroad world. And yet, once his method
was tried, it all seemed simpler than A, B, C.

Take the case of the Lucin cut-off on his Southern
Pacific. When the Union Pacific was being pushed across
the plains and threaded over the Rockies and the Sierras,
the Great Salt Lake of Utah lay directly in its path. The
railroad did the obvious thing and carefully made a de-
tour around the lake. When Mr. Harriman took over
the Union Pacific, then in a state of physical decadence,
and linked it with his Southern Pacific, and surveyed
the situation carefully, he decreed that the Great Salt
Lake should no longer cause a trunk-line railroad to
double in its path. He caused a line to be surveyed di-
rect across the marshy lake from Ogden to Lucin and
when that was done he had a line — on paper — 103

140 THE MODERN RAILROAD

miles long as against 147 miles by the old line. The en-
gineer hesitated, but Harriman urged and they coura-
geously began the construction of miles and miles of em-
bankment and of trestle. Then new difficulties arose.
Sink-holes developed. In a few minutes structures that
had been the work of long months silently disappeared.
The engineers in charge came to Harriman.

;' It is not possible," they told him.

" You must carry it through whether it is possible or
not," Harriman replied.

Eventually they carried it through.

When it was done, the Union Pacific had not only short-
ened its transcontinental line 44 miles, but it had eliminated
more than 1,500 feet of heavy grade and 3,919 degrees
of curvature. An operating economy of between $900,-
ooo and $1,000,000 a year had been effected and the
stockholders of the company had a good investment for
the $10,000,000 that the Lucin cut-off had cost them.

Nor was that all on the Union Pacific. On other sec-
tions of its main line similar reconstruction work has
added to the economy of operation by millions of dollars
each year. For twenty miles west from Omaha, where
the old historic transcontinental formerly dipped south
to avoid a series of undulating hills, the new Lane cut-
off cuts squarely across them — 20 miles of deep cuts and
heavy fills — "heavy railroad," as the engineers like to
put it. And again, where the old line twisted and
wound itself over the Black Hills, and wobbled unsteadily
through Wyoming, the reconstruction engineers pressed
their work.

It is not generally understood that the summit of the
Union Pacific is in the Black Hills, which are the first
foothill range of the Rockies, rather than in the moun-
tain crest beyond. The Black Hills have always been a
baffling proposition, with their short, steep slopes. The
engineers wrinkled their brows at the thought of correcting

WHERE HARRIMAX STRETCHED THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC IN A
STRAIGHT LINE ACROSS THE GREAT SALT LAKE

LlNE REVISION ON THE NEW YORK CENTRAL TUNNELLING

THROUGH THE BASES OF THESE JUTTING PEAKS ALONG THE HUDSON
RlVER DOES AWAY WITH SHARP AND DANGEROUS CURVES

REBUILDING A RAILROAD 141

the old line through there, but Harriman simply said that
they must, that the board — which meant E. H. Harriman
himself — had directed that 247 feet be cut from the
road's crest there; and 247 feet, almost to the inch, was
cut. It took giant fills and embankments and an army
of men but the grades were brought to a minimum for a
Rocky Mountain stretch. Wooden trestles, old and af-
fording a constant fire-risk, were swallowed up in embank-
ments ; a single slice through a hill-top, a quarter of a mile
long and eighty feet deep, did its part in reducing the
grades ; antiquated cars disappeared before equipment
of the modern class; dilapidated shanties were supplanted
by fine, permanent railroad stations. The new Union Pa-
cific is a monument to the reconstruction engineer — and
to E. H. Harriman.

The Canadian Pacific Railway, while traversing but one
small northeastern corner of the United States, is essen-
tially an American railroad, both in equipment and in
operation. It forms an important half of that all-British
Red Line encircling the globe, of which any Englishman
is so very proud. When the Canadian Pacific Railway
was completing its last link in this unbroken line of rails
from St. John, N. B., and Montreal, to Vancouver, the
question of grades was indeed a secondary one. The
vital thing was to cut the line through, and to that end
great sacrifices of grade efficiency were made. So that
when the line was through, and the first Imperial Limited
was making its way from the Atlantic to the Pacific over
a single railroad system, it was indeed a line with struc-
tural defects. At one point — the famous Big Hill, near
Field, Alta. — in order to overcome the steep Rocky
Mountain climbs, it was necessary to use from four to six
engines for comparatively light freight and passenger
trains. And at that, it was difficult to attain a speed of
more than four or five miles an hour.

Within the last three years, this fearful grade has been
corrected by the very first spiral tunnels ever built upon

i42 THE MODERN RAILROAD

the American continent. Spiral tunnel construction of
this kind is not new. It has been used with remarkable
success by the railroads of Continental Europe, in piercing
the High-Alpine boundaries between France, Germany,
Austria, and Italy.

Coming from the east on the Canadian Pacific Rail-
way, the train first enters the spiral tunnel — they call
it the " corkscrew " out in Alberta — under Cathedral
Mountain. This first bore is some 3,200 feet in length.
Emerging from it, the train runs back east across the
Kicking Horse River, then enters the eastern spiral tunnel,
and after describing an elliptic curve, emerges, and again
crosses the Kicking Horse westward. This whole thing
is a perfect maze — the railroad doubling back upon itself
twice, tunnelling under two mountains, and crossing the
river twice in order to cut down the grade. The work
cost $1,500,000. The mere cost of the explosives came
to over $250,000. It was one of the really great tunnel
jobs of the world. Yet despite the complicated work
caused by the spiral shape of the tunnels, they met exactly.
The worth of the thing to the Canadian Pacific is shown
in the fact that those same trains that formerly required
four to six engines, are now handled easily over this
Big-Hill grade with but two engines, and at a speed of
about twenty-five miles an hour.

Other railroads by the dozen, whose lines traverse moun-
tainous or even hilly country, are engaged in this propo-
sition of lowering their grades. F. D. Underwood,
president of the Erie, and known as one of the ablest oper-
ating heads in this country, has been engaged in cutting off
some of the heavy hill-climbs on that old-time route from
the seaboard to the lakes. Underwood has already seen
Erie's hopes of success in developing the property as es-
sentially a freighter and for the immediate improvement
of that portion of its facilities he has built three new re-
lief lines, a small stretch near Chautauqua Lake in west-
ern New York, and then through the upper Genesee

REBUILDING A RAILROAD 143

Valley, the third and most important eastward from a
point near Port Jervis and piercing the summit of the
Shawangunk Mountains.

The line through the Genesee Valley extends from
Hunts, on the Buffalo division, about 20 miles west of
Hornell, to Hinsdale on the main line, and is 33 miles
long. It cuts off a heavy grade between Hornell and
Hinsdale on the main line — a little over one per cent —
for both east-bound and west-bound freight. At that
particular point, Erie's west-bound freight approximates
75 per cent of the east-bound, and so the new line recog-
nizes that fact by establishing the west-bound maximum
grade at 3-10 of one per cent, as against a maximum of
2-10 of one per-cent in the other direction. Brought to
a plain understanding, a single locomotive has no difficulty
in handling 80 cars, each bearing 40 tons of coal, over this
new low-grade line. To take one-half that load over the
old main line required a pusher.

On the east end of the line, where Erie's engineers
built their greatest low-grade cut-off, the coal rolls down
to the seaboard in such quantities as to make the west-
bound tonnage only a quarter of the east-bound; so the
reconstruction engineers were satisfied with a maximum
west-bound grade at 6-10 of one per cent as against the
maximum of 2-10 east-bound, in the direction of the heavy
traffic. The cut-off, which is double-tracked and is 42^
miles long, increases the distance from New York to
Chicago 8 miles ; but this is not an essential fact, for, like
the Genesee Valley Road it is built exclusively for freight
service, and not only almost triples the hauling capacity
of a locomotive but actually permits of faster running time
for the freight trains between Jersey City and Port Jervis.
To build the cut-off required a really great expenditure,
for like all these new lines it was " heavy work," embra-
cing a tunnel nearly a mile long under the crest of the
Shawangunk Ridge, and a steel trestle over the Moodna
Valley, 3,200 feet in length and 190 feet high. Still

144 THE MODERN RAILROAD

President Underwood can contemplate his locomotives
hauling three times their old loads over it. The economy
of such a proposition becomes apparent upon the face of
it.

The Baltimore & Ohio, the Southern, and the Norfolk &
Western have recently lowered their grades and straight-
ened their curves in similar fashion; the Lehigh Valley,
by the erection of a great new bridge at Towanda, Pa.,
has taken a bad link out of its main line; the Chicago &
Alton, when the engineers told it that it must abandon
miles upon miles of its main line (for long years its pride)
and build anew, told those engineers to go ahead.
Stretch by stretch the old road was revamped to meet in
every way modern conditions. A steel bridge across the
Missouri, which was the first steel bridge built in America,
and which cost $500,000, was sent to the scrap-heap while
the old-timers groaned. " That which yesterday was a
railroad marvel becomes a curiosity to-morrow," observes
Frank H. Spearman, in speaking of this very thing.

The rebuilding of the Chicago & Alton was a clean-
cut affair. The yo-pound rails were torn from the main
line and sent to sidings and branch lines in favor of the 80-
pound rails; for while men were tearing at the tracks,
the shops were working overtime; 55-ton freight engines
that could haul 30 cars were to give way to 1 65-ton
motive power, capable of picking up and carrying a hun-
dred cars with ease. That was why the old bridge had
to go in favor of one which cost an even million dollars.
And when the Alton built heavy new bridges at dozens
of other points besides the Missouri, it built them after
the new fashion, with solid rock ballast floor, affording
additional comfort and safety to its patrons.

In a flat State like Illinois there were no very serious
grade defects to be corrected, but through the gentle un-
dulations of rolling country the line twisted and turned like
a lazy brook. The rebuilders stopped that. When
they were done there was a single section of 40 miles,

REBUILDING A RAILROAD 145

straight as the arrow flies, and many tangents of from
15 to 29 miles. In some cases when the trains were trans-
ferred to the completed line, the old, spindly, wobbly affair
could be seen for miles in roadbed, to the one side or the
other of the new. In some cases, this abandoned right-
of-way was sold to interurban electric railroads; in one par-
ticular case one of the abandoned bridges was included in
the sale.

The Delaware, Lackawanna, & Western is one of the
old time Eastern Roads that have waxed immensely pros-
perous with the years. Originally built as an anthracite
coal carrier from the Eastern Pennsylvania Mountains to
the seaboard, it has developed into a through freight and
passenger carrier of importance. The old-time engineer
knew how to plan good railroads; the Pennsylvania to-
day is building its new low-grade freight line on the very
surveys made by its pioneer surveyors three-quarters of a
century ago ; but, as we have already intimated, those rail-
roads were financially weak. Early annual reports of the
Pennsylvania tell how its stock was peddled in Philadelphia
from house to house — up one street and down another
— and how sometimes two houses joined together to buy
a single share. Money was not plentiful in the middle
of the last century.

So the Lackawanna engineers were compelled to build
their road in semi-mountainous districts, along the lines
of least resistance, rather than by the most direct routes.
As it came east from Scranton over the Pocono Moun-
tains it found its way in a roundabout course to the middle
of Northern New Jersey. The road wound south and
then wound north again, its grades were steep, some of its
curves were short, and it dipped through two tunnels —
one at Oxford Furnace, the other at Manunka Chunk.

To iron out those time-taking dips, the sharp curves, the
grades, and the tunnel, the Lackawanna cut-off — the
" heaviest " bit of railroad in the world — was begun

i46 THE MODERN RAILROAD

three years ago. A new route 2%l/2 miles long was sur-
veyed diagonally across from Port Morris on the main line
in New Jersey to the main line again at the Delaware
Water Gap. Despite the fact that it must cross the water-
sheds diagonally — the watersheds formed by deep valleys
and high rocky ridges — the line as surveyed and built
is only three miles longer than an absolute air-line. It
shortens the Lackawanna's main stem from New York to
Buffalo — already the shortest route between these two
cities — by 15 miles, and brings that busy lake port a trifle
within 400 miles from the seaboard.

To cross those watersheds at a sharp diagonal meant
" heavy work " ; and the engineers, to run their straight-
cut, low-grade line, found that they would have to make
tremendous cuts and fills — these last alone totalling 14,-
600,00 cubic yards. The Lackawanna's engineers will
give you a faint idea of the stupendous size of these em-
bankments. To build them up of stone and earth at
the rate of a cartload a minute for each working-day of
the year would require 81 years for the job. To do it in
less than three years has meant the employment of whole
trains of dump-cars, the purchase of 6oo-acre farms for
single borrow-pits, the energy and administration of real
engineers.

There have been cuts through solid rock, 65 bridges
and culverts to be wrought of concrete, a single embank-
ment (at the Pequest River) three miles in length, no
feet high, and 300 feet wide at its base. The traveller
who rides over the completed double-track road will have
but a faint idea of the human labor and the human energy
that have gone to construct it.

The great railroad that traverses the State of Pennsyl-
vania is another monument to the engineer. The Pennsyl-
vania Railroad was no wobbly affair at any time. Its
grades and curves, considering the character of the country
through which its trunk rests, are not excessive. It has

REBUILDING A RAILROAD 147

been a good standard railroad for a good many years past.
But in 1902, the Pennsylvania found that its troubles rested
in the volume of traffic that was being offered it. Over
its middle division from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh it was
handling as much tonnage as J. J. Hill's entire Great
Northern system. The heavy tonnage business began
to clog the road's fast passenger traffic (its especial pride)
and the fast freight traffic (the mainstay of its shippers),
and appeal was made to the reconstruction engineers.

It was no slight appeal at that. Pittsburgh, handling
400,000 freight cars a month, was clogged, congested with
such streams as had never before tried to crowd through
that narrow neck of the Pennsylvania's bottle and the
orders that went forth for relief were emphatic. Vice-
presidents, general managers, superintendents and general
superintendents, and engineers of every sort crowded into
the president's office in Broad Street Station, and out of
that conference the plans for an exclusively low-grade
freight line from New York to Pittsburgh and for the
traffic relief of Pittsburgh itself were born.

Every large city has become, in a sense, a bottle-neck for
the important railroads that pierce it. In some cases
like Chicago or St. Louis or Kansas City or Indianapolis,
the situation has been solved by the creation of belt-line
freight railroads partly or entirely encircling the town.
At Buffalo, the New York Central lines have built a con-
necting line to enable through traffic to escape the con-
gestion of city yards and terminals, while at New Haven,
the road of the same name has recently spent several mil-
lion dollars in enlarging its narrow throat in the middle
of the town.

But nowhere else did the situation approach that at
Pittsburgh. Through the Pennsylvania's passenger sta-
tion there poured not only an abnormally heavy passenger
traffic, owing to a heavy suburban service, but every
pound of freight bound between the parent company and
its two great subsidiaries, the Panhandle and the Fort

148 THE MODERN RAILROAD

Wayne. There were further complications right at the
station, owing to the proximity of two of the very worst
grade-crossings in America, where Penn and Liberty
Avenues swept their busy tides of city traffic all day long
over the Fort Wayne's main line tracks. It was a prob-
lem that called for the best in engineering skill — and
received it.

The Pennsylvania dug deep into its pocket-book and
solved the problem magnificently. It began by going
back to the vicinity of its great Pitcairn freight-yards at
the east of the city, and from them building two con-
necting laterals (the one to the south and across the
Monongahela River to connect with the Panhandle tracks,
the other to the north — known as the Brilliant cut-off)
across the Alleghany and connecting with the tracks of
the West Penn Railroad, which in turn connected with
those of the Fort Wayne in the one-time city of Alle-
gheny. That sounds simple, but it was in reality a fear-
fully expensive undertaking. The mile of Brilliant cut-
off, " heavy work " every inch of it, cost $5,500,000, and
is to-day the most expensive mile of railroad track in the
world.

But the gripping hand was off the traffic throat of
Pittsburgh and commercial Pittsburgh breathed more
easily once again. The Union Station and its approach
tracks were restored to passenger uses; and in the course
of things the Pennsylvania tore down the old station, built
a new one, and wiped out the two wicked city crossings,
as with the stroke of an Aladdin's hand.

So much for Pittsburgh. Now consider the great new
freight line leading to the east from there. Not all of
that railroad has yet been built, but the greater part of
it is already completed, and every part of the old road
that was under tension because of freight congestion has
already been relieved.

To build this new double-track railroad across 350
miles of a mountainous State, the engineers studied two

REBUILDING A RAILROAD 149

points — grade and curvature. Distance was no object,
for speed is the very last attainment of heavy tonnage
movement. The new route consisted in part of the en-
largement of the old routes, and in part of the construc-
tion of brand new line. It started east from Pittsburgh,
where the great Brilliant cut-off had been built to relieve
the tremendous terminal freight congestion, and followed
up the valley of the Alleghany River on the route of the
West Penn Road, a Pennsylvania property. The main
line of the Pennsylvania comes east from Pittsburgh up
the valley of the Monongahela for a distance, and then
across country to Blairsville Intersection, 50 miles east
of Pittsburgh, where it is intercepted by the low-grade
freight route.

From Blairsville to Gallitzin, the road winds through
the narrow and forbidding Conemaugh Valley most of
the way. It twists itself through the slender defile of
Packsaddle. A dozen years ago or more, when the Penn-
sylvania's engineers were ordered to four-track the orig-
inal double-track through that narrow defile in God's
great world, they shook their heads dubiously; then —
after the fashion of engineers — they went ahead and did
it. When the order came for two more tracks in the
same narrow pass, they placed them there, although they
had literally to blast out a shelf on the side of the fear-
fully steep mountainsides for the low-grade line.

Just beyond Gallitzin, where the Pennsylvania pierces
with two great tunnels the very summit of the Alle-
ghanies, the low-grade line takes its own course once
more, breaking farther and farther away from the main
line, and for long sections following the trail of the long-
since abandoned Portage Railroad. The day is coming
when Gallitzin Tunnels are to be left high in the air.
The Pennsylvania's officers tell you that frankly.

" We have plans for a six-mile tunnel, to be handled
by electric motive-power already made," said one of
them, just the other day, " and every year we wait, that

150 THE MODERN RAILROAD

tunnel grows longer, the approaching grades less and less.
It will cost money — money into millions of dollars —
and it will earn 10 per cent on the investment."

From Gallitzin, the low-grade line delves far south to
Hollidaysburgh and then follows the tracks of a former
branch line up to Petersburg on the main line, which it
parallels to the Susquehanna. Where the main line
crosses the Susquehanna at Rockville, the low-grade
freight route diverges once again and follows the west
bank of the river for a number of miles, completely
avoiding in that way Harrisburg and the steel-making
towns to the south of it with all of their conditions of con-
gestion. The freight route crosses the broad Susque-
hanna at Shock's Mills, eight miles north of Columbia,
and follows the east bank of the river for twenty miles
to Shenks Ferry, where it turns abruptly eastward through
the rugged hills of Lancaster County to a connection with
the main line at Parkesburg. From thence it follows the
main line nearly all the way to Glen Loch, crossing and
re-crossing it but at all times retaining its nominal grades.
At Glen Loch it makes a wide detour around Philadelphia
and its suburbs and reaches with a long straight " short
cut " over to the main line at Morrisville near Trenton.

So much for the location of this great line of recon-
struction. In grades and in curvatures it has achieved
real triumphs. The great tonnage here is also always
east-bound — coal and iron coming to the seaboard. Its
grades also are chiefly consequential then to the east-bound
movement. To that movement the heavy grades are
again at the almost incredible figure of 3-10 of one per
cent — some seventeen feet to the mile. That will mean
more when it is understood that that figure is equal to
the pull that is required of an engine to start a heavy
freight train upon an absolutely level track. With such
a pull, grades become as nothing, and the Pennsylvania's
operating department is enabled to run 75 trains an hour

REBUILDING A RAILROAD 151

over this low-grade line; hour after hour upon a 15 min-
utes* interval.

Ask a Pennsylvania officer what he would do with such
traffic on his old main line to-day, and he will tell you
that he would rather resign than tackle the proposition.
The same thing is true on the New York Central lines.
Like the Pennsylvania, that railroad thought a little time
ago that with its four tracks it might move all civilization.
Its acquisition of the bankrupt West Shore Railroad in
the eighties gave it two extra tracks across New York
State that for a long time were carried on the company's
books as deadwood. Now they are filled with freight
operation and bringing in a healthy return to their owners.
The growing land is always catching up to its new rail-
road facilities, no matter how rapidly they may be con-
structed.

To-morrow ?

The railroad operator does not like to think of that.
He meets to-day and he plans as best he may against that
to-morrow. To meet the great unknown he bids the en-
gineers — those who construct and those who reconstruct
— to him, and begs that they exercise their best wits to
help him to see a little way into the dim and shadowy
future.

CHAPTER X

THE RAILROAD AND ITS PRESIDENT

SUPERVISION OF THE CLASSIFIED ACTIVITIES — ENGINEERING, OPERATING,
MAINTENANCE OF WAY, ETC. — THE DIVISIONAL SYSTEM AS FOLLOWED
IN THE PENNSYLVANIA ROAD — THE DEPARTMENTAL PLAN AS FOL-
LOWED IN THE NEW YORK CENTRAL — NEED FOR VICE-PRESIDENTS —
THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS — HARRIMAN A MODEL PRESIDENT — How
THE PENNSYLVANIA FORCED ITSELF INTO NEW YORK CITY — ACTION OF
A PRESIDENT TO SAVE THE LIFE OF A LABORER'S CHILD — " KEEP RIGHT
ON OBEYING ORDERS " — SOME RAILROAD PRESIDENTS COMPARED —
HIGH SALARIES OF PRESIDENTS.

ALL the widely divergent lines of human activity in
the organization of the railroad converge in the
office of its president. He is the focal point of the entire
system. More than that, he is its head and front. If
he is anything less, the sooner he is out of his job the
better for both the railroad and himself; for, although
there is a great variety of departments in the organization
of steam railroad transportation and each department will
have still greater varieties of activities, there is but
a single activity delegated to the office that bears only
the modest word " president " in gilt letters upon its door.
The function of that office is to supervise. To under-
stand that supervision better, consider for a moment the
rough structure of the railroad.

Its activities are grouped into classes. The activity of
soliciting business, both freight and passenger, forms the
traffic department, in many ways the most important of
all; for from it comes nearly all the vast revenue needed
for the maintenance of the organism. The legal depart-
ment looks after the railroad's rights — its franchises, its
charters, the law fabric of its almost innumerable rela-
tions with the various railroad commissions, legislatures,

152

THE RAILROAD AND ITS PRESIDENT 153

city councils, and town and country boards. If the road
be really sizable — with 8,000 or 10,000 or 12,000
miles of track — it will probably organize into separate
departments the buying of its great quantities of supplies,
the keeping of its intricate books, and the handling of
its money. The business of building its lines and struc-
tures will need special talent for an engineering depart-
ment. The department that will employ the great rank
and file of the railroad's army of employees is the opera-
ting department, called by some big roads the transporta-
tion department.

There are two other great factors of conducting a rail-
road; maintaining its lines — the tracks, bridges, tunnels
and other features of the permanent way; and keeping
both cars and engines fit for service. This last work,
organized as the mechanical department, will probably
rank next to operating in the number of its employees,
and the value of its equipment is one of the greatest assets
of the railroad. It is generally expressed in great shops
located here and there and everywhere, at convenient
points upon the system.

Generally the maintenance-of-way department comes
under operating — it is only fair that a general manager
should supervise the condition of the line over which he
is expected to operate his trains at high speed and in ab-
solute safety. The same argument should hold true as
to the equipment. But right here is the great rock upon
which the principle of American railroad organization
splits in twain.

From the president's office downward, the system of
organization may be divisional or departmental. In the
former case, the division superintendent is the real unit
of railroad operation: under his guidance and responsi-
bility come not only the operation of the trains but the
maintenance both of the line and of the rolling-stock. In
the case of departmental organization that superintendent
— and also, above him, the general superintendent — ex-

154 THE MODERN RAILROAD

ercises no authority over the engineers of maintenance-of-
way or the master mechanics of the shops along the system.
Those lines of railroad activity do not converge with that
of train operation below the office of the general man-
ager. The greatest outside power that is given to a di-
vision superintendent on a purely departmental road is a
sort of cooperation with the master mechanic in the mat-
ter of the men who handle the road's motive power.
This cooperation is many times intricate and involved.
If the master mechanic and the division superintendent
are not harmoniously inclined toward one another, and
things very naturally go wrong with the motive-power,
it is a difficult matter to locate responsibility.

The Pennsylvania system, which is one of the most
perfectly organized in the world, is strongly organized
upon the divisional system. The division superintendent
upon the Pennsylvania is indeed a prince above his prin-
cipality, and he is well trained for his rulership. Penn-
sylvania men go through the mill. It takes a pretty
capable man to combine the ability for handling trains
and handling men with the intricate knowledge for com-
mand over an engineering corps devoted to maintenance-
of-way, as well as command over a machine-shop which
may employ a thousand skilled workmen. In order to
give its division heads that tremendous training, the Penn-
sylvania sends its men through its own West Point, the
great shops at Altoona. The men who have sat in the
big, roomy office in Broad Street Station, Philadelphia,
and who have been addressed as president, have been
proud of the days when they were up in the hills of the
Keystone State, standing their trick in overalls at the
lathe, or carrying chain and rod over long stretches of
track. To-day every Pennsylvania superintendent, pos-
sibly with a single exception or two, is a civil or mechan-
ical engineer.

On the other hand, the New York Central has also

THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC FINDS DIRECT ENTRANCE INTO SAN

FRANCISCO FOR ONE OF ITS BRANCH LINES BY TUNNELS PIERCING

THE HEART OF THE SUBURBS

PORTAL OF THE ABANDONED TUNNEL OF THE ALLEGHANY PORTAGE

RAILROAD NEAR JOHNSTOWN, PA., THE FIRST RAILROAD TUNNEL

IN THE UNITED STATES

THE RAILROAD AND ITS PRESIDENT 155

been brought into a high state of organization, and stands
firmly on the departmental plan.

'* We believe that our superintendents should specialize
in train operation," says one of the high officers of that
road. " In other words, we do not believe that a man,
to get his traffic through over a stretch of line, should
necessarily know to a fraction of an inch the best wheel-
base for an engine of a given type or the precise con-
struction of a truss bridge. Such requirements take away
from the special training that is to-day needed for every
high-class railroader. A railroader is made better by
sticking to one thing and sticking to it faithfully; and our
departmental method, by which the maintenance of line
and rolling-stock comes under the sole supervision of men
expert in those specialties, we think the best. Sometimes
we develop a very wizard in traffic handling, who has
never had a chance at a technical education."

And there you have the very essence of the other side
of the proposition. Between these two sides there are
various shadings and gradings, but the question has never
been definitely solved. It has reduced the vast complex-
ity in the organization of the modern railroad of the
larger size. That has become so very complex it fairly
cried for expert relief. One man has recently spent a
busy term of years in simplifying the organization of the
Harriman lines. To cut the intricate lines of red-tape
in a big railroad office, to reduce to a minimum the vast
needless correspondence between departments and between
branches of a single department, is a problem that calls
for genius — and offers for its solution no small reward.

In other days — and we refer to* no ancient history,
for the electric light was proved and the hundred-ton
locomotive already increasing the average tonnage of the
American freight train — the presidents of the biggest
roads were content to worry along with one or two as-
sistants. But two decades ago, the railroads were still

156 THE MODERN RAILROAD

simple matters; there did not exist the intimate relations
between one and the others of them, as shown by stock-
holdings in competing and feeding lines to-day — the
constant waiting of their executives upon the sessions of
the different railroad commissions. These complications
of American railroading have also further complicated
the organizations of the different systems, and have
brought a demand for executives of the keenest type. It
is no slight strain that a man works under when he be-
comes the head of a ten-thousand-mile railroad.

So to-day the president of the railroad has fortified
himself in the only possible way — by creating vice-
presidencies. Each ranking department to-day is apt to
be recognized in council by a vice-president; and these
heads form a cabinet as informal as that of the Federal
Government and, in its way, quite as important. Legal
traffic, and engineering traffic each demands a vice-presi-
dent at that cabinet-board, and gets him. The general
manager usually is the vice-president representing opera-
tion. One big road has eight vice-presidents. It is in-
deed a poor property that cannot show three or four men
that are the fittest to hold this title.

There is another cabinet where the president must sit,
which is formal and recognized; it is the board of di-
rectors. Between it and the lesser cabinet the president
must take good care that he is not ground as between
millstones. The cabinet of his department heads will tell
him how he can spend his money ; but he must get it from
the upper cabinet. It is not always harmonious pulling
in the upper cabinet. Imagine for a moment the troubles
that sometimes arise in the lower.

You are sitting in the office of a big railroad president,
talking straight to that big-shouldered soul himself.
Outside is the shadowy roof of the train-shed of a termi-
nal, which is filled with long lines of cars that come and
go, of platforms that are black with humans one instant
and quite deserted the next. The room has the quiet

THE RAILROAD AND ITS PRESIDENT 157

elegance of a comfortable home library. There are long
rows of books upon the shelves; a great table is set
squarely in the centre. But it is business — for a ticker
is slowly spelling the fate of that railroad and every
other railroad, upon the endless tape ; a huge map of the
system — many thousands of miles of high-class railroad
— lies under the glass that covers the table top.

'* They don't always pull together," the president of
the railroad admits, when you ask him about the lower
cabinet. " Sometimes they pull apart when they have
honestly different ideas as to policy, and other times —

there 's to be a big college football game up at G

next Saturday. We have only two private cars for our
four vice-presidents, every single blessed one of whom
wants to go. I don't want to go myself, and I 've con-
tributed my car, but we 're one short then, and the man
that 's left is going around like a boy who 's had a chip
knocked off his shoulder. He 's just been in here, and
I 've settled the matter by hiring a car for his party from
the Pullman folks and footing the bill myself. I sent him
out ashamed of himself.

" That 's Pete every time. Flares up quick, and every
time he flares up I can remember when we were working
the day-and-night tricks in a God-forsaken junction out
on a prairie stretch of the Great West. He 's like a
boy in some ways — awfully fussy about the rights and
prerogatives of his department; and he '11 go all to pieces
over some little thing if he thinks another man has
stepped over on to his side of the line. But let a big
situation arise — a flood that sets a whole division of our
lines awash; a wicked congestion of traffic in midwinter
blizzards; a nasty accident that takes away our nerve —
and you ought to see Pete ! He '11 be handling the thing
as if he were putting a ball up on the links, and he '11
never lose his confident smile. That man in one such
emergency is worth the hire of a dozen Pullmans."

You ask about the upper cabinet, and the president

158 THE MODERN RAILROAD

lowers his voice. The board is no matter for light con-
versation. He steps to the window and points down into
the concourse of the train-shed.

" I happen to know that young fellow over there by
the mailbox," he answers. " He 's one of our travelling
freight-agents. He 's lucky. He works for one boss,
and is responsible to him; I work for a whole regiment
of bosses, and am held responsible by a group of pretty
keen old citizens who gather around this table and put
me on the rack.

'* There are many interests in this property, and some
of them are too big to sleep in the same bed. I have
three directors who never speak to one another outside
of this room, and rarely ever in it. There is another
who represents the holdings of a road that fights this at
every turn, and he hurts the property worse than any
good husky plague. A big estate, with a bitter aversion
to spending money for any purpose whatsoever, has an-
other director here; and a banking interest presents a di-
rector who seconds him in every move, fool or good.
That is the crowd I have got to work with when I want
ten or fifteen millions to hold our own against some other
fellow who is crowding us hard for business in our com-
petitive territory or threatening to run a line into one of
our own private melon-patches. That boy down there is
lucky. He has only got to get out and land a couple of
hundred carloads from a shipper who hates corporations
worse than politics, and who has just had a claim for
spoiled goods turned down by this particular corporation.
That boy has the cinch job."

This imaginary railroad president has told you of one
of the vital points in the business of the railroad, the
necessity for constant teamwork. A railroad head may
have the genius of a Napoleon, the stubborn persistence
of a Grant, or the marvellous executive ability of a Pier-
pont Morgan, and be worthless if his board is not work-

THE RAILROAD AND ITS PRESIDENT 159

ing enthusiastically with and for him. It is not all pie
and preserves by any means. The board may set its
sweet will straight against his, and he may be forced to
execute a policy of which in his own mind he has no trust.
It is only once in a generation that a man like Harriman,
who can bend a whole mighty directorate to his absolute
will, arises. Harriman was a railroad president in the
fullest sense of the word.

He rode in his car north from Ogden one day, toward
the great National Park of the Yellowstone. At that
time the only direct rail entrance to that splendid reserve
was by the rival Hill lines. Harriman had called for a re-
port upon the opportunities for the Southern Pacific to
strike its own line into the west edge of the Park. That
report was being explained to him in great detail as he
rode north from Ogden. His chiefs had a hundred prac-
tical reasons against building the line. Harriman lis-
tened faithfully to the explanation, as was his way. Then
he turned to one of the signers of the report, a high
officer of his property.

" You have never been in the Yellowstone? " he asked.

The officer admitted that he had not.

" I have," said Harriman triumphantly, " and I am
going to build that road."

That road was built and became successful from its
beginning; but Harriman was a railroader with the in-
tuitive sense that gives genius to a great statesman or to
a great general. The average railroad president does
not hold a controlling interest himself and he must be
guided pretty carefully by the judgment of his depart-
ment heads ; he must win the cooperation of his board by
tact and subtlety rather than by the display of an iron
will ; and where he leads he must take the responsibility.

The Pennsylvania Railroad, as has already been told
in an earlier chapter, recently forced its entrance into
New York City and marked its terminal there with a
monumental station. That move was a strategy of the

160 THE MODERN RAILROAD

highest order, and was made that the road might place
itself upon an even fighting basis for traffic with its chief
competitor. But it cost. Two mighty rivers had to be
crossed, whole blocks of high-priced real estate secured,
a busy city threaded, the opposition of local authorities
(who stood with palms outstretched) honestly downed.
That all cost. That would have been a mighty expendi-
ture for the Federal Government; for a private corpora-
tion it was all but staggering.

When the station was finished, a rarely beautiful thing
with its classic public rooms, its long vistas, and its vast
dimensions, that private corporation built, within a niche
of the great waiting-room, a bronze figure of its former
president, the late A. J. Cassatt, where all hurrying hu-
manity might see it. But, though a thousand nervous
travellers see that statue in the passing of a single hour,
not a hundred of them will know the splendid tragedy
it represents; for many of the high officers of that rail-
road— some of the men who caused the bronze to be
erected — to this day believe that the production of that
great station was the cause of the death of their chief.
He had dreamed of that terminal for years ; his engineer
had deemed it all but impossible, and he had sent over-
seas for other engineers. One of these, who had con-
quered the busy Thames, said that he could tunnel the two
great rivers. He was asked the cost, and he gave it.
His first figures were staggering, but the railroad presi-
dent did not abandon his hope. He summoned his board
and put the problem to them.

There was pulling power between that president and
his board, and the pulling was all in a single direction.
Their system — a railroad that acknowledged no superior
— could not keep in the very front rank without its termi-
nal in the heart of the seaboard city, eliminating forever
the delays and the inconveniences of a ferry service; the
road could not afford to drop into second rank, and so it
assumed the great undertaking.

THE RAILROAD AND ITS PRESIDENT 161

That meant many things more than laymen under-
stand; the selling of securities in delicate markets, home
and foreign, which fluctuate wildly on the promulgation
of anticorporation talk; the evading of untiring com-
petitors; the appeasing of hungry politicians, only too
anxious to feed at the hands of a wealthy corporation.
In this case, it meant more than all these things, for the
two rivers were quite as treacherous as the American en-
gineers had pronounced them. They would sound in
their tunnel bearings and find rock which seemed soft,
and their dynamite charges would be sufficient. Then it
would prove hard, and their blast as inefficient as that
of a child's toy cannon. Again, the rock would drill as
hard as the hardest gneiss — the very backbone of Mother
Earth herself, and the hard-rock men would prepare a
heavy charge of dynamite. Then the stuff was as soft
as gravel, and their heavy charge would have torn off
the roofs of half a dozen houses. When they were un-
der one of the rivers they found its bed — the roof of
their tunnel — as soft as mud. There came a day when
the little foaming swirls of water above their headings
became a geyser: the river-bed had blown entirely out.

After that, some of the younger engineers felt like
throwing themselves into the wicked river, but the biggest
engineer of all never lost his faith. He sent upstream
and brought down a whole Spanish Armada of clumsy
scows, each heaped high with sticky clay. That clay —
in thousands of cubic yards — made a new river-bottom
and the tunnel shields went forward.

There were other obstacles and discouragements, almost
an infinite array of them, to be surmounted, but this rail-
road president had steeled his mind to the accomplishment
of that terminal. In the making of it he gave his life.
When the day came for the drafts upon the railroad's
treasury, mounting higher and higher, he was cheer; when
bad news came from the burrowing engineers, he was
courage; when timid stockholders and directors began to

1 62 THE MODERN RAILROAD

worry, he was comfort. He gave of his vitality to the
organization, to the making of the terminal, until the day
came when he gave too much — and his life went out while
he was still like a mighty king in battle. He did not live
to see the classic lines of the great station building. As
he stands in the waiting-room, he stands in bronze.
Those bronze eyes are powerless to see the splendid frui-
tion of his endeavors.

That sort of thing — heroic courage and death-bringing
devotion to an enterprise — repeats itself now and then
among the executives of the railroads. When the panic of
1907 reached high tide, there was a certain railroad pres-
ident who, like his fellows, viewed it with no little alarm.
He had lunched with a big steel man, the kind the news-
papers like to call a magnate, and the steel man had scared
him. The company for which the former labored was
going to close half a dozen of its plants — was going to
throw some thousands of poorly provided men out of
work.

The railroad president took that bad news back to
his comfortable office; at night it travelled with him in his
automobile to his big and showy house. It would hit his
company hard in its heavy tonnage district, but that was
only a single phase of the situation. He thought of things
becoming more disjointed when the news became public —
before that week had run its course. That night the pres-
ident made up his mind to take a big step. It was risky
business, but he thought it worth the risk.

He sent for the steel man in the morning and asked him
what was the best price he could make for his product.
The steel man cut his regular profit in half, but the presi-
dent was not satisfied.

' You '11 have to show me a better margin than that," he
said.

' We '11 eliminate profits," said the steel man, " and give
you the stuff at cost, to save shutting down our plant."

" Is that the best you can do? " persisted the president.

THE RAILROAD AND ITS PRESIDENT 163

Before he was done, the steel man had also eliminated
depreciation on plants and half a dozen minor expenses.
He agreed to deliver at the mere cost of raw material and
labor. Then he received an order that would have broken
some records in prosperous times. The road was com-
mitted to some big building projects and it needed whole
trainloads of girders and columns; bridges by the dozen.
The railroad president went further, and helped out the
steel man's car-building plant. He ordered 3,000 steel
freight cars, and every day he was getting reports from his
general manager of a further falling of traffic tides.
They had motive-power rusting on sidings, and they were
dumping freight cars in the ditches along the right-of-way
because they did not have storage-room for them. That
took courage of a certain high-grade sort. When those
freshly-painted new steel cars began to be delivered in
daily batches of sixty, some of his directors asked him
where he was going to find room to store them. He did
not answer, for he did not know; but in the long run he
won out. His company had a new equipment for the re-
turning flood-tide of traffic which had cost it 25 per cent
less than that of its competitors. When the time came
to build its big improvement it had the steel all stored and
ready. The president was able to tell his directors then
that he had saved them $1,700,000 on that close bargain
that he had driven in panicky times.

Sometimes a little thing makes a railroad president big.

The head of a busy road in the Middle West was hurry-
ing to Chicago one day to attend a mighty important con-
ference of railroad chiefs. His special was halted at a
division point for an engine-change, and the president was
enjoying a three-minute breathing spell walking up and
down beside his car. An Italian track laborer tried to
make his way to him. The president's secretary, who was
on the job, after the manner of presidents' secretaries,
stopped the man. The signal was given that the train was

1 64 THE MODERN RAILROAD

ready, but the president saw that the track-hand was crying.
He ordered his train held and went over to him. The
story was quickly told. The track-hand's little boy had
been playing in the yards and had hidden in an open box-
car; so his small companions had reported. Afterwards
the car had been closed and sealed by a yardmaster's em-
ployee. Somewhere it was bumping its weary way in a
lazy freight train, while a small boy, hungry and scared,
was vainly calling to be let out.

Perhaps that president had a boy of the same size —
they always do in stories ; and perhaps — this being reality
— he did not. But he stopped there for three precious
hours, at that busy division point, while he sent orders
broadcast to find the boy, orders that went with big au-
thority because they came from the high boss himself.
He was late at the conference, because that search was
taking his mind and his attention. He hung for hours
at a long-distance telephone, personally directing the boy-
hunt with his marvellously fertile and resourceful mind.
When action came entirely too slowly he ordered the men
out of the shops and all interchange freight halted, until
every one of 12,000 or 14,000 box cars had been opened
and searched. Finally, from one of these they drew forth
the limp and almost lifeless body of a small boy.

The railroad chief died a little while ago and was
buried in a city 500 miles away from the line that he had
controlled. The track-hands of his line, with that delicate
sensibility that is part and parcel of the Italian, dug deep
into their scanty savings and hired a special train, that
they might march in a body at his funeral.

It sometimes takes a big man to do a little thing in a
big way.

Here is Underwood, the railroad president who took
hold of the Erie when the property was a byword and a
joke, who began pouring money into it to give it real
improvements and possibilities for economical handling,

THE RAILROAD AND ITS PRESIDENT 165

and made it a practical and a profitable freighter, a
freighter of no mean importance at that. He once issued
an order that any car on the road (no matter of what
class of equipment) with a flat wheel should be imme-
diately cut out of the train. The order was posted in every
yardmaster's office up and down that system.

Some time after it went into effect, Underwood was
hurrying east in his private car. It was essential that he
should reach Jersey City in the early morning, for he had
a big day's grist awaiting him at his office. A real rail-
road president, working 18 hours a day, can brook few
delays. But when the president awoke, his car was not in
motion; the foot of his bunk was higher than the head.
He looked out and found himself in a railroad yard three
or four hundred miles from his office. When he got up
and out he saw why his bed had been aslant. The obser-
vation end of his car was jacked up and the car-repairers
were slipping a new pair of wheels underneath it. A
car-tinker bossed the job and Underwood addressed
him.

" Who gave you authority to cut out my car?" he
asked.

" If you will walk over to my coop," said the car-
tinker, politely, " you will find my authority in orders
from headquarters to cut out any car (no matter of what
class of equipment) with a flat wheel."

When the new wheels were in place the president of the
road put his hand upon the shoulder of the car-tinker
and marched him uptown. The man obeyed, not knowing
what was coming to him. Underwood walked him
straight into a jeweller's shop, picked out the best gold
watch in the case and handed it to the car-tinker.

" You keep right on obeying orders," he said.

The relations between a railroad president at the head
of the organization, and some man who struggles ahead
in the army of which the president is general, would make
a whole book. They still tell a story in Broad Street

1 66 THE MODERN RAILROAD

Station, Philadelphia, of Mr. Cassatt, the Pennsylvania's
great president, and the brakeman.

It seems that one of the suburban locals that took Cas-
satt to his country home up the main line was halted one
night by an unfriendly signal. The president, mildly won-
dering at the delay, found his way to the rear platform.
On the lower step of that platform, in plain violation of
the company's rule, sat the rear brakeman. Cassatt was
never a man who was quick with words, but he said in a
low voice :

" Young man, is n't there a rule on this road that a
brakeman shall go a certain distance to the rear of a stalled
train to protect it by danger signal? "

The brakeman spat upon the right-of-way and, without
lifting his eyes from it, said :

" If there is, it 's none of your damn business."

Cassatt — the man who could strike an arm of Pennsyl-
vania into the heart of metropolitan New York at a cost
of many millions of dollars — was much embarrassed.

" Oh, certainly it is n't," he said with an attempt at a
smile. " I was merely asking for information."

The next morning the president of the Pennsylvania
summoned the trainmaster of that suburban division to his
desk and reported the matter. The trainmaster turned
three colors. It was lese-majeste of the most heinous
sort. He proposed the immediate dismissal of the offend-
ing brakeman. Cassatt ruled against that. He was too
big a man to be seeking to rob any brakeman of his job.

" Just tell him," he said to the trainmaster, with a sug-
gestion of a smile about his lips, " that he cussed the presi-
dent, and that, as a personal favor, I should like him to
be more polite to passengers in the future."

No two railroad presidents come up to their problem in
quite the same way. Take the two members of the West-
ern railroad world — one gone now — Hill and Harri-
man. In J. J. Hill's domain the personality of the man
counts for everything. He picks his men, advances them,

THE RAILROAD AND ITS PRESIDENT 167

rejects or dismisses them, by a rare intuitive sense, with
which he judges character. A high chief in his ranks once
asked for a vacation in which to take his family to Europe.
Hill granted it. When the man came back from Europe
another was at his desk. Hill did not approve of long
vacations, and that was his method of showing it. The
department head should have known better.

On the other hand, Harriman measured his men imper-
sonally — as if in a master scale. He measured them by
results. A man might personally be somewhat repugnant
to him, but if he accomplished results for the road, he held
his place, at least until some one came along who could do
even better.

W. C. Brown, of the New York Central, and James
McCrea, of the Pennsylvania, are the heads of two rail-
roads great in mileage and in volume of traffic; yet
their methods are in many essentials radically different.
McCrea is the essence of Pennsylvania policy — coldly
impersonal. It is easier to gain an audience with the pres-
ident of the United States than with the president of the
Pennsylvania. No Pennsylvania man from president
down to the lowest ranking officer, grants an interview to
a newspaper reporter. It would be risky business for any
officer of the Pennsylvania to have his photograph pub-
lished or himself glorified by reason of his connection with
the company. The company is the corporation.

When it speaks, it speaks impersonally through its press
agent, a clever young man with clever assistants, who both
answers newspaper questions and advances newspaper in-
formation. His function is a new one of the American
railroad, and allies itself directly with the office of the
president.

W. C. Brown, of the New York Central, probably
stands preeminent to-day among American railroad ex-
ecutives. He has shouldered himself up from the ranks
of the railroad army, and only good wishes have gone to
him as he has stepped from one high post to a still higher

1 68 THE MODERN RAILROAD

one. He has come, as nine out of ten successful executives
have come, from the operating end of the railroad

Brown is particularly accessible to newspaper reporters.
He talks with them, carefully and painstakingly, and
sees to it that they are correctly informed as to each of
the great railroad problems of the day. He believes sin-
cerely that the head of a railroad should be personality
and that the personality should stand forth directly in the
guidance of the property. In his own case, at least, he
has demonstrated the value of his theory.

For all this work and all this strain, the railroad presi-
dent demands that he be adequately paid. He has a
good many perquisites — chief among them a comfortable
private car at his beck and call; but perquisites are
not salary. The head and front of the American rail-
road to-day receives anywhere from $15,000 to $75,000;
an astonishingly large percentage of railroad presidents
are receiving at least $50,000 annually. But they work
for their pay — sometimes with their life-devotion, as in
the case of the big man who built the big terminal;
other times with the hard sense of the president who
bought his steel girders and cars in the time of panic.
Here is a case in point.

A road in the Middle West, which was so compact as
to make it quite local in character, had a big traffic prop-
osition to handle and was handling it in a miserable fash-
ion. One local celebrity after another tackled it, until
the directors were laying side bets with one another as
to the precise day when the receiver should walk into the
office. Finally, Eastern capital, which was heavily inter-
ested in the property, revolted at the local offerings, and
sent out an operating man with a big reputation to take
hold of it.

The directors received him with a certain veiled dis-
trust as coming from another land, but in the end they
hired him. The matter of salary came up last of all.

" Fifty thousand," said the New Yorker in a low voice.

One of the local directors spoke up.

THE RAILROAD AND ITS PRESIDENT 169

" Fifteen thousand I " said he. " It 's out of the ques-
tion. We Ve never paid more than twelve."

" So I should imagine," was the dry response. " But I
said fifty, not fifteen."

The consternation that followed may be imagined 1
In the end the New Yorker carried his point. At the
end of just twelve months he had, through his acquaint-
ance in Wall Street, and his keen insight into the big chan-
nels of finance, cut that little road's interest charges just
$800,000 a year. The receiver has not come yet. The
road has accomplished a miracle and has begun to pay div-
idends. There is another miracle to relate. Last spring,
the directors of the road voted an increase in salary to
their president — and he courteously refused it !

" I think the presidency of this road is worth $50,000 a
year," he said, frankly, " and not one cent more."

That is the way a president should stand above and
with his board.

Only a little time ago, another president, who had no
easier proposition to set upon its feet, was criticised by a
querulous old director for his lavish use of private cars
and special trains. That president was having his own
troubles — his job had no soft places; but he said noth-
ing when the testy old fellow lectured him as he might
have lectured a sin-filled schoolboy. When the director
was done, the president spoke in a low voice.

" Gentlemen, my resignation is on the table," was his
reply to the censure.

The next moment there was consternation in that board.
The president slipped out of the room and left them to
consider the matter. When he returned, the chairman of
the board, who had nodded in half approval at the censure,
was at the door to greet him.

" We refuse to accept your resignation," he said; " but
the board does feel that you ought to have a new car —
the present one 's getting shabby, Phil."

And in that moment the president felt that his work had
gained one little ounce of appreciation.

CHAPTER XI

THE LEGAL AND FINANCIAL DEPARTMENTS

FUNCTIONS OF GENERAL COUNSEL, AND THOSE OF GENERAL ATTORNEY —
A SHREWD LEGAL MIND'S WORTH TO A RAILROAD — THE FUNCTION
OF THE CLAIM-AGENT — MEN AND WOMEN WHO FEIGN INJURY — THE
SECRET SERVICE AS AN AID TO THE CLAIM-AGENT — WAGES OF EM-
PLOYEES THE GREATEST OF A RAILROAD'S EXPENDITURES — THE PAY-
CAR — THE COMPTROLLER OR AUDITOR — DIVISION OF THE INCOME FROM
THROUGH TICKETS — CLAIMS FOR LOST OR DAMAGED FREIGHT — PUR-
CHASING-AGENT AND STORE-KEEPER.

AT the very elbow of the railroad president stands
the general counsel. He is shrewd, resourceful, dip-
lomatic. He has quick perception and action, the faith
and the loyalty of a friend. In many cases he is a per-
sonal officer of the president — in the highest sense. If
there is a change of administration of the railroad, there
is apt to be a change in the office of the general counsel.

If B , who has been guiding the destinies of the T.

& S., goes to Transcontinental, he is apt to take Y ,

his general counsel along with him. For except in the
case of some exquisitely organized roads like the Penn-
sylvania, for instance, the general counsel is in every sense
personal to the president. He advises him privately,
urges him to this step, cautions him from that.

On the other hand, the general attorney is more apt to
be the legal officer of the railroad. Like the general
counsel he has an old-fashioned pride in his profession that
makes him hesitate at accepting a vice-presidency; he likes
the ring of " general attorney " or " general counsel " in
his own ears. Railroad history and tradition both go to
prove that. He will hardly drop those titles for anything
less than that of president.

The general attorney, unlike the general counsel, in most

170

LEGAL AND FINANCIAL 171

cases will make his offices in the railroad's headquarters.
He will handle its litigation, and if in half a dozen years
he can bring down its verdict costs from $1,250,000 to
$750,000 for an average twelve month, as one man did,
he will be well worth the large salary that he demands and
gets. And his salary will be only one of many of the
heavy expenses of the legal department. When that
functionary asks for money he gets it and without many
questionings. The operating department, the traffic de-
partment, the engineers, may have to give sharp account
for their appropriations; the legal end of the railroad is
trusted to accomplish accurate results, without detailed ac-
counting. In some cases it might prove embarrassing.

You want to know the value of the shrewd and per-
ceptive legal mind to a big railroad? Here is a case
that proves his worth:

A certain transportation company in the East had a legal
vice-president who many people supposed was a political
heritage to the road, a man for whom it was supposed a
berth had been made by the owner of the property, who
was something of a politician himself. A quick turning of
the wheel of fortune had thrown one political party out
of business at the capital, and another in. The man was
given a place in the railroad offices, and a little later was
made a vice-president. It so happened that the vice-pres-
ident knew more than supposers might even imagine; but
he was a quiet man, and sometimes some of his own
clerks wondered why he drew his big salary. After he
had been at his desk a dozen years they found the
reason.

In gathering up a number of railroad properties to
make the parent company — after the fashion of modern
railroad practice — one of the most important of these
old-time units was found to be in woefully shabby physical
form. It was a valuable road in the consolidation.
The new parent was willing to guarantee an annual rental

1 72 THE MODERN RAILROAD

of 10 per cent on its stock; but as a railroad it fairly
shook at the knees. It stood in dire need of reconstruc-
tion, and the men who were offering it a high rental made
that a provision of the deal. The old road finally agreed
to spend $12,000,000 in revising its line and in buying
new locomotives, cars, and bridges. With much ado it
accomplished its revision, and brought itself up closer to
modern standards of railroading.

A decade later when the governmental supervision of
the railroads had come into the full flush of its authority,
the quiet vice-president had an armful of State commis-
sion reports and vouchers brought to his desk. He
locked himself in his room, and in a week he had made
from them a 2O,ooo-word abstract in long hand. Then
he took his report in to the president of the road.

The acute mind of that general counsel — you see that
he was vice-president in this particular case — searching
here and there and everywhere, had discovered a mouse-
hole. The old-time road had not fulfilled its part of the
contract. It had found that it could revise its lines at a
cost of a little less than $9,000,000 and had quietly pock-
eted the change. The big rent-paying consolidation went
into the courts, after its cool, impassive way. The case
went to a referee and the referee took four years to hear
the case and decide it. There were 5,000 exhibits offered
in evidence and 8,000 closely written pages of evidence,
making a case nearly equal to that of the receivership of
the Metropolitan Street Railway Company of New York
City, which fills twenty pudgy volumes of some 800 pages
each.

The referee decided in favor of the parent company,
and rendered a verdict close to $6,000,000, principal
and interest. The case was appealed, and sustained.
That vice-president had proved his worth. The presi-
dent of the defendant road came to him.

" We simply can't pay," he pleaded. " We Ve no re-
serve fund."

LEGAL AND FINANCIAL 173

" Then we will take it out of your rental," was the emo-
tionless reply of the quiet vice-president.

That type of man stands forth as a possibility to every
one of the dozens and dozens of young men who make
the main staff of the railroad's legal- department. Those
fellows come to the railroad fresh from the law schools.
Their salaries are small but their experience and their op-
portunities are enormous. It is a far better career at the
beginning than a briefless existence in one's own office,
even though one's own name is emblazoned in brilliant
gilt letters upon the door. A young man coming into the
legal department of a large railroad has a diversity of
work offered him. He draws up the simplest of papers at
first, acts as assistant to a trial lawyer, then finally comes
to the time when he will alone fight the railroad's case
in some minor cause in a small court. After that the
causes get bigger, the courts more important, he begins
to delve into law libraries and to write briefs. Gradually
he emerges into a full-fledged lawyer. He may even-
tually become general attorney or general counsel, and he
may find himself welcome to the partnership of some really
important law firm. He has knowledge that may be of
value in fighting the railroad; whether he will use that
knowledge in afterwards fighting his employer is a mat-
ter for his own conscience to determine.

There are special departments under the main heading
of the law department. Counsel, the ablest of counsel, is
retained at each important point reached by the railroad,
and these counsel must act in conjunction and cooperation
with headquarters. Special tax counsel have an important
office by themselves, for the railroad sometimes finds itself
in a difficult position. In its pride it may announce to
the world, through the newspapers, that the new Bing-
town depot has cost $400,000, but when the Bingtown
appraisers come around, possessing in their bosoms no in-
herent love for the railroad, those newspaper clippings in
their hands, the tax counsel begins to earn his salary.

174 THE MODERN RAILROAD

In these days of Federal and State supervision and regu-
lation of railroad management, with now and then an
aldermanic chamber or a county board of supervisors trying
its hand at the game, there is sure to be special counsel,
generally known as the commerce or commission counsel,
assigned to the complaints and hearings. For intricate, in-
volved, or unusual cases the road may go outside of its
own ranks and hire special counsel — lawyers who are
specialists in the very thing involved.

Just as the big and tactful attorney stands back of the
railroad's president, so there crouches at his feet the claim-
agent of the company, who is its watch-dog and its scent-
ing hound. Back of this claim-agent, who must have
achieved a reputation for keen-sightedness and marked
ability before receiving his position, is a busy company of
claim agents, at headquarters and every division head-
quarters upon the system. Together, these form a mili-
tant organization that stands with the legal department
to defend the railroad's treasury against indiscriminate
raiding.

Sometimes, because the work dovetails in many ways
closely with that of the operating department, these claim-
agents work under the order of the general manager and
the division superintendents. A sly old fellow who once
headed a big road in the Middle West once explained the
reason why — in the case of his property — without even
a trace of a smile.

" John says," he was speaking of his own general coun-
sel, " that a claim-agent can't be yanked up before any of
these touchy bar associations and charged with unprofes-
sional practices if we can show cases — that they 're just
railroad men and not lawyers, at all."

That was an exaggerated case. As a rule, the young
claim-agent has abundant need to be upon his mettle.
The public, with an inborn itching against the corpora-
tion, keeps him upon that mettle. The man who has had
a slight bump upon a railroad train — to make an in-

LEGAL AND FINANCIAL 175

stance — hunts out the claim office at headquarters. He
gets quick treatment and mighty courteous treatment. If
he can prove himself in any way entitled to a reimburse-
ment, he gets it — in cash upon the spot. Likewise he
signs a release — a most ponderous and impressive docu-
ment. When his " John Smith " goes upon that docu-
ment he has, in its own magnificent phrasing " in
consideration of money received " released the railroad
company from all obligation to him from the beginning of
the world, the fall of man and the decline of the Roman
Empire up to the very moment of the signing.

He goes home, pretty well satisfied with himself. It
was only a little bump at that. A twenty-five cent bottle
of arnica had made him physically himself once again;
and as for his suit, well, that was pretty well worn, any-
way, and three dollars to a tailor would make it a good
" second best " for next winter. He feels that the ten
dollars that the railroad gave him was pretty abundant
compensation.

But wait until he sees his neighbor. The neighbor al-
most froths at the mouth when he hears of the transaction
— of the impressively worded release that was signed.

" You Jre a chump," he says. ' You could have gone to
bed, stayed there a week and they would have been glad to
give you a hundred."

After which the man looks upon his ten dollars with
contempt and a feeling of injury, and becomes a corpora-
tion hater. Or perhaps he was really hurt and had some
sort of a bill from his doctor and his druggist, lost time to
be compensated at his job. The railroad has figured these
together and paid him the sum, with the signing of the
release as a necessary feature of the transaction. The
thing was not very serious, we will say, in this instance
also, and the hundred dollars that he received was really
a fair compensation. Now watch the neighbor, who it
happens is a pretty shrewd attorney:

" Let me take the case, even now," he urges slyly.

176 THE MODERN RAILROAD

" I '11 get a verdict of five thousand for you, if you are
wise, and we will divide the proceeds."

" But I Ve signed their release," groans the other.

The shyster laughs in his face.

* You were drugged," he whispers, " drugged, and we
will prove it."

That is not an exaggerated case. It is the sort of thing
that the railroad's claim-agents are combating every day
of the year; and then wonder not, that some of them finally
lose the fine sense of honor, themselves.

And beyond this class of folk, is another — nothing
less than criminal. There are men and women in this
broad land who make a business of feigning injury, and
make it a pretty astute business, too, so that they may dig
deep into the strong-boxes of the railroad. The most
dramatic of this particular brand of " nature fakirs " has
been Edward Pape, the man with the broken neck. Pape
has a most remarkable deformity and has not been slow to
avail himself of it as a money-making device far beyond
the figures that might be quoted for him by circus side-
shows or dime museums. Pape makes a specialty of the
trolley companies. He can so alight from a car, coming
slowly to a stop, that he will fall and go rolling into
the gutter. Instantly there is excitement and a group of
men to pick up the prostrate form. He is found to be
badly injured and is hurried to a hospital. There the in-
ternes discover that he has a broken neck. A marvellous
set of X-ray photographs are made, and the railroad is
usually willing to settle a large cash sum rather than stand
suit. Within a week he will probably be away and prac-
tising his trick on some unsuspecting railroad.

" There was a time over in Philadelphia that was hell,"
Pape once told the writer. " I 'd just finished my fancy
fall, and they got me into the sickhouse and rigged out
most to kill. They put hip-boots on me there in bed, with
their soles fastened to the foot-board and a rubber band-
age under my chin and over my head. They put seventy-

LEGAL AND FINANCIAL 177

five pounds in weights on a cord and a pulley-jigger to that
bandage and it nearly killed me all day long. At night
I used to wait until it was dark and then I 'd haul up the
weights and put them under the blanket with me. Oth-
erwise, I don't know how I 'd 'a' got my sleep."

Little things like the discomfort of hospital treatment
and searching examinations by railroad surgeons do not
seem to discourage these criminals. They take these as
necessary hardships that go with their profession. Inga
Hanson, the woman who impersonated deafness, dumb-
ness, blindness and paralysis to win a heavy verdict from
the Chicago City Railway Company, and who was after-
wards convicted of perjury, was wheeled daily into the
court-room in a chair apparently nothing more than a liv-
ing, inert, shapeless mass of humanity, exquisitely trained
to enact her role of deception.

Sometimes the claim-agents, working in conjunction with
the railroad's secret service, have used the camera to great
advantage. A farmer who lives in New Jersey drove
into a seaboard city with a load of produce. At a grade
crossing, a switch-engine overturned his craft, about as
gently as such an accident could be accomplished. The
farmer was lucky in that he was bruised, rather than
seriously hurt. Then he saw a lawyer and learned that
he was incapacitated for life by severe internal injuries.
He entered suit for $25,000 against the railroad.

There was a case for the secret-service bureau of the
railroad, and it took little time to find the right detect-
ives, husky enough to get out into the fields and work for
four long weeks as farmhands. When the Jersey farmer
began haying that August, he found less trouble than
he had ever before experienced in hiring low-priced
help. He was able to get two big lads, who were hard
workers.

It was a big hay year and the farmer was not averse
to turning in to do his part of the work. He liked to
be with the boys he had hired and one of them had a cam-

178 THE MODERN RAILROAD

era that he could take " great " pictures with. He
showed him some of the pictures that he took those Aug-
ust days on the Jersey farm. The farmer liked them im-
mensely.

He liked them rather less when his attorney came down
from the city one day, with prints of the same pictures
that had been sent him by the law department of the rail-
road. The farmer was given a chance to withdraw from
the limelight or else stand a criminal trial for perjury,
with the penitentiary's gray walls looming up behind.
He took the chance. Few of the dishonest claimants will
proceed after such evidence has been put before them. As
for the railroad, it usually works better through getting
signed confessions of guilt than by going through the some-
what intense workings of a criminal trial.

The secret service stands just back of the claim-agents.
It has greater or less recognition in the case of different
railroads but its work is generally much the same. It
is police. Sometimes it is organized like the police
department of a small city, with captains and inspec-
tors at various division headquarters, and at other
times its very existence is denied by the railroad
heads. But its work is much the same. Its men,
generally chosen for fitness from city police or detective
staffs, sometimes root out tramps or small thieves along
the line and in the freight-yards, sometimes in gay uniform
patrol the platforms of crowded passenger terminals,
sometimes work with greatest secrecy in " plain clothes "
— which in this case may be jeans or overalls — to detect
theft or treason among employees, and sometimes they re-
ceive their greatest laurels in connection with the " fake "
suits that are brought against the railroad.

The secret-service works night and day. Its members,
with the claim-agents, are at the scene of a serious accident
as quickly as the wrecking-train itself. Together with
the railroad's own corps of surgeons, retained in every
important town, and chosen for absolute honesty and in-

LEGAL AND FINANCIAL 179

tegrity, they form an important adjunct of the personal
injury claim service.

The financial officer of the railroad is, of course, the
treasurer. It is he who receives its earnings — running
possibly into a hundred millions dollars in the course of a
twelvemonth — and disburses them for supplies and for
wages, for taxes and for bond coupons, and, it is to be
hoped, for dividends. He works through appointed
banks; and the bank president who can go out and cap-
ture one or two good railroad accounts for his institution
has earned his salary for several years to come. The
selection of the banks is one of the dramatic phases of the
inside politics of railroading ; it is a cause of constant wire-
pullings and heartburnings.

"Do you see that whited sepulchre down there?" a
big railroad head laughs to you as he points to a white
marble skyscraper closing the vista of a city canyon.
;' This road built that temple of business. Our account is
its backbone. Sometimes we deposit a million dollars
a day and it is no uncommon thing for our balance there,
approaching coupon or dividend times to reach sixteen
or seventeen million dollars."

He laughs again, then grows confidential.

" We 're in a bit of a hole," he admits. " Some of the
big manufacturers downtown are organizing a bank, and
it looks as if it was going to be a pretty solid sort of in-
stitution. They want a big account from us, and our traf-
fic people are urging their cause. In the long run they '11
get the account."

Then he explains to you that the railroad endeavors to
hold down its bank accounts, although it must have them
in a large number of different cities, to avoid the long
shipments of large quantities of money. The agents and
the conductors will, following a carefully arranged sys-
tem, send their receipts to the nearest designated banks,
mailing memorandum slips of the deposit both to the treas-

i8o THE MODERN RAILROAD

urer and to the comptroller. The bank in its turn, sends
receipt slips to both of these officers, so the deposit trans-
action is hedged about with a sufficient degree of formality
and detail.

When it comes to pay out its money, the railroad has
no lessened degree of formality and detail. For the wages
of its employees — generally the greatest of all expendi-
tures — the railroad has proper system and order. The
paymaster makes out the voluminous pay-rolls, they are
each properly attested by the heads of departments; and
for his pay-roll totals, the necessary vouchers are issued to
him by the treasurer. He may pay the railroad army by
check or he may send his deputies out over the system
in the pay-cars.

The pay-car is one of the pleasantest of the surviving
old-time railroad customs. The shriek of the whistle of
the engine that hauls it is the pleasantest melody that can
come to the ears of the man out upon the line. To
shuffle in a long line up to its platform window where the
railroad's money is being paid out in tiny envelopes, as
each man signs the impressive roll, is one of the greatest
joys that anticipation can hold out. As the car makes its
routine trip over the line each month or each fortnight, it
draws its money from the various repository banks, or else
the cash is forwarded to it at division points from head-
quarters.

But, like many old customs, the pay-car is disappearing.
The railroads are more and more paying their men by
check. It is a better system in many ways. It avoids the
handling of large sums of money, and many of the men
prefer not to have a roll of bills thrust into their hands.
The old prejudice among them against checks is practically
over. The checks are constant incentives toward saving,
the small banks in the little town are shrewdly reaching
for the accounts of the thrifty railroaders. There may not
be much for the bank in just one of these accounts, but
they can quickly multiply into considerable sums.

LEGAL AND FINANCIAL !8i

We have already spoken of the comptroller; he is called
the auditor upon some of our railroads. The comp-
troller is the most passionless and unemotional of all rail-
road officials. He measures the worth of his fellows by
cold mathematical rules, by addition, by subtraction, by
multiplication, by division. Even as big a man as the
president may shudder at the result of such coldly accurate
measurings.

No moneys are received, none spent, without the
knowledge and approval of the comptroller. He is really
a fine balance-wheel of the system, a governor working
in exact accord with the laws of the ancient and wonder-
fully accurate science of numbers. By his computations
men rise, men fall. He is the keeper of the rule and
keeper of the weight.

His office organization reflects his own measure of ac-
curacy. As a rule, an auditor of disbursements and
auditors of tickets and of freight receipts report are his
chief assistants at headquarters. A corps of sharp-eyed
I young men, each also having an almighty respect for math-
f ematical accuracy, will be up and down the line for him,
I catching up careless agents on the one hand, and on the
other gently showing them how to keep their accounts bet-
I ter, and conform more carefully to the company's estab-
lished standards. Sometimes the car accountant, a man
who watches the mileage of the company's cars travelling
i over other roads, and the equipment of other roads scur-
; rying over the home system, reports to the comptroller,
oftener, however, directly to the operating department.
All these make a considerable office — an office which
usually treads its monotonous path and rarely becomes
nervously excited ; an office to be well considered in the or-
1 ganization of the railroad.

The work of that office falls quite naturally into three
channels — as we have already indicated — passenger re-
ceipts, freight receipts and disbursements, and general ac-
counts. In the passenger receipts the accounting has, of

1 82 THE MODERN RAILROAD

course, to do with the sale of tickets, and the cash fare
collections made by conductors upon the trains. This
would be simple enough bookkeeping if a good many years
ago the interline or coupon ticket, entitling the bearer to
ride upon several different roads, had not come into pop-
ularity. To apportion the revenue of a ticket between
the half-dozen different lines upon which it has been used
requires almost no end of system and accounting. Once
a month each road has an accounting with its fellows, with
whom it is engaged in selling through tickets. The cou-
pons themselves are the vouchers, and cash balances of
a single road — because of the freight as well as the pas-
senger business — may be kept standing in the treas-
uries of several hundred other roads. It is a system quite
as intricate, in itself, as the relations between city and
country banking and yet it is only a single small phase of
the conduct of the railroad.

The auditor of ticket receipts must also, through this
staff organization, make sharp examination of the tickets
that are turned in by the conductors at the end of each
day's run. He must see to it that the conductor is neither
careless nor anything worse. In either of these cases he
will bring the matter quickly to the attention of the opera-
ting department.

In addition to the railroad selling its tickets there are
also railroad passenger traffic organizations, half a dozen
or more important ones across the country, which are en-
gaged in selling various forms of railroad transportation.
In some cases this takes the shape of a mileage-book
which may be honored by fifteen or twenty different lines.
The book will perhaps be sold for $25.00 and will
permit of 1,000 miles' riding at a saving over local fares, if
the purchaser comply with its provisions. If he has com-
plied with its provisions within the year's life of the book,
he will be paid $5 rebate upon return of its cover which
has given him his riding at two cents a mile. Sometimes
these books take the form of " scrip " which is silent upon

LEGAL AND FINANCIAL 183

mileage but which has its strip divided into five-cent por-
tions, sold at wholesale, as it were, at a fraction less than
five cents each.

In any case, there is more work for the auditor who
handles passenger receipts, and if the railroad is in New
York State, for instance, where there is quite a model
law in effect regulating these things he will have to be very
careful how he handles the accounts for these peculiar
mileage books. The law tells him that he must not credit
the whole $25 to passenger receipts, for the law seems to
point to even finer lines than the comptroller. He can-
not even subtract the $5 which will probably return to the
purchaser, and charge the $20 to receipts. The mileage-
book sales must be credited to a separate account, and only
transferred to the main receipts of the railroad as the strip
is turned in for passage, a few miles at a time.

Do you wonder then that the comptroller sometimes
grows gray-haired, that the vast routine of his office swells
tremendously from year to year? The passenger receipts
are almost always less than half of the income accounts of
his offices. They are the A, B, C compared with the de-
licious tangle that comes when the freight waybills come
in by the hundred thousand, and each little road must re-
ceive the last penny due to it. That feature alone will
sometimes keep 400 clerks scratching their pens in a single
office, will involve many, many more balances and cross-
balances between the railroads.

And beyond that complication is still another, the con-
stant investigation and settlement of freight claims that
come pouring in against the railroad. There is another
job for a staff of competent men. If it is an overcharge
claim, the routine is comparatively simple. The audit
office should have information at hand sufficient to de-
cline the claim or settle it immediately. But if the claim
is for lost or damaged freight, the thing complicates. Be-
fore the freight claim department will draw a voucher
against the treasurer, it will have to assure its own

1 84 THE MODERN RAILROAD

conscience that the claim is fairly substantiated by the
facts.

From these receipts, combined with those from rentals
of express or telegraph privileges or the like, the railroad
pays its bills — pays its men, as we have already seen. It
pays its taxes and its bond coupons and its fire insurance,
and apportions these as far as possible over the twelve
months of the year that it may keep a fairly even balance
between receipts and expenditures. The other bills are
paid by properly signed and attested vouchers, which are
bankable like checks, and which are indeed the very best
form of check, because they are upon their face a receipt
stating the precise reason for which a certain sum of
money was paid.

In recent years the comptroller, or the auditor, as you
may prefer to call him, has become more and more of a
statistician. He prepares tables as to locomotive perform-
ances, obtaining his figures from the mechanical depart-
ment; he can tell you to an ounce the average carload of
the system for any given month. He fairly seems to
revel in his own development of the science of numbers.
Train and car statistics will probably show the number
of trains of different classes, the mileage of the same, the
mileage of empty and of loaded cars, and the direction
of their movement. Locomotive statistics run to mileage,
consumption of fuel and of stores, and the cost of labor
and material for repairs. In addition to all these the
comptroller will probably prepare statistics of locomotive
performances — so many miles to one ton of coal and one
pint of oil. Then he will show the average cost of coal by
the ton and of oil by the gallon, for the railroad never
forgets the cost.

It is cost that really makes the excuse for these great
statistics; cost and revenue, analyzed and reanalyzed in
half a hundred different ways. The statistics are the
thermometers, the very pulse by which the health of the
railroad is acutely judged. Sometimes the statistics be-

LEGAL AND FINANCIAL 185

come graphic, and the comptroller, through some of the
keen-witted men in his office, prepares charts, in which
statistics become " curves of averages " or jotted and
wriggling lines, with each jot and each wriggle full of
meaning.

" Government by draughting-board," sniffs the old-time
railroader as he sees these great " cross-hatched " sheets
with their crazy lines of intelligence spun across them, but
it is " government by draughting-board " that has made the
old-time railroader — well, the old-time railroader. The
new-time railroader gives heed to those charts — the pulse
readings of the creature that he is directing — guides his
course in no small way by them. They are veritable
charts by which he may pick his way quickly and safely.

Branching, as a rule, direct from the president's office
and occasionally from the general manager's, are the pur-
chasing agent and the store-keeper, many times one and the
same, or the former acting as superior to the latter. The
purchasing agent has no easy role. If he is not above
sharp practices — the gift of a bit of furniture or a theatre
box, in the least instances — he will fulfil only part of the
reputation of his office; and if he is — as many, many of
them are — absolutely honest down to the keenest degree
of an acute conscience, he will probably still be under the
suspicion of some querulous minds. His opportunities
for deceit and guile are many, so much the more must he
be an honest man in every full sense of that word.

He brings the modern railroad's passion for standardi-
zation down to the purchase of its every sort of supplies;
for his office goes out into the market for anything, from
a box of matches to a locomotive. The very fact that his
department is a non-revenue department, save for an oc-
casional sale of scrap-iron or discarded materials, only
serves to put him the more upon his guard. He must
not yield to the wiles of crafty salesmen. He must meas-
ure their wares by a single standard — economy, as ex-
pressed in selling-price, in durability, and in cost of main-

•i86 THE MODERN RAILROAD

tenance; and upon that standard he must decide between
them, as impartially as a justice upon the bench.

He must be guided by standard. If it be typewriters,
he must struggle against the preference of this department
or that for some particular machine, and bring all to the
test of his three-headed economy. The successful machine
will then be adopted for the system and brought as such.
No small responsibility rests upon his accuracy of judg-
ment.

His store-keeper must see to it that there is no waste of
supplies. He must see to it, for instance, that the en-
gineers are as careful in their use of oils as the clerk
in that of stationery.

" We use $4,000 worth of lead pencils alone in the
course of a single year," says one of them; " and if we
didn't keep hammering at the boys, that figure would
jump to $5,000 or $6,000 without realizing it."

He keeps check on the supplies that he issues. His
stock of blank forms, alone, would do credit to a whole-
sale stationery house in a sizable city; for the railroad is
a liberal user of printer's ink in its own devices. He
must be thrifty and he must be economical; he must
look to it that the railroad's money is not wasted in
the purchase and use of its supplies. -

Together with the general counsel, the general attorney,
the claim-agent, the treasurer, and the comptroller, the
purchasing agent and the store-keeper stand as guardians
of the railroad's §trong-box.

CHAPTER XII

THE GENERAL MANAGER

His DUTY TO KEEP EMPLOYEES IN HARMONIOUS ACTION — " THE SUPER-
INTENDENT DEALS WITH MEN; THE GENERAL MANAGER WITH SUPER-
INTENDENTS " — " THE GENERAL MANAGER is REALLY KING " — CASES
IN WHICH HIS POWER is ALMOST DESPOTIC — HE MUST KNOW MEN.

THE general manager operating the railroad is held
strictly responsible for the economical movement of
the trains and the maintenance of the property. To the
greatest portion of the railroad army (nine-tenths of it
employed in the operating department) he is an uncrowned
king. The superintendent, as we shall presently see, is the
unit of the operation of the road, just as the division over
which he is head is one of the physical units that go to
make up some thousands of miles of first-class railroad
track. The division superintendent deals in men; the gen-
eral manager deals in division superintendents; and right
there is the radical difference between the two.

The superintendent must see to it that his men get a
square deal. If he does not see to it in the first instance
they will see to it in the last, and woe to him if such
be the case. For the men who work on the steam rail-
road are well-paid, well-read, keenly sensitive as to their
privileges and their rights. And from these men have
come the division superintendents, as different each from
the other as men can be grown. It is the general man-
ager's chief duty to bring these very different men into
harmonious action. That is absolutely essential to the
successful operation of the railroad. The general man-
ager must have absolute firmness with his superintend-
ents. He can appoint or discharge them as they can
appoint or discharge their trainmen — more quickly in

1 88 THE MODERN RAILROAD

fact, for up to the present time there is no brotherhood of
railroad superintendents.

A certain division superintendent in the East had 150
miles of busy double-track trunk line under his direction.
At his headquarters were a big classification yard and a
coaling-station for the engine of the two divisions that in-
tersected there. In the course of gradually increasing
business, the coaling-station, which stood in a narrow ledge
beside the main-line tracks and under the breast of a steep
mountain-side, had to be enlarged. In so small a place,
that was a difficult engineering problem. It was necessary
to build much bigger coal-pockets and while the engineers
were removing the old and building the new station, tem-
porary coaling facilities had to be provided for the busy
engine point. That part of the problem — more opera-
ting than engineering — was finally solved by going across
the main-line tracks and locating a temporary coaling-
station there. That made a bad situation — with the
heavy main-line traffic constantly intersecting with engines
drilling back and forth to their coal supply, and the gen-
eral manager was quick to realize it. He went up there
and warned his superintendent.

'* This is a danger place," he said, " and a mighty bad
one at that. That tower 's too far away to guard this
cross-over. I want you to put two flagmen here at all
hours and let them personally signal and safeguard every
engine that crosses these main-line tracks."

Then he went back to his own big office, feeling that the
responsibility for that danger place was off his own shoul-
ders, in part at least. The division superintendent put in
the requisition for the four men he needed. The requisi-
tion enmeshed itself in the red-tape at the general offices of
the system. Some smart young assistant auditor there,
who could n't tell a coal-pocket from a gravity-yard, and
who was 400 miles away, remembered that he had been
ordered to cut the pay-roll — and the requisition went into
the waste-basket. The division superintendent did not

THE GENERAL MANAGER 189

try to get another requisition for those flagmen through.
He did the next best thing and told the towerman in the
cabin — almost half a mile away — to keep as good a
watch as possible of the cross-over.

The inevitable came early one evening, in an October
fog. The Chicago Fast Mail ran into an engine return-
ing from the coal-pockets and there were half a dozen
dead when the wreck was cleared away. The division
superintendent was hurriedly summoned down to the gen-
eral manager's office.

" I cautioned you against trying to operate that cross-
over without special signalmen/' that officer said, as he dis-
charged the superintendent and so cleared himself of the
responsibility.

And that is where the modern system of excessive con-
solidation in our big land carriers turned one good, faith-
ful railroad executive into a howling anarchist. An illogi-
cal system has developed from this rapid expansion of
the great individual railroad properties. As its most in-
teresting phase, it offers the man who is farthest away
from the detail of operation as the man who decides. One
man takes the judgment of another and both of them are
far removed, perhaps, from the seat of the very trouble
that they seek to remedy. The man on the ground is pow-
erless in the matter.

Here is the yardmaster at a great interior railroad
centre — we call it Somerset for the sake of convenience.
His is one of the biggest yards in all this land, and he is
a man whose judgment should be solidly respected.
There are four improvements in his yards that he deems
absolutely necessary in the face of a rapidly increasing traf-
fic, and for a portion of the property that depreciates rap-
idly under hard usage. His is a most important position ;
and yet as he cannot spend a cent himself for the use of the
railroad, not even to buy matches, he embodies his four re-
quests for necessities into a requisition and forwards it to
headquarters — at a seaboard city. His superior officer

190 THE MODERN RAILROAD

thinks that Somerset is asking a good deal, and he cuts the
request down to three items. The next link in the chain
is a man — an auditor, perhaps — who happens to be
imbued with a strong streak of economy at that time.
Middle division has had its appropriation cut thirty-three
per cent, so off comes another item from Somerset yard.
After a time, the yardmaster is lucky to get one single item
through — and that is sure not to be the essential item that
he needed most of all. Good, plucky, valiant railroader
that he is, he is sure to think the whole outfit in the general
offices a set of arrant fools. Perhaps the big accident
comes, and then perhaps he has full opportunity to set
himself straight. It is more likely that he does not, and
that he is made the target for Grand Jury indictment and
a lot of other fireworks.

That is an instance of the complications of the modern
railroad — the vast intricacy of organization. Wonder
not, then, that many a general manager of to-day must
think twice before he remembers that some particular in-
land town is one of the obscure branches of his property.

The superintendent deals with men; the general man-
ager, with superintendents. That statement is open to a
slight modification. The superintendent deals with the
operating army in individual cases; the general manager
deals with them collectively. Somewhere in rank between
the division superintendent and the general manager stands
the general superintendent, but in the rapidly changing
structure of American railroad operation, his office is fast
losing its individuality, is to-day in real danger of utter
extinction. On some railroads he is hardly more than a
chief clerk to the general manager, a rubber-stamp whose
signature goes mechanically upon papers bound upwards
from division superintendent to general manager. At
the most he is to-day an outside man, getting up and down
the line and making constant reports to his boss, the gen-
eral manager.

OlL-BURXIXG LOCOMOTIVE ON THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC SYSTEM
THE STEEL PASSENGER COACH, SUCH AS HAS BECOME STANDARD

UPON THE AMERICAN RAILROAD

ELECTRIC CAR, GENERATING ITS OWN POWER BY A GASOLINE ENGINE
BOTH LOCOMOTIVE AND TRAIN GASOLINE MOTOR CAR DESIGNED

FOR BRANCH LINE SERVICE

THE GENERAL MANAGER 191

For the general manager is really king of the entire sit-
uation. Just now his reign is threatened from a new
quarter, and you find him receiving the opposition with
both distrust and anger. This is the fine figure of a fine
man. He has come up the ladder, rung by rung — sta-
tion assistant, telegraph operator, despatcher, train-master,
assistant superintendent, superintendent, general superin-
tendent, general manager; he knows railroading, stick and
wheel. His own railroad he knows as he might know
the fingers of his hand.

When we come into his office, the last of a committee of
well-dressed citizens is slipping out of his door; they are
citizens from a prosperous town in an adjoining State, and
he may tell us of their errand.

" K is a good town," he will say, " and gives us a

good and growing traffic. We Ve a lot of nasty grade-
crossings there, for the two of our big lines that right-
angle into there seem to get over about every street in the
place at level. They want us to elevate or depress our
tracks through there, and it should be done. This road

wants it as much as K wants it ; for it 's one of the

worst bottle-necks on our main line, and Lord only knows
how many thousands of dollars it 1s cost us in delayed
traffic."

This king of the railroad points to a sheaf of blueprints
upon his desk.

" That tells the story," he says simply, " and the end
of the chapter is a bill for nine millions of dollars to

get rid of those crossings. According to law, K

will have to stand about half of the cost of the work,

and K , like most progressive American towns, has

been running pretty close to her debt limit. She is stag-
gered at the thought of having to dig out three or four
millions of perfectly good dollars, and so her mayor has
made the naive suggestion that we advance the money
and let them pay back their share in the shape of re-
funded taxes and annual payments.

192 THE MODERN RAILROAD

;< We advance that money — and the big boss has to
slip over to France and try to sell our securities for mere
necessities. The truth of the matter is that we have n't
the money to advance. We 're grubbing to get enough
cash to buy locomotives and cars to keep pace with our
business, not running a loan business for upstart towns
that have run through their capital."

In comes a second delegation, this one another group
of commuters. They have been asking for an additional
train in on the Valley branch. The general manager has
said that the road cannot afford it, for the train would
have to be operated at a loss. He proves his statement.

" But," urges the spokesman of the party, " you will
make traffic by it, and eventually the train will pay."

" Eventually is n't to-day," said the G. M. stanchly,
" and it is on to-day that we are being judged. You
gentlemen come here and ask me to place a train in service
that is a sure loser; and then you will go down to your
office, and when the difference between my net and gross
comes to you upon your ticket sheets, you will damn me
as being a rank incompetent."

" But this one train? " protests the spokesman.

" Violates that very principle," replies the general man-
ager. " Not another car that does not pay its way."

And as that little group files its way out of the big
office, uttering sundry threats about going to the commis-
sion, the general manager stretches his leg over his big
desk. Under the glass top of that desk is a big map, in
colors, of his system — miles and miles and miles of first-
class railroad.

'* They come to me — towns like K and tell me

of their troubles," he says, " as if I already did not know
of them. I Ve a reconstruction plan for every ten miles
of our main-line." His finger traces upon the map to a
great division point. " Take Somerset here, and Somer-
set yard. That is some yard, as the boys say. We have
no miles of track in it, enough for a good-sized side-line

THE GENERAL MANAGER 193

division, and that yardmaster has to be the equal of a
superintendent.

" You would take a good look at that yard, with its
roundhouses and its shops, its gravity-humps and its
classification sections, and you would think it big enough
to handle every freight car that goes between here and
Chicago. It is n't. It is n't really big enough to handle
our decent share of that traffic to-day. We 're trying
to pour the business through it to-day, and are succeeding
only by the narrowest measure. It 's a weak valve in our
biggest artery, and some day it 's going to clog.

" It won't be five years before Somerset has me throttled
again. Five years ago it was as bad. It took us three
to four weeks to put a carload of freight through it in
winter, and the shippers were howling bloody murder.
They got mad enough then to scare our directors and I
got separate east-bound and west-bound classifications
yards, relief that I 'd been fairly down on my knees for,
three years at least. I was the goat in that thing. I al-
ways am ; that 's part of the job of general manager.

" I know just what the steady increase in traffic is go-
ing to bring me to, at this point and at that. Here 's
where a couple of our biggest feeders from the north come
into our main-line; here are a couple of friendly haulers
dumping down into us from Canada; here, in the moun-
tains, is where we pick up our stuff from the south and
the southwest. Every yard on our system is beginning
to stagger under the traffic that shows no let up, and we 've
got to spend millions to keep ourselves from getting
throttled. Don't think I don't know every bit of that.
I can see necessary improvements all the way up our
main line; but every one of them takes money, and just
now the big boss has to hustle to sell his securities and
raise the money. But when we know and can't improve
— that 's railroading."

A secretary tiptoes in. This railroad king looks up
and smiles quite frankly at us.
13

i94 THE MODERN RAILROAD

" Committee from the Chamber of Commerce at
Zanesburgh," he announces. ' They want a new depot
in Zanesburgh, and they 're entitled to a new one, cost-
ing at a fair ratio about $40,000. A $4O,ooo-depot
would give them every comfort and convenience but they
demand that we spend $100,000 because Great Midland
has spent $80,000 in an architectural wonder in Stenton;
and the old time town rivalry makes Zanesburgh want
to go Stenton one better."

4 You Ve got a lot of these delegations ? " we venture.

" I lose track of them," says the general manager.
" It 's all a part of the day's work; it 's railroading."

We know. Last night, this general manager was at
a big freight terminal there in the headquarters city, see-
ing with his own eyes until midnight the fast freight and
the express traffic under handling. The night before he
was there, and the night before that he was also there,
and three days before that he was out pounding over
the line in his car, working eighteen hours a day. That 's
railroading, too.

The freight house in this terminal city is one of his
biggest problems. His biggest local freight yard is in a
narrow valley between high hills ; and these, together with
fearful realty values, absolutely circumscribe its area.
The traffic is growing all the while, and all the local
freight for his road — running in strongly competitive
territory — comes to this terminal. Three hundred and
fifty cars must be despatched every night for different
points, and yet a dray coming into the yard must be able
to find any one of those cars without an instant's delay.
And still the narrow physical limitations of that yard
prevail. There is a big problem for a big man.

And sometimes the big man must stoop to examine
carefully into the little things. When McCrea, the pres-
ent president of the Pennsylvania, was a general manager
off on the western end of that system, his car was halted
in the middle of the night by a bad wreck on a single-

THE GENERAL MANAGER 195

track side-line. He might have remained in his comfort-
able bed, but that would not have been McCrea. He got
up and dressed, went outside and offered his services to
the wrecking-boss. The wrecking-boss was competent
and he knew it.

* There *s nothing you can do, boss," he said.

" Do you mean to tell me that there is nothing that I
can do — with a road blocked on both sides with wreck-
age and stalled trains and track to be laid? " said McCrea.
" Well, let me tell you that there are ties down there in
the ditch that will have to be placed before another train
goes over here, and we might as well be beginning."

And with that General Manager McCrea suited action
to word. He went down into the ditch, picked up a
heavy tie, put it over his shoulder, and brought it up into
position. In an instant he was in the ranks, working to
bring order out of chaos. That was the way a big man
could do a little thing in a big way.

It takes a really big man for that very sort of thing.
And the big man, general manager of several thousand
miles of railroad, must understand the smaller men be-
neath him — any one of whom is apt in some future day
to supersede him. Here is a man who has been known
as one of the best general managers in the whole land.
Soon after he was made operating head of a really big
road, a certain train on which he was travelling was much
delayed. The new G. M. inquired the exact reason for
the trouble. He was not so much concerned for his own
convenience as he was curious to know why one of the
road's best through trains should have halted until assist-
ance should come from the nearest roundhouse.

" The fireman lost his rake," was the somewhat per-
functory report that the G. M.'s secretary returned to
him. But if that young man thought that his boss was
going to be satisfied with that report, he was mistaken,
decidedly.

" Bring the fireman to me," commanded the chief.

196 THE MODERN RAILROAD

4

That fireman was not of the sort that is easily feazed.
He stood stockily and in a low voice gave a very circum-
stantial explanation of the whole occurrence. It seemed
that he had missed the rake that morning when they had
started out from the yard roundhouse to take the Limited
down over the division. He was just going back for an-
other, when they were called to lend a hand at a small
yard wreck. When they were done shoving and bunting
there, they had no time to run back to the roundhouse
and get a rake. They had barely enough time to get
to the passenger station for the engine change. That
was a good story, with a deal of explanation, and the fire-
man thought that the G. M. must be impressed with it.

The G. M. was not in the least impressed. He looked
the coal shover up and down, from head to feet, then
said:

" How about those seven freights that you passed laid
out on sidings ? You could have forced any one of those
engineers to lend you his rake rather than lay out this
train."

The effect of that slight observation from the G. M.'s
car was not lost on a man on the system. The new man
made good. From that time forward word went out
to the far corners of his road that the " new boss " knew
railroading; that he had four eyes in his head and that
you had to be pretty careful what sort of a story you
put up to him. Calculate, if you can, in dollars and
cents the moral effect of such a stand upon the rank and
file of the king's army. The general manager, as we
have already said, must know men.

You are back with your first general manager again.
He is tired of all these problems, and yet he is now turn-
ing to another. This is formally entitled the Situation.
It is placed upon his big desk every morning. It is a
morning paper, if you please, prepared for a single reader.
The general manager is " Old Subscriber," in good meas-

THE GENERAL MANAGER 197

ure; and if the paper lacks both editorials and advertising,
it is none the less interesting to its star reader. Its news
is as exclusive as its reader, and exclusively the news of
his system.

By it he knows first of the traffic that has been handled
in twenty-four hours, by cars and by trains. He knows
by it the reserve forces of the railroad, in cars and in
locomotives, and just where they are located. By the
Situation, he can discover the over-massing of equipment
upon one division, the shortage upon another. After that
he can begin to give orders to his general superintendents
and his superintendents of transportation — these last the
men who are directly responsible for car movement —
toward bringing a better balance between traffic and
equipment. The Situation is on his desk at ten o'clock
in the morning. By eleven, whole brigades of locomotives
may be under way, moving from their stalls in some giant
roundhouse out toward another division whose superin-
tendent is fairly shrieking for power.

But the Situation tells more than merely this. It goes
into history, and in its own cold-blooded fashion tells what
the road is doing by comparison. It gives weather condi-
tions and traffic for the corresponding day, one year, two
years, three years, five years before ; and the general man-
ager will do well if he avoids giving mere cursory ex-
amination of such tables. The Situation not only notes
weather conditions, it brings to the eyes of the man whom
we have called king in railroad operation the more im-
portant train delays and the reasons that have caused
them. Every fact or incident that may affect the traffic
or the operation of the road is noted in its fine-filled pages.
It is in every way a guide and a barometer of the condi-
tion of a great property up to the v very hour that the
general manager comes to his desk.

But the Situation does not tell the entire story. Out
in the nearest passenger yard is a big private-car, almost
as handsome and as well equipped as that of the presi-

198 THE MODERN RAILROAD

dent of the road, and that car is in service as many days
as it stands idle there upon the siding. This man has
4,000 miles of railroad empire in his domain; there are
nearly 70,000 faithful privates for his army. To cover
that territory means constant travel. There are side-
lines of less importance that sometimes do not see him
for six months at a time.

Of less importance, did we say? We had better not
let him hear us breathe that, for there are men in his
employ who remember the first council of the operating
department staff after this G. M. came to the road. They
were gathered there for the time-table meeting — a gen-
eral superintendent, a whole round dozen of division
superintendents, serious traffic-minded folk from the pas-
senger department, an auxiliary corps of chief clerks and
stenographers. Division by division, the passenger time-
table problem was adjusted. This superintendent asked
a little more running time, for they were putting in a
cluster of new bridges, which made slow orders necessary ;
another was thereupon forced to shorten his schedule, for
the total running time between main-line terminals of a
road in hot competitive territory could not be increased
a single sixty seconds. Finally, after a vast amount of
argument, the main-line divisions were settled, and atten-
tion was given to the side-lines. The first of these ran
through a section purely rural, but there was not a busier
500 miles of single track in the East.

The general superintendent called attention to it, with
a laugh.

u We '11 now tackle the hoejack," said he.

It was an old joke, and the division heads began to
laugh. They stopped laughing the next instant. The
new general manager was on his feet and pounding
thunderously upon his table top. His face was crimson,
as he demanded attention.

" Gentlemen," said he, scathingly, " the great railroad
from which I have had the honor to come has prided

THE GENERAL MANAGER 199

itself upon being a standard railroad. Its standard is
universal wherever its cars and engines run, and its juris-
diction extends. Some of its lines are the busiest traffic-
haulers in the land. The four and even six tracks to
each of them are hardly enough for the great volume of
high-class freight and passenger traffic that press upon
their rails. There are some side-lines, with but two or
three trains a day — side-lines that reach the main-line
only through other branches. But there are no hoejacks,
nor peanut branches, nor jerkwaters upon that system.
Hereafter there are to be none upon this. The man who
is hauling a train on the most remote corner of this rail-
road is doing its work quite as much as the biggest train-
master here at the terminal. I trust you follow me ? "

They followed implicitly; and to that .general manager
has been finally accorded the credit for bringing an oper-
ating department, torn by inefficiencies and by jealousies,
into one of the first rank among the railroads of the land.

But he admits that he is going out upon side-line; and
that particular side-line brings a story to the mind of his
chief clerk. When he has us quite aside he tells it to us:

;< The next to the last time the boss went up the
Upper River Division, they got his goat. We halted at
the depot up at West Lyndonbrook, to fill the tanks.
The boss thinks that he will get out and stir his feet for
a minute on the right-of-way. Up comes a villager.
4 Are you the general manager of this 'ere road?' he
says to the boss. Boss thinks he was some gentle bucolic
soul, and he says ' yes,' and offers him a real cigar. But
the gentle bucolic doesn't smoke anything cleaner than
a pipe, and he just up and says, ' Well, General, here 's
somethin' fer ye,' and shoves a paper with a big red seal
into the boss's hand.

" It seems that up in that neck o' woods they get grade
crossings removed as a last resort by going to the county
court and the paper that the constable served was one
for the boss to come down there in a fortnight for a

200 THE MODERN RAILROAD

hearing on an order to put a flagman and gates at our
crossing in West Lyndonbrook. The boss was mighty
mad, and almost discharged the agent for letting that con-
stable hang around the depot. There is n't enough traffic
over that line to do more than keep the rust off the rails,
and we never had an accident in the sixty odd years that
crossing has been in use. And at that the boss might
have fallen for a flagman. But the way they rubbed it
into him riled him. They might have gone at the thing
in a decent way — first sent a committee down to the divi-
sion superintendent to request that flagman.

" He went down on the appointed night to the old
Town Hall. Before he got there he started a guessing
contest in that smart-aleck burg. The crossing was right
* in the heart of the community,' as they put it them-
selves, and the big citizens' houses were all within an
eighth of a mile of our right-of-way. Three days before
the big flight of oratory down at the Town Hall, the boss
starts something. They hardly get away from their
houses in the morning before there is a bunch of those
bright tech-school boys with their rods and sextants and
steel tapes measuring lines over the front lawns. And
the next thing they were planting bright new stakes in
all the flower-beds. There had n't been so murh excite-
ment in West Lyndonbrook since the last time Theodore
Roosevelt talked there, and the townfolk hustled down to
the depot. The agent did n't ease their minds. The
boss was n't working hand in glove with him.

' When the night came for the big time at the Town
Hall, it was a regular 4 standing-room only ' business.
The boss kept in the background while the great minds
of the township did their best. When it came his turn
he clamped across the platform like an avenging angel.
He is a big fellow, and that night he looked seven-foot-
six, as he stuck his long fingers out over that intelligent
body politic and asked what it meant by trying to cow
the only first-class railroad that had ever had enough

THE GENERAL MANAGER 201

energy to put its rails down in that township. Then he
calls up an engineer from our construction department.

" * Mr. Blinkins,' he says, in a voice that you could
have heard across the public square, ' this railroad has
decided to temporize no longer in this highway crossing
situation on its lines. How much will it cost to put a
subway under our track at this crossing? *

" The engineer dove into his drawings and said :

* It '11 be quite a big job, and we '11 have to cut quite a
way into some of the front yards to get the foundations
for our abutments. My estimate of the cost of the pro-
posed improvement is $160,000.'

" Then it was the boss's turn again. * Under the state
law, work on abolishing a grade crossing begins by the
railroad expressing its willingness,' he told them.

* The cost is divided — half being borne by the railroad,
the other half being divided between the township and the
State. West Lyndonbrook's share will reach $40,000.'
Forty thousand dollars — why $40,000 would have built
either the new union school or the waterworks that that
burg had been hankering for and thought it could n't
afford. When the boss breathed about that $40,000 it
started the old feuds between the waterworks crowd and
the school crowd. They forgot all about the crossing
and our sin-filled railroad, and got to hammering anew
on the old issue. We slinked out while they were still
at it — had the car hooked on to the rear of thirty-eight
and got started while the oratory was taking a fresh turn.

"The boss? The boss is a diplomat. That's how
he keeps his job."

CHAPTER XIII

THE SUPERINTENDENT

His HEADSHIP OF THE TRANSPORTATION ORGANISM — His MANNER OF
DEALING WITH AN OFFENDED SHIPPER — His MANNER WITH COM-
MUTERS — His MANNER WITH A SPITEFUL " KICKER " — A DISHONEST
CONDUCTOR WHO HAD A " PULL " — A SYSTEM OF DEMERITS FOR EM-
PLOYEES — DEALING WITH DRUNKARDS — WITH SELFISH AND COVET-
OUS MEN.

IF the general manager is king in modern railroad
operation, the division superintendent is not less than
prince. His principality is no mean state. It may con-
sist of some 500 miles of what he modestly admits is the
" best sort of railroad in all this land "; or it may be a
little stretch of 100 miles, or even less, losing its way
back among the hills; but it is a principality, and his rule
is undisputed. If ever it be questioned, it will then be
high time for him to abdicate.

Just as the division is the physical unit of railroad
operation, so is its superintendent the human unit. By
him the transportation organism stands or falls. If it
stands, he is able to go forward; the path from his door
leads to the general manager's office. If it falls — Well,
there is to-day in Central Illinois a gray-haired station-
agent who once held his own principality — 4,000 men
to take his orders.

" We only discharge for disobedience or dishonesty,"
said the president of that railroad at the time he signed
the order reducing the prince to the ranks. " When we
fail to get the real measure of a man, it is our fault, not
his. We never turn out a man who has done his level
best for us."

This man is superintendent of one of the most prosper-

202

THE SUPERINTENDENT 203

ous of the trunk-line railroads that reach the metropolis
by stretching their rails across New Jersey. His is a
" terminal division," so called, and he has assumed com-
mand of one of the busiest city gates in all America.
His railroad day begins almost as soon as he is awake.
There is a telegraph outfit in the corner of his bedroom,
and as he dresses and shaves he listens mechanically to
its scoldings — to the gossip of the division. It comes
as casually to his ear as the prattle of his children; the
key began to be music to him long before he left the little
yellow depot where he first began to be a railroader.

" They 're in pretty good shape this morning, John,"
laughs his wife. She, too, has been listening half uncon-
sciously to the gossip of the wire. Years ago she " stood
her trick " with her husband back in that little yellow
depot.

" Got a co^l train in the ditch up the other side of
Greyport," is his reply. " We '11 rip out that nasty cross-
over up there some day, when the big boss wakes up to
the cash we 've put out in wrecks at GP."

" Going up there? "

41 Not this morning, Maggie," he laughs. " I Ve a
committee from the firemen coming in to see me.
They 're nagging for a raise." He lowers his voice, as
if he almost thought that the walls had ears. " It 's be-
ginning to grind the boys, too — butter 48 cents, eggs
45, and all their hungry kiddies. But the big boss —
whew!"

He whistles, goes to his key, cuts in, and begins to give
orders to the wrecking-boss up at Greyport.

" Steady, Jim," he says, in a low voice. ' You Ve
got all day on that job if you need it, only watch out for
the number two track with your crane. We can't risk
a side-swipe on one of our pretty trains. We 're detour-
ing the east-bound passengers over the Central. How 's
Hinckley?"

He closes the circuit softly.

204 THE MODERN RAILROAD

" Poor Hinckley," he says gently. u Do you remem-
ber, Maggie? He was married the same summer we

were."

Through with his breakfast, he hurries down to the
station, and before he slips aboard the suburban train
that is to carry him in to his Jersey City office, he has had
the wire again into Greyport. They are getting things
cleaned up there a bit; a baggage-car has been sent up
with a special engine for Hinckley. The superintendent
turns from these. One of the little trains that come out
from town in the dusk of early dawn has brought a leather
bag filled with mail. He runs through it as his train slips
across the meadows. By the time he is in his roomy
office it is ready to be answered, a pencilled memorandum
on each is sufficient guide for his chief clerk.

Throughout the morning his calendar is a crowded
thing. There is a constant line of restless men sitting
on the long bench just without the guarded rail of the
outside office. One by one these are called; they disap-
pear behind swinging baize doors to stand in front of
the superintendent.

For the first of these there is a smile — the caller is
a big shipper, big enough to go to the head of the line
and have instant access to the boss. This shipper is the
sort who gives the railroad tonnage in trainload lots. He
is hot. He cannot get cars. He will begin to route

over the Triple B , even though his siding facilities

are wrong for it. They 'II dig him out the cars he needs,
they have folks over there who make it their business to
find cars. And while he is on the subject it seems pretty
bad to have stuff coming twelve and fourteen days through
from Chicago. Perhaps he 'd better be getting after the
Commission. The shipper is very hot. He expatiates
upon his wrongs, hammers upon the superintendent's
desk, grows scarlet in his heavy face.

The superintendent's smile never wavers. He gives
close attention, does not grow excited. A few orders

THE SUPERINTENDENT 205

over the telephone, a word of explanation, the shipper
smiles now. Down in his heart he begins to be sorry
that he made these threats about the Triple B .

That is getting traffic, you say, and the superintendent
is an operating man. You are a bit wrong there. The
superintendent is a railroad man and that means that any
part of the railroad business is his business. There is a
man, by name A. H. Smith, who is to-day operating vice-
president of the New York Central system, who held to
that idea from the beginning. In the beginning, Smith
was the superintendent of a little side-tracked division of
the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern which centred in at
Hillsdale, Michigan. It was a strong competitive terri-
tory, and Smith found that the traffic that came to his
road was so slight that it did not take a great deal of his
time to move it. The superintendents before him had
had a lot of time to speed their fast horses and fuss around
their gardens. Not so with Smith. He went into the
business of making traffic. It was a decade that took
keen delight in singing societies, and Smith's robust voice
allied itself to every choir of importance in three counties.
He sang himself into personal popularity, he sang traffic
into coming over the Michigan Southern. After a while,
the folks over in the general offices at Cleveland began
to take notice. The traffic folks were the first to notice,
after that — well, a long story 's short when you know
that Smith found himself on a short cut to his present
job.

The superintendent's smile remains while a solemn-
faced delegation of commuters files into his room. These
grave folk have been coming into town on the 8:52 al-
most since the road first laid its rails. It is part of their
lives, and they fondly imagine that it is a big part of the
road's — that the twenty-hour train over the mountains
to Chicago is a matter of considerably less importance
than the 8:52. The superintendent broadens his bland
smile and rings for his train sheets. There are other

206 THE MODERN RAILROAD

trains than the 8:52 coming into that terminal — almost
a train a minute from a little before eight o'clock until
half-past nine. The superintendent's finger runs for cor-
roboration over the train sheets. Twenty-five days this
month when 94 per cent of his suburban trains come un-
der the protection of the big shed of the terminal right on
the scheduled moment — how was that for consistency of
operation ?

The commuters' committee seem a little dazed. In-
dividually, the men are expert on a good many things —
printing, indictments, breakfast foods, patents, wholesale
feathers; but consistency of train operation and train
sheets are a bit confusing.

'The 8:52 has been late a whole lot recently," dog-
gedly affirms the chairman. " Last Thursday we were
pretty near fifteen minutes late."

A gleam of triumph comes into the superintendent's
eye. He fumbles anew among the flimsy train sheets.
His forefinger alights upon a line of the typewritten copy.
" Last Thursday," he comments, " you can see that we
were all laid out by the Hackensack River draw. A
schooner filled with brick got caught by the ebb tide and
laid down on us in the open draw. What you want to
see, gentlemen, is the Treasury departments down at
Washington. It is outrageous that the antiquated navi-
gation laws should be allowed to hold up business in that
way."

The committee confer among themselves and decide to
make the life of the Secretary of the Treasury uncom-
fortable for a while.

' You cannot hope for anything better with that Hack-
ensack Bridge," urges the superintendent almost malevo-
lently.

He does not tell them, but the boys out on the line
know his own experience with the Hackensack River
bridge. Last December and just in the evening rush-
hours they found that the cabin that stands perched at

THE SUPERINTENDENT 207

the top of the trussed draw was afire. The trains bring-
ing home the tired suburbanites were beginning to line up
back of the fire for solid miles. The tired suburbanites
were saying things about this particular railroad. It
chanced that this superintendent was a passenger on one
of the trains. He went forward to the blaze. The
towerman had beat a retreat. The superintendent started
to climb up the ice-covered ladder tower toward the
burning cabin. The towerman halted him. The wiry
superintendent turned upon him with a look of infinite
scorn :

" We Ve got to hand signal those trains across here —
there 's thousands of folks out here in the meadows that
we can't let miss their supper — "

" I Ve got a family — " began the towerman.

" That 's all right. I '11 signal these across."

" That ain't it, boss. Back o' thj cabin 's the gasolene
tanks, the stuff for openin' th' draw."

The superintendent gave a low whistle.

" That settles it," he said. " We Ve got to put this
fire out. I can't risk cutting this draw out of service."

It is a matter of record on that railroad that he climbed
alone to the top of the draw and began to put out the
fire with his own stout endeavors. He was not alone for
long. Inspired by him, the men that gathered there —
engineers, firemen, trainmen, and conductors, crawled up
upon that freezing cold draw and lent him their efforts.
In a half-hour the fire was out, and the stalled trains were
moving again.

This, then, is the measure of the man who sits across
the wide office table from you. The mollified commuters
are marching out.

" You don't encourage kicking ? " you ask.

" We don't discourage it," he replied. He is reminded
of a story and tells it to you.

" When they made Blank superintendent over there at
Broad Street, in Philadelphia, he went in to make a clean

208 THE MODERN RAILROAD

record. He called his chief clerk to him. * Mind you,
if you hear kicks, don't let them get in one ear and out
the other. You bring them in here and we '11 investi-
gate.' In three days the chief clerk was busy. ' Lots
of trouble with the suburban traffic to-day,' he would say.
' Wilmington train laid out at Grey's Ferry ; third day
that 's happened.' l Ugly trainman on the main line
would n't close the rear doors. That fellow 's unpopular.'
1 Not enough equipment on the Central division.' ' No
fire in the stove at Lenden Road,' — a long string of
commuter troubles. After Blank had heard this for a
week he began to get nervous. He called his chief clerk
to him. * See here,' he demanded, * what 's the matter
with our service? Where are all these kicks coming in
from ? ' The chief clerk looked at him — never a snicker.
* You said you wanted the kicks,' he replied. * Well,
I 've been letting the head barber downstairs shave me
after he was done with the commuters. He gets every
one of the howls.' '

Sometimes the kicks represent a serious side of the su-
perintendent's problem. A while ago a man came to a
railroad superintendent in Boston and demanded that a
certain ticket-examiner in the passenger terminal be dis-
missed. There had been some sort of dispute and the
man insisted that the ticket-examiner be discharged, noth-
ing less. The ticket-examiner, on his part, told a pretty
fair sort of story. Moreover, he said that if in the heat
of the dispute he had transgressed on good manners he
was frankly sorry and that it would not happen again.
Back of all that he had a good record : no complaints had
ever before been registered against him. The superin-
tendent then wrote a letter to the man who had com-
plained and stated that the offending ticket-examiner had
been reprimanded and that the offence would probably
not be repeated.

That did not satisfy the man who complained. He
was of the sort that are supposed to have a " pull," and

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THE SUPERINTENDENT 209

he threatened to use his pull if the ticket-examiner were
not discharged. He refused to accept apologies or ex-
planations. He said he was hot. So was the superin-
tendent. He keenly resented anything that approached
interference with his discipline, and he refused to dis-
charge his employee. Pressure was exerted, the pull was
doing its fine work. The superintendent was — like
every other railroad superintendent in this land — a fine
diplomat. He took the man from the train gate in the
terminal and gave him an equally good job in a city a
hundred miles distant from Boston. He flattered him-
self that he had seen the last of the man with the pull.

Not a bit of it. That brisk soul chanced to pass
through the distant town, and gasped at sight of the
former ticket-examiner still drawing pay from the rail-
road. He hastened into the superintendent's office in
Boston and demanded that the subterfuge end — that the
man be actually discharged from the road's employ. The
superintendent looked at him coolly, not speaking. The
man again threatened his pull. The railroad boss looked
at him through slitted eyes. It was a real crisis for him.
His diplomatic smile was ready. He pointed with his
lean forefinger toward the door.

1 The case is closed. Good-morning," was all he said.

After that he began wondering what road would have
him after that pull was exerted. He wondered for a
day, for a week, then a month. Then he forgot the oc-
currence. The pull, like many other sorts of threats,
was thin air.

Of a different sort was the problem that confronted
a superintendent in Chicago. On a certain suburban
train for many years the conductor had remained with
an unchanged run. Gossip had come into the super's
office that this conductor was systematically stealing from
the company. The boss started a quiet investigation.
The conductor with apparently no other income than his
$3 a day, had purchased a neat home in the suburbs, had
14

210 THE MODERN RAILROAD

sent his boy to Yale, his girl to Vassar. That was Thrift,
with a capital T. The superintendent took the case
sharply in hand and summoned the conductor before him.
He was one of the older sort, gray-haired, kind-faced.

" Johnson," said the boss, " you 've been with the
road a long time and never had a vacation. I want you
to lay off a month and run over to either coast. I '11 get
the transportation for you."

Johnson protested. He belonged to a generation of
railroaders that was not educated to vacations. The
superintendent insisted and had his way, as superintendents
generally do. Johnson started on his vacation, and a
substitute, knowing nothing of the real situation, replaced
him. The returns from that daily run doubled, and the
superintendent knew that he was right.

Nowadays when a railroad finds that a conductor is
stealing, it invokes the majesty of the Interstate Com-
merce Law and prepares to hurry him off toward a Fed-
eral prison. In that day they were content to fire John-
son; that was sufficient disgrace to the old man. The
railroad could not begin to get back the money that had
been trickling out throughout the long years.

But Johnson showed fight. His was an important
train in the Chicago suburban service, and his passengers
were important merchants and manufacturers — big
shippers. They got together, under Johnson's supervi-
sion, and made the hair on the heads of the traffic men
turn gray. Those fellows were Johnson's friends, and
they were not going to see the N turn out a faith-
ful employee. Johnson said that he had not stolen, and

Johnson was not the sort to lie. It might do the N

good to send some tonnage over to the M . The

traffic department and the operating locked horns, as
ofttimes they do on roads, both big and little. Traffic
won. The superintendent lost, Johnson went back to his
job, and the road put on a checking system that made its
conductors wonder if they had held convict records.

THE SUPERINTENDENT 211

That case was an exception. There are not many
superintendents who are compelled to back water, mighty
few Johnsons among the thousands of conductors across
the land.

We are still in that superintendent's office in Jersey
City. The boss's smile is gone. A big railroader just
in from the line, his jeans covered with engine grease,
shuffles into the place and stands before the super, hat in
hand, like a naughty boy ready to be whipped. The su-
perintendent speaks in a few low sentences to him, makes
a notation on an envelope. The big man trembles in
front of the little. A bit of a smile comes to the lips
of the boss.

" You think of the wife and the kiddies first next time,"
he says. ' Good-bye and good luck to you.' I 'm not
much for lecturings," he adds, after the man has gone.
A little later he begins to explain. " That big fellow
had to be disciplined. There was no two ways about it
for either of us. He 's an engine-man, got a good train,
too ; but he 's been running signals. We 've caught him
twice on test. We can't stand for that. Suppose we
have a nasty smash and the coroner's jury begins to ask
nosey questions? I had to put black on his envelope."

He goes into further detail. In other days he would
have been forced, in order to uphold his discipline, to
suspend the engineer for from five days to two weeks —
the punishment preceding discharge. There was a possi-
bility — disagreeable to the superintendent — that the
engineer's family might have been crowded for sufficient
food for a fortnight. Some of those fellows live pretty
close to the proposition all the while. Nowadays the of-
fender is demerited — once again like the schoolboy.
That is what the superintendent meant by that reference
to the envelope, the road's record of the man's service
with it.

Sixty demerits — dismissed. That's the rule of one
big road. But the record does not always continue to

212 THE MODERN RAILROAD

be negative. Its positive side rests in the fact that for
every month a man keeps his envelope clear five demerits
are taken from the black side of his envelope. A train-
man might have forty-five demerits against him, be on
the narrow edge of discharge, and in eleven months, after
turning the new leaf, have as clean a sheet as the best man
on the division. This is as it should be. The demerit
plan — often called the " Brown system "• — represents
the triumph of modern railroad operation over the old.

The superintendent may have all the advantages of a
time-tried disciple and a modern record system; have the
prestige and the reputation that come from the operation
of 500 miles of railroad, and still have a hard row to
hoe. Out in the Middle West there was, until recently,
a stretch of what was known as u booze railroad." It
was a division where reputations and records alike counted
for naught, where discipline was a mockery. Train-
crews went from their runs direct to saloons and, what
was a deal worse, began their day's work within them.
The wreck record of that division that went forward to
the State Commission was appalling — and half the
wrecks were not reported. Yardmasters were busy day
after day stowing away damaged equipment far from the
curious eyes of passengers — the wrecking crews were
hammering for big over-time pay. It was a thoroughly
demoralized stretch of railroad.

The distressed president of the system sent East for
a superintendent who had a reputation. He thought he
had his man. The new broom was a book-of-rules man.
He had a quarter of his operating force laid off all the
time, to go before him. He was a man fond of words,
and he lectured those old fellows as if they had been
school children. He might have done quite as well with
his division if he had been operating it from Kamchatka.
The men began to call their rule-books the " Joe Millers."

The superintendent got mad and was lost — hopelessly.

THE SUPERINTENDENT 213

He began discharging right and left, and the wrath of
the gods and of the brotherhoods (the great labor unions
of the railroads), was upon him. The road was threat-
ened with a big strike at the very time that it could least
afford it. He avoided that strike only by acceding to
the demand of the brotherhood chiefs that the super-
intendent's head be given to them on a silver platter.
After that the " Man Without a Country " was in a more
enviable position. There was not a railroad in the coun-
try that dared employ him, despite his excellent technical
training. He drifted up into Canada, got a job running
a state-operated line. He held that job less than a year.
He was murdered of a winter's night in a shadowy rail-
road yard, shot down by a discharged train hand.

The grim situation on the " booze division " grew
much worse. The president of that system gave the mat-
ter his keen personal attention; he began scouring the
entire width of the land for material, without much success.
When he was thoroughly discouraged, a raw-boned train-
master from a far corner of the demoralized division ap-
plied for the job of superintendent; he reckoned he could
handle the situation. He had caught the president un-
awares standing outside of his private car. The president
told him that he was superintendent.

' There was something in Matt's eye that took me,"
he confessed afterwards. " You do see something in a
man's eye now and then that beats a whole barrel of
references."

So Matt Jones (that is nothing like his real name),
took up the nastiest operating proposition in the country.
He did not lecture nor discharge, not he; but the men
knew that there was a boss behind the super's desk. The
fellows who began trifling with the new broom were down
in his office the next morning. Jones selected the leading
spirit; he had the advantage of knowing him.

" Pete," he said in a quiet way, " you Ve been drink-

214 THE MODERN RAILROAD

ing. It does n't go. I 'm not going to discharge you,"
— he gave grim thought to the fate of his predecessor —
" but in thirty days you are going to send in your resigna-
tion voluntarily and leave our service."

The man protested. He had not been drinking; and
Matt Jones had better not try that game anyway. The
superintendent wished him a pleasant good-morning and
bowed him out of the office.

In five days the engineer was back, uncalled. The
superintendent saw him, even though he had no more to
say than he had not been drinking; that is, he had quit
drinking long ago. In ten days he was back again.
This time he admitted that he had been drinking up to
the day that Matt Jones took office. The superintendent
said nothing. He bowed the engineer out again. A
month is a short thing at the best. At the end of the
twenty-second day, the engineer again found his way to
the superintendent's office. He seemed like a man who
had been through a sickness. Big human that he was,
he began crying at the sight of the man who was a real
boss.

" For God's sake, Matt, don't forget the old days up
on the branch. I can't get out from the old road," he
said.

" I gave you thirty days' chance to get on another
road," was all the satisfaction that he got.

But on the thirtieth day the engineer went to work with
a clean envelope and the new superintendent had an ally
of no mean strength. The patient grinding won; com-
plete victory was only a question of time; the president
five hundred miles away began to notice. You may say
what you want, railroad executives are born, not made.
This reads like romance, but it is truth. Matt Jones is
to-day general manager of that system, and a little while
ago a New York paper said he was going to take charge
of one of the big transcontinental that needs a firm hand
at its reins.

THE SUPERINTENDENT 215

This superintendent has his division 400 miles away
from New York, a clean stretch of busy railroad, making
a link in one of the stoutest of the transcontinental chains,
300 miles of line, making traffic and handling it. The
superintendent is a personage in the little inland city
where headquarters are located; his opinion is eagerly
sought by the local reporters each time a new civic prob-
lem is tackled. If he were in the metropolitan district
he would be unknown except to a little coterie of rail-
roaders; up here he is the voice of the railroad. He is
far more real to the folk of half a dozen populous coun-
ties than is the president of the road, a stuffy gentleman
who comes up in a private car once in a dozen years to
the dinner of the local Chamber of Commerce and tells
the townspeople to thank God that they have the main
line of the K. & M. running through their " lovely little
city."

You may listen for the clatter of the telegraph key in
his house and be entirely disappointed.

" I would have poor system if I had to listen to all the
gossip of the wire," he tells you quietly. " We Ve organ-
ization on this stretch of line." He says this with a bit
of pride. ' We have men and we have system. My
train-masters are in effect assistant superintendents: they
are expected to organize beneath them."

Watch this sort of man. He is the kind that American
railroading is hungry for to-day. Of him the big ex-
ecutives are being made each year. He enters his office
in the morning and gets a few brief reports of the situa-
tion on the line: first weather, then congestion conditions
in the big yards. After that he talks over the long-dis-
tance 'phone with the G. M., four hundred miles away.
He gives a summary of the situation to headquarters, just
as the summaries came in to him from his train-masters at
junctions and at terminals. He holds the telephone re-
ceiver for a minute: the 'phone is rapidly coming into
general railroad use since the telegraphers made Congress

2i6 THE MODERN RAILROAD

pass a bill limiting their working hours to eight each day.
That bill promises to make trouble yet for the men who
were supposed to benefit by it.

The telephone speaks to him a moment. He hangs up
the receiver and speaks to his chief clerk.

" W. H. T. is coming up the line this afternoon. Tell
the boys not to get rattled," he says.

That is all. The passage of the President of the
United States over his three hundred miles of well-ordered
track makes no flutter in this superintendent's heart. If
it were Europe — the troops would be drawn out, all
other trains brought to a standstill, pilot engines run in
advance of the royal train, in infinite pow-wow over the
railroading of nobility. But it is not Europe, it is this
blessed United States, partly blessed because it so excess-
ively differs from Europe.

Only the military aides of the President lament upon
the informality of his travel. Some time since a great
executive was making the familiar loop throughout the
West. The superintendent of a division of line the far
side of the Missouri was a worrier, and was personally
watching the progress. In order to facilitate rear plat-
form oratory the President's cars were placed at the rear
of a train that hardly ranked as express. Between towns
the delays grew frequent and a stuffy little aide in uni-
form protested to the superintendent.

" Look a' here, sir," he said stiffly, " why don't you
let these other trains up the line wait ? " The division
was single-track. " You know this is the President's
train."

A twinkle came into the super's eye.

' You 're wrong," he said, in the positive tones of a
real executive. " This is not the President's special.

This is train number 67 of the B main line, and she

has n't many more rights on the time-card than a gravel
limited. Now if you were snitching along on our cracker-
jack Nippon Limited — there 's some train, sir. They

THE SUPERINTENDENT 217

would n't lay her out. She 's double-extra first-class all
the way through to the coast."

The point of that was not lost.

An instance of a different sort occurred some years
ago, when Mr. Roosevelt went up into Northern New
York to make a speech. The superintendent of the old
Black River road was pretty proud of his stretch of line,
and invited the then Governor to ride in his neat inspec-
tion engine.

" Dee-lighted," said he of the gleaming teeth, and he
climbed up into the big cab. The superintendent won-
dered what he 'd think of that nifty stretch of track just
north of Lewville. Col. Roosevelt never thought. As
soon as he was settled in the cab he picked a well-thumbed
copy of Carlyle's " French Revolution " out of his pocket
and read it every inch of the way from Utica to Water-
town. The Republican party had to worry along there-
after without that superintendent's vote.

All the superintendents cannot become general manag-
ers or railroad presidents ; there is not room at the top for
even a decent proportion of the best of them. The real
tragedy on the division comes when a Prince grows old and
for the first time realizes that he is never to be King.
When such tragedy shows its head it is time for the stove
committee — the men who gossip in roundhouse corners
and the yardmaster's office — to talk in whispers.

Buffalo is no mean principality in the railroad world —
it is near kingdom in itself — miles and miles and still
more miles of congested freight yards, tonnage in breath-
taking volume rolling in from the wonderful lakes eight
months out of the twelve, a nervous traffic that never
ceases. For years there reigned in Buffalo, in calm com-
mand of the situation for a great railroad system, a man
who was entitled by every virtue of the word to be called
superintendent. They called him " the lion " and did not
misuse that word either. He was a lion, guardian of a

2i 8 THE MODERN RAILROAD

great railroad gate, a stern old lion whose word and whose
law were unquestioned.

But time aged the man, and the day came when the
clerks in his outer office began to talk in whispers; they
were having the audacity to wonder who the new Prince
would be. Two men thought that they were capable —
one an assistant superintendent in the great yard at East
Buffalo, the other holding similar rank over at Rochester.
Each of these men was prepared to assume greater honor,
to sit in command at the lion's great desk.

That old fellow sat aloof. His ears were not too deaf
to hear the whisperings of his clerks in the outer office,
and sometimes when one of them would creep in upon him
unawares they would find him sitting alone there, head
in hands, holding the fort. The two assistant superin-
tendents gained courage; they went to the picayune busi-
ness of pulling wires. At other times they locked horns.

They locked horns over one great question. It was
not operation that set them at odds, not a vexing practical
question of how some congested yard might be lanced so
that traffic should flow the more freely, or a main line
section be aided to give a greater daily tonnage. Noth-
ing of that sort for the two ambitious assistants.

A new pony inspection engine, with an observation room
built forward over the boiler — just the sort that Col.
Roosevelt had once used as a reading-room — was to be
built for the division, and each assistant thought that he
needed that engine for the dignity of his job. Each in
turn went before the lion and stated his claims for the
possession of the pretty toy. The old man listened with
grave dignity. A week later he sent down to the master
mechanic at the big Depew shops and had him deliver a
brand new hand-car, with his compliments, to each.

The pony-engine went into the roundhouse until the real
Prince should come. Then he sat long hours alone at
his desk once more.

Finally they brought a man to him, a fine, upstanding

THE SUPERINTENDENT 219

man. The lion rose from his comfy old chair and gave
greeting to the newcomer.

" I 'm glad to see you," was all he said; but to the gen-
eral manager, who had come up from New York, his eyes
seemed to ask: " You Ve brought the right man here at
last? " He turned to the stranger.

" Would you like a pony engine to get over the divi-
sion?" was his question.

" I 'm willing to go to hell, and go in a caboose,"
laughed the stranger.

The old superintendent grasped him by the hand.

" Thank God, they Ve sent a real man to be superin-
tendent at Buffalo," was all he said. That was the only
recognition that he gave to one who since has become
one of the master railroaders of America, but in that mo-
ment the act of succession had been consummated.

CHAPTER XIV

OPERATING THE RAILROAD

AUTHORITY OF THE CHIEF CLERK AND THAT OF THE ASSISTANT SUPER-
INTENDENT—RESPONSIBILITIES OF ENGINEERS, FIREMEN, MASTER ME-
CHANIC, TRAIN-MASTER, TRAIN-DESPATCHER — ARRANGING THE TIME-
TABLE—FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF OPERATION — SIGNALS — SELECTING
ENGINE AND CARS FOR A TRAIN — CLERICAL WORK OF CONDUCTORS —
A TRIP WITH THE CONDUCTOR — THE DESPATCHER'S AUTHORITY —
SIGNALS ALONG THE LINE — MAINTENANCE OF WAY — SUPERINTEND-
ENT OF BRIDGES AND BUILDINGS — ROAD-MASTER — SECTION Boss.

THE administration of the division runs quite nat-
urally into several channels. The routine of the
work, the making and filing of records and reports, the
handling of the mass of correspondence that must con-
stantly arise, is usually in the hands of a chief clerk, who
has control over the office force at division headquarters.
If there is an assistant superintendent, the chief clerk
will divide responsibility with him, the theory at all times
being to cut off the detail wherever possible. This office
work is not radically different from the office management
of any other large business. Its clerks are about the only
unorganized force in railroad employ.

If the management of the road is of the divisional
type, the superintendent of course is a more important ex-
ecutive than if it is of the departmental type. In either
of these cases, as we have seen, he will probably have at
least partial authority over the engineer of maintenance of
way, whose force keeps the line and track structures in full
repair, and also looks after ordinary construction work
along the division. In the road of divisional type, he will
also have partial authority over the master mechanic, in
charge of the shops and roundhouses and the locomo-
tives of the division. These last are regarded by the rail-

220

OPERATING THE RAILROAD 221

road as part of its machinery, like the planers and drills
in the shops themselves ; and for the care and operation of
the locomotives the engineers and firemen are held re-
sponsible to the mechanical department. This is the case
even upon those railroads where, under the departmental
system, the superintendent has no direct authority over
the master mechanic upon his division. For the conduct
of the trains which their locomotives pull, both engineers
and firemen are directly responsible to the operating de-
partment. The master mechanic simply sees to it that the
railroad's property is maintained to a certain degree of
efficiency and that the man who operates the locomotives is
capable from every point of view. A reasonable amount
of deterioration is expected, and each locomotive is ex-
pected to turn in to the shops for inspection, overhauling
and repairs, at certain stated intervals.

The superintendent has absolute authority over the two
officials who are chiefly interested in the conduct of the
trains over the division — the train-master and the train-
despatcher. The first of these two officers, who must dove-
tail their work both night and day, has the assignment
of the train crews. His opinion will be called for when-
ever the vexed questions of seniority and promotion arise,
and he will be asked to help to plan all extra or special
freight and passenger trains. To show how this is done
brings us close to the question of schedules, and we may
pause for a moment to consider how this important phase
of the railroad's operating is builded together.

That time-table that you have just pulled from the
folder rack seems at first glance an interminable mass of
meaningless figures; yet when you come to find your jour-
ney upon it, it quickly simplifies itself, and you begin to
marvel at the relation the figures bear to one another, how
easily you may pick your course through the long col-
umns of numerals. The more extensive time-tables that
the railroad employees carry are quite as simple, and yet
they are great feats of typographical composition. In

222 THE MODERN RAILROAD

reality, both these forms of printed time-tables are but
transcripts of the real time-table of the division, which is
kept set out upon a great board.

This board is ruled in two directions. The regularly
spaced intervals in one direction are marked as time,
and represent time — one entire day of twenty-four hours.
In the other direction of the board the stations are spaced
in proportion to their actual spacing upon the line.

The reproduction of a portion of such a board for an
imaginary division of a railroad will illustrate. This line
runs from Somerset to Rockville, 120 miles; and portions
of it are double-tracked, the rest single-track, as shown at
the top of the diagram. On the double-track, trains going
in the same direction may pass one another only at the ver-
tical lines, which represent station passing sidings, and on
the single-track sections this rule holds, with the additional
one, of course, that trains running in opposite directions
may also pass one another at the vertical station lines.
For economy of room only the seven hours from six o'clock
in the morning until one o'clock in the afternoon are shown
here. Following an old-time practice, odd numbers will
represent up-bound trains, from Somerset to Rockville;
even numbers, the down trains.

So we have an early morning accommodation passenger
train, No. i, leaving Rockville at 6:10 o'clock and pro-
ceeding at a leisurely rate of about twenty miles an hour
(which makes allowances for local stops) all the way to
Somerset at the far end of the division, which it is due to
reach at 1 1 .-45 A. M. It is halted for any length of time
only at Honeytown, where upbound No. 8 — local ac-
commodation — and upbound No. 6 — fast express —
will pass it. At 6:20 o'clock an upbound local accom-
modation of the same nature as No. i, and hence known
as No. 2, leaves Somerset and, halting only at Robbins's
Corners to permit the fast upbound No. 6 to overhaul and
pass it, reaches Rockville at i P. M. Train No. 31, which
follows No. i out of Rockville forty minutes later, is a

\ \

/

7

\

i£Am^tof /»

\

/«

\

\

/?0cAvv//e

>W THE REAL TIME TABLE OF THE DIVISION LOOKS THE ONE USED IN

HEADQUARTERS

OPERATING THE RAILROAD 223

milk train, and so must have a liberal allowance for stops.
It proceeds only as far as Stoneville, where the dairy
country ends, stops there long enough to turn and to water
the engine, and then returns to Rockville as No. 32.
Train No. 117 is a way- freight, and still slower. So it
follows the milk-train. It is known as a " low-class " train
by the railroaders. It must wait everywhere for better
class trains to pass it. Train No. 118 is the same class
of train, proceeding in the opposing direction. Train
No. 5 is a down express.

Sometimes unforeseen demands of traffic necessitate the
running of extra trains, and these may be strung across
the board. This board, in reality, has all its trains placed
upon it by strings and pins, to admit of the constant
changes that the schedules are always undergoing, and
the addition of a new train is a quick proceeding. As a
matter of fact, a skilled train-master or despatcher will
rarely take the time actually to string an extra train. He
carries the schedule too completely in his head to admit
of such a necessity.

But the extra train is best placed following, as a second
section, some good passenger train, as indicated on the
diagram. The regular train will then carry signals show-
ing that it is followed on this particular day. While the
train orders protect its movement in any event, as will
be shown in a moment, the billing of the extra train as a
second section is less of an upset to the regular operation
of the division. Practised operating men found years
ago that the fewer deviations made from the regular pro-
gramme of the day, the higher the proportion of safety
arose.

Now you begin to see the use of the train-despatcher.
If the unforeseen never came to pass upon the railroad,
instead of coming to pass nearly every hour, there might
be no need of that officer. Each engineer, each conductor,
each station agent would have his complete time-tables, and
the road would run every day in full accordance with them.

224 THE MODERN RAILROAD

That was the very earliest and the most primitive way of
operating railroads. Almost as early the need arose of
having a special direction over the operation of the trains.
Emergencies arose daily. Trains were often late; storms
beat down upon the line ; the snow covered its rails ; what
might have been, according to the time-card, an orderly
operation of line, became chaos. If a train was ordered by
schedule to meet a train bound in the opposite direction
at P , it might wait there for long hours, not know-
ing that the other engine was broken down at A .

The invention of the telegraph and its almost instant
application to the railroad service made such special di-
rection possible. So now we find the explicit directions
of the schedule supplemented by even more explicit di-
rections from the train-despatcher at the head of the train
movements upon each division. Briefly stated, it may be
said that the engineer and the conductor in charge of a
train are first guided by the schedule, which, after many
revisions, has been compiled with great care, and in
reference to connecting lines, branches, and adjoining
divisions. This schedule acts in conjunction with certain
simple fundamental rules of operation, the A, B, C of
every railroader. By one of these, trains of the same
class bound north or east are given precedence, all other
things being equal, over trains bound south or west. This
rule is sometimes superseded by one giving right-of-way to
trains bound up the line — or the reverse.

High-class trains, like the fastest limited expresses, have
precedence over trains of graduated lower classes — down
to the slow-moving heavy freights. When any sort of
train loses a certain length of time — usually half an hour
or more — it loses all rights that it might ever have had,
and everything else on the line has precedence over it.
A train may lose time if it has to, but there are never any
circumstances that will justify it in running ahead of time.

All this is the part of railroad operation which governs
the relation of one train to another. There are even

OPERATING THE RAILROAD 225

simpler but not less vital rules that control its own opera-
tion. In order that the engineer who is guiding the train,
and the conductor who shares the responsibility, may keep
in touch with one another, the device was adopted many
years ago of having a cord run through the cars of passen-
ger trains to a bell signal in the cab of the engine. This
bell signal during recent years has given way to an im-
proved form of locomotive signal, sounded by means of
compressed air in tubes throughout the train, and operated
in connection with the air-brake equipment.

The air-whistle, or bell cord-code of signals, is standard
upon all American railroads, and is as follows:

When the train is standing:

Two signals — start.

Three signals — back.

Four signals — apply or release air-brakes.

Five signals — call in flagman.

When the train is in motion:

Two signals — stop at once.

Three signals — stop at the next station.

Four signals — reduce speed.

Five signals — increase speed.

There also arises a necessity for communication between
men who stand outside the train and who seek to guide
the movement of the locomotive. This necessity has given
rise to still another code, transmitted by the hands —
holding a flag, if possible — by day, and a lighted lantern
at night. This signal code follows :

Method of Transmitting Signal. Indication.

Swung across track. Stop.

Raised and lowered vertically. Proceed.
Swung vertically in a circle across the track:

When the train is standing — Back.

When train is in motion — Train has parted.
15

226 THE MODERN RAILROAD

Swung horizontally in a circle:

When the train is standing — Apply air-brakes.

Held at arm's length above head:

When the train is standing — Release air-brakes.

Any object waved violently by any person on
or near the track is a stop signal.

By use of his locomotive whistle, the engineer is enabled
to acknowledge these signals, as well as to signal upon his
own initiative. His code is also a standard in railroad-
ing. It follows:

A short blast. A long blast.

Stop, apply brakes.

Release brakes.

• Flagman go back

and protect rear
end of train.

Flagman return to

train.

Train in motion,

has parted.

Acknowledgment of

signals, not other-
wise provided for.

Standing train —

back.

Call for signals.

Calls attention to

following section.

Highway crossing

signal.

— — Approaching sta-
tions, junctions or
railroad crossings
at grade.

A succession of short blasts is an alarm for persons on
the track and calls the attention of trainmen to danger
ahead.

OPERATING THE RAILROAD 227

These signal codes operate fundamentally in connection
with the essential rules of schedule that we have already
shown.

Suppose now that we consider the workings of all this
system as it comes down to actual practice in a single con-
crete instance. We are finding our way to a big terminal
yard in all the murkiness and cloudiness of very early
morning, and once again we hunt out that urbane soul, the
yardmaster. He holds in his hand the yellow tissue of an
order from the despatcher of the division. In the con-
ciseness of telegraphy it tells him to start a third section of
train 1 1 8 — through freight — at 6:15 o'clock. Just
back of his little grimy box of an office is the big sprawling
roundhouse — a dozen freighters with banked fires stand-
ing in the stalls, awaiting summons to work. The twelve
engines are divided into several classifications according
to pulling strength and speed, but the despatcher has des-
ignated the particular engine he wishes for third- n 8, and
he gets it — a big lanky puller — 1847. She is chosen
chiefly because she has had the longest roundhouse rest,
having brought in a through freight from up the line, and
having been received with engineer's report showing her
to be in good running order, at five o'clock yesterday
afternoon. Before the 1847 slipped from the turntable
into the waiting stall, the hostlers and the wipers were
at her. The hostlers had taken her over the cinder-pit and
cleaned out the fire-box. Then they went over her, clean-
ing her, inch by inch, a mechanical inspector in their wake,
testing and sounding and checking every item in the en-
gineer's report which showed 1847 to ^e m good order at
the end of his run with her. There was not much chance
left for any shirking of responsibility, no matter what
might arise upon the 1847 on anY coming day.

We turn and watch the yardmaster once again. He
has the roundhouse foreman send one of the bright young
boys who hang around his office night and day, and who
dream of that coming hour when they will handle an 1847

228 THE MODERN RAILROAD

for themselves, to call the engineer and fireman, whose
names are posted " first out." Or perhaps the telephone
has come into play — in these days in the smaller towns
there is hardly a house too humble to have receiver and
transmitter hanging somewhere upon its walls. In any
event the engine-crew are supposed to stay home when
off duty, unless especially excused, and to live within reas-
onable distance — say a mile — of the roundhouse.

The caller tells the engineer and fireman to report at
the roundhouse at 5 145 a. m. At that hour the hostlers
have made the 1847 ^ f°r service. Her tender has been
filled with coal, her tanks with water, even her sand is
packed aboard the box that stands upon the boiler and is
ready to help on slippery rail and upgrade. The engineer
makes keen inspection of the 1847 before he moves her a
single inch, makes sure with his keen and practised eye
that she is quite fit for service, pokes here and there and
everywhere with his long-spouted oil-can. At a minute or
two after shop whistles have shrieked " six o'clock " he
pulls the 1847 out from the shadows of the roundhouse.
He gets an open signal and switch to the main yard and
finds waiting on a siding in that great place, the trail of
freight cars and the caboose that are going with him to
make Third- n 8.

Now come back for a moment in your thought. While
we were still scurrying down to the grimy yard, the de-
spatcher was creating Third-n8. On his desk were car
reports, showing what had been received and sent out, and
there was enough accumulation of stuff in the yards last
night to justify a Third-n8. Because good railroading
means yard-sidings cleared, and standing cars and freight,
like passengers, kept constantly moving, he did not hesi-
tate at ordering her out. He found that there would be
32 cars between tender and caboose, weighing approxi-
mately some 1 200 tons, and so he ordered from the round-
house an engine of a class which the mechanical depart-

Courtesy of the "Railroad Age. Gazette1'

THE ELECTRO-PNEUMATIC SIGNAL-BOX IN THE CONTROL TOWER OF
A MODERN TERMINAL

THE RESPONSIBLE MEN WHO STAND AT THE SWITCHTTOWER OF A
MODERN TERMINAL: A LARGE TOWER OF THE " MANUAL " TYPE

WHEN WINTER COMES UPON THE LINES THE SUPERINTENDENT
WILL HAVE FULL USE FOR EVERY ONE OF HIS WITS "

WATCHFUL SIGNALS GUARDING THE MAIN LINE OF A BUSY
RAILROAD

OPERATING THE RAILROAD 229

ment guaranteed capable of pulling from 1,000 to 1,500
tons, gross weight.

The yardmaster had given the numbers of the cars that
were to make Third-n8, just as he received them from
one of the despatcher's assistants, to a switching foreman,
who arranged them, with the quick facility that comes
from long practice, into an order that would permit them
to be set off at various points up the line, with the least
possible amount of switching. That practical sequence
worked out in pencil and paper, a stubby switch-engine
effected in reality. The cars and the caboose, in proper
order, were ready, with the crew, and inspected when the
1847 backed to them and Third-n8 came into her being.

A yard caller had summoned the train-crew while the
roundhouse caller was rounding up the two men of the
engine-crew. Collins, the conductor, and his brakemen
had reported at the yard-office, and were assigned to Third-
ii 8. Collins found the cars and caboose waiting just a
few minutes before the 1847 na<^ been coupled to them,
with little ado and no formality whatsoever, beyond the
testing of the air-brakes. Into his train-book he had en-
tered the number of each car and the initials of the road
owning it, its destination, its empty or tare weight; the
weight of its load, and the sum of these or its gross weight.
He sees to it that each box-car is firmly seal-locked. If
not, he refuses to accept it from the yardmaster until it has
been resealed, and makes a note of the occurrence. Like
the engineer and the hostlers in the roundhouse, he takes
no chances, no responsibilities that do not fairly belong to
him.

With both conductor and engineer ready, Third-n8
starts upon her day's run. The yard operator has tel-
egraphed the despatcher's office that 3-118 is awaiting in-
structions. In that despatch he has given the locomotive
number, the number and total weight of the cars it hauls,
the name of both engineer and conductor. The train-

232 THE MODERN RAILROAD

orders into our hands in order that we may see something
of the great detail of this branch of operating. Each is
wonderfully specific, and we know by that " complete " on
the corner that it has been given in detail.

" No. I Engine 2236 will wait at Morris Level until
10:00 A. M. for 3-118, Engine 1847."

The signature is that of the initials of the division super-
intendent, the numerals have been spelled out. It would
seem as if the railroad had taken every possible precaution
for safety. And yet again, remember that great accidents
have happened upon American railroads just because men's
minds have perversely refused to read what eyes and ears
have read. And yet there seems to be nothing to be done,
more thorough than is already being done.

" Are all these freights upon schedule? " you may ask
Collins, after you meet a few dozen of them within the
limits of a single-track division. He is decent enough not
to laugh at your ignorance.

" Schedule?'1 he repeats. "It's a joke. They give
our first section a time to get out on, in the time-card and
then one o' them bright office-boys gets a figger out o' his
head an' puts it down for an arrivin' time. He never hits
it an' he never expects to. So more an' more they 're
gettin' to move this freight on special orders. They can
better regulate it then, 'cordin' to volume of business.
Mos' of the men carry the schedules of the fas' an' th'
way-freights in their domes. Th' coarse tonnage stuff
does n't even get special orders. When they get enough
of it, down on th' main line, they get an engine out o' th'
roundhouse, give the train th' engine number, and start off.
Railroad traffic along the freight end follows business con-
ditions mighty close."

It is still daylight when we halt at a junction, across a
frozen river from a city. The city is set upon a steep
hillside, and its houses rise from the river in even ter-
races. At the top a great domed structure — the State
House — crowns it. It is a still winter's morning, and the

OPERATING THE RAILROAD 233

smoke from all the chimney-pots extends straight heaven-
ward. We wait patiently upon a long siding until every-
thing else has been moved — through fast expresses heav-
ily laden with opulent-looking Pullmans, jerky little sub-
urban trains, long draughts of empty coaches, being
drawn by consequential switch-engines in and out of the
train-shed of the passenger station. Finally a certain
semaphore blade drops, we cross over to the important
main line and begin pulling on a sharp curve, across the
river, clear of the station with its confusion, through and
past the city to a busy division yard.

In a very little time, for this is their home town, Collins
and his crew are registering at the yardmaster's office.
The engineer of the 1847, and his fireman, turn in their
time-slips and proceed with the locomotive to the round-
house where they make a report upon its condition.
Their names are posted on the " in " list or register, and
they are off duty until they are summoned by the callers
at this end of the division. The despatcher has, of
course, been apprised of the safe ending of the run of
Third- 1 1 8.

In the despatcher we have a high type of railroad of-
ficial who works almost unknown to the great travelling
public, and yet accepts a very great measure of the respon-
sibility for the safe operation of the lines. His orders,
sent by telegraph and bearing that cabalistic initial signa-
ture of his superintendent, are the products of his own
mind. There can be no mistake in these, and he knows it.
Each message that he sends may produce disaster, and he
knows that.

He is an executive of a type that is not to be passed by
lightly. He has risen from the ranks of the telegraphers,
most likely from some lonely country station or forlorn
signal-tower, and his knowledge of railroad operation, both
theoretical and practical, must approach perfection. On
sunny, serene days he proceeds with the theoretical rail-
roading; when storms or unexpected influxes of traffic come

232 THE MODERN RAILROAD

orders into our hands in order that we may see something
of the great detail of this branch of operating. Each is
wonderfully specific, and we know by that " complete " on
the corner that it has been given in detail.

" No. I Engine 2236 will wait at Morris Level until
10:00 A. M. for 3-118, Engine 1847."

The signature is that of the initials of the division super-
intendent, the numerals have been spelled out. It would
seem as if the railroad had taken every possible precaution
for safety. And yet again, remember that great accidents
have happened upon American railroads just because men's
minds have perversely refused to read what eyes and ears
have read. And yet there seems to be nothing to be done,
more thorough than is already being done.

" Are all these freights upon schedule? " you may ask
Collins, after you meet a few dozen of them within the
limits of a single-track division. He is decent enough not
to laugh at your ignorance.

" Schedule? " he repeats. " It 's a joke. They give
our first section a time to get out on, in the time-card and
then one o' them bright office-boys gets a figger out o' his
head an' puts it down for an arrivin' time. He never hits
it an' he never expects to. So more an' more they 're
gettin' to move this freight on special orders. They can
better regulate it then, 'cordin' to volume of business.
Mos' of the men carry the schedules of the fas' an' th'
way-freights in their domes. Th' coarse tonnage stuff
does n't even get special orders. When they get enough
of it, down on th' main line, they get an engine out o' th'
roundhouse, give the train th' engine number, and start off.
Railroad traffic along the freight end follows business con-
ditions mighty close."

It is still daylight when we halt at a junction, across a
frozen river from a city. The city is set upon a steep
hillside, and its houses rise from the river in even ter-
races. At the top a great domed structure — the State
House — crowns it. It is a still winter's morning, and the

OPERATING THE RAILROAD 233

smoke from all the chimney-pots extends straight heaven-
ward. We wait patiently upon a long siding until every-
thing else has been moved — through fast expresses heav-
ily laden with opulent-looking Pullmans, jerky little sub-
urban trains, long draughts of empty coaches, being
drawn by consequential switch-engines in and out of the
train-shed of the passenger station. Finally a certain
semaphore blade drops, we cross over to the important
main line and begin pulling on a sharp curve, across the
river, clear of the station with its confusion, through and
past the city to a busy division yard.

In a very little time, for this is their home town, Collins
and his crew are registering at the yardmaster's office.
The engineer of the 1847, and his fireman, turn in their
time-slips and proceed with the locomotive to the round-
house where they make a report upon its condition.
Their names are posted on the " in " list or register, and
they are off duty until they are summoned by the callers
at this end of the division. The despatcher has, of
course, been apprised of the safe ending of the run of
Third- 1 1 8.

In the despatcher we have a high type of railroad of-
ficial who works almost unknown to the great travelling
public, and yet accepts a very great measure of the respon-
sibility for the safe operation of the lines. His orders,
sent by telegraph and bearing that cabalistic initial signa-
ture of his superintendent, are the products of his own
mind. There can be no mistake in these, and he knows it.
Each message that he sends may produce disaster, and he
knows that.

He is an executive of a type that is not to be passed by
lightly. He has risen from the ranks of the telegraphers,
most likely from some lonely country station or forlorn
signal-tower, and his knowledge of railroad operation, both
theoretical and practical, must approach perfection. On
sunny, serene days he proceeds with the theoretical rail-
roading; when storms or unexpected influxes of traffic come

234 THE MODERN RAILROAD

to harass the division, he will need every bit of his prac-
tical knowledge. Handling a number of special trains
— freight or passenger — is a strain, and that strain is
most felt at the despatcher's desk.

Now and then your morning paper tells of a railroad
wreck, and laconically adds, " The despatcher was at
fault." The stories of the wrecks that were forestalled
by the sheer genius of the men who sit night and day at
the telegraph instruments at headquarters are the stories
that are for the most part untold, and that far surpass in
thrill and interest the stories of the failures.

The despatcher must also be the full measure of a man.
He is, like the silent figure upon the bridge of a great ship,
of unquestioned authority as he sits at his desk. He may
or may not have a map of the line before him as he sits
there, but you may be certain that he knows where every
moving train on the division is at the moment you see
him, just as clearly as if it were all visible there to the
naked eye in some sort of picture map. No trains pro-
ceed without his express orders. He has " reliefs " and
there is no hour of day or night when one of these is not
at the despatcher's desk, having the work of the line under
his exact supervision.

The order that any train receives from the despatcher
by means of the telegraph will, as we saw in Collins's
case, direct it to proceed to a certain point on the line, and
will specify every train, regular or extra, that it will meet,
and the meeting point. When the train has proceeded to
the end of its orders there will be more orders from the
train-despatcher to be receipted for, and so it will proceed
to the end of the route. It is quite possible that at any
stage of the journey orders will come from headquarters
nullifying those already issued, in part or entirely; and
these must be accounted for in the same thorough and ac-
curate fashion. Some of this seems " red tape " to the
men on the line, and there come times when they are a bit
disposed to rebel at what seems to them useless formality.

OPERATING THE RAILROAD 235

There also come times when trains crash into one an-
other ; and at those times the railroad, with its infinite sys-
tem of recording its orders, is generally apt to be able to
place the blame pretty accurately. Those are the times
when the system of train orders justifies its worth.

Recently the telephone has come into something more
than an experimental use in despatching trains upon Amer-
ican railroads. Various causes have contributed to this.
For one thing, the use of the telephone enables the aver-
age road to make good use of its veterans, men who would
indignantly refuse to become pensioners, and yet who have
come to a time in their lives when they must set their pace
in gentler key. A trusted old employee, a man crippled
perhaps in loyalty to the company's service, a keen-witted
responsible woman, any one of these can competently han-
dle train orders over a telephone, without having to have
the education and the wonderful expertness that comes only
from long experience in telegraphy; and they all become
available in the despatching service. Still another cause
has contributed to the change, which is being reported
each week from some fresh corner of the country — the
telegraphers, themselves. Within the past few years they
were able to induce Congress to reduce their day's work to
eight hours. Translated, this meant that the average way-
station which had been manned by one or two operators
would correspondingly need two or three operators. The
telegraphers, by reason of the expert training needed in
their business, kept their wage-scale up, and the railroads
felt that eight-hour bill keenly in their treasuries. So
there may have been the least bit of retribution in their
seeking the telephone as a relief. The change has cer-
tainly been made in the keen hope of effecting economy.
No railroad operator would feel ashamed to admit that fine
impeachment.

Modern railroading simply makes the same demand of
the telephone that it makes of the telegraph — that it keep
the probability of safety high. It makes the same de-

236 THE MODERN RAILROAD

mand of the men who maintain the signals, the track, the
bridges, and other portions of the right-of-way. Let us
consider them in the passing of an instant.

You know the signals along the line of the railroad —
those gaunt, uncanny things that spell danger or safety
to the men in the engine-cabs. A little while ago, we stood
beside a man in the sun-filled tower of a great railroad
terminal and watched him operate the most complicated
switch and signal system in the land, watched him with
the crooking of a finger upon the lever of an electric ma-
chine raise this blade, lower that, as he made new paths
for the many trains, coming and going.

A plant of that sort is known as the interlocking. In
its simplest form, it will guard a junction between two
single tracks. The mast of the signal will rise, according
to standard custom, at the right of the track in the di-
rection of travel, and there will probably be two semaphore
blades, the upper of which guards and signals the straight
main-line or " superior " track, the lower, the diverging
branch, known as the " inferior " track. The blade raised
— automatically showing a red light — indicates that the
main line is closed to the engineer. " Stop ! " " Danger ! "
are the words it tells him. The blade lowered, a green
light is automatically displayed, and the engineer knows
that he can go ahead at full speed on the main line. The
road is clear for him. The lower blade gives similar indi-
cations for the branch diverging line. Normally, both
blades stand at " stop " and " danger," and the one guard-
ing the line for which the train is destined, is dropped only
on the approach of the train, itself. In fact, to facilitate
the movement of trains, these guarding signals — known
to the signal experts as " home signals " — are generally
interlocked with " distant signals " several hundred feet
down the line, on which blades indicating the diverging
tracks forecast the story that the " home signal " is to tell
the engineer. The blade raised — by night displaying a
white or safety signal — on the " distant signal " indi-

OPERATING THE RAILROAD 237

cates that the line it guards is blocked at the " home
signal," and that the engineer must be prepared to bring
his train to a full stop. Dropped — showing the green
safety light — that particular line is open and ready, and
the engineer can be prepared to pass the junction without a
very great diminution of speed.

That is the fundamental rule of the signal. Some roads
have experimented with other forms of indicators — disks
of one sort or another, semaphore blades that turn up-
wards rather than drop. The devices are numerous, but
the principle is the same. When the tracks begin to mul-
tiply, and the signals begin to multiply in even greater
proportion, they are generally carried over the tracks on
a light bridge construction — our English cousins call it a
" gantry " — and a series of small semaphore masts built
up from the bridge. One of these masts, or " dolls," will
be assigned to each track; and if there chances to be an
unsignalled siding-track of little importance passing under
the bridge, it will have its own " doll " rising from the
bridge although quite devoid of semaphore blades. So
it is all quite as clear as print to the engineer, even when
forty or fifty lights blink at him from a single bridge.
The signals tell their story to him quite as simply as to
the man in the tower, who is setting their blades in accord-
ance with his carefully arranged plans.

Where signals are not of this interlocking type, guard-
ing some junction, railroad grade crossing, draw-bridge or
other point of possible danger, they are likely to resolve
themselves into the block system. This system, in a rather
crude Jform, with the use of operators at each block-tower
or way-station, has been in development for something less
than thirty years upon the American railroad. In brief,
it divides a line — usually double-tracked, but sometimes
used by the so-called " staff " method upon a single-track
road — into sections, or blocks, of from three to five miles
each. On double-track under this system, no two trains,
even though travelling in the same direction are permitted

238 THE MODERN RAILROAD

in the same block. At the entrance to each block stands a
tall mast with two of the conventional signal blades. The
upper of these raised denotes that a train is still in the
block, and an engineer must stop his train and wait till it
drops, before he can proceed. The lower blade, when
raised, indicates that a train is in the second block ahead,
and the engineer must proceed only with caution and ex-
pecting to find that block closed against him. It is all
quite simple; and if the engineers followed the signals
absolutely, there never could be any rear-end collisions on
lines protected by block signals. As a matter of fact, there
rarely ever are, although the engineers do take chances time
and time again.

'' Why should I stop for that thing," said a veteran en-
gineer on a fast express train as we went whirring by one
of those upper blades raised and commanding us in a
blood-red point of light to stop, " when I can look down
this straight stretch and see they're clear? Like as not
something 's got into the mechanism of it and let her flop
that way."

Do not insult the intelligence of that engineer. A little
while before, he had told us, with a deal of pride, that the
rolling stock of " his road " placed end to end would reach
from New York to Omaha, a distance of some 1300 miles.
Keenest of the keen, he had a sort of contempt for a rule-
book in such a case as that.

" Is n't it sort of positive ? " we began. " Good excuse
anyway — "

" It is," he shouted back, " but somehow it don't go if
you fall behind on your running time. We 're here to use
ordinary good sense — and bring our trains in on time."

And yet the railroad has a sharp way of insisting upon
compliance with that book of rules by making, once in
a great while, surprise tests. A signal is set at danger,
without any more apparent reason than in the case just
cited; a secret watch is kept, and judgment and discipline

OPERATING THE RAILROAD 239

are visited upon the heads of the engineers who permit
themselves to run past it.

To operate the signals calls for one body of men, and to
maintain them for faithful service against all manner and
stress of wear and weather, another; just as there must be
a working corps to keep the right-of-way in working order.
This last is a mighty brigade of the railroad's army; for
one man in every four who works for it is employed in
keeping the track in order. One dollar in every six that
the railroad spends goes for that purpose.

Maintenance of way on each division divides itself into
a superintendent of bridges and buildings, who sees to the
upkeep of those facilities; and a roadmaster, who special-
izes upon the track itself. This last officer, almost in-
variably one who has begun to shoulder himself up in the
ranks of the railroad army from the very beginning, has
his territory divided into sections from two to five miles in
length on double-track, from four to ten on single. In
command of each section a faithful hand-car and a group
of more or less faithful section-hands, figured on an allow-
ance of one to each mile of track, is a section-boss. The
section-boss is a wry and a wise soul, or should be. He
may not know as much about the formulas for compen-
sating curves as that bright boy who has just come out of
a " tech " school to stand his turn at a transit, but he
has a marvellous sort of intuitive sense in keeping his little
stretch of track in order. He can sight his rail and dis-
cover flaws in alignment as a blind man can find surface
flaws with the developed tips of his fingers, and all the
while he may be growling at the railroad management for
adding to the weight of its rolling-stock and " pounding
the elevations out of his track."

In summer he is expert with the " track jacks " and con-
stantly putting in bits of ballast here and there; and in
the winter, when the frost and snow have made it impos-

240 THE MODERN RAILROAD

sible to touch the ballast, he keeps his elevations by means
of " shims." A " shim " is a piece of wood, from shingle
thickness to the width of two ties piled one upon the other,
and is wedged between the tie and the rail till summer
comes and the line can be corrected by ballasting.

The section-boss must keep pace with a job that is no
sinecure. If his gang, in eagerness to be on dress parade,
almost throws dirt on the rear steps of the boss's private
car as it goes whizzing down the line, he must also see to it
that they keep plugging at it where there is not even a loco-
motive whistle within sound. He must be thrifty, eco-
nomical. He must remember that the humble cross-tie
which once cost a quarter now costs almost a dollar, and
that for one of these to be found neglected in the ditch is
almost a capital crime. He must have an eye for loose
spikes and angle-plates, for the big boss has hinted at the
annual loss to the road in these simple factors.

At his call and that of the superintendent of bridges and
buildings is a work-train, made up of a few flat-cars and
discarded coaches, doing boarding-house Pullman service
in their declining years, which looks after work too sizable
for the section-boss and his little gang, and yet not large
enough for the attention of the dignified gentlemen who
are known as the reconstruction engineers. Yet some of
the feats of these work-train gangs have the crackle of en-
gineering genius. It takes brains to rip out a little timber
span and replace it in the interval between two trains
spaced a couple of hours apart, and in the railroad, brain
work often comes from the shabby workman, from the
man who graduates from the command of his own bat-
tered hand-car.

All this elaborate system of railroad operation has been
built up through many years of practice. Experience has
been more than a teacher in the business, which becomes
yearly more and more nearly a developed science ; she has
been a whole faculty and a curriculum, too. Methods that

OPERATING THE RAILROAD 241

promised well at the outset have been found faulty after
trial, and rejected. Committees of trained experts have
pondered and reported voluminously; the standard rail-
road codes of every sort have been born because of them.
The operation of the railroad has been brought close to
science. It would seem as if the entire field had been com-
pletely covered.

And yet new situations constantly arise, the like of
which have never before presented themselves, even to the
railroad veterans. Traffic moves in unequal volume, par-
ticularly freight traffic. There are single-track stretches
through the Middle West that starve through eleven
months of the year, and for the other thirty days handle
in grain more tonnage than a double-track trunk-line in
the East. Obviously such lines cannot be double-tracked
for thirty days of business; quite as obviously the over-
taxed division, its equipment, and its men must rise to every
necessity of the floodtide of business. There are fat years
and there are lean years. There come years of bumper
crops, years when the factory lights burn from sunset to
dawn, and wheels turn unceasingly, and then the superin-
tendent wonders how his equipment and men are going to
stand the strain. Engines are kept from the shops and in
service; nothing that is even a semblance of a car is kept
out of service; the demand for men is keen; prosperity
strains the resources of the railroad.

In the lean years, engines are sometimes kept from the
shops because the railroad feels that it must hold down its
running expenses to keep pace with reduced revenues, and
such a course it can stoutly defend as nothing else than
good business. Equipment begins to stand idle. Engines
are tucked away on empty sidings, boarded and forlorn;
and if the year be very lean indeed, the superintendent may
find it necessary to send out a wrecking crane and begin
lifting empty cars off the rails and leaving them in the
ditch at the side of the right-of-way, until the golden times
come again. At such seasons his ingenuity is tested quite

16

242 THE MODERN RAILROAD

as much as in the times of floodtide. Orders come to cut
expenses, and his big expense is the pay-roll. When he
begins to blue-pencil that pay-roll, some one is going to be
hungry. The superintendent knows that. He must move
with great care in such emergencies.

CHAPTER XV

THE FELLOWS OUT UPON THE LINE

MEN WHO RUN THE TRAINS MUST HAVE BRAIN AS WELL AS MUSCLE —
THEIR TRAINING — FROM FARMER'S BOY TO ENGINEER — THE BRAKE-
MAN'S DANGEROUS WORK — BAGGAGEMAN AND MAIL CLERKS — HAND-
SWITCHMEN — THE MULTIFARIOUS DUTIES OF COUNTRY STATION-
AGENTS.

ONE man in every twelve in the United States is on
the pay-roll of a railroad. No wonder that that
great organism comes so close to human life throughout
the nation, that we seem to touch it at every turn.

This one out of twelve is the great army of industrial
America. Composed of nearly 1,500,000 men, it is an
army that inspires loyalty and cooperation within its own
ranks, and confidence and admiration from without. To a
nation whose creed is work, it stands as the uniformed host
stands to a fighting nation like England or France or Ger-
many. The army of industrial America inspires not one
whit less affection than those great crops of paid fighters
in Europe.

Ninety-six per cent of this army of railroaders are en-
gaged in the business of maintaining and operating the
great avenues of transportation, an overwhelming propor-
tion in the last phase of the business.- The operating
department is, to the average mind, the railroad. Its
members are the men with whom the public come oftenest
in contact; they are the men who are oftenest called upon
to hazard life and limb in the pursuit of their callings.
The romance of the railroad — a romance that is told in
unending prose and verse — hovers over the men who
operate it. The men who labor in the shops and keep en-
gines and cars safe and fit for the most efficient service

243

244 THE MODERN RAILROAD

have no small responsibilities. Moreover, their work,
forging and finishing great masses of metal, is not without
its own hazards. The men who give their time and talents
to the maintenance of the track and the structure of the
railroad have equal responsibilities. It is not doubted for
an instant that both of these are important functions in
the conduct of railroad transportation, and each in turn
will have full attention given to it.

In a previous chapter we have considered the men who
control the actual operation of the railroad, the safe con-
duct of its trains up and down the line. How about the
privates in the ranks of this industrial army, the men, who
by their loyalty and ability form the very foundations
of successful operation, who also form the material from
which executives are chosen every day?

There are no common laborers in this phase of railroad
work. A man with stout muscles and less than the aver-
age amount of brains can ofttimes shovel ballast out with
the track-gangs; there are many, many opportunities for
crude labor in the heavy metal work of the railroad's
shops ; there are none within the scientific activity that gives
itself to the running of the trains. The humblest of these
folk must have a particular talent, a talent so peculiar that
it might almost be described as " latent Americanism."
The lowest-priced man in the train-service must under-
stand the entire complicated theories of railroad operation
to a T. He may be the man on whom responsibility —
the responsibility for the safety of not one but many hu-
man lives — may suddenly be thrust. A gate-tender at
a highway crossing has not ordinarily a place of gravest
responsibility; yet in some least expected hour this hum-
blest employee of the operating department may hold the
fate of human life in the balancing of his steady hands.

Americans run the American railroads. For this great
service men must possess not only the mental capacity for
understanding the technique of operation, but the physical
strength to meet the stress of hard labor, and of every

THE FELLOWS OUT UPON THE LINE 245

sort of weather, and of long hours spent upon moving
trains. Moreover, there is a requirement of morals —
that a man must fully know and quite as fully accept the
responsibility for human life that is placed in his hands.
These things combined make that " latent Americanism "
of which we have just spoken; and the railroad that digs
deep into this mine of " latent Americanism " finds its ma-
terial, not in the great cities with their vast colonies of
foreigners, but on the farms of a broad, broad land. The
boy standing in the pasture sees the express train go skim-
ming past him from an unknown great world into another
unknown great world, and straightway he has the railroad
fever. He drives to the depot with the milk cans, and
there he comes in contact with the personnel of that link
of steel that stretches across the farm where he was born.
It is only a little time after that before he is applying for
work as a railroad man.

So it is that the railroad finds fine timber for its service.
It picks and chooses. For its choice it has the pick of
American timber, the ironwood of our national forests of
humanity. It gathers its army of men, inspects them care-
fully for physical, mental and moral requirements and then
it impresses upon them the necessity of good living, the
absolute necessity of deference to an established and rigid
system of discipline as a requirement in the successful han-
dling of the different transportation business.

Thus we have the railroad men as the best workers of
the nation. If you want proof of that, ask any of the
great mail-order concerns which class of business they pre-
fer and they will tell you without hesitation that it is the
railroad man. Come closer home and ask the merchants
of any community the same question. Their answer will
be the same. Rigid conditions, out-of-door life, sober
habits make desirable citizens out of this class of workers.
There are none better anywhere.

In the train service, the ordinary route of promotion is
through the freight service to the passenger. Thus, for

246 THE MODERN RAILROAD

the farmer's boy who hankers to sit in the cab of the
locomotive that hauls the Limited there is a long hard
path. Chances are that at the beginning the road fore-
man of engines will start him at odd chores, calling crews,
wiping engines, and the like, around some one of the big
roundhouses. He will work hard, but here he will begin
to absorb the romance of the line, the romance that, like
fog and engine smoke, lies around the engine house, thick
enough to cut. Perhaps after a while they will give him
a little authority and make him a hostler. The " hostler "
and the u stalls " in the roundhouses are quaint survivals
of the most primitive railroad days, when horses were
really motive power.

At odd times, night times perhaps, the boy will ride in
engine cabs and gradually acquire a knowledge of one
of these great machines such as no text-book would ever
give him. Then comes his first big opportunity. There
is a vacancy among the engine crews; the road foreman
of engines gives him a good report, and he begins to have
dealing with the train-master. He is made a fireman, and
he travels the division end to end, day in and day out.

Now he knows why the railroad requires physical tests
as well as tests of eyesight and of hearing. Even after
he has taken another step in advance and been promoted
to the passenger service (we will assume that ours is a
bright, ambitious boy), he will only find that his labors in
the engine-cab have been increased. It is no slight task,
firing a heavy locomotive over 100 or more miles of grade-
climbing, curve-rounding railroad. It is a task that fairly
calls for human arms of steel; for some firemen handle
some 17 tons of coal in a single run. The appetite of
that firebox is seemingly insatiable. There is hardly a
moment during the run that it is not clamoring to be fed,
and that the fireman is not hard at it there on the rocking
floor of the swaying tender, reaching from tender coal to
firebox door.

But the day does come, if he sticks hard at it, when he

THE FELLOWS OUT UPON THE LINE 247

becomes an engineer. He has learned the line well, during
his countless trips over it as fireman. He has come to
know every signal, every bridge, every station, every curve,
every grade, every place for slow, careful running, every
place for speeding, as thoroughly as ever river pilot
learned his course. There have been many times when he
has had to assume temporary charge of the engine. He
is a qualified man at least to sit in the right hand of
the cab, to have command over reverse lever and over
throttle.

His work is of a different sort already. The hard
physical labor is a thing of the past, most of the time he
sits at his work. But responsibility replaces physical
stress, and the farmer boy now realizes which of the two
is more wearing. Upon his judgment — instant judg-
ment time and time and time again — the fate of that
heavy train depends. After he has been promoted from
freight engineer to passenger engineer he has a train filled
with humanity, and he knows the difference. By day the
inclination of a single blade, by night the friendly welcome
or the harsh command of changeable lights must never
escape him. One slip, and after that —

The engineer prefers not to think of that. He prefers
to think of a safe trip, terminal to terminal, to think of
the long line covered, once again in safety, to think of
the station at the far end of the division, where a relief
engine and engineer will be in waiting to take the train
another stage in its long journey across the land, to think
of the home and family awaiting him. He is a big pas-
senger man now. When he gets to the end of the run,
there will be a crew to take his locomotive away to the
roundhouse. He will have a bit of a wash and in a few
minutes he will be bound through the station waiting-room,
well dressed, smoking a good fifteen-cent cigar, quite as
fine a type of American citizen as you might wish to see
anywhere. You would hardly recognize in this well-
dressed man of affairs, the keen-eyed, sound-bodied man in

248 THE MODERN RAILROAD

blue jeans who stood beside his engine, oil-can in hand, at
the far end of the division.

r

The same type holds true through the man in care of
the other parts of the trains. Take the brakeman — they
call him trainman nowadays in the passenger service. In
the old days this was a slouchy, somewhat slovenly dressed
individual of a self-acknowledged independence. Time
has changed him in thirty years. An increased respect
for the service has taken away from him his slouchiness;
a feeling that good work and hard work will take him
through the ranks, through a service as conductor, perhaps
to train-master, to superintendent, goodness knows how
much further, has replaced that bumptious independence.

He began as brakeman on a freight. There were two,
possibly three, of these men to the train, under command
of the conductor, back there in the caboose, and they were
supposed to distribute themselves pretty equally over the
top of the train. The forward brakeman would work
from the cab backward, the rear brakeman from the
caboose (he also probably calls it a "hack"), forward,
the remaining man when a third was assigned to the train,
having the middle. It was thought and confidently pre-
dicted that with the universal use of the air-brake to
freight equipment the days of clambering over the tops of
the cars to man the brakes were over. Brakemen twenty
years ago were dreaming of the day when they might sit in
a cab or caboose and have the difficult work of slacking or
the stopping of a i,5OO-ton train accomplished, through
the genius of mechanism, by a hand-turn of the engineer
upon an air-brake throttle. But what looked so well in
theory has not worked quite so well in practice. The rail-
roads have found the wear and tear on the air-brake
equipment, particularly with the steep grade lines and
heavy equipment, a tremendous expense. For the sake of
that and for the sake of still greater safety — following
the railroad rule to use each possible safety measure, one

VV HliX THE TRAIN COMES TO A WATER STATION THE FIREMAN GETS
OUT AND FILLS THE TANK "

A FREIGHT-CREW AND ITS " HACK

- H

w o

B «
o >

THE FELLOWS OUT UPON THE LINE 249

upon the other — the brakemen are still compelled to
keep to the top of the cars.

On a pleasant day this is a task that can give the aver-
age brakeman a sort of supreme contempt fo^ the man
whose work houses him within four walls. If the road
lies through a lovely country, if it pierces mountain ranges,
or follows the twisting course of a broad river, he may
feel a contempt, too, for the passenger who observes the
lovely scenes only through the narrow confines of a car
window. To him there is a broad horizon, and he would
be a poor sort of man indeed if he did not rise to the
inspiration of this environment.

There is quite another side of this in the winter. Let
wind and rain and then freezing weather come, and that
icy footpath over the top of the snaky train becomes the
most dangerous way in all Christendom. It consists of
only three narrow planks laid lengthwise of the train, and
between the cars there is a two-foot interval to be jumped.
Hand-rails of any sort are an impossibility, and the brake-
man now and then will receive a sharp slap in the face that
is not the slap of wind or of sleet, and he will fall flat
upon the car-roof or dodge to the ladders that run up be-
tween the cars. That slap was the slap of the " tickler,"
that gallows-like affair that stands guard before tunnels
and low bridges and gives crude warning to the man work-
ing upon the train roofs of a worse slap yet to come.

There are other dangers, not the least of these the pos-
sibility of open battle at any time of day or night with
one or more " hobos," tramps, or " yeggmen," who
seem to regard freight trains as complimentary transporta-
tion extended to them as a right, and train-crews as their
natural enemies. The list of railroad men who have lost
their lives because of these thugs is not a short one. It
is one of the many records of railroad heroism.

Still the brakeman has a far easier time of it than his
prototype of a generation or more back. The air-brake
is a big help. When a train breaks in two or three parts

250 THE MODERN RAILROAD

on a grade, the pulling out of the air-couplings automatic-
ally sets the brakes on every part, and if you do not know
what that means ask one of the old-timers. In the old
days of the hand-brakes the very worst of all freight ac-
cidents came when a section of a freight train without
any one aboard to set its brakes, broke loose and came
crashing down a hill into some helpless train. Ask the
old-timer about the hand-couplings and the terrific record
of maimed arms and bodies that they left. The modern
automatic couplings have been worth far more than their
cost to the railroads.

In the course of time and advancement the brakeman
leaves the freight and enters the passenger service. Now
he is called a trainman and is attired in a natty uniform.
He has to shave, to keep his hands clean, wear gloves
perhaps, and be a little more of a Chesterfield. He must
announce the stations in fairly intelligible tones, and be
prepared to answer pleasantly and accurately the thousand
and one foolish questions put to him by passengers.

As a conductor he will probably begin as Collins began,
in the freight service. When he comes to the passenger-
service there will be still more book-keeping to confront
him, and he will have to be a man of good mental attain-
ments to handle all the many, many varieties of local and
through tickets, mileage-books, passes, and other forms of
transportation contracts that come to him, to detect the
good from the bad, to throw out the counterfeits that are
constantly being offered to him. He will have to carry
quite a money account for cash affairs, and he knows that
mistakes will have to be paid out of his own pocket.

All this is only a phase of his business. He is respon-
sible for the care and safe conduct of his train, equally
responsible in this last respect with the engineer. He
also receives and signs for the train orders, and he is
required to keep in mind every detail of the train's
progress over the line. He will have his own assortment
of questions to answer at every stage of the journey, and

THE FELLOWS OUT UPON THE LINE 251

he will be expected to maintain the discipline of the rail-
road upon its trains. That may mean in one instance
the ejectment of a passenger who refuses to pay his fare,
and still he must not involve the road in any big damage
suit; or in another, the subjugation of some gang of
drunken loafers. The real wonder of it is that so many
conductors come as near as they do to the Chesterfieldian
standards.

In the forward part of the train are still other members
of its crew, some of them possibly who are not paid by
the railroad, but who are indirectly of its service. Among
these last may be classed the mail clerks, who are dis-
tinctly employees of the Federal Government, and the
messengers of the various express companies. If the road
is small and the train unimportant, these workers may be
grouped with the baggagemen in the baggage-car. If the
train is still less important the baggageman may assume
part of the functions of mail clerk and express messenger.
If so, he is apt to have his own hands full. The mere
manual exercise of stacking a 6o-foot baggage-car from
floor to ceiling with heavy trunks (and the commercial
travellers and theatrical folk do carry heavy trunks) is
no slight matter. But that is not all. The trunk put off
at the wrong place or the trunk that is not put off at all
is apt to make the railroad an enemy for life and the
baggageman is another one of the many in the service
who are permitted to make no mistakes.

When he has United States mail-sacks and a stack of
express packages to handle, his troubles only multiply.
His book-keeping increases prodigiously, and his temper
undergoes a sharper strain. Give him all these, then a
couple of fighting Boston terriers, which must, because of
one of the many minor regulations of railroad passenger
traffic, ride in the baggage-car — a cold and draughty
car — and you will no longer wonder why the baggage-
man has a streak of ill-temper at times. His office is

25 2 THE MODERN RAILROAD

certainly no sinecure, neither is he in the direct path of
advancement like his co-workers, the fireman and the
brakeman.

These train-workers who are so little seen by the travel-
ling public — baggagemen, mail clerks and express mes-
sengers alike, ride in the most hazardous part of the
equipment, the extreme forward cars of the train. Read
the list of train accidents, involving loss of life, and in
nine cases out of ten you will find that these have headed
the list of killed or injured. There work is hard, their
hours long, their pay modest. They form a silent brigade
of the industrial army that is always close to the firing
line.

There remains in the operating service a great branch
of the army that does not scurry up and down the line.
Some of these men are at lonely outposts, forlorn towers
hidden at the edge of the forest or set out upon the plain,
where a desolate man guards a cluster of switch levers
and hardly knows of the outer world, save through the
clicking of his telegraph key or the rush of the trains
passing below his perch. He knows each of these. If
his is a junction tower or a point where two busy lines
of track intersect or cross one another, it is his duty to set
the proper switches and their governing signals.

It seems a simple enough thing, and it is. But even
the simple things in railroading must be executed with
extreme care. If the towerman set those switches and
signals 319 times in the course of a day, they must be
set absolutely correct 319 times. There can be no slur-
ring in this work.

Those men in the towers have their own records of
bravery. They are the sentinels of the railroad, and
faithful sentinels they are. The lonely tower, like so
many other scenes of railroad activity, gives long opportu-
nity for thought and meditation; and so it is not so
strange, after all, that one of them has recently given the

THE FELLOWS OUT UPON THE LINE 253

country a most distinguished essayist upon national rail-
road conditions.

There are even humbler positions in the operating serv-
ice, each of them demanding a fine loyalty and a fair
measure of ability. Even the young boy who draws a
baggage-truck knows that the path of advancement starts
at his very feet; and the humble track-walker feels that
a good part of the railroad safety and the railroad re-
sponsibility rests upon his broad shoulders. His is also
a forlorn task, as he trudges back and forth over a sec-
tion of line, hammer and wrench in hand, looking for the
broken rail or other defect, slight in itself, but capable of
infinite harm.

By day his task is dreary and arduous enough. By
night it is far more so. With his lantern in hand he must
patrol the line faithfully, even if the wind howl about him
and the snow come to block his progress. The passengers
in the fast express trains that whirl past him and who
see, if they see anything at all without, only a blotch of
a tiny spark of light, do not know that it is a part of their
protection. There is a deal of " behind the scenes " in
railroad operation.

And so it goes. There are hundreds of hand-switch-
men who make the safe path for the train and upon each
of them hangs responsibility. It is a trite saying that
each of them knows that, and that each lives up to the
full measure of his responsibility.

The station-agent, even in the smallest towns, has a less
lonely time. He comes in contact with the outside world,
and ofttimes his life goes quite to the other extreme. A
local train may be due within three minutes, and here
comes Aunt Mary Clark, delayed until the train is al-
ready whistling the station stop. Aunt Mary is deaf and
it takes her some time to buy her ticket and to ask end-
less questions which must bring an endless string of an-
swers. At that very moment the agent's telegraph

254 THE MODERN RAILROAD

sounder begins to call him. A message, upon which the
safety of the operation of that train depends, is being
poured into his ear, and he cannot afford to miss a single
click of that instrument; the responsibility will be his if
anything goes wrong in its delivery. On top of all this
some commercial traveller may be clamoring for the
checking of his trunk. The representative of the railroad
in the small town has to keep his wits about him in such
times.

Of course, if the town is of considerable size he may
have a staff about him. In such a case, he may have a
baggage-room with baggageman and baggage-handlers
installed; he may have assistants to mind the telegraph
instrument and to sell tickets, other assistants to look after
the freight. He may even attain to the dignity of a sta-
tion master in uniform or else have such a dignitary re-
porting to him.

But in the majority of railroad stations throughout the
United States the station-agent is the staff; he is lucky if
he has a man to " spell " him in his " off " hours. He
probably is the agent of the express company in addition,
and probably the agent of the telegraph company, too,
which, by arrangement with the railroad, transacts a
general commercial business over its wires. There are
frequent instances when the local postoffice is situated
within the depot and the agent proves the versatility of
his profession by acting as postmaster, too. He serves
many masters, as you can see, and not all of these are
outside of the railroad. He is not only answerable to the
superintendent, in almost every case he is freight-agent,
too, making out the bills of lading and figuring the com-
plicated rate sheet. For this part of his work he is under
the control of the general freight-agent. The general
passenger-agent is also his superior officer. To him he
must account accurately for his ticket sales, and that is
not always a very easy matter. The question of passen-
ger rates is a fairly complicated one.

THE FELLOWS OUT UPON THE LINE 255

Still, the agent must not only be able to figure the rate
to South Paris, Me., or to Oshkosh, Wis., within two min-
utes, but he must make out a long and correct ticket within
that time, while the railroad's patron demands informa-
tion about some branch line connection on another system
a thousand miles away. The country station-agent earns
every cent of his humble salary. He works long hours;
and then occasionally one of the railroad's travelling rep-
resentatives will drop in upon him and casually suggest
that in his leisure time he might get out and solicit a little
business for the company!

There is not much loafing at the little yellow depot in
the country. Sometimes a group of trainmen from some
freight awaiting orders will gather there to swap stories
and the keen wit of the railroad. These are the excep-
tions. The most times are the times of long, hard grind,
work, work, work like the men out upon the trains. This
railroad army is truly the army of hard work. It was
gathered for labor.

Yet the station-agent leaning over his telegraph instru-
ment in the bay of his office, and watching the Limited
scurry by the little depot, and seeing the president's big
and gay private car hitched on behind, knows that that
very executive in charge of many miles of railroad and
thousands of men, came from another little country depot
like this. The time may yet come when he himself will
have a private car and a deal of authority. There is a
great goal for every man in the railroad service.

CHAPTER XVI

KEEPING THE LINE OPEN

THE WRECKING TRAIN AND ITS SUPPLIES — FLOODS DAMMED BY AN
EMBANKMENT — RIGHT OF WAY ALWAYS GIVEN TO THE WRECKING-
TRAIN — EXPEDITIOUS WORK IN REPAIRING THE TRACK — COLLAPSE OF
THE ROOF OF A TUNNEL — TELEGRAPH CRIPPLED BY STORMS — WINTER
STORMS THE SEVEREST TEST — TRAINS IN QUICK SUCCESSION HELP
TO KEEP THE LINE OPEN IN SNOWSTORMS — THE ROTARY PLOUGH.

A CUB reporter shouldered his way into a railroad
superintendent's office. Outside, a late winter's
storm howled around the terminal; the morning was nip-
ping cold, the air curtained with myriad snow-flakes, a
great railroad was making a desperate fight against the
mighty forces of nature.

" My city editor wants to know what you folks are do-
ing to get the line open," demanded the reporter.

The big superintendent swung in his swivel chair and
faced him. It was a place where angels might well have
feared to tread — a place surcharged with the electricity
of fight. The superintendent's mind was filled with the
almost infinite detail of the fight, but he liked the cub re-
porter and greeted him with a smile.

' You can tell your city editor," he replied slowly,
" that it is as much as a man's job here is worth for him
to think that the line is going to be opened. I 'd fire
him if he as much as thought that it was ever closed. We
don't die. We fight. It 's a hard storm, sonny, but we
make muscle in storms like this. We don't get the line
open, we are keeping the line open. D 'ye see ? "

In that the big superintendent had sounded one of the
biggest principles of railroad operation.

The line must be kept open. That slender trail of

256

KEEPING THE LINE OPEN 257

two rails, stretching straight across the open land and
writhing and twisting through the high hills, is a living
organism. The railroad is no mere inanimate organiza-
tion, like a store, for instance. It is a right-hand of the
nation's life; it is life. The railroad is like a great living
thing, its many arms reaching long distances back into the
land. You cannot cut off the living arm and then bring
it back to pulsing life.

Just so the railroad arm cannot be severed — the line
must be kept open. Strange things may come to pass:
the right-of-way may be littered with the wreckage of
trains, brought together through a defect in the physical
machine of the human; unexpected floods of traffic may
seek to overwhelm the outlet; in spring the power and
might of flood may descend upon it; winter's storms may
seek to paralyze it; still, always the railroad must be kept
open.

" We can't lie down," the superintendent explained to
the cub reporter. " We Ve got to get the traffic through.
Do you know what it would mean if we were to follow
the path of least resistance to-day — to let this storm get
the best of us? Let me give you an idea of just one
thing. There 's food coming in here in trainload lots
every night — fresh meat, fresh vegetables, fresh milk.
Folks would go hungry if we were to say * We can't,
this storm is a gee-whilicker. We give up.J '

To keep the line open, the railroad affords every sort
of protective device; it trains men for especial duties.

Take the matter of wrecks, for instance. The rail-
roader does not like to think of wrecks, but his methods
for removing them must be prompt and thorough: the
line must be kept open. Each year sees equipment in-
creasing in size and weight, and each increase brings
additional problems in handling wrecked cars and engines.

Twenty years ago, the wrecking-equipment of most of
the big roads was comparatively simple. It was gener-
ally built in the railroad's own shops. To-day 6o-ton

258 THE MODERN RAILROAD

cars and loo-ton locomotives require something of a
wrecking crane or derrick to lift them from the right-of-
way; and the wrecking-train is a device thought out and
built by specialists.

These wrecking-trains are the emergency arms of rail-
road operation. They stand, like the apparatus of a city
fire department, at every important terminal or division
operating plant, awaiting summons to action. You may
see the wrecking-train at every big yard, waiting on a
siding which has quick access to the main-line tracks. It
consists of from four to six cars — a tool-car with all sorts
of wrecking-devices — replacers, blocks and tackle, extra
small parts of car-trucks for emergency repairs, and the
like. There are more of these extra parts — axles and
wheels and four-wheel trucks on a " flat " that is fastened
to the tool-car; and if this wrecking-train has a couple
of miles of heavy traffic line to serve, there may be three
or four of the " flats " with tools and spare equipment.
You cannot have too many of those in a big wreck. The
wrecking-train is sure to have a crane — a big arm of
steel, compressed to come within the slim clearances of
bridges and of tunnels, but capable of reaching down and
tugging at a loo-ton locomotive with almost no effort
whatsoever. And quite as important as the crane is the
cook-car — generally some old-time coach or sleeper de-
scended to humble service on the road. The cook-car has
a rough berth and a kitchen ; and you may be mighty sure
that there is a good griddle artist upon it. You cannot
expect a wrecking-gang to get into a twenty- four hour job
without being pretty constantly provisioned while it is at
work.

Only a little while ago, one of the officers of an Eastern
trunk-line railroad and a member of one of the State
railroad commissions were coming toward New York.
The trip was in the nature of an inspection on the part
of the State official, but as a matter of comfort and con-
venience to the two men, it was made upon the former's

KEEPING THE LINE OPEN 259

private car. The comfort and convenience suddenly
ceased while the two were still nearly 300 miles away from
the seaboard. The road rested there for many miles in
heavy country; its rails found their curving way in the
crevices between high hills. It had rained steadily for a
fortnight; the little mountain brooks were raging mill-
races. In the low flatlands of one deep valley lakes were
being formed. There were long stretches where the four
rails of the double-tracked trunk-line railroad lost them-
selves under the glassy surface of the waters. Up and
down the valley trains were standing helpless between
those lakes, their passengers fuming at the delay. Fast
freights stood axle-deep in water ; their title, for that mo-
ment, was an occasion for joyous humor. The comfort-
able, convenient trip of the railroad operating man and
the railroad commissioner was at an end.

An embankment that the railroad had built for a
branch down the valley was blocking the waters, and
orders had come from New York to dynamite out that
embankment. It would cost the railroad nearly $50,000
to destroy that half-mile of track but it might save the
valley millions. There had been no hesitation on the part
of the " old man " — the road's tried executive. That is
a phase of American railroading not often brought to
light.

Orders came that the engine hauling the " special " of
the operating man and the railroad commissioner was to
be taken for a work-train down at that damming embank-
ment. That 's the way with railroading. When the
clattering telegraph keys sound the note of trouble, even
that mighty soul, the chairman of the board, may find
himself " laid out " at some jerkwater junction, while
his pet engine goes into service with a wrecking-train.
But the chairman of the board, whose time is real money,
offers no protest. He knows that to block the main line
costs his road $250 a minute for the first 60 minutes;
that that figure doubles and trebles in the second hour;

266 THE MODERN RAILROAD

in the third, his auditors may check off $1,000 a minute,
at the least, as the cost of a blocked railroad. No won-
der that they insist that it is " keeping the line open."

Before the engine of that special was cut off to go
scurrying down to the embankment where the skilled
workmen were making preparations to dynamite away
a half-mile of track, the operating man lifted his hand.
He had, like any trained railroader, been listening to the
clattering telegraph key.

" They Ve come away without their cook — those
wreckers/' he told the gentleman who regulated public
utilities. " I think I '11 go down with the * eats.'
There 's an old hotel across from the railroad track down
at the next station, and the landlord, Uncle Dan Hortley,
will fix me up."

" I '11 go with you," said the State official. " I want
to get my finger in the pie."

So it came to pass that they both went, the private car
stopping at the little hotel long enough to get in an over-
whelming supply of bread and ham. As they whizzed
through the scene of trouble all hands joined at making
sandwiches.

" Butter them on both sides," said the railroad commis-
sioner.

" They 're better with the butter on one side," insisted
the operating man.

The commissioner was not used to back-talk from rail-
roaders, no matter how high their office, and he stuck to
his point.

" Both sides," he insisted.

" One side only," reported the big operating man.

;< The commission has closed its hearing and issues an
order for both sides."

;t The railroad appeals."

But the commission won — it almost always does —
and the men down at the embankment ate their sand-
wiches with a double thickness of butter.

KEEPING THE LINE OPEN 261

Sometimes a refrigerator train comes under the skilled
hands of the wreckers, and the cook-car may have more
than an abundance of good material right at hand. Beef,
chickens, milk — all manner of edibles have been spilled
like waste along the right-of-way, and there have been
no regrets among the men of the wrecking-boss's crew.
Once, a speeding cook-car hurrying to the relief of the
laborers upon a wrecked meat-train that had tried to go
tangent to a mountain curve, brought reinforcements in
the form of ham sandwiches. The wreckers were pretty
hungry, but it needed all their hunger to tackle those sand-
wiches. The meat-train had been filled with ham ; it had
caught fire. Somehow, three or four hours of work-
hauling out smoked hams gave no appetite for sandwiches
of the same sort.

On main-line divisions, where traffic runs exceeding
heavy, a locomotive stands, steam-up, with the four cars of
the wrecking-train. Even on side-line divisions the call
for the wreckers will bring the fastest and best engine out
of the roundhouse, no matter what her train assignment
may be. Things on the railroad stand aside for the
wrecker. Limiteds may paw their nervous heels upon sid-
ings while she goes skimming up the line — all time-
table rights are hers from the moment that she goes into
service.

A wire from the seat of trouble brings her into service.

" Second Four-twelve in ditch at Grey's Bridge.
Broken rail. Engine and two cars derailed. Both tracks
blocked. About four killed and injured."

That wire has itself had the right-of-way. When
" W-K, W-K, W-K " comes persistently calling over a
railroad wire, every key closes. ;' W-K " is the
" C-Q-D " of railroading. It is as much as any opera-
tor's job is worth, to ignore it.

When a despatch of the sort just cited comes into head-
quarters, things start to move. The despatcher, if he is

262 THE MODERN RAILROAD

after the manner of most despatchers, turns to his tele-
phone and calls the yardmaster to order out the wreck-
ing-crew. There is no more excitement in his voice than
if he were ordering out any ordinary sort of special. He
rings off quickly, calls up in turn the superintendent, train-
master, perhaps the division engineer, the claim depart-
ment. If there is a fatality list — the wreck one of those
fearful things that sometimes show themselves upon the
front pages of the newspapers — he will get the hospitals
and the doctors. The list of surgeons who are allied to
the railroad in every town on the division hangs above
the despatched desk.

He may run a special hospital train with doctors and
nurses and emergency equipment. On one memorable
occasion the hospital train was on its way out upon the
main line before the wreck had been reported over the
wire. The despatcher saw that the hospital special had a
clear track; he gave a multitude of directions as to its
running, with the quick clear word of a self-possessed man
— then turned and shot himself dead. He had miscal-
culated: the human machine sometimes does. He knew
that he had sent the two crack-a-jack trains on that single-
track division, curling its way among the mountains, into
each other at full speed. No need for him to know ex-
actly where they met.

But even if the wreck is no holocaust; if it is one of
those minor smashes that are bound to come now and then
on the best of lines, he must keep his head. As he caught
up his telephone to get orders to that wrecking-boss out
at the roundhouse, his assistant took instant notice of the
wreck, first notifying the stations on either side of the
accident to set danger-signals against all trains. After
that, while the despatcher himself was busied with de-
tails, the assistant arranged to handle all traffic. If both
tracks were blocked, there were plans to be instantly made
to forward the fast through trains by detouring them over
other lines of railroad. The assistant despatcher, wish-

THE WRECKING TRAIN READY TO START OUT FROM THE YARD

TWO OF THESE GREAT CRANES CAN GRAB. A WOUNDED MOGUL
LOCOMOTIVE AND PUT HER OUT OF THE WAY "

KEEPING THE LINE OPEN 263

ing to know how long he could afford to hold his heavy
traffic (remember that the line must always be kept open) ,
wired the nearest station for additional details. Most of
all he wanted to know how long the tracks would be
blocked. Perhaps before he got his wire through there
came a second message from the wreck, giving more facts
about it. By means of code, great detail can be given
in a short wire; headquarters gets a clear understanding
of the trouble. After that the wire chatters constantly;
there are a thousand orders to be given, a thousand details
to be arranged.

While the first of these wires are beginning to swing
back and forth the despatcher will hear the wrecking-
train, pulled by the neatest and swiftest bit of motive
power from their big roundhouse, go scurrying by down
the line. The road is cleared. Everything stands aside,
and for weeks after, the stove committee in every round-
house on the division will be telling how she made the
run.

They don't talk about the run when they get to the
accident. They pile off the train and get to work quickly.
Every man is a trained wreck-worker, as a fireman is
trained to his peculiar business. In such hours as they
are not out on the road, the wreckers are repairers of cars.
It keeps them busy during the long seasons when the line
is lucky and has no wrecks, and it gives them the skill
with which to tackle the difficult problems that confront
them after a smash. By day these men — eight or ten or
twelve of them to a crew — work in the yard close to the
waiting wrecking-train ; by night the telephone at the head
of the bed of each man will bring him quickly to the
near-by yard.

"How do you handle a wreck?" we once asked an
old-time wrecking-boss, a man grown gray in keeping his
line open.

" I don't know," was his frank response. " I Ve prob-
ably handled a thousand wrecks — perhaps more — but

264 THE MODERN RAILROAD

I have yet to see two that were the same. Different cases
demand different treatments. Any surgeon will tell you
that; and you know," this with a bit of a laugh, " we are
the surgeons of the steel highway.

" We Ve only one rule that is absolute, and that rule
is to take care of the folks who are hurt in the first place,
and in the second place to get the line open. If it is
multiple-track line — two or three or four tracks in oper-
ation — and the muss is sprawled over the entire right-
of-way we get a through track working in shortest inter-
val. When we can wire " number two open " or whatever
it is, the despatcher down at headquarters will catch the
stations where there are crossovers and he '11 be handling
his first-class traffic of all sorts past us while we '11 still be
stocking the arm of the old bill crane down into the
smash."

The arm of that crane can lift a freight-car — if there
is enough freight-car left to lift — off the rails and into
the ditch in almost a twinkling. Two of these great
cranes can grab a wounded mogul locomotive and put her
out of the way. The wrecking-trains on a first-class road
are kept along the line in profusion. Each is supposed
to cover a territory of 100 miles or so in every direction
from headquarters, and a sizable smash will bring two
or more to work in unison. Two wrecking-cranes work-
ing into the remnants of a head-on collision from each
direction can accomplish marvels. They will come to-
gether finally at the chief test of their strength — the
point where two locomotives have firmly locked horns in
dying embrace. That is a point that finds the nerve and
ability of every wrecking-boss.

But all these wrecking-bosses have nerve and ability.
They could not hold their jobs without both. They know
when equipment — cars that might be made as good as
new in the shops — must be burned like driftwood, and
when the burning of a wreck would be criminal waste.
That requires judgment — judgment to determine whether

KEEPING THE LINE OPEN 265

it is cheaper to burn than to lose valuable time; to de-
lay traffic on a main-line division or to let the traffic on
a less important side-line division wait for a little longer
time. Judgment is part of a wrecking-boss's equipment.
His superintendent knows that ; and when the super grows
nervous and gets down to the wreck himself, although he
knows that he is ranking officer in charge of the work he
shows good judgment, on his own part, in letting the
wrecking-boss give all orders. That makes for skill, it
makes for speed. If the wrecking-boss is not doing good
work the superintendent can fire him to-morrow, or (what
is far more usual) find him an easier berth somewhere
on the division.

There are times when the work-train must be sum-
moned, when laborers by the dozen must get to work to
build new track. A wash-out may require a half-mile
of track to be laid in a night, and the railroad can do it.
A young man wrote a very able story for The Saturday
Evening Post a few months ago, in which he told how an
emergency track was laid across a highway bridge and a
test fast-freight put through on schedule. That feat was
but one of the many ordinary tasks that come in the life-
time of every operating man.

Clearing a wreck may be a tedious business.

There is a deep sink on the parade-ground of the
Military Academy at West Point that is a monument to
the nastiest railroad wreck from the point of view of
time, that the Eastern railroaders have ever known.
Just under that parade-ground the West Shore Railroad
passes through a long tunnel. On an October night more
than twenty years ago, the Chicago & St. Louis Express
of that railroad was slowly poking through that bore,
when a portion of the roof of the tunnel collapsed. It
buried itself between the rear part of the baggage-car and
the forward part of the express-car and the train came
to an abrupt stop.

Engineer William Morse saw in an instant the damage

266 THE MODERN RAILROAD

that had been done. He cut loose from that penned
baggage-car and made record speed up the line to Corn-
wall, the nearest station. From there he a sent a wire
post-haste to the despatcher up at Kingston, then the head-
quarters of the line.

" Train caught by collapse of West Point tunnel/' that
despatch read in part. " Only engineer and fireman es-
caped."

They began to get their hospital train ready at Kings-
ton, notified Newburg to get all the doctors in sight and
hurry them on a special to West Point. The chief
despatcher went through the worst quarter of an hour
of his life. He began to call Weehawken, the southern
terminal of the line. Weehawken wires were all busy,
and he could not cut in there.

Weehawken wires were getting reports from Conductor
Sam Brown of the Chicago & St. Louis Express, who had
come running out of the tunnel to the West Point depot.

" Wire headquarters," he shouted to the agent, " that
we Ve run into an avalanche. Morse and his fireman are
crushed under the tunnel roof."

And they began to get the wreckers busy down at
Weehawken.

When the chief despatcher up at Kingston finally got
Weehawken, they told him about Sam Morse's fate.
The truth of the thing came to him in an instant. He
laughed hysterically, and his assistant jumped up. The
despatcher's bad quarter of an hour was over. He
jumped to his telephone, caught the yardmaster with it.

u We won't need that hospital train," he said.
" There is n't a soul hurt."

And there was not. But there remained the worst rail-
road block on record. It was three months before they
pulled the baggage-car out of that tunnel, and then they
had to use dynamite. After that it was found necessary
to line the entire bore with solid masonry. That was

KEEPING THE LINE OPEN 267

an accident that might not have been so lucky on repeti-
tion.

Enough of wrecks. They are not the only test when
it comes to keeping the line open. Sometimes a crippled
telegraph service may be quite as effective. Out on the
Pennsylvania lines west of Pittsburgh a couple of years
ago a severe wind and sleet storm levelled more than 40
miles of telegraph poles, in most cases dropping them
across main-line tracks in the dark. A few months later
— the never-to-be-forgotten inauguration day of Presi-
dent Taft — a similar storm did similar work on the lines
leading to Washington. Thousands of militiamen and
excursionists never reached the inauguration at all. In
both storms the resources of a great railroad were well
tested.

An old-time Erie man remembers wire troubles of a
different sort. It was in his salad days, when he was
serving as assistant superintendent over the Meadville, in
the western part of Pennsylvania. They had but one
telegraph wire for railroad purposes on the division then,
and one night it " grounded.'* Keys were silent, the
road might as well have had no wire at all.

The assistant superintendent started that evening with
two linemen on a hand-car to find that " ground." They
Went miles from Meadville, and every test showed the
wire working. Finally they came to a deserted little
depot at a cross-roads and the railroader lifting his lantern
high against the window verified his suspicions: the care-
less agent had gone home and left his key open. The
superintendent broke open the window, climbed in, re-
moved the telegraph set, placed it in his overcoat pocket
and closed the circuit. He knew that he would hear from
the agent on the morrow. He did. Word came by
tedious train mail, a formal report on the road's yellow
stationery.

268 THE MODERN RAILROAD

" Station at A burglarized last evening," that

formal report read, " and agent's telegraph set, best
pants, and ten dollars taken."

The real test of keeping the line open comes when
winter descends upon the land, when the heaviest freight
traffic of the year comes, together with those forces of
nature that sweep off the summer joys of railroading.
The mighty battles of the western transcontinental with
the snows of the Rockies have long been known, their miles
of snow-sheds making safe crawling bores for through
trains under the snow-banks, and the avalanches of the
mountain-sides are as familiar to the tourist as the Great
Salt Lake or the wonders of the Yellowstone. Only a
few months ago the newspapers told the story of how a
passenger train, stalled at the entrance of a Washington
tunnel, had been carried by an avalanche down a great
cliff. Every railroader, east and west, knows full well
the hazard of mountain line in the depths of a treacher-
ous winter.

There is a snow-belt extending around the south edge
of the Great Lakes that annually gives the Eastern rail-
road men a good opportunity to sympathize with the
Westerners. Long years ago a little railroad reaching
north in this belt from the main line of the New York
Central became discouraged in the all but hopeless task
of keeping its line open. It had been a hard enough
battle to find the rails of its main line from Rome to Wat-
ertown through one blizzard crowding upon the heels of
another. There had been ten days when Watertown was
entirely cut off from the world to the south of it. But
that little railroad owed some obligations to its chief
town, and it kept at its brave efforts although every night
the fresh wind blowing down from the Canadas across
Lake Ontario filled the long miles of railroad cuts, and
nightly erased all trace of rails. But there was a branch
from Watertown to Cape Vincent run at a dead loss

KEEPING THE LINE OPEN 269

throughout the entire winter, and in that hard winter the
railroad gave up the branch, and hired a liveryman to
take the mails in his cutter over the country drifts. It
was one of the few instances on record of a railroad giving
up the fight.

After the railroad had been abandoned a fortnight a del-
egation of citizens from Cape Vincent drove to Watertown
and there confronted H. M. Britton, the general manager
of the line. They made their little speeches, and those
were pretty hot little speeches — hot enough to have
melted away one good-sized drift.

" When are you going to cart that snow off our line? "
finally demanded the spokesman of the Cape Vincent
folk.

Britton looked at the delegation coolly, and lighted a
fresh cigar.

:' I 'm going to let the man that put it there," he said
slowly, " take it away."

And he did. It was thirty-two days before a railroad
engine entered Cape Vincent from the time that the last
one left it.

In recent years, that nasty stretch of railroad line has
kept the railroaders still busy. Within the decade it was
blocked for six long days, while a force of snow-fighters
and a battery of ploughs forced their way into the drifts.
And while the superintendent up at Watertown grew nerv-
ous, then desperate, there came the worst blow of all:
the telegraph wire no longer brought news from the
front.

Afterwards that super knew the reason why. His
train-master was at the front with ploughs and the hungry,
tired, straggling men. The train-master was nervous, too,
wearied explaining to his boss. He remembered Dewey
at Manila, and he cut the cable! He lost sight of the
outer world for long hours, for days, for nights, until that
January evening when he brought his battered snow-fight-
ing force triumphant into Richland Junction.

27o THE MODERN RAILROAD

When a big road whose rails rest through a snow belt
finds the winter clouds blackening, it puts on its fighting
armor. Every man at headquarters sticks by his desk.
The superintendent will get bulletins from each terminal
and important yard every hour, perhaps oftener. Those
bulletins will give him exact information — the amount of
motive-power ready at each roundhouse, freight conges-
tion, if any, amount and direction of wind, cloud and
snow conditions.

In other days the signal for an oncoming storm was
followed by quick orders from headquarters to pull off the
snow-freights. Traffic was quickly cut down to passenger
and perishable-freight trains, and, if the blizzard grew
bad enough, the perishable-freights were run in upon the
sidings. The railroad concentrated its motive-power upon
the passenger trains and the ploughs. Nowadays they do
it better. Not that the old fellows of the last generation
were anything less than prize railroaders, for remember
they did not have the locomotives in those days that even
side-line divisions possess in these.

So to-day the superintendent can growl at the first of his
men who even hints that a scheduled train of any class be
sent upon a siding.

" We keep the traffic moving," said one of the biggest
the other day. " We keep the line open. A train every
thirty minutes over our rails will do more toward keeping
them usable than a rotary going over them after a night's
inaction.

" So when she begins to blizz, we just fall back on our
roundhouses, that 's all. We cut our local freights down
to 1500 tons, then to 1200, 900, 600, rather than send
them into shelter. We tackle our through freights in a
like proportion and while we are cutting off cars, we are
adding power. Everything that goes out of this yard will
be double-headed as long as there is danger in the air.
There will be two engines to a passenger-train and ahead
of each a rotary, with two or three locomotives to push

KEEPING THE LINE OPEN 271

her. You see the value of reserve motive-power, don't
you? Why we have half-a-dozen extra engines trying
to gather rust over there in the roundhouse. They 're
worth their weight in gold in a pinch of this sort, though
when they 're done with a week of snow fighting, they 're
fit candidates for the shops."

A rotary plough has no powers of self-propulsion, but
the mighty engine within her heart, driving the shaft of
her great cutting-wheel has the power of three locomotives.
That cutting-wheel approximates the width of a single-
track in diameter. It will bore into a solidly packed drift,
twelve or sixteen feet in height, suck in a great volume of
snow, and then throw it — as a fire engine throws water
— through a nozzle 60 to 100 feet to the right or left
of the line. The nozzle is close to three feet in diameter,
and the stream that it throws will bury a small barn. The
man who sits in the lookout of the rotary controls the
nozzle, changes it from side to side so as to avoid build-
ings.

These rotaries are giants. Where the great flange or
wing ploughs — the ordinary snow-fighting artillery of a
railroad — fail, they come into service. Theirs is ever
a mighty task to perform. We have seen a rotary spend
sixty minutes in going sixty feet through a heavy drift, a
drift three miles long and twenty deep. Snow can drift,
and wet snow can pack, pack until you almost begin to
think of dynamite as a resource.

Three days of such snow-fighting would completely
weary the ordinary man. Up in the snow-belts, they are
likely to get a hard storm every week from December to
March, and that atop of the heaviest traffic of the year.
It is the sort of fighting that marks the fine-grained timber
of a man; that sends him down to headquarters in some
metropolitan city along the seaboard, to fight the weight-
ier battles of traffic and of operation, which are
unending within and between the mighty railroads of
America.

272 THE MODERN RAILROAD

Sometimes the battle to keep the line open is fought
close to a busy terminal. Here, before you, once again,
is the division superintendent of one of the great lines en-
tering Jersey City. Let him tell you of the nasty storm
on Christmas night last, a storm that laid low all street
transportation in every city along the North Atlantic sea-
board. He will tell you how it was the first Christmas
that he had spent with his family in seven years ; the first
holiday in three. He lives in a little suburban city within
the 2O-mile radius of New York City Hall, and in his bed-
room a telegraph sounder, connected with the division's
main wire, clicks in the early morning and late at night.

Over that wire on Christmas night last, the superinten-
dent gave orders. There was snow in the air at dusk when
they finished their late afternoon dinner; by eight o'clock
he had ordered the flanges (ploughs) on all his regular
road engines. Along the entire line orders had gone to
keep a sharp lookout for trouble. The superintendent
turned into bed at ten o'clock, hoping for a clear winter's
sky in the morning.

He turned into bed but not into sleep. He had cut out
his telegraph wire for the night but a telephone message
from the agent down at the depot in the suburban city
made him sit up wide awake. The storm was gaining.
They were beginning to get trouble reports down at head-
quarters. The superintendent turned out of bed and be-
gan dressing. He cut in on the telegraph wire and began
giving orders.

He caught his train-master at the neighboring town and
told him to meet him at 495, the last train into Jersey
City that evening. He turned from the telegraph to the
telephone and ordered the local livery man to get up to his
house and take him down to the 1 1 142. He called the
depot agent to hold that 1 1 142 until he arrived.

When that superintendent came puffing into his office in
the Jersey City terminal it was one o'clock of a blizzardy
Sabbath morn. He dropped into a chair beside his chief

THE DESPATCHER MAY HAVE COME FROM SOME LONELY COUNTRY

STATION "

' THE SUPERINTENDENT IS NOT ABOVE GETTING OUT AND BOSSING
THE WRECKING-GANG ONCE IN A GREAT WHILE "

KEEPING THE LINE OPEN 273

despatcher and took the entire situation in hand. Things
looked pretty bad from every point of view. From up
in the foothills came reports of discouraging nature, trains
were losing time, they were having added trouble every
hour in handling switches and cross-overs. At the ter-
minal the switches were a most prolific source of annoy-
ance. The intricacy of the interlocking system was being
bothered by ice freezing about its exposed working parts.

The superintendent was perplexed, but he did not show
it. He kept lighting cigars and throwing them away half-
smoked. And all the while he was sending orders over
his wire. If a narrow strand of steel, stretching for miles
through darkness and through storm could carry infectious
courage, that wire carried the superintendent's courage out
to every far corner of his division through those early
hours.

" Keep at it," was the tenor of his message. " Keep
everlastingly at it."

And between times he was planning how to help them
to keep everlastingly at it. Men were summoned to report
Sunday morning at the shops — they might need to make
some quick repairs, and it is a matter of record on that
division that a locomotive has been torn apart, entirely
overhauled and placed in service again in twenty-four
hours — others were ordered to stand by important
switches against breakdowns in the interlocking.

There were special problems in plenty to be considered,
a new one arising every hour. One of them will suffice to
show the measure of that superintendent's problem that
night.

Up in a narrow pass between overhanging hills a much-
delayed local, with a light road-engine, was still struggling
to get the Christmas celebrators home. It was a hard
proposition; and just a block back of the suburban train
was chafing the midnight express through to Chicago —
one of the road's best trains. The superintendent saw
in an instant that his main line stood in imminent danger

18

274 THE MODERN RAILROAD

of being blocked. He caught Middleport, the station
ahead of the struggling local, and ordered it side-tracked
there for a moment.

" I want to get that midnight with her big engine ahead
from there," he explained to his despatcher.

But the towerman at Middleport said that he could not
move the siding-switch there; it was packed in with ice
and snow.

" Tell him to get a pick-axe and shovel and get in at it,"
said the superintendent.

" He says that it 's 20° below up there; they Ve swiped
his shovel, and he has n't anything but a broom," the
despatcher returned.

" A broom ! Tell him a broom 's a God-send. He
can sweep with the one end and pick with the other."

Eight times that towerman tried there in the midst
of the storm to open that switch and eight times he re-
ported failure. Eight times the superintendent kept at
him with his kind persistence, and the ninth time they re-
ported that the midnight express with the best type of
motor power on the division was ahead of the weak en-
gine on the local.

And while the superintendent struggled at the far end
of a telegraph wire with that towerman, there were a
dozen other Middleports, each with its own different and
equally difficult problem. Each required quick, intelligent
solution. He solved each. The line stayed open. The
superintendent stayed at his desk.

All that Sunday it snowed, and all that Sunday the
superintendent was at his desk. He did not know the
passage of the hours; the clicking sounder held his atten-
tion riveted. He worked all Sunday night and into Mon-
day morning. There were 200 suburban trains to be
brought into the terminal on Monday morning, and the
commuter is a fussy soul about his train being on time.
The superintendent knew that, and he was ready. He had
extra men at the switches in the terminal yards, took

KEEPING THE LINE OPEN 275

particular pains to have snow swept from the platforms
of even the lowliest suburban station.

The trains came in on time that Monday morning, all
save one. On that one train the regular fireman had been
snowbound at his home upon the mountainside. They
had to put on a green man to fire the engine — a raw-
boned lad just off a freight. He made slow work of it,
and the train was fourteen minutes late. That was the
only exception to a clean record, a record made possible by
long hours of work.

" They ought to have been proud of that fight," you
say to the big boss. He grins at your ignorance.

" Proud? " he laughs. " They raised hell with me be-
cause we had 387 laid out fourteen minutes."

CHAPTER XVII

THE G. P. A. AND HIS OFFICE

HE HAS TO KEEP THE ROAD ADVERTISED — MUST BE AN AFTER-DINNER
ORATOR, AND MANY-SIDED — His GENIALITY, URBANITY, COURTESY —
EXCESSIVE RIVALRY FOR PASSENGER TRAFFIC — INCREASING LUXURY IN
PULLMAN CARS — MANY PRINTED FORMS OF TICKETS, ETC.

WE have already called the division superintendent
the Prince in the realm of railroad operation. But
there is another, whom we see when we leave operation
and consider traffic — another who might also be called
Prince — Prince Charming. This prince of charm of the
railroad is the general passenger agent. To a large pro-
portion of folk he is almost the personification of the rail-
road itself. His signature, appearing upon each of the
railroad's tickets and time-tables, is multiplied a million
times a year. In his own self he appears many, many
times as the road's mouthpiece. His evening clothes must
always be kept in press and moth-balls, for his oratory
is at all times close to the tap. His wit is ready, his
tongue a good arguer for his line. At dinners of Cham-
bers of Commerce and Boards of Trade, his urbanity is
profound, his remarks to the point; and the road gets the
advertising.

For the general passenger agent is per set an advertiser.
There are two affiliated and yet quite distinctive functions
to his office. The older function, the one for which it was
really created when railroads were young, is that of issu-
ing tickets and selling them. The newer function, and
to-day the all-important function, is that of keeping the
road before the eyes of the travel-mad public — an adver-
tising function. A few years ago, a big Eastern road had
to change general passenger agents because of this very

276

THE G. P. A. AND HIS OFFICE 277

thing. The man who had held the job was in almost
every way absolutely efficient. He had been reared in the
routine of his office ; he knew its vast details as well as any
man might ever hope to know them. But he was a detail
man, and there he stopped. The road needed more of a
figurehead, a better advertiser. The late George H. Dan-
iels was in many respects the best passenger agent that
American railroading has ever known. He was the fore-
runner of the general passenger agent of to-day — a well-
known figure in the great State that his railroad served,
being interviewed by reporters — and lady reporters, too
— on every conceivable subject in the public eye; address-
ing dinners in metropolitan New York, or in suburban
Yonkers, or anywhere else in the State, with rare facility,
yet now and then adroitly bringing in reference to the
" four-track trail " by which he was employed.

Other roads took heed of Daniels. The general pas-
senger agent became less and less a man of office routine
and of ticket detail, more and more of a public figure.
He called Mayors of important cities by their first names;
he kept close to the pulsing heart of the public press by
friendly intimacy with the reporters; spoke at two, three,
four dinners a week. The Prince Charming of the rail-
road is, indeed, a development

But behind the smiles of this prince, behind the phrase-
ology of words spoken or written that glorify " the road,"
there is a serious aspect of his life. He must capitalize
that splendid urbanity, that jocose wit, into ticket-sales.
In the beginning he was created to sell tickets, and sell
tickets he must. On his ability to sell tickets, and not as
a popular public figure, will he be measured by the board
of directors — that delegation of grim-faced gentlemen,
who place small market value on either urbanity or
jocosity.

So, while the general passenger agent presents his smil-
ing face to the outside world, he is a man of system, no
mean executive there within the inner. He must organize

278 THE MODERN RAILROAD

to sell his tickets. There is an inner organization of no
small moment in the passenger office of any sizable rail-
road. In the first place, the area from which traffic is to
be drawn is divided into districts. General agents or as-
sistant general passenger agents (the title varies widely
on the different railroads) are assigned to each. This
traffic area is far larger than the area covered by one
railroad system. It is generally nation-wide, while some
of the biggest of our railroads maintain ticket-offices in the
large cities all the way around the world. They are to-
day fighting almost as sharply for American traffic in
Paris or in London as they fight in Clark Street, Chicago,
or in Broadway, New York.

For it is a fight and an endless fight, which the Prince
Charming — he of the urbane smiles — must wage. Des-
pite the constant consolidating processes of our railroads,
there are few large territories that are the exclusive field of
any one road. The most of them must fight for their
business — particularly for their profitable long-distance
business. The fight divides itself between the freight and
passenger traffic departments. No wonder, then, that the
general passenger agent must be a many-sided man.

From his district offices, there scurries forth a corps of
smooth-tongued, quick-witted young men — the travelling
passenger agents. These young men are skirmishers.
They are up and down the steel highways of the nation,
thirty days out of the month, skirmishing for business.
Each carries in an inner pocket a wad of annual passes —
such as might make any statesman green with envy.
Those passes cover every steam line in the territory that is
assigned to him and are return courtesy for the neat little
cards which his road in turn issues to the traffic solicitors
of other roads.

In other days these skirmishers carried forth business
which sometimes approached cut-throat tendencies. The
weaker lines in hotly competitive territory — lines which,
running fewer high-grade trains and running them at

THE G. P. A. AND HIS OFFICE 279

slower speed — which were naturally at a disadvantage,
sought to obtain at least their normal share of passenger
traffic, by sharp work. After that their stronger brethren
often showed their religious belief in fighting them by fire.
Tickets were sold at less than advertised rates to certain
favored individuals; sometimes a few passes, adroitly
placed, did the business. In these days those sharp things
are forbidden, and the young man, soliciting railroad
traffic, who breaks the rules of the game runs the risk of
worse than facing an angry boss, getting discharged ; per-
haps he can see the doors of a Federal prison opening
for him.

So the fellow who skirmishes for the weak road has a
hard time of it in these piping days. Passenger traffic,
like kissing, seems to go by favor nowadays ; and how hard
the travelling passenger agent works to curry that favor !
He drops off a local at some way-station, there is a smile
and perhaps a cigar for the country-boy who sells tickets
there, for the Interstate folk have not sent any one to
prison yet for offering either a smile or a cigar. The T.
P. A. knows that the local agent cannot, under the rules
that govern him, recommend routes that connect with and
extend beyond the line which gives him employment. Still,
sometime the country agent may be approached by a man
who demands that a connecting road be suggested for him,
and the T. P. A. can see that man, without even shutting
his eyes. If the country agent will only remember the
nice T. P. A. that the Transcontinental sent in there a
month before, and the good kind of cigars he dispenses,
the Transcontinental may get a part of the haul on a long
green ticket. Perhaps the man will be taking his wife,
and there will be two of the long green tickets. Perhaps
there will be a whole party to be routed over the Trans-
continental — the T. P. A. can imagine almost anything as
he swings overland in the dreary locals from way-station to
way-station.

Sometimes a wire from his chief quickly changes his

280 THE MODERN RAILROAD

schedule. The Magnificent Knights of the Realm — or
some other impressive order of that sort — are to hold
their annual convention at Oshkosh, and the T. P. A.
must hustle down to Bingtown to see that Transcontinental
gets the haul of the delegation that will go to Oshkosh
from the bustling little community. He scurries into
Bingtown to locate the officers of the local lodge of the
M. K. O. R. there. On the train there may be a T. P. A.
from some rival system — they are all partners in misery.
The Transcontinental man will probably drop off the
opposite side of the train at Bingtown from the crowded
depot platform — it 's an old trick of the T. P. A. — and
be tearing over the pages of the Bingtown directory be-
fore that train is out of town again. Once located, the
officers of that lodge of M. K. O. R. must be pleasantly
instructed in the advantages of Transcontinental — the
speed of its trains, the safety of its operation, the conven-
ience of its terminals, the scenic splendors along the way,
the excellence of its dining-car service ; all these things are
spun with convincing eloquence by the travelling passenger
agent.

A few years ago, two travelling passenger agents, whose
lines supplement one another to make a through route
across the continent, went down into an Eastern manufac-
turing city to land business bound west to a national con-
vention of one of the biggest of the fraternal orders.
There were other passenger men heading toward that
same territory, and the two men from the connecting lines
made an offensive and defensive alliance. When they
reached this town, they found that the chief officers of the
local lodge were two city detectives and a police justice.
All three of the city officers showed little enthusiasm about
the coming convention. The passenger men took off
their coats — figuratively — and pitched in.

For three days, they ran up an expense account that
must have all but paralyzed the auditors of their com-
panies, but they accomplished results. After the first day

THE G. P. A. AND HIS OFFICE 281

of entertainment, the police justice said that there would
be an even dozen of them for the three-thousand-mile run,
which was going some. Most passenger men would have
rested content on those laurels, but this combination used
that first day only to whet their appetites. They started
briskly out on the second, a little fagged, but still in fight-
ing trim, and by that night the two detectives united in
promising one or two filled Pullmans. The third day saw
the two traffic solicitors nearly dead, and the well-seasoned
city officials just in fine trim. The trim must have been
fine, for that night they completed arrangements for one
of the biggest special train movements of that year: two
hundred and fifty enthusiastic brethren went three-quar-
ters of the way across the continent and back as a result
of the work of these passenger men.

Once a travelling passenger agent went nearly too far
in this entertainment business. He got business, miles
and miles and miles of it, but he also got drinking far
too heavily. One day, when he came into the general
offices very much the worse for entertaining, he bumped
into no less a man than the president of the road. That
president was a strict old soul. He had church connec-
tions, and he used to lecture his Sunday School class on
the evils of the liquor habit. He decided to make an ex-
ample of this young whelp of a passenger agent from off
the road.

But just as the sentence was about to be pronounced, the
general passenger agent interfered. He went straight to
the president and the wrath of an honest man was in his
eye.

4 We don't intend to have drunken men working here,"
the president kept saying. " It 's the example — "

" If he drinks," said the G. P. A., " it 's my fault, and
I 'm the man to let go."

The president let his eyeglasses drop in astonishment.

"You?" he said.

" I 'm guilty," said the G. P. A. " This man goes

282 THE MODERN RAILROAD

everywhere to get business for us, and he gets it. He
kneels with the preacher, he talks high art with the Brown-
ing societies, and he gets drunk with the drinkers — all
in the name of this railroad system. Now we propose
to kick him out, still in the name of this railroad system/'

The president saw the point, and together they took hold
of the T. P. A. and made him a decent, sober man. To-
day he is one of the most efficient officers of that very
road, and he owes it all to that broad-minded G. P. A.

Geniality, urbanity, courtesy are the major part of a
travelling passenger agent's equipment, as they are part
of his chiefs in these days, when the rates have ceased to
enter into the fight for traffic.

Rates?

The rates must be the same nowadays by all routes of
the same class ; and so the T. P. A. must bring out the ex-
cellence of his line, leaving none behind because of a false
sense of modesty. He is silent about other roads, save as
they may lead to and from the system that he represents.
You want to go to Kickapoo. You could go to Milltown
by the Transcontinental and get from there to Kickapoo
most easily by the main line of the St. Louis Southwestern,
but the travelling passenger agent frowns his first frown
at the very suggestion. The St. Louis Southwestern is the
worst competitor that Transcontinental has for passenger
traffic, and the T. P. A. does not propose to send business
over its rails. So he ignores your suggestion.

" We have our own line into Kickapoo," he tells you —
the old smile returning. " You won't have to leave Trans-
continental."

And such a line! It happens to be a branch of the
worst jerkwater type. To reach Kickapoo over Trans-
continental you must go to Milltown and change from the
comfortable Limited to a less comfortable train, which
takes you to Quashalong Junction. There you find a seat
on a local which jogs along at twenty miles an hour for the
greater part of the afternoon until you get into Miller's

THE G. P. A. AND HIS OFFICE 283

Forks. When you reach Miller's Forks you almost aban-
don hope. For the thirty-mile stretch from that cross-
roads over into Kickapoo is a grass-grown stretch of half-
neglected track over which a combination freight and pas-
senger-train — adequately described on the time-card as
mixed — ambles once in twenty-four hours. By the time
you have finished that trip you will have arrived in Kick-
apoo without leaving the rails of the Transcontinental,
but you will also probably have registered a vow never to
travel on them again, if they can be avoided.

Right there is a traffic mistake. If the T. P. A. had
been wise he would have swallowed his hatred of St. Louis
Southwestern and recommended that you use it for that
stretch from Milltown to Kickapoo. He let his zeal for
his road overrun his business judgment. A good many
of them do. Only the other day a man walked into a
railroad station of a small city in the Southern Tier of
New York State and announced that he wanted to hurry
through to Binghamton.

' We have a train in five minutes, our 12:12," said the
agent, all smiles.

The man hesitated. He wanted to do two or three er-
rands in that small city before he went on to Bingham-
ton, and so he asked the leaving time of the next train.

" Nothing until 6:18," the agent told him.

" That will be too late for me to get into Bingham-
ton," the passenger said. The agent did not reply, but
turned his attention to other persons who were waiting at
the ticket-window. But the man from Binghamton was
still perplexed. An agent of the news company who
ran the stand in that station, came over and helped him
out.

" The — (mentioning a rival and paralleling road)
gets a train out of here for Binghamton at 3 130," he ex-
plained.

The passenger thanked the news-agent, for his problem
had been lightened and started out for the other station.

284 THE MODERN RAILROAD

When he was gone, the ticket-seller summoned the news-
man and threatened to have him fired.

But there is a new order of things coming to pass even
in this hot rivalry for getting passenger traffic. Long
ago, C. F. Daly, who is to-day vice-president in charge of
traffic for the New York Central lines, was in charge of
the city ticket-office of the Burlington, in Omaha. Those
were days when no loyal traffic-man was ever supposed even
to breathe the name of a competing road. But Daly
held his loyalty firm, and still went straight against that
absurd rule. If a woman came into his office and, after
the way of some women travellers, finally decided that she
wished to travel over the rival Northwestern, he would not
let her get out of his office. He would give her a com-
fortable seat, and perhaps a magazine or paper to read,
and send one of his office-boys over to the Northwestern
office to buy a ticket for her. Sometimes before the office-
boy could get out of the place the woman would change her
mind in favor of the Burlington. If she did not, Daly did
not worry. He knew that he was of the new order of rail-
roaders.

Come back, for a final moment, to the travelling pas-
senger agent. He may be forgiven an over-zeal for the
line which employs him, for that has been his training
from the beginning, and — which is far more to the point
— he is being measured by the results that he accomplishes.
The road does not pay him a salary and pay his heavy
expense account (which the auditor generally permits to
contain various unvouchered items for entertainment)
without expecting results.

If he is a new man in the territory, he is measured
against his predecessor. Afterwards, he is measured
month by month, against the corresponding month of the
preceding year. All tickets which were sold from his ter-
ritory, and in which his road shares, are credited to his
influence. It becomes a matter of cold calculations and of

THE NEW YORK CENTRAL RAILROAD is BUILDING A NEW GRAND

CENTRAL STATION IN NEW YORK CITY, FOR ITSELF AND ITS

TENANT, THE NfiWT YORK, NTEW HAVEN & HARTFORD RAILROAD

THE CONCOURSE OF THE NEW GRAND CENTRAL STATION, NEW
YORK, WILL BE ONE OF THE LARGEST ROOMS IN THE WORLD

SOUTH STATION, BOSTON, is THE BUSIEST RAILROAD TERMINAL IN

THE WORLD

THE TRAIN-SHED AND APPROACH TRACKS OF BROAD STREET

STATION, PHILADELPHIA, STILL ONE OF THE FINEST OF AMERICAN

RAILROAD PASSENGER TERMINALS

THE G. P. A. AND HIS OFFICE 285

dollars and cents. If this April does not show an increase

j over April of last year, the T. P. A. must make a mighty

j good explanation to his chief. It will have to be famine or

; pestilence or something nearly as bad to justify the slump

in ticket sales. An insinuation on his part that a reduc-

< tion of the service of his road was responsible for the

slump would never be accepted at headquarters.

So, all in all, the life of the travelling passenger agent
is no sinecure. It is easiest when he is in the home terri-
tory of his road, rather pleasant when that road is non-
competitive. But when he is out in *' foreign " territory,
fighting for a road which is hardly more than a name to
the folk with whom he comes in contact, his difficulties in-
crease; when, if his road is one of the weaker fry, its trains
slower and less frequent than some of the other trunk-lines,
i his difficulties increase. The differential-fares by which
the slower competing roads are permitted by their stronger
brethren to charge a reduced rate between important dis-
tant traffic points were adopted to help to equalize this
difficulty. But the differentials do not count, neither do
the differential lines now get their share of the through
business. Last year fifty per cent of the passengers be-
tween New York and Chicago went on the eighteen-hour
train, even though the regular full fare of $20 in each
direction is increased by an excess fare of $10, aside from
the Pullman rates. Twenty-five per cent more travelled
on the limited trains, which makes an excess of $5, in
addition to Pullman rates, in each direction. It begins to
look as if the American public were willing to pay for
added comfort and convenience. Pullman operation has
doubled within the past ten years. Pullman chair-cars
are operated to-day on hundreds of miles of branch line
railroads that would not have dreamed of such a luxury
a decade ago.

In fact, we are moving toward first-class and second-class
passenger service by leaps and bounds. Less than twenty
years ago the New York Central established its Empire

286 THE MODERN RAILROAD

State Express between New York and Buffalo, and, by
means of the almost marvellous resources of its advertis-
ing department, made it the most famous train in the
world. Save for a single parlor car or two, it has always
been a day-coach train, no excess fare being charged. Yet
for many years (in recent years its running-time has been
slightly lengthened) it was the fastest regular long-dis-
tance train in the world. Still, in the judgment of rail-
roaders to-day, another Empire State would be a mistake,
even though the original is, day in and day out probably
one of the most popular and profitable express trains in
the world. But the judgment is different: the Lehigh
Valley, running the competing Black Diamond, between
New York and Buffalo, has already found it advisable
to make its equipment all Pullman.

Just as the travelling passenger agent forms the stock
from which many of the general passenger agents are
finally formed, so does the country agent aspire to the
day when he will be given territory and sent out with his
gripsack, to sell transportation upon the road. Sometimes,
though, as in Daly's case, the road to traffic titles comes
by way of the city ticket-offices. These form an impor-
tant function of the railroad's passenger department.
They are regulated carefully, through an inter-railroad
harmony, as expressed in the great national passenger asso-
ciations. We have already seen how they sell mileage-
books and " scrip " on their own account. For instance,
a sort of tacit agreement specifies how many ticket-offices
a railroad may maintain in a given city. Otherwise, the
biggest and richest road might completely overshadow its
weaker neighbor in the number as well as in the magnifi-
cence of its agencies. So an unwritten agreement, which
is as strict in its way as the law on cutting rates, states
that this city may have so many offices for any road, and
that so many. It has become an exact rule.

The city ticket-offices, situated at advantageous corners

THE G. P. A. AND HIS OFFICE 287

in the various busy centres of metropolitan towns, and
towns having metropolitan ambitions, save the average
man a long trip, perhaps, to the station. They will sell
tickets, check baggage, answer innumerable questions.
Answering questions remains one of the big functions of
the passenger-man.

Only recently, a sign was hung in a city ticket-office of
one of the large railroads in New York, which read :

" Remember that we are Here to Sell Tickets as well as
Give Information."

That sign was a mistake. It was an affront to every
person who entered that ticket-office, and remember that
every person who enters a ticket-office is at least a potential
passenger for the railroad that operates it. It is only
charitable to believe that the agent meant to say : " Re-
member that we are here to give information as well as
to sell tickets," for the giving of information is a func-
tion of a passenger ticket office. So important has this
function become, that the railroads have established desks
in the largest of these city offices at which no tickets are
sold, but where questions are answered and railroad, steam-
ship, and hotel folders given out. " Public Service sta-
tions," the New York Central has begun to call its city
ticket-offices and, furthering this idea of courtesy and af-
fability, its general passenger agent has opened a school
for the training of its agents. They are taught to answer
questions quickly and accurately, and to be, above all
things, courteous to the persons who come before them
and the potential travellers.

Just a final look before we leave this passenger depart-
ment, at its equipment. Its complications are large.
Take this matter of tickets, for instance. While the finan-
cial department of the road will receive the money that
comes in for their sales, and the auditing department takes
good care as to the accuracy of the agent's returns, the
passenger department has charge of printing and issuing

288 THE MODERN RAILROAD

the contract slips by which it agrees to convey its passen-
gers. There is a multiplicity of forms of these, each bear-
ing the signature of the general passenger agent.

On smaller roads, the number of forms of local tickets
is greatly reduced by writing or stamping the name of
the destination on tickets. On a single branch line, with
25 stations, just 600 different styles of printed railroad
tickets would be required otherwise; you can imagine the
number of styles required for an average system of 1,000
stations. Fortunately, for the passenger department, the
use of simplified forms of tickets, where adroit cutting and
tearing makes possible the use of a single ticket form for
an entire division, has reduced the big ticket-printing
bills. Only recently, a machine, on the order of a cash
register, has been invented, from which a ticket, accurately
stamped and dated, with the destination indelibly printed,
can be delivered as demanded.

Still, with all these simplified forms of tickets, a big road
will hardly carry less than 5,000 standard forms. Then
there will be anywhere from a dozen to twenty special
forms a week that will have to be printed — for excur-
sions, conventions, and special train movements of every
sort. The ticket-printing bill of a big road will easily
exceed $40,000 a year. Its folders will cost not less
than $50,000, while the twelvemonths' bill for newspaper
advertising will more than exceed the combined figure of
these two.

All these details come under the jurisdiction of that ur-
bane general passenger agent. He supervises, in another
department, the making and the readjustment of rates —
this last a seemingly endless task.

To make up rate-sheets, either in the freight or in the
passenger department, requires expert work. The fare
between the same points on competitive railroads must, in
the present order of things, remain equal. To cite an in-
teresting instance: The A railroad long ago estab-
lished $6.00 as its passenger charge from N to

THE G. P. A. AND HIS OFFICE 289

S . The B railroad, although charging a higher

rate per mile over its line, is obliged to meet this rate

of $6.00 in order to secure business from N to

S — — , even though that makes many perplexing prob-
lems in its local rates. The B railroad mileage

from N to S , up its main line, is 288 miles —

practically the same as that of its competitor. For the

146-mile ride to G , the first large way-station, it

charges $4.50, for the 2o8-mile ride to M , the next,

$5.00. If a man were to go over its line to S and

stop off at G and M his fare from N to

S — — would be $8.80. That is a typical case, and one
that is repeated in every corner of the country. Where a
road comes into competitive territory its rates must adjust
themselves to those of its lowest-priced rival, otherwise it
could hardly hope for a fair share of the business. So
the rates must shade here and there; the rate-clerk must
take good care to see that wherever it is in any way pos-
sible, no combination of tickets can be formed that will
sell at less rate than a through ticket. When the rate-
sheet is completed and copies of it forwarded to the rail-
road commission, it is, indeed, a sensitive organization.

But no sooner will the cumbersome rate-sheet be com-
pleted, before some little road off in a distant corner of
the country will send a printed announcement of some
slight change in its passenger charges. In an instant, the
whole mighty fabric of the rate-sheet must be torn apart
and reconstructed. If the St. Louis Southwestern, by rea-
son of a single change in the rates of the little Blissville,
Bulgetown and Beyond (with which it connects) is en-
abled to charge a few cents less than the rival Trans-
continental, its rate-sheet must be torn asunder and
a new one adopted.

Beyond the long desks where the rate-clerks keep at their
tedious jobs of constant readjustment of local and through
rates, the passenger department has located its ticket re-
19

290 THE MODERN RAILROAD

demption bureau. It announces publicly its willingness to
redeem unused portions of its tickets, and the work of fig-
uring out the amount due on a ticket, sometimes half or
three-quarters used, requires a rate-clerk of ability and pa-
tience. The redemption clerk holds a ticket up to the light
for your inspection.

" They tried to put this over on me," he says as he
shows a local ticket which had been sent to him for re-
demption at full value. The pasteboard is filled with
small burned holes. " The breezy young man who for-
warded this exhibit to me claimed that he had used no
portion of this ticket and then apologized to me for its
condition. His small boy, he said, had burned it with
Fourth-of-July punk.

" Punk ? That was punk. The small boy did not do a
thorough job. Every hole burned there was burned to
hide a conductor's punchmark. You can see the edges of
three of them ; and those three punch marks show that the

ticket issued from B to T was used 300 miles

from B to A and not used from A to

T . When that young man threatened us with trou-
ble on that ticket deal, we threatened him with arrest.
After that he shut up."

So does the general passenger agent come in constant
contact with the great American public. His outside mail
is probably the largest at headquarters, and it contains let-
ters of every sort, asking innumerable questions, praising
and damning his road with equal interest and force. One
letter will commend a courteous conductor, the next will
find some fault with the dining-car service. It is not so
very long ago that a big Eastern railroad sent out a gen-
eral order that the raw oysters on its dining-cars should
be served affixed to their shells, because a woman from
Sioux City had written a positive assertion that the shells
were being used over and over again for canned oysters.

Some of the railroads have already begun to system-
atize this whole matter of complaints. One New York

THE G. P. A. AND HIS OFFICE 291

City line which sells a large amount of transportation in
small packages every day (two million passengers is its
average in twenty- four hours) has a Harvard man at high
salary just to receive those letters and give diplomatic an-
swer to each of them. Each complaint is first acknowl-
edged and then investigated; the person who made the
complaint is notified of the final action taken. If a mat-
ter of fare is involved (the complicated transfer systems
of New York make such questions frequent), and the
company is wrong, it cheerfully acknowledges its fault and
forwards car tickets as reimbursement. Many times when
a conductor or a motorman has forgotten his manners, he
is sent to make a personal apology to the aggrieved pas-
senger, as a price of holding his position. That street
railway company has won many friends out of persons
who had complained to it, because of this method.

But here is the general passenger agent of a big steam
road, who holds a considerably different view of this very
matter.

41 We never get in writing on one of these complaints,"
he says. '* We send a man every time to make the matter
right, and the man must be a diplomat. He must under-
stand human nature, and so well does he understand it, that
he makes the matter right in ninety-nine cases out of a hun-
dred — turns an enemy into a friend, a liability into an
asset, makes a firm patron for our road."

" Liabilities into assets ! " That then is the work of
the general passenger agent and his remarkable depart-
ment. " Liabilities into assets ! " In these days of cold
judgments upon the managements of the big railroad
properties, such a man is worth his weight in gold to a
big system. He measures his worth in the assets that
he brings to it.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE LUXURY OF MODERN RAILROAD TRAVEL

SPECIAL TRAINS PROVIDED — PRIVATE CARS — SPECIALS FOR ACTORS,
ACTRESSES, AND MUSICIANS — CRUDE COACHES ON EARLY RAILROADS —
LUXURIOUS OLD-TIME SLEEPING-CARS — PULLMAN'S SLEEPERS MADE AT
FIRST FROM OLD COACHES — His PIONEER — THE FIRST DINING-CARS
— THE PRESENT-DAY DINING-CARS — DINNERS, TABLE D' HOTE AND
A LA CARTE — CAFE-CARS — BUFFET-CARS — CARE FOR THE COMFORT
OF WOMEN.

IF a man stops you in Nassau Street, New York, in the
late afternoon, and you miss your favorite eighteen-
hour train; if it is imperative that you be in Chicago the
next morning at ten o'clock, and (this a most important
"if") if you are willing to spend your money pretty
freely, the railroad will accomplish it for you. If you are
well known, and your credit accomplished with the rail-
road folks, it is highly probable that you will find your
special, ready to accomplish an over-night run of nearly
1,000 miles, .standing waiting in the train-shed when you
hurry to the station. Even if your credit is not so estab-
lished, the sight of several thousand dollars in greenbacks
will accomplish the trick for you. The train will be ready
in any event almost as soon as you.

If you are planning a novel outing, you may ring for a
railroad representative and he will bring to your house or
to your office tickets on any train and to any part of the
world, or he will be prepared to arrange a special train
for a night's run or for a three months' swing around the
country. Your train may be of any length you desire
and are willing to pay for. You can hire a car and it will
be handled either as regular express trains or with special
engines. You pay the bills and you have your choice.

292

LUXURY OF MODERN TRAVEL 293

A run in a private car is the acme of luxury to the aver-
age man. These are used for a variety of purposes in
these comfort-loving days, and the sight of one or more of
them attached to the rear of a heavy train has ceased to
excite comment. The average luxury-loving millionaire
has one — possibly two — of these expensive toys at-
tached to an entourage that embraces ocean-going yachts,
complete stables, and dozens of motor-cars of every de-
scription. If he can claim some sort of responsible con-
nection with a large railroad system, he is likely to have
his car hauled free from one ocean to the other; and the
millionaire likes these little perquisites. He is not so far
removed, after all, from the man who huddles in the cor-
ner of the smoking-car and secretly hopes and prays that
the conductor will forget to collect his ticket.

To appreciate the number and variety of these cars take
a look at the passenger sidings at any of the large Florida
beach hotels in midwinter. Better still, run down to
Princeton or up to New Haven at any large football game.
You will see parked there at such a time from sixty to one
hundred of these palatial cars, some of them private prop-
erty, others chartered for the occasion.

Even in the middle of the night this branch of luxuri-
ous railroad traffic is still at your disposal. An emer-
gency call summons you out of town for a distance, and the
night train schedules do not meet your needs. The night
train-master will meet your needs. He will act as the
agent of the railroad and arrange, while you hold the
telephone receiver in your fingers, the entire schedule for
you. Trains will be held, connections made; the tele-
graph is capable of arranging the details. If you demand
speed, the railroad will give it to you — if you are willing
to pay the price and give a release against damage to your
precious bones. Increased speed means increased risk to
your railroader.

Maude Adams uses a special many Saturday nights to
carry her down to her Long Island farm at Ronkonkoma.

294 THE MODERN RAILROAD

Her place is far out of the regular suburban district, and
there are no regular trains that will enable her to reach
it after the evening performance. For ordinary service
she is quite content with a private car — the mania has
its deathly grip on a good many of our prosperous theatri-
cal folk.

Lillian Russell used to live down in the Rockaway sec-
tion of Long Island, hardly outside of the New York
City limits. When she played in the metropolis a special
train carried her six nights in the week out to her suburban
home. There were plenty of regular trains — theatre
trains, in the colloquialism of the railroaders — but the
prima donna would have none of them. She had ac-
quired the private-car mania while she was on the road.
So her special stood night after night in the big railroad
terminal in Long Island City — a neat little acquisition
for a prosperous lady. The nightly ride cost her fifty
dollars to the railroad company; and the generous tips
she lavished, from the engine-cab back, doubled that sum.

Hardly a prosperous star, these days, but demands in
the contract a fully-equipped car for the long, hard days
on the road. The car has some value for advertising;
its greatest value, however, lies in the maximum degree
of comfort that it affords, as compared with the constant
changing from one country hotel to another. Sometimes
the biggest of these folk let the mania seize so tightly
upon them that they go to excess.

Paderewski, on his first trip to America, made a flying
journey up to Poughkeepsie to bewilder the fair Vassar-
ites. He shuddered at the thought of what he was
pleased to call the provinces. He had the popular
European notion of American small towns and their
hostelries. Poughkeepsie has very comfortable hotels,
but Paderewski would not risk them. He would not
sleep in them, neither would he eat in them. A private
car solved the first of these problems ; the second was met
by bringing two cooks and a waiter up from the New

LUXURY OF MODERN TRAVEL 295

York hotel in which he was staying. He was paid $1,000
for the concert, and his travelling expenses cost him more
than half that sum, which was a pretty good ratio.

Still, stage folk are not in the habit of counting either
ratios or their pennies, and the average prima donna
would make some sacrifices at the savings-bank in order
to indulge herself in this extravagant and purely Ameri-
can mania. The grand-opera folk indulge themselves to
the limit, invariably at the expense of the beneficent im-
presario. But even this long-suffering publicist does not
feel the expense so bitterly. Special trains for opera com-
panies make splendid advertising, but they do not cost
one cent more than regular transportation. For the
railroads, acting under the guidance of an all-wise and all-
powerful commission down at Washington, will issue,
without extra cost, from sixty to one hundred tickets for
the man who orders a special train at two dollars a mile.
In this way the wise theatrical manager keeps his little
flock segregated while en route, and reaps gratuitously
the prestige and the advertising that ensue.

Even the cheaper companies have their own cars —
gaudy affairs most of them, their battered sides still re-
flecting the brilliancy of some gifted sign-painter. You
must remember seeing them in the long ago, back there
at the home-town, stuck in the long siding next the coal-
shed, and surrounded by admiring youth, getting its first
faint taint of the mania. The All-Star Imperial Min-
strel Troupes, and the Uncle Tom shows, are the grave-
yards of the private cars. Proud equipages that in
their days have housed real magnates and have been the
theatres of what we like mysteriously to call " big deals,"
once supplanted, drop quickly down the scale of elegance.
In their last days they come to the hard use of some
itinerant band of entertainers, to squeak their rusty joints
and worn frames as if in protest against a fly-by-night ex-
istence over jerkwater railroad branches.

Come back again to those cars you see at the college

296 THE MODERN RAILROAD

football games, the travelling private palaces that mi-
grate up to Newport, the White Mountains, and the
Adirondacks in summer; that flock south in the winter
like the birds. The astonishing thing is that few of these
cars are owned by the persons who are using them. Of
course, as we have already said, if a man can lay claim
to some railroad connection, he can get his car hauled
free over other lines and, perhaps, get it built for
him ; but more of that in a moment. There are probably
not more than 40 private cars in the land that are owned
by persons not connected with the railroads. This is an
astonishingly low figure, considering the number of these
craft that are constantly drifting about our 200,000 miles
of track. Some society folk have cars as a part of their
daily life, but the storage costs are apt to cause a man to
think twice before he buys one. Mr. Rockefeller and
Mr. Morgan have managed to worry along very com-
fortably without contracting the disease. As a rule, both
of these men are willing to accept the comfort of any
of the fast limited trains that form part of the luxurious
equipment of the American railroad.

But the fact remains that the average citizen, when he
is felled by an intermittent attack of the private-car mania,
is content to hire one of the very comfortable equipages
that the Pullman Company keeps ready at big terminals
at various points across the country. The arrangements
for these are exclusive of the price paid to the" railroad
companies for their haul. A complete private car,
equipped with staterooms, baths, private dining-room, ob-
servation parlor and the like, costs seventy-five dollars a
day. For two or more days this rate drops to fifty dollars
a day. An extra charge is made for food; but the rail-
road will deliver the car without charge at the point from
which you wish to begin your journey.

For the haul of these cars the railroads will charge you
according to their regularly filed tariffs, unless you have
that valued connection with some common carrier. This

CONNECTING DRAWING ROOM AND STATE ROOM

A MAN MAY HAVE AS FINE A BED IN A SLEEPING CAR AS IN THE
BEST HOTEL IN ALL THE LAND "

YOU MAY HAVE THE MANICURE UPON THE MODERN TRAIN "

THE DINING-CAR IS A SOCIABLE SORT OF PLACE "

LUXURY OF MODERN TRAVEL' 297

varies from a minimum of from eighteen to twenty-five
first-class fares. In other words, let us assume that the
minimum in a particular case is twenty fares. That par-
ticular railroad will carry up to twenty persons in the
car at its regular fares; if there are more than twenty
aboard it will get a full fare ticket from each over the
minimum allowance. That is all a matter established as
the special train rates are established, not by whim, but
by law.

Strange as it may seem, the private car mania, in
chronic form, seems to attack some railroad presidents
most violently. For reasons which show that railroading
is a business filled with fine tact and diplomacy, these cars
are called business cars. It is also remarkable that for
size and elegance they vary in almost inverse ratio to the
size and importance of the railroad that owns them.
Big railroads, like the Pennsylvania, the Harriman lines,
and the New York Central rather pride themselves upon
the simplicity of their official cars. Some of these are
plain almost to the point of shabbiness. Contrasted with
these are the private cars belonging to the head of a great
interurban electric line in Southern California, a car so
wondrously beautiful that it was carried all the way to
Washington, in the Spring of 1905, so that a thousand
foreign railroad managers there gathered in convention,
might see the attainments of American car-builders. An-
other Western railroad, a small steam line this time, boasts
a president's car with a dining service that cost $2,500.
A little Mississippi lumbering road spent $40,000 in pro-
viding a private car for its operating head.

The big Eastern roads know about all of these cars.
Their heads get frequent invitations to take a run over
the K., Y. & Z., or some other enterprising jerkwater
road that runs from the back waters to the bad lands.
Of course, they never take the trip, but they invariably
see the next step in the developments. It comes in the
form of requests for a " pass for haul of car and party "

298 THE MODERN RAILROAD

from Chicago to New York and return. Time was when
the New York Central and the Pennsylvania were laid
low under the avalanche of requests of this sort. Some
of their slower trains were laden down with long strings
of these deadhead caravans, and on one memorable occa-
sion a whole section was made up of the prominent private
cars of decidedly unprominent railroad officers.

Since the introduction of the eighteen-hour trains be-
tween these two most important cities of the country this
burden has been lessened. These fastest trains will ab-
solutely not haul any private cars at any price; it is a rule
that would not be abrogated for the President of the
United States. So the railroaders of the West, from the
big men like Stubbs and Kruttschnitt of the Union Pacific
down to the small fry, leave their cars in the roomy termi-
nal yards at Chicago and come to New York most of the
time on one or the other of the eighteen-hour trains.
About the only time their cars come East nowadays is
when they are bringing their families to the seashore for
the Summer.

So much for the private cars. They are perhaps one of
the most typical things of the America of to-day, as we
have seen. Actresses and millionaires use them for their
private comfort and convenience; tourist parties roam
forth in them; delegations proceed in them to conven-
tions; civic bodies find them agreeable aids to junketing.
Sometimes a party of sportsmen will charter a car and
hie themselves off to a secluded spot where the railroad
roams through the forest, find an idle siding and use their
car for a camp for a week, a fortnight, or even a month.
Cities and States use private cars as travelling museums to
exploit their charms, some of them are travelling chapels
for religious propagandism. The uses of the private car
are nearly as manifold as those of the railroad itself.

In the beginning things were different. Our great
grand-daddies drew no class lines when they travelled, but

LUXURY OF MODERN TRAVEL 299

were content to find shelter from the storm, or upon pleas-
ant days from the showers of sparks scattered by the
locomotive. But when the railroad began to stretch
itself and to be a thing of reaches, it was found advisable
to run trains at night in order to make quick communica-
tion between distant points. Travelling at night in the
crude coaches of the early railroads was an abominable
thing, and before the forties the old Cumberland Valley
Railroad was operating some crude sort of sleeping-cars.
Within another decade there was much experimenting of
this sort. Old-timers on the Erie still remember the
sleeping-cars that were built on that road soon after the
close of the Civil War. There were six of them, more
like summer cottages than cars, for the Erie was then of
6-foot gauge, and its cars were 1 2 feet wide. The berths
were made up in crude form by hanging curtains from
iron rods and bringing the bedding from a storage closet
at the end of the car. There was a little less privacy
in them than in the modern Pullman, but in the eyes of
Jim Fisk, whose love of elegant luxury was first respon-
sible for their construction, they were nothing less than
palaces. One of them was named after Fisk and carried
his portrait in an immense decorative medallion on each
of its sides. The other cars were the Jay Gould — with-
out decorative medallions — the Morning Star, the Even-
ing Star, the Queen City, and the Crescent City. All you
have to do to-day, to set an old Erie man's tongue wag-
ging, is to speak of one of these cars. They were tri-
umphs, and away back in that day and generation they
cost $60,000 each.

But while many men were fussing in futile ways to
build comfortable cars for long journeys, a man named
George M. Pullman, over in Western New York, was
packing his goods and making ready to go to Chicago and
build his world-famed car-works there. Pullman's cars
survived the others. He bought in the Woodruff Com-
pany and some lesser concerns, and for many years his

300 THE MODERN RAILROAD

only important rival was the Wagner Palace Car Com-
pany, a Vanderbilt property. In course of time this too
was absorbed, and the Pullman Company had virtual
control of the luxurious part of American traffic, few rail-
roads caring to run their own parlor and sleeping-car
service.

There are economic and sensible reasons for this in
many cases. Some railroads have great through passen-
ger traffic, demanding Pullman equipment in summer and
little or none in winter. Others reverse this need and so
whole trains of sleeping and parlor cars go flocking north
and south and then north again with the private cars.
Special occasions, like great conventions, call for extra
Pullmans by hundreds; and because of the enormous
capital that must be tied up, a single supplying company
is best able to handle the problem. Still, big roads like
the New Haven, the Milwaukee, and the Great North-
ern have been most successful in building and operating
their own sleeping and parlor-car service. A great road
like the Pennsylvania might do the same thing, and be-
cause of that possibility the Pennsylvania was one of the
first roads in the country to make the Pullman Company
pay it for the privilege of hauling its cars. As a rule,
the railroad pays the Pullman Company for hauling by
the mile — a very few cents a mile — and the Pullman
Company also takes the entire receipts to itself.

The body of Abraham Lincoln was carried to its final
resting-place in the first real Pullman car that was ever
built. President Lincoln rode in one of Pullman's earli-
est attempts at railroad luxury, some sleeping-cars that
he had remodelled from day coaches on the Chicago &
Alton Railroad and that were put in service between
Chicago and St. Louis in 1860. These cars were almost
as crude as the barbaric predecessors that had induced
Pullman to tackle the problem of railroad comfort ap-
proaching the standards of boat comfort.

LUXURY OF MODERN TRAVEL 301

Leonard Seibert, a veteran employee of the Chicago &
Alton, told a few years ago of Mr. Pullman's first at-
tempts to remodel the old coaches of that road into
sleeping-cars. Said he:

" In 1858 Mr. Pullman came to Bloomington and en-
gaged me to do the work of remodelling the Chicago &
Alton coaches into the first Pullman sleeping-cars. The
contract was that Mr. Pullman should make all necessary
changes inside of the cars. After looking over the entire
passenger car equipment of the road, which at that time
constituted about a dozen cars, we selected Coaches Nos.
9 and 19. They were 44 feet long, had flat roofs like
box cars, single sash windows, of which there were four-
teen on a side, the glass in each sash being only a little
over one foot square. The roof was only a trifle over
six feet from the floor of the car. Into this car we got
ten sleeping-car sections, besides a linen locker and two
washrooms — - one at each end.

' The wood used in the interior finish was cherry.
Mr. Pullman was anxious to get hickory, to stand the hard
usage which it was supposed the cars would receive. I
worked part of the Summer of 1858, employing an assist-
ant or two, and the cars went into service in the Fall of
1858. There were no blue prints or plans made for the
remodelling of these first two sleeping-cars, and Mr. Pull-
man and I worked out the details and measurements as
we came to them. The two cars cost Mr. Pullman not
more than $2,000, or $1,000 each. They were uphol-
stered in plush, lighted by oil lamps, heated with box
stoves, and mounted on four-wheel trucks with iron
wheels. The berth rate was fifty cents a night. There
was no porter in those days; the brakeman made up the
beds."

Pullman built his first real sleeping-car in 1864. It
was called the Pioneer and he further designated it by
the letter " A," not dreaming that there would ever be
enough Pullman cars to exhaust the letters of the alpha-

302 THE MODERN RAILROAD

bet. The Pioneer was built in a Chicago & Alton car
shop, and it cost the almost fabulous, in those times, sum
of $18,000. That was extravagant car-building in a
year when the best of railroad coaches could be built at a
cost not exceeding $4,500 each. But the Pioneer was
blazing a new path in luxury. From without, it was
radiant in paints and varnishes, in gay stripings and
letterings; it was a giant compared with its fellows, for
it was a foot wider and two and a half feet higher than
any car ever built before. It had the hinged berths that
are to-day the distinctive feature of the American sleeping
car, and the porter and the passengers no longer had to
drag the bedding from closets at the far end of the car.

The Pioneer was not only wider and higher than other
passenger cars, it was also wider and higher than the clear-
ances of station platforms and overhead bridges. But
when the country was reduced to the deepest distress be-
cause of the death of President Lincoln, the fame of Pull-
man's Pioneer was already widespread, and it was sug-
gested that the fine new car should be the funeral coach
of the martyred president. This involved cutting wider
clearances all the way from Washington by the way of
Philadelphia, New York, and Albany to Springfield, 111. ;
and gangs of men worked night and day making the
needed changes. Pullman knew that the increased con-
venience of an attractive car built upon proper propor-
tions would justify these changes in the long run, and it
is significant that the height and width of the Pullman
cars to-day are those of the Pioneer; the changes have
been made in the length. Not long after that car had
carried President Lincoln to his grave, General Grant
started on a trip west, and the Michigan Central Rail-
road anxious to carry him over its lines from Detroit to
Chicago, widened its clearances for the same celebrated
car. After that there were several paths open for the
big car, and work was begun upon its fellows. It went

AN INTERIOR VIEW OF OXE OF THE EARLIEST
PULLMAN SLEEPING-CARS

INTERIOR OF A STANDARD SLEEPING-CAR
OF TO-DAY

LUXURY OF MODERN TRAVEL 303

into regular service on the Chicago & Alton Railroad;
and the Pullman Palace Car Company was formed in
1867. The alphabet soon ran out, and the company to-
day operates between four and five thousand cars in reg-
ular service. There is a popular tradition, several times
denied, to the effect that Pullman for many years gave
his daughters $100 each for the names of the cars, and
that that formed the source of their pin money.

While the dimensions of the car were largely set, im-
provements in its construction have gone steadily forward,
as has been told in an earlier chapter. The interior of
these luxurious modern cars has not been neglected.
From the beginning they have been elaborate in rare
woods and splendid textile fittings. The advancing era of
American good taste has done much toward softening the
over-elaboration of car interiors — the sort of sleeping
car that George Ade used to call " the chambermaid's
dream of heaven." The newest cars present the quiet
elegance and good taste of a modern residence. Nothing
that may be added in wealth of material or of comfort
is omitted, but the foolish draperies and carvings that once
made the American car the laughing-stock of Europeans
have already gone their way.

. To make for luxury all manner of devices have been
added to these cars. The superintendent sometimes hears
complaints from a traveller that the sharp curves on some
mountain division have spilled the water on his bath-tub;
and the switching-crews at the big terminals know that
turntables are kept busy turning the big observation plat-
form cars so that they will " set right," and the big
piazza-like platform will rest squarely at the rear of the
train. For those persons who wish to pay for the luxury
there are staterooms, and the best of these staterooms
have the baths and big comfortable brass beds. After
many years of unsatisfactory experiment the electric light
has come into its own upon the railroad train; and even

304 THE MODERN RAILROAD

upon unpretentious trains the night traveller no longer has
to wrestle with the difficulties of dressing or undressing
in an absolutely dark berth.

Once the problem of housing folk at night had been met
and solved, another rose. If travellers might sleep upon
a train, why might they not eat there, too? The Ameri-
can eating-houses had met with a degree of fame. There
are old fellows who will still tell you of the glories of
the dining-rooms at Springfield, at Poughkeepsie, at
Hornellsville, and at Altoona. But the' eating-house
scheme had its great disadvantages. For one thing, it
caused a delay in the progress of through fast trains to
halt them three times a day while the passengers piled
out of the cars and went across to some lunch-counter or
dining-room to ruin their digestions in the twenty minutes
allotted for each meal. For another thing, the process
of clambering in and out of the comfortable train in all
sorts of weather was unpopular. The well-established
and equally well-famed eating-houses along the trunk-line
railroads were doomed from the time that the Pioneer
won its first success.

No more should a train tie up at meal-time than a
steamboat should tie up at her wharf for a similar purpose.
The first dining-cars were called hotel-cars; and the first
of these, the President, was placed in operation by the
Pullman company on the Great Western Railway — now
the Grand Trunk — of Canada, in 1867. The hotel-car
was nothing more or less than a sleeping-car with a
kitchen built in at one end and facilities for serving meals
at tables placed at the berths. It was well enough in its
way, but travellers demanded something better, something
more hygienic than eating meals in a sleeping place.

Pullman went hard at his problem, and in another year
he had evolved the first real dining-car, the Delmonico,
which went into regular service on the Chicago & Alton
Railway. The Delmonico was a pretty complete sort of

LUXURY OF MODERN TRAVEL 305

a restaurant on wheels, and not far different from the
dining-car of to-day.

To-day there are 750 successors to the old Delmonko
in daily service on the railroads of the United States.
A small regiment of men earn their livelihood upon them ;
some genius, handy with a lead pencil, has estimated that
these serve some 60,000 meals — breakfast, lunch, and
dinner — every day. The amount of food and drink
consumed is a matter that is left to the statistician.

The average full-sized dining-car seats 40 persons, but
that does not represent the business it does. Unless the
car can be completely filled two or more times at each
meal, it is not considered a profitable run. The Euro-
pean method of reserving seats at " first table " or " sec-
ond table " has never obtained in the United States, and
the wise man on a popular train sacrifices his dignity and
hurries toward the dining-car at the first intimation that
the meal is ready.

To take care of the hungry folk a dining-car crew of
nine men is kept busy. The car is in absolute charge of
a conductor or steward, who is held sharply accountable
by the dining-car superintendent of the road for the con-
duct of his men and of his car. He signs a receipt for
the car equipment before starting on his run out over the
line, and he must see to it that none of that equipment,
not a single napkin or spoon out of all his stock, is missing
at its end. He is held in as strict account for the ap-
pearance and behavior of his men. The waiters must be
neatly dressed, must have clean linen; the conductor him-
self must be something of a Beau Brummel, carrying a
certain polite smile toward each one of the road's patrons,
no matter how disagreeable or cranky he or she may be.
For all of these things and many others — maintaining
a sharp guard over the car's miniature wine-cellars, add-
ing " specials " to the bill-of-fare for a given day, acting
as a cashier for the service — he receives a princely
salary, varying from $75 to $110 a month.

306 THE MODERN RAILROAD

His crew, as far as the passengers see it, consists of
five men, almost always negroes. Back in the tiny
kitchen is the chef, with two assistants, preparing the
food. The kitchen is tiny. It is less than five feet wide
and fifteen feet long, and the three men who work within
it must have a place for everything in it, including them-
selves. Obviously there is no room for the waiters, and
these receive their supplies through a small wicket window.

If the kitchen is tiny, it is also marvellously complete.
An ice-box fits upon and takes half the space of the wide
vestibule platform; the range has the compact dimensions
of a yacht's range; sinks, pots, and kettles fit into incon-
ceivably small spaces. Yet in these tiny cubbyholes one
hundred, ofttimes many more dinners, of seven or eight
courses each, are carefully prepared, with a skill in the
cooking that is a marvel to restaurateurs.

The table d'hote dinner — the famous " dollar din-
ner " — of the American railroad has almost disappeared.
The constant increase in foodstuffs is most largely respon-
sible for this. The Pullman Company long ago gave up
this particular feature of passenger luxury, save in a few
isolated cases. It had ceased to be a particularly profit-
able business, this serving of fine meals for a dollar each ;
and so the railroads themselves took it up and prepared
to make it a cost business for the advertising value to
them. Each railroad plumed itself upon its dining-car
service — some of them still do — and each was willing
to lose a little money, perhaps, to induce travel to come
its way because of the superior meals it served upon its
trains. But as the price of food-stuffs continued steadily
to rise, the advertising feature of these meals began to
be more and more expensive, and the dollar dinner
quickly disappeared. A high priced a-la-carte service
took its place, and the railroads sought to establish their
commissary upon a money-making basis.

The attempt has not been very successful. For the lift-
ing of the dining-car prices and the attempt to reduce

LUXURY OF MODERN TRAVEL 307

running expenses has, on some roads in particular, hurt
the reputation of these " restaurants on wheels," and so
in due season hurt their patronage ; brought their patrons
from folk who went out of their way to eat on dining-cars
to folk who eat there only because of dire necessity.
And these last still have found prices high and the result
is to be eventually a return to former methods in part —
slower trains stopping again for meals at important sta-
tions, the faster trains returning to the table d'hote.
Beginnings have been made along that line recently.
The dollar dinner may never return to some roads — al-
though it remains a joy and a delight to travellers upon
the New Haven system — but the " regular dinner " at
least, capable of quick service in a crowded car, bids fair
to have a renaissance.

While the problem of dining-car economy, and profit
even, remains a problem, the idea is nevertheless being
steadily extended all the while to branches and to trains
that could not support full-sized dining-cars. To meet
these needs smaller cars — generally called cafe-cars —
in which the dining-compartment is much reduced in size,
have been built and operated. In these two cooks, two
waiters and a steward form the working force and the
fixed charges of the outfit are correspondingly reduced.
They are further reduced in the operation of the so-called
broiler-coach, which is nothing more or less than a day-
car with a kitchen built in, the entire service being per-
formed by one or two cooks and a like number of waiters.
Some sleeping-cars and some parlor cars still have kitch-
ens where a single accomplished negro may act as both
cook and waiter, and these cars are designated commonly
as buffet sleepers or buffet parlor cars.

The dining-car department of the railroad will prob-
ably have more to do than supervise the operation of
these various sorts of equipment. Restaurants and lunch-
rooms at terminals and stations along the line may fall
under its direct supervision, and it will probably also

308 THE MODERN RAILROAD

conduct the cuisine of the private cars of the railroad's
officers.

The dining-car department has direct charge of all the
men employed on cars and in the lunch-rooms; it sees to
it that the railroad's culinary equipment is fully main-
tained ; it buys food and drink, linen, silver, china, kitchen
supplies of every sort. The routing of the cars is care-
fully planned to secure the most economical use of them.
Few trains running from New York to Chicago will
carry a single diner throughout the entire trip. These
trains will use two, sometimes three cars during a single-
way trip between the cities. A single car will generally
make the daylight run with the train, to be dropped at
night to continue its course west again at daylight upon
some other train needing meal service. The first train
will pick up a fresh diner in the morning to carry into
Chicago. In this way, a diner may take a week or more
to make the round trip from New York to Chicago.
Obviously, her commissary must meet all needs along the
way. Staple supplies, liquors, dry groceries are all placed
aboard the car at the terminals. Fresh meats and vege-
tables are picked up along the route. This town has an
especial reputation for its chickens; this for its grapes;
this other for its celery. The dining-car department
knows all these, and it selects under the rare opportunity
of a housewife who has a market nearly a thousand miles
long within which to do her marketing.

Just as the glorious comfort of the American river
steamboat of the fifties was responsible for the plans for
eating and sleeping aboard the railroad trains, so it was
responsible for the introduction of a finer luxury in rail-
road travel, until to-day, when the resources of the gen-
eral passenger agent are taxed to discover some new in-
genious joy to add to the pleasure of going by this
particular line. The full development of the protected
vestibule platform and the opportunity it afforded of easy

LUXURY OF MODERN TRAVEL 309

intercourse between the coaches of a train led to many
new devices to make the long cross-country trip of the
traveller more than ever a thing of joy. First came the
buffet-car, with all the conveniences of a man's club; and
the car-builders have shown remarkable ingenuity in imi-
tating the mission-like grillroom interiors, despite the
many limitations placed upon them. No club was com-
plete without a barber-shop, and soon every fast-rushing
limited of any consequence had a dusky servitor whose
sharp-bladed razor was warranted not to cut even when
the train struck a sharp curve at fifty miles an hour.
Stationery, books, and magazines became features of the
buffet-car. After that there came a stenographer, whose
services were free to the patrons of the train.

Most of these things were for the comfort of men, who
form the majority of patrons of the railroad. But a
considerable portion of femininity travels, and it sent in
a complaint that its comfort was being neglected. The
general passenger agents gave quick ear. The men's
buffet, with its comfortable adjuncts of smoke and drink
was at the forward end of the train, the women were
considered in the big, comfortable observation cars at the
rear. They were given more stationery, more magazines,
even a easeful of books, running from the severe standard
works to the gayest and lightest of modern fiction.
Ladies' maids were installed upon the trains, and the girl
running from New York up to Albany could have her
nails manicured while upon the train.

These are all details, but each goes to make the com-
fort of the traveller upon the American railroad train.
Such comfort is not equalled in any other country in the
world. From the moment he steps from his cab, the
American traveller passing through the magnificence of
superb waiting-rooms enters palatial trains, superior to
the private trains of royalty upon the other side of the
ocean. A corps of well-trained attaches look to his com-
fort and his ease, every moment that he is upon the train,

310 THE MODERN RAILROAD

whether his ride be of an hour's duration or a four-days'
run across the continent. Other railroaders whom he
does not see, engine crews, changing each few hours upon
his run, signalmen in the towers along the route, telegra-
phers, despatchers, train walkers, car inspectors help in
their small but important ways to make his trip one of
comfort and of safety. The entire organization of the
railroad lends itself to that very purpose.

The railroad does not stop at the mere exercise of its
great function as a carrier; it does not even stop with the
exercise of its every ingenuity toward safety in its trans-
portation; it goes a little further and gives to the man or
woman who rides upon its rails, a degree of luxurious
comfort equal to if not even greater than that man or
woman can receive at any other place.

CHAPTER XIX

GETTING THE CITY OUT INTO THE COUNTRY

COMMUTERS' TRAINS IN MANY TOWNS — RAPID INCREASE IN THE VOL-
UME OF SUBURBAN TRAVEL — ELECTRIFICATION OF THE LINES — LONG
ISLAND RAILROAD ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY SUBURBAN — VARIED DIS-
TANCES OF SUBURBAN HOMES FROM THE CITIES — CLUB-CARS FOR
COMMUTERS — STATEROOMS IN THE SUBURBAN CARS — SPECIAL TRANS-
FER COMMUTERS.

WHEN the Commuter slams his desk shut at the
close of a busy day, he is fully aware that he is a
superior being. Other mortals condemned to hard labor
in the city may squeeze within the ill-ventilated confines
of trolley-car, elevated or subway train, may find their
way to stuffy apartments, which, if their fronts were to
be suddenly removed, would look for all the world like
shoe-boxes stuck tier upon tier in a shop. The Commuter
thrusts out his chest. Not for him. His is a different
life. He even feels justified in thinking that his is the
only life. There is nothing narrow about the Commuter ;
the open breath of the country has tended to widen him.
He finds his way to the showy railroad terminal, down
the crowded concourse with a human stream of other
Commuters to the 5 -.37. That train is part of his reg-
ular calendar of life. It has been such ever since he
took flight to the country, a dozen years ago. If the
5 137 should ever be stricken from the time-card the Com-
muter would feel as if the light had been extinguished.
Once, when some meddler violently assumed to change it
into a 5:31, the Commuter was one of a committee who
visited a terrified general passenger agent and had the
course of time set right again. There is only one other
train which must approach the 5 :37 in regularity ; that is

3i2 THE MODERN RAILROAD

the 7:52, on which the Commuter slinks sorrowfully into
the dirty town each morning. Other trains may be
jumped about on the time-card, the Commuter is oblivious
of their fate. But let his 7:52 be ten minutes late into
the big terminal three mornings in succession, and the
Commuter begins to write letters to the papers and to
the officers of the railroad.

Once aboard the 5 137 the Commuter trails his way
into the smoker. Jim, the brakeman, who is the source
of all trustworthy information about the railroad, and
who can even foreshadow the resignation of the president,
has stored away the table and the cards. They are pro-
duced for the daily consideration of a dime and a game
that runs week in and week out is ready to begin. Smith,
of the Standard Oil crowd, drops into his seat; Higgins,
the lawyer, into his; the others are quickly filled; packages
— foodstuffs from the cheaper city markets and hurried
purchases made at noon from handy shops — go into the
racks, and the Commuter is oblivious until, as if by in-
stinct, a familiar red barn goes flying backwards. The
game is off again until to-morrow morning; he is sorting
his own packages out of the rack. The train halts for
a single nervous moment, and he is on the platform. The
cars roll past him; the party are at a three-handed game
now.

The Commuter finds his way up a steep road to his
home on the hillside, his very own home. It looks as
sweet, set in there among the bushes and the trees, as it
did the day he bought it; and that day it looked to him
as Paradise. When night comes, there comes a peace
and quiet, a peculiar country coolness in the air. The
city is steaming from the hot day, and through the night
the pavements and the roofs still emit heat. The Com-
muter has forgotten the city. He sleeps as he slept as a
boy on a farm, where a city was but a hazy dream in his
mind. When he awakes he is refreshed, invigorated.
The country has repaid him for the trouble that he has

GETTING CITY OUT INTO COUNTRY 313

taken to reach it. He goes into town again on that
blessed 7:52, twice as good a workingman as the man
who has the next desk to his, the poor chap who had to
sit on the apartment steps until after midnight in order
to get even a miserable degree of comfort.
That is why the city goes out into the country.

The Commuter is apt to settle his thoughts upon him-
self, to forget that he is but an infinitely small part of
a mighty home-going army that nightly calls all the
passenger resources of the railroad into play. There are
more than 100,000 of him alone in the metropolitan dis-
trict around New York. The busy Long Island Railroad
takes a host of him nightly off to the garden spots of that
wonderful land from which it takes its name ; the Central
Railroad reaches off into the lowlands, and the Erie and
the Lackawanna into the highlands of New Jersey; the
New York Central and the New Haven tap the pic-
turesque shores of the Hudson and the Sound.

Boston repeats New York in this human tide that ebbs
and flows daily through her gates. From both her North
and South stations mighty armies of Commuters come and
go until one wonders sometimes if any one really lives in
Boston itself. There are more than 60,000 of this army
at the Hub. In Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania and the
Reading handle from their terminals an army of equal
size each night; another finds its way from the smoky,
dirty heart of Pittsburgh out into the attractive towns that
perch the hills in her vicinage.

Middle West cities, even those of good size, differ
from Eastern in the fact that they are rarely hampered
in their growth by natural conditions. In big towns like
Cleveland and Detroit, for instance, the natural and the
artificial electric transit facilities are so good as to bring
the commutation business to a minimum. Not so with
Chicago. The Illinois Central from the south, the
Northwestern and the St. Paul from the north, serve

3 H THE MODERN RAILROAD

rapidly growing suburban areas that will compare with
some of the best in the East. Then, after the Com-
muters in the East are safely home, another army is find-
ing its way across the bay, and off to the north and the
south of San Francisco. These are the big centres of
commuting as the American railroads know it. In
smaller measure it exists at every large city in the country.
The familiar monthly card ticket, representing its cousin,
that holy-of-holies — the annual pass, is issued from
good-sized villages and pretentious country seats. The
Commuter is already a national institution.

Conductor John M. Dorsey, who used to run an Erie
train out of Jersey City in the long ago, once showed us
what he thought was the first example of a pure commuta-
tion business. It was a list issued to Erie conductors in
1860, and containing the names of 162 persons who
travelled daily in and out of New York by the way of
Jersey City. These folk lived in Passaic (they called it
Boiling Springs in those days), and in Paterson, and all
the way up the line to Goshen and Middletown. When
a man wanted to commute then he paid a monthly fee
to the railroad and they printed his name on this official
list. Such a scheme would be obviously out of the ques-
tion these days.

When New York refused to stop growing, and more
and more people began making the daily trip in and out
of Jersey City, the handy method of the commutation
ticket was substituted for the cumbersome printed list, and
the Erie and all the other railroads began to cater to the
Commuter with special short-distance trains. Committees
came to railroad officers from various small towns and
aided them in fixing a definite basis of fare, which remains
to-day at something between six-tenths and three-quarters
of a cent a mile. In later years, the real estate business
became the science that it is to-day, and the suburban busi-
ness began to move forward in long leaps.

" EVEN IN WINTER THERE IS A HOMELY, HOMEY AIR ABOUT THE

COMMUTER'S STATION "

ENTRANCE TO THE GREAT FOUR-TRACK OPEN CUT WHICH THE

ERIE HAS BUILT FOR THE COMMUTER'S COMFORT AT JERSEY ClTY

A MODEL WAY-STATION ON THE LINES OF THE BOSTON & ALBANY

RAILROAD

THE YARDMASTER'S OFFICE — IN AN ABANDONED SWITCH-TOWER

GETTING CITY OUT INTO COUNTRY 315

" It seems incredible," said a railroad officer just the
other day, " but this suburban problem is all but over-
whelming for us. It does not increase our revenues at so
wonderful a pace, but it does increase in volume from 20
to 25 per cent a year ; and think how that keeps us hustling,
making facilities for it. There is not a railroad entering
New York to-day that could not dismiss its passenger ter-
minal problems to-morrow, if it were not for the Com-
muter. There is not a railroad coming into New York
that could not handle all its through business in a train-
house of from four to five tracks. Instead of that, what
do we see? The Erie with five through trains requiring
a terminal of sixteen tracks; the Lackawanna, with the
same number of through trains, a new terminal of even
greater size, the overwhelming passenger terminal prob-
lem being repeated at every corner of New York, just
because of the tremendous annual increase in the suburban
passenger business."

The great reconstruction of the Grand Central terminal
facilities in the heart of New York, and the erection of
a new station there, as described in detail in an earlier
chapter, is directly due to the Commuter. When the new
station with its double tier of tracks is finished, there will
be thirty-two platform tracks in the double train-house,
an amount far in excess of that needed for even the great
volume of through business that goes and comes over the
lines of the New York Central and the New York, New
Haven, & Hartford, the two systems that use it. And
the new station, involving a tremendous expenditure of
money, of brains, and of energy, is not all.

The New Haven has electrified its four-track main line
all the way out to Stamford, Conn., in order that it may
in some measure cope with this increasing flow of sub-
urban traffic over its already crowded main-line tracks.
It has wrestled with the unanticipated problems of electri-
fication because it has been facing a situation that left it
no time to experiment elsewhere and approach its main-

316 THE MODERN RAILROAD

line problem with deliberation. More and more folk
were settling in the suburban towns in its territory each
month, and deliberation was quite out of their calcula-
tions. The Commuter is rarely deliberate.

So the New Haven, with all the resources of a giant
carrier, has found each new measure of relief swallowed
up in the new flood and has turned to more radical
methods. It has been apparent to its managers for some
time past that even the new Grand Central, with its won-
derful capacity, would some day prove inadequate, for
the reason that the New York Central — the actual
owners of the property — was also trying to cope with
its own great increase in suburban traffic, and would
eventually require more and more space for its own Com-
muters. With such a possibility in the future — not a
distant future with the suburban business doubling in
volume every four or five years — the New Haven sought
to develop an unimportant freight branch leading from
New Rochelle down to the Harlem River. It has almost
finished the work of transforming this into a great electric
carrier, six tracks in width. Railroad engineers show no
hesitancy in saying that eight-track trunks will be needed
out of New York in every direction within a dozen years.
The Harlem River branch of the New Haven, once it is
provided with a suitable terminal, will become a great
artery of suburban traffic. It will give trunk capacity to
make possible the development of a great new area lying
just inland from the Sound, and yet within from 40 to 50
miles of New York City.

A third project in which New Haven capital is known
to be interested is that of a high-speed, four-track suburban
electric railroad also to reach into the Sound territory as
far as Port Chester, with an important branch, diverging
to White Plains, the shire-town of Westchester County.
This line will feed into the main line of the New York
subway, and so avoid cramping the terminals still further.

GETTING CITY OUT INTO COUNTRY 317

The terminals are the crux of the whole great problem
of handling suburban traffic.

The New York Central has also electrified its tracks
for a zone of some 40 to 50 miles from its terminal.
This work was started primarily by a distressing accident
in its old smoke-filled tunnel, that ran the length of Park
Avenue under Manhattan Island, but New York Central
officers are to-day free to admit that the electrification was
close at hand in any event. The operation of a terminal
so closely planned as the new Grand Central, with its
train-sheds and yards built in layers, would have been a
physical impossibility with smoky, dirty, steam locomotives.
The New York Central has been, as we shall see in
greater detail in the chapter on the coming of electricity,
the first of the standard steam railroads entering New
York to provide suburban trains of multiple unit motor-
cars, similar to those used in rapid transit subway and
elevated trains. The great advantage of these trains over
trains handled by either steam or electric locomotives is
an operating advantage. The train may be so quickly
turned in terminals as to bring the terminal problem down

i an appreciable percentage, and so to give a greater haul-
ing capacity to main-line tracks. The Central, wedged

| in tightly by the high hills that lie to the north of the

\ metropolis, has had to pin its faith to plans that utilize the

| present tracks to the uttermost capacity.

The railroads crossing New Jersey and reaching the
west bank of the Hudson have not been behind the routes
that enter from the north in providing for the suburban
business. The recently opened McAdoo Tunnel, linking
the Jersey terminals of the Erie, the Lackawanna, and the
Pennsylvania with both the downtown and the uptown
theatre, hotel, and shopping district of Manhattan, has
been a great stimulus to the suburban development across
the Hudson.

The Lackawanna has done its part by boring a second

3 1 8- THE MODERN RAILROAD

tunnel under the Bergen Hill, parallel to its original tube,
giving a four-track entrance to its fine new terminal, and
relieving the congestion of suburban traffic night and
morning at its worst point, the neck of the bottle. The
Erie has already completed, as a part of its extensive ter-
minal reconstruction-work in Jersey City, a similar project,
a four-track open cut through the stout backbone of
Bergen Hill. The open cut replaces completely the
so-called Bergen Tunnel, which has already become a
matter of history.

We have already told of the Pennsylvania terminal in
New York. The Pennsylvania built the new station for
through travel rather than for the Commuter, at the out-
set. But the Pennsylvania, with the exception of a brisk
traffic out to Newark, is hardly a big suburban road, in
the New York metropolitan district. The great volume
of Commuters who will flock to its station nightly, will
be bound east, not west. The Long Island Railroad, its
property stretching less than one hundred miles east from
New York, through what is one of the most attractive
residential localities in the world, is almost exclusively a
suburban system. Long Island is not a manufacturing or
agricultural territory of consequence. There is not a
town of 10,000 souls east of the New York City line.
Freight traffic and through traffic, aside from some sum-
mer excursion business, is conspicuous by its absence. Yet
the Long Island operates through its local station at
Jamaica (an even dozen miles distant from the new Penn-
sylvania terminal), more than 800 trains a day. That,
of itself, represents a volume of traffic, and speaks won-
ders for the desirability of the broad and sandy island as
an escape from the city to the country.

'We have from 18,000 to 20,000 Commuters all the
year round," said a Long Island official, just the other
day; " and this branch of our traffic — our chief strong-
hold— is increasing at the rate of 25 per cent annually.
We are trying to increase our facilities to keep pace with

GETTING CITY OUT INTO COUNTRY 319

the demand made upon them ; that is why we became ten-
ants in the new Pennsylvania Station. For our share of
that work we will pay $65,000,000 — some money. But
we cut twenty minutes off every Commuter's trip in each
direction every day, and that is worth while in a day
when every road is reaching out for new business. We
do not consider that $65,000,000 to save a man forty
minutes a day is money ill-spent ; but I am frank in saying
that we also expect our 25 per cent annual increase to re-
main for several years in order to make good such an ex-
penditure."

Part of that $65,000,000 is yet to be spent on the elec-
trification of the Long Island suburban lines, within a zone
of from 30 to 40 miles out from the new terminal. The
through trains running to the far eastern points of the
island will run direct from the Pennsylvania Station as
far as Jamaica by electricity, heavy motors hauling the
standard equipment. At Jamaica, in a million-dollar
transfer station that is part of the big improvement scheme,
the steam locomotives will take up their part of the work.
Electricity for long stretches of standard railroad where
the traffic is comparatively slight is still an economic im-
possibility.

So much for New York, where the lead has been taken
in providing suburban service on the railroads operated
by electricity. The problem is being approached in Bos-
ton — who, like her larger sister, refuses to stay " put."
South Station and North Station, on opposite sides of the
city, are of the largest size, but they are beginning to feel
the strain of traffic, which forges ahead every year. The
Metropolitan Improvements Commission of that city has
already made a careful study of the problem. It plans
to relieve the situation by constructing a four-track tunnel
from one station to the other, and operating both of them
• — as far as suburban traffic is concerned — as through
stations rather than as terminals. In a word, Boston &
Maine local trains entering North Station would not end

320 THE MODERN RAILROAD

their runs there as at present, but would continue through
the proposed tunnel to a second stop at South Station,
where they would become outgoing New York, New
Haven, & Hartford suburban locals. The same opera-
tion would be continued in a reverse direction. A more
complicated adaptation of the scheme from a construction
standpoint would still use the connecting tunnel and pro-
vide car-yards for the Boston & Maine trains outside of
South Station, with a similar yard for the New Haven
locals just beyond North Station. The main gain made
by such a plan is the elimination of switching — the same
point at which the New York Central and the Long Island
have aimed in making their suburban trains of multiple
units. With the hauling in and out of empty trains to and
from a terminal eliminated, the capacity may be almost
doubled. Another gain is the convenience to passengers
who under such a plan would be enabled to reach either
side of the city without changing cars, and a recourse to
street transit facilities. The Boston plan, of course, em-
bodies a change from steam to electricity as a motive
power. It is one of the most comprehensive plans yet sub-
mitted for the solving of the great problem of getting the
city out into the country.

In Philadelphia, they are feeling the pressure of the
Commuter at both the big downtown terminals, the Penn-
sylvania and the Reading, while the first of these roads is
already planning to electrify its suburban lines and to
give Broad Street Station exclusively to this class of traffic.
Philadelphia is such a wide-spreading and sprawling town
that the trolley lines have afforded little real rapid transit
to the outlying sections, while relief by subways and ele-
vated lines has so far been meagre. As a result, a great
burden of interurban as well as suburban traffic has
been laid upon the railroads there, and they have been
compelled repeatedly to enlarge both track and station
facilities.

The Illinois Central, carrying a heavy traffic south of

GETTING CITY OUT INTO COUNTRY 321

Chicago, has prepared plans for the electrification of 325
miles of its suburban lines, and radical enlargement of
terminal facilities. The Illinois Central has been very
progressive in its methods of handling the Commuter
traffic. Its side-door cars, permitting quick loading and
unloading, have long marked a progressive step in equip-
ment. The Chicago and Northwestern, in its splendid
new white marble terminal on the West Side of Chi-
cago, will give its chief use toward the upbuilding of a sub-
urban traffic, already, strong and well developed.

The Commuter covers a varied zone. His station may
be less than a mile from the terminal and his home still
within the crowded confines of the town, or he may be
the last passenger of the train as it reaches the far end
of its suburban run. The average commutation district
runs about 30 miles out, with by far the heavier part of
the traffic in the first 15 miles of this. Most of the rail-
roads that cluster in at New York, however, issue commu-
tation tickets out over a 70 or 8o-mile radius. One man
for many years held the record as a long-distance Com-
muter. He preferred to sleep nights within the quiet con-
fines of Philadelphia and his 9<>mile trip to New York,
with a 9<>mile return at the end of every day became a
mere incident in his life. His record was beaten this year.
A man arrives and departs from the Grand Central Station
five days out of the week, who travels 320 miles on every
one of them. He catches a fast train from his home
town at seven o'clock in the morning, breakfasts on the
train, and is at his New York office at 1 1 130 o'clock. He
leaves his desk at 3 130 o'clock, dines on the returning ex-
press, and is home by eight. His daily trip, with all in-
cidental expenses, aggregates more than $12.00; so he
deserves to rank as the Champion Commuter.

If few Commuters can approach the mileage record of
this man there are many who do not hesitate at extra ex-
penditures for their comfort. About all of the best subur-
ban expresses that come into New York carry some sort of

322 THE MODERN RAILROAD

club or private-parlor cars. The club car is one of the
most elaborate developments of the entire Commuter idea.
It is a comfortable coach, which is rented to a group of re-
sponsible men coming either from a single point or a chain
of contiguous points. The railroad charges from $250 to
$300 a month for the use of this car in addition to the
commutation fares, and the " club " arranges dues to
cover this cost and the cost of such attendants and supplies
as it may elect to place on its roving house. It must
guarantee a certain number of riders to the railroad every
trip, so the membership of the " club " is kept high enough
to allow for a reasonable percentage failing to use the car
daily. Some railroads go at the thing in another way.
They supply the car and its attendants and make a monthly
extra charge, in addition to commutation. The car is
entirely filled with regular riders, so it is in a sense a
club car.

Such a car has been running for some years on one of
the suburban trains of the Harlem road. It is unique in
some ways, and in these an outgrowth of early customs.
The first of these began years ago, when the Oldest Com-
muter began his habit of riding to and from town in the
baggage-car. There is something about a baggage-car
that fascinates the ordinary man traveller. Perhaps it is
the solemn rule of the railroad that attempts to prevent
him from riding in this form of conveyance. At any
rate in this particular case the Oldest Commuter gradually
picks up an acquaintance with the baggageman; and, pre-
suming upon that acquaintance gradually appropriates
the baggageman's old chair for his own use. The bag-
gageman was good-natured, for the Oldest Commuter was
a generous fellow and never forgot Christmas-times and
the like. He got another old chair from somewhere, and
all was well until the Next Oldest Commuter absorbed the
baggageman's chair, and the baggageman had to bring a
third into his car. The Next to the Next Oldest Com-
muter swallowed that up, and after a time there was a row

GETTING CITY OUT INTO COUNTRY 323

of comfy old-fashioned chairs all around the edge of the
dingy baggage-car, and an atmosphere of smoke and good
stories that warmed the cockles of the baggageman's heart.
You could have raised $100,000,000 for an enterprise
from the crowd of men who rode regularly in that little
car, but the baggageman neither knew nor cared about
that. He simply knew that there was a good crowd of
Commuters who rode with him daily.

After another little time the railroad took cognizance
of that particular baggage-car. The general passenger
agent, who was a fellow both wise and solemn, talked with
the general manager, and one day that little club of Com-
muters had a surprise. Instead of their baggage-car, the
down train hauled a bright new car all fitted with fancy
things — curtains and carpets and big stuffed chairs, and
the baggageman was rigged out in a fine new uniform as
an attendant. The general passenger agent fondly im-
agined that he had made the one really happy stroke of
his existence.

He had not. His was a colossal mistake. The " club "
called for its baggage-car back again. Its members were
men who were surfeited with mahoganies and impressive
stuffed chairs and thick carpets. They demanded their
old dingy car, with its four little windows, its rough
board floor and the wooden armchairs. They got it back.
The big, new, showy car was sent off upon another route ;
and the baggage-car — itself a club to which many a soul
enviously craves for admission — makes its run six times a
week on one of the fastest expresses on the line.

Groups of men have staterooms regularly reserved for
them in the parlor cars of the finest suburban expresses,
and there is never a word said of what goes on behind
those closed doors. There come whispers of " antes "
that are as high as a church steeple, but the railroad does
not concern itself with the morals of its passengers to the
point of breaking in upon closed doors. The porters may
know, but the porters are traditionally wise and more than

324 THE MODERN RAILROAD

traditionally close-mouthed. One big New York editor
hired a stateroom for his daily ride in and out to his sub-
urban home. His secretary and his stenographer are
closeted in it with him, and on the 5o-minute ride twice
each day he dictates the daily editorial utterances that
delight a great congregation of his readers.

Special trains for Commuters are no particular novelty.
Almost every big system has some daily suburban trains
that are on its working time-tables and not upon the sched-
ules that are given out to the public. A group of aristo-
cratic Commuters living north of Boston in the district
around Manchester have their private special into the
North Station every summer morning. It is an all-parlor-
car train, the most luxurious suburban on the line, yet not
one Commuter in a thousand knows a thing about it. A
similar train arrives and departs daily at the South Sta-
tion. Others are in service out of New York. You can
buy both exclusiveness and elegance from the railroad.

The Commuter is not more concerned about that 5 137
than is the railroad. It makes train and Commuter both
its concern, because that is the way it seeks to build up its
profitable suburban traffic.

" We are getting more of the city out into the country
each year," says a big suburban passenger agent; "and
with the wide increase in the use of electricity as a motive
power for the standard railroads this business is bound
for increases that we can hardly foresee to-day. I think
that I am quite safe in predicting that another decade will
see the belt of from 30 to 50 miles outside of New York
terminals as thickly settled as the belt from 10 to 30 miles
is to-day settled. The railroaders have done their part
by expensive increase in terminal and track facilities ; they
have helped the real-estate men in their broad advertising
of the possibilities of suburban life: the harvest is all that
now remains to be reaped."

CHAPTER XX

FREIGHT TRAFFIC

INCOME FROM FREIGHT TRAFFIC GREATER THAN FROM PASSENGER —
COMPETITION IN FREIGHT RATES — AFTERWARDS A STANDARD RATE-
SHEET — RATE- WARS VIRTUALLY ENDED BY THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE
COMMISSION CLASSIFICATION OF FREIGHT INTO GROUPS — DIFFERENTIAL
FREIGHT RATES — DEMURRAGE FOR DELAY IN EMPTYING CARS — COAL
TRAFFIC — MODERN METHODS OF HANDLING LARD AND OTHER FREIGHT.

IN England they speak of it as " goods " and regard
it as almost a minor factor in the conduct of their rail-
ways. In the United States it is freight-traffic, and is the
thing from which the railroads derive by far the greater
part of their revenues. In England it is represented by
delicious little trails of " goods-wagons," four-wheelers of
from five to eight or nine or ten tons' capacity, the
" goods " often left exposed to the rigors of winter, save
for possibly a tarpaulin covering; in the United States,
fast-freights and slow-freights crowd upon one another's
heels; the sixty-ton steel car has long since come into
its own.

If you do not realize the importance of the freight traf-
fic, you should talk to those shrewd old souls in Wall
Street who measure a carrier, not by its ticket sales, but by
that fascinating thing that they call " tonnage " ; you
should go out upon the line and ask any operating man
how his territory is holding up in traffic. He will an-
swer you in tons, in freight-cars moved within a single
twenty-four hours. If you are still unconvinced, go to the
passenger man you know best. He will tell you that while
he is pleading vainly with the biggest boss of all for some
new Limited, eight or ten passenger cars all told, some
shouldering freight-hustler has been welcomed into the

325

326 THE MODERN RAILROAD

inner sanctum and comes out with an O. K. for 800 or
1,000 box-cars or gondolas in his fist, a dozen new freight-
pulling locomotives in addition, for good measure. There
is your answer.

The passenger terminals may have all the magnificence
in which we have seen them, but the freight terminals are
the real core of a railroad's entrance into any town. For
when you come to even the roughest figures, you find that
in extreme cases — such as the New Haven's, where there
is a congested territory, closely filled with thickly populated
cities and towns — the passenger receipts will hardly do
more than approach a balance with those from freight.
In some cases the passenger earnings are hardly 25 per
cent of the railroad's entire income; and cases like these
are more common than the New Haven, holding New
England as its own principality. Wonder not that Wall
Street looks askance at any new line until it can prove it-
self able to develop " train-load " — freight traffic, meas-
ured in thousands of tons.

Your general freight agent, who is a sort of official
cousin to the general passenger agent, is the man who
studies tonnage. More likely in these days of the exalta-
tion of titles, he is the freight traffic-manager, with a group
of subordinates around him and a traffic-skirmishing corps
out on his own road and the other connecting roads, who
are making friends with shippers, just as the young travel-
ling passenger agents round up the theatrical managers
and the brethren from the lodges. The travelling
freight agents hang around sidings and breathe affection
for manufacturers and wholesalers; they welcome to
their very arms the business traffic-managers, who are
really glorified shipping clerks for great big concerns.
And while they cultivate the road in detail, their big
boss studies the territory in general. The trade papers
and the market bulletins litter his desk; he can tell you
strength or weakness in this thing or that — why cotton
is off, and wheat rushing upwards. Moreover, the freight

FREIGHT TRAFFIC 327

traffic-manager, himself, is not above friendships. He
will pack his own evening suit into a bag and go 500 miles
willingly to give shippers his own private explanation of
the national rate complication.

Did we say rate complication? -That seems almost too
simple a name for the subtle and intricate structure which
tells us how much we must pay the railroad for the trans-
portation of our goods. When we were visiting the pas-
senger office, we saw something of the work of the rate-
clerks there. We learned that, in fact, the railroad creates
various classes of rates in the first place; local or round-
trip tickets, at, say, three cents a mile for occasional travel-
lers; mileage books for more constant travellers, which
bring a wholesale rate of two cents a mile; a third and
lowest rate of something less than a cent for that urbane
soul, the Commuter. For excursions, where many, many
persons were to be moved at one time, perhaps upon a
single train, other very low passenger rates were created.
We also saw how the railroad, trying to base its passenger
charges on the number of miles covered, is compelled to
make delicate adjustments on through charges between
competitive points.

We speak of these things now, because in a way the pas-
senger tariff resembles the freight, and yet compares with
it as a child's primer with a Greek lexicon. In an earlier
day the thing was very much worse. In fact, at the very
beginning there was no real scientific way in which the
railroad might regulate its charges, and on some of the
very earliest of steel highways the rates were made just
half what they had been on the toll-roads, and without
regard to the cost of transportation. Thus the competi-
tive feature had its way early in the formulation of a
rate-sheet; and there is evidence to assert that in those
early days when the railroad had an opportunity it made
its tariff as high as it thought folk would stand without a
riot, and thus the now historic phrase " what the traffic
will bear " came into coinage. As a matter of fact, in

328 THE MODERN RAILROAD

those days when scientific bookkeeping was unknown the
railroad had no way of accurately knowing just how much
it cost to operate, and how that cost should be fairly
apportioned between the different classes of its traffic.

The thing went from bad to worse as the great land
carriers developed. Each made its rate-sheet according
to its own sweet will; it classified freight precisely as it
pleased, and the man down in New Orleans sending goods
to New Hampshire was puzzled as to the charges that
would accrue upon his shipment when it finally reached
the northeastern corner of the country. The competitive
feature grew to be the strongest in the making of the rate-
sheet, unless it was the subtle influence of the railroad's
favored friends, an influence that showed its ugly head
oftener in the practice of rebating than anywhere else.
The fierce competition that ruled between the railroads in
the seventies has never been approached at another time.
Ruinous rate-war after rate-war followed upon each oth-
er's heels, and little roads kept dropping into bankruptcy,
one after another. There was a time in 1877 when a man
might ship a carload of live-stock free from Chicago to
Pittsburgh, from Chicago away through to New York for
five dollars; and there is hardly a more expensive com-
modity for the railroad to handle, than cattle. To appre-
ciate what these wars meant to the carriers, bear in mind
that the week after this particular one was settled it cost
the old rate — $110 a car — to ship cattle from Chicago
to New York.

Out of such guerilla warfare came the one possible
thing — cooperation. The railroads were not then big
enough to consolidate their properties, J. P. Morgan had
not then developed his fine art of welding them together.
So they did the next best thing and made secret con-
tracts — pooling. That is, they established a standard
rate-sheet in their mutual territories and bound themselves
to abide by it for a certain length of time. They figured
out their relative percentages of business at the beginning

" THE INSIDE OF ANY FREIGHT-HOUSE IS A BUSY PLACE "

ST. JOHN'S PARK, THE GREAT FREIGHT-HOUSE OF THE NEW YORK
CENTRAL RAILROAD IN DOWN-TOWN NEW YORK

FREIGHT TRAFFIC 329

of any agreement, and took from the combined earnings
of the pool, the same percentages of receipts. The bitter
outcry that went up across the land against pooling still
echoes. That practice with another now also prohibited
— rebating — really gave birth to governmental regula-
tion of railroads.

In 1887 the Interstate Commerce Commission was born,
and ruinous rate-warring practically came to an end. The
Commission required the railroads to file with it copies of
all their rate-sheets, both freight and passenger, and or-
dered that in almost every case thirty days' notice should
be given of any change in the tariff. This meant that the
old practice of tearing a rate-sheet apart in a single night,
so as to jab vitally into the heart of a competitor, was at
an end. And a dignified rate-war, with the opponents
giving thirty days' advance notice of their strategic in-
tentions, is almost an impossibility.

Now come to the present. The freight-rate system of
to-day is intricate, fearfully intricate, but it is a system.
It begins by classifying all manner of freight into groups,
for it must be apparent to any one that to the railroad
the cost of handling different commodities must vary tre-
mendously. Several factors make for such variation:
the value of the shipment and the degree of risk for its safe
transportation that the railroad must assume; its bulk, its
weight, and the cost of handling at terminals, as well as
the cost of any special equipment that may be necessary to
carry it over the rails. No one would expect a railroad
to haul a box-car filled with several hundred thousand
dollars' worth of silk for the same price that it hauled
the same car filled with coke. So the railroad has grouped
its freight into six general classes — varying from the most
difficult and expensive to handle down to the easiest and
the cheapest; and the rates for these six different classes
also run in a rough proportion.

Some 8,000 articles, ranging from arsenic to step-lad-
ders and from Christmas trees to locomotives, are grouped

330 THE MODERN RAILROAD

into these classes. Into them has gone about everything
that the railroad will handle, save coal and a few other
specialties which are rated as specific commodities and have
special published rates. So a man shipping feather dust-
ers from South Brooklyn to Ogdensburg, N. Y., would
find that they came under Class i, and that he would have
to pay 44 cents a hundred pounds for the haul. If he was
shipping steel beams between the same points he would
find them under Class 4 and he would find the tariff at 23
cents a hundred. These six classes have been made stand-
ard throughout the country by all the railroads in coop-
eration. The roads north of the Ohio River and east of
the Mississippi use the so-called Official Classification;
south of the Ohio and still east of the Mississippi, the
Southern Classification; while all those west of the Mis-
sissippi use the Western Classification. So the shipper is
no longer in much doubt in these matters, particularly in
view of the fact that the three classifications are very much
the same in all save minor details.

So much for the classification at this moment. It is
quite simple when you come to place it beside the tariff
sheets themselves, the printed form of an intricate struc-
ture, so great as to be almost shadowy in its workings.
You ask a freight traffic-manager about rates. He is a
skilled man, a man skilled in the economics of common
carriers, and he tries his best to explain simply to you the
basing charges for the transportation of commodities.

" Our rates/' he says, u are formed by many things.
In a general way, by the competitive territory into which
we go, and in specific cases by the volume of business that
comes or goes from a single point. The direction of the
movement, including whether cars must return empty or
loaded, is another factor. Then, of course, there is the
great factor to which both passenger and freight rates
must comply — the necessity for the railroad earning more
than it pays out. Acworth, the English economist, says
that a railroad must pay for three things, the expense of

FREIGHT TRAFFIC 331

maintaining the organization, that of maintaining the
plant, and that of doing the work. Our revenues, from
one source or another, must meet that triple expense."

Ask this big freight-man about charging " what the
traffic will bear " and he looks grieved. He turns about
sharply and asks you :

"The earning-sheets of every railroad are public and
they will show you that they are but making expenses, in
a few cases paying about half the dividends that a healthy
national bank or trust company or manufacturing enter-
prise might be expected to return to its investors. That
makes it look as if we had begun to get some sort of
scientific adjustment between expense and revenue, does
it not?"

You dodge the point. You have no desire to quarrel
or to delve into high railroad finance, and so you say you
simply want to know about rates.

" It 's a little simpler than Sanscrit," says the freight-
man. " We begin to figure on common or basing
points — "

You interrupt and inquire as to what a " common
point " really is. Then the traffic expert gets down to
primer talk and begins to explain the thing to your real un-
derstanding. It seems that some years ago, when the rail-
roads first " pooled " they had to find an equitable method
of making a rate-sheet. Everybody made suggestions, and
a Pennsylvania freight-clerk, named James McGraham,
made the right one. It was adopted and became the
standard of to-day — which goes to show that good can
sometimes come out of iniquity.

In this arrangement, the rate for each of the six different
classes and all the special commodities, between New York
and Chicago was made 100 per cent. Other towns, both
further and less distant from New York than Chicago
were given proportionate percentages, St. Louis being fixed
at 117, Pittsburg 60, Cleveland 71, Detroit 78, Indian-
apolis 93, Peoria no, and Grand Rapids at 100 — the

332 THE MODERN RAILROAD

same as Chicago. At the eastern end of this particular bit
of territory — the Official Classification — a reduction of
two or three cents a hundred was made from the New
York rates in favor of Baltimore and Philadelphia, a
corresponding addition of two or three cents to meet the
increased haul to Boston. No matter how you ship
freight, these rates now hold standard, as long as the rail-
roads remain faithful to their traffic associations. You
may ship from Indianapolis to New York by way of Cleve-
land and Albany, by Marion and Salamanca, by Columbus
and Pittsburgh, or by Cincinnati and Parkersburg, and
although there is quite a wide variance in mileage between
these routes, the rate is the same on all the different roads
that go to form them.

This standard, simple as things go in freight-rates, was
not adopted in a moment. Bitter contentions on the part
of cities and of shippers had to be settled before it ruled.
After it ruled, it was easy for each road to build its own
tariff upon it. Together these form a vast structure, one
that is constantly changing, as one road or another changes
its tariff under the pressure of shippers or of civic bodies,
or possibly a desire to establish more equitable schedules;
and the work these changes make can be imagined when
it is stated that a single one of them in the Official Classi-
fication territory causes more than eight thousand changes
in the rate-sheets of the railroads.

The choosing of Chicago as the " one hundred per cent "
city in the northeastern territory of the United States re-
peated the compliment to her prowess as a traffic city, that
the great yards which hedge her in for miles have paid her
for many years. She is one of the very greatest basing
points, where multiple rates or percentages are built from
the single. Most of the very important commercial cities
share this distinction, which is further shared sometimes
by comparatively unimportant points that happen to be
the terminals of rather important railroads. Thus we
find Cincinnati and Henderson, Louisville and Evansville,

FREIGHT TRAFFIC 333

St. Louis and Davenport, Chicago and Peoria, Omaha
and Sioux City, Kansas City and Leavenworth, all possess-
ing this railroad distinction.

So much for the standard rates. Just as certain rail-
road lines running from New York to Chicago are per-
mitted to charge two dollars less for tickets than other
" standard lines," because of slower running time, so does
the same factor make a " differential " in freight rates.
Big roads boast that they can haul the first-class freight
— the " preference freights " — from one city to the other
in sixty hours. Others take a longer time, and are per-
mitted by their larger competitors to make their prices a
shade lower because of slower running time in freight
service. Such a " differential " is the Grand Trunk, han-
dling New York-Chicago freight by a roundabout route,
from New York by water to New London, Conn., and
thence over the Central Vermont up into Canada and the
Grand Trunk's main line. Obviously such a longer route
adds to the running-time and would be at a keen disad-
vantage in securing travel, without a lower rate as bait for
the shipper. We have used New York-Chicago differen-
tials simply as illustrative cases. The differentials are apt
to be found in any corner of the country where there are
long hauls and a number of railroads fighting to secure
them.

But the Grand Trunk as a factor in Chicago traffic to
and from Boston brought one of the earliest and most in-
teresting decisions from the Interstate Commerce Com-
mission. St. Albans, Vt., complained to that board that
its local freight rate by Boston & Maine and Central
Vermont from Boston was higher than the through rate
from Boston to Chicago. On the face of it, it seemed
as if justice must have rested with St. Albans, but the
railroad was able to prove its case and win a decision.
It showed that it could not live on shipments between
Boston and St. Albans and other local non-competitive
points, or on the business interchanged between these

334 THE MODERN RAILROAD

points. To earn its bread and butter it must fight for the
rich Chicago traffic; and to be in a position to fight for
that traffic, despite some disadvantage of location, it must
make very low rates.

It proved that these low rates were possible for business
that went through in solid trains, like Boston-Chicago
traffic, and that each of these trains earned its proportion
of the railroad's profit. For when you come to handle
freight at St. Albans, more particularly the case in still
smaller towns, you bring on a new traffic expense, and
because of this expense we get what is known as " back
haul."

On the " back haul " small towns suffer and must prob-
ably continue to suffer until a still more equitable sys-
tem of railroad rates can be devised. Sometimes it may
come about in such a case at the St. Albans one just cited;
in other times because of water competition, as in the
famous Spokane case, to which we shall again refer; and
sometimes it is merely an arbitrary charge laid by the rail-
road. In such cases the railroad reasons that it would
cost, in time and train delay ten dollars for every dollar's
worth of freight switched off and delivered at certain small
towns ; and so it figures upon hauling to the nearest large
division point with large yards, and sending it back from
there on a way-train. When such a small town is nearer
the division yard at the far end of the route the back
haul charge develops, and the small town must grin and
bear it. If the small towns and the small cities, with their
vigorous organizations, begin to complain too bitterly of
the present system, the traffic experts will turn to them and
say:

" Devise a better system. Perhaps you would like the
Australian system, where the charges diminish per mile,
for each additional mile covered by a consignment?"

That may look good to the Secretary of the Chamber of
Commerce, who has come down to headquarters with
wrath in his eyes; it looks absolutely equitable to every

FREIGHT TRAFFIC 335

one; and he nods yes. The traffic-manager gleams with
joy. His quarry has stepped into the trap. He turns
upon him.

" Where would your dandy little town of 35,000 con-
tented folks be under the Australian system?" he de-
mands. " The Australian system would concentrate all
business at water traffic points, along the seaboard and
the great lakes and rivers; it would concentrate all manu-
facturing at the points from which comes the raw material.
Where would the seven wholesalers of your town that we
are all so proud of be located under the Australian plan ?
If the railroads were to adopt it, it would save millions of
dollars in bookkeeping alone, but there would not be an
interior distributing point in the entire country."

The Secretary of the C. of C. is flustered. He was a
young newspaper reporter before he reached his present
high estate. He flounders. The traffic man is a man of
ready wit and even readier figures. Still the young Secre-
tary feels that he must show a few grains of wisdom,
and so he gently makes inquiry about the Spokane case.

That Spokane case, also a famous decision of the Inter-
state Commerce Commission, shows another factor in rail-
road rate-making, the serious influence of water competi-
tion. Indirectly it also includes the principle of the back
haul. Spokane, which is much nearer Chicago than Se-
attle, was, like St. Albans, paying a higher rate for the
" short haul " than Seattle was paying for a much longer
haul. But Seattle is a prosperous port, and if the rail-
road did not make a very low rate to it, all the slow
freight would go to it by water, where much lower trans-
portation expense invariably makes much lower rates, and
the railroad, to save its own skin, as it were, must make
a low through rate there, charging a back haul or higher
rate to Spokane from the large eastern points. If it
charged Spokane a proportionate rate of the one to
Seattle, which would then be lower, all the other inland
towns would demand the same privilege, and the railroad

336 THE MODERN RAILROAD

would then be hauling property at a loss — a business
which can have but one inevitable result.

" You see how complicated it all is," the traffic man-
ager tells the young Secretary, " and how we must use
judgment all the while. We Ve got to figure individual
cost for certain distances and localities and directions of
traffic, figure in the varying cost of handling different
sorts of freight, and then put in a percentage of the gen-
eral cost of the business, just as the restaurant-keeper
makes each patron pay proportionately for the cost
of bread and butter, heat, light, service and rent, no
matter how large or how small his check may be on any
one occasion.

;t We must use judgment, and we must make rates to
keep the goods moving all the while. Suppose that both
nails and crowbars are made in Pittsburgh and only nails
are made at Williamsport. Suppose then that the rate
from Pittsburgh to New York for both crowbars and
nails is fifty cents a hundred, but that the rate from
Williamsport to New York was but 38 cents. What
chance would the nail manufacturer in Pittsburgh have
against his competitor in Williamsport, when both men
are making annually nails in tens of thousands of tons?
It is to help the Pittsburgh man that we make a special
38-cent rate on nails from his town to New York; and
when we keep filing these commodity rates at Washing-
ton, your shippers ask why we can't have a standard rate-
sheet, or the Australian system. The next time some one
of them finds that he cannot sell plough shares in Texas
because a man down in Fort Wayne has him beaten on
standard rates, you watch him hurry here and ask for a
special one.

" It is out of this clamor and contention of almost
myriad interests, the ambitions of just such thriving little
cities as your own, out of the skilled arguments of brainy
men that the rate-sheet is born and kept living in a state
of perpetual healthy change."

FREIGHT TRAFFIC 337

We are tired of rates and the factors that go to make
them, and inquire what is the A, B, C of a freight trans-
action between the railroad and a shipper. The traffic-
man makes it quite clear to us.

" When one of our agents receives a consignment of
freight," he says, " he immediately issues a bill of lading
to the shipper, or consignor, as a receipt and as a con-
tract for the shipment. From his duplicate of this bill
of lading he makes out a way-bill, or manifest, which
will accompany the car until the freight reaches its des-
tination. This way-bill describes the shipment and the
car into which it has been loaded, specifies the shipping
point and the destination, the consignor and the consignee,
the rate and whether or not the charges have been paid
in advance or are to be collected at destination. A copy
of this way-bill is given to the freight-conductor, who
gives the station agent a receipt for the consignment. At
that place of destination a freight-bill, containing a de-
scription of the shipment similar to that of the way-bill,
and showing in addition the total charge collected or to
be paid, is rendered to the consignee, and his receipt is
taken for the shipment when it is delivered."

" It seems quite simple," you breathe softly.

" It is not," is his reply, " for it has its complications.
I '11 show you one of them."

We step through swinging doors of green baize and
for a moment from a traffic into an operating department,
but an operating department that for the telling in a work
of this sort is best allied with the story of the freight
traffic. The traffic-manager points to a man sitting at a
square and littered desk, his thoughts with sturdy intent
upon the mass of correspondence which he is quickly
sifting.

" He is the best car-service man in the country," says
our guide; and you recall when you were in the auditor's
office, that an accounting was being kept between the lines
for the use of one another's cars that went on through

338 THE MODERN RAILROAD

runs off upon strange or " foreign " lines. The traffio
man continues: " Ours is not a big road, as some roads
go. Yet we receiv about 40,000 cars a month and, of
course, deliver something like the same number in the
same thirty days. Yet there is not an hour of any day
of the month that this man cannot tell where any one
of these cars is, just how long it has been upon our tracks,
just how much free time the consignee has for unloading
it, or just how much he will have to pay the railroad for
his delay in emptying it, so it can get back into service
once again. "

That waiting charge, the traffic-man explains, is known
in the parlance of his business as " demurrage " ; and it
is another keen example of the constant use to which a
railroad puts its equipment, of the tremendous economy
that is beginning to be practised in the modern science
of railroading. You are introduced to the car-service
man, bend low over his desk as he explains a bit of his
work to you. Here, for example, is a car filled with
automobiles bound from Detroit to a dealer in Wor-
cester, Mass. This car, in a train of some 60 others,
leaves Detroit east-bound over the Michigan Central Rail-
road. At Buffalo it is switched to the tracks of the New
York Central & Hudson River Railroad. On the even-
ing of the second day it arrives at Rensselaer, across the
Hudson River from Albany, and is given over to the
Boston & Albany Railroad. To make a concrete instance,
let us see how the B. & A. handles the thing through its
car-service department.

That department swings into quick action automatic-
ally, as soon as the car strikes B. & A. rails at Rensselaer.
The freight agent there makes a note of the car and its
contents from the way-bill which accompanies it; makes
special note, perhaps, of the fact that it is a car designed
particularly for the transportation of automobiles. Now
let us presume that this big box-car is owned by the
Michigan Central. The Boston & Albany will pay that

FREIGHT TRAFFIC 339

owner railroad 35 cents a day rental — " per diem" in
the phraseology of the railroads — for the time it is upon
B. & A. rails. There are at that very time perhaps
hundreds of B. & A. cars on the Michigan Central, and
at the end of 30 days these accounts and many, many
others are sent to the auditor's department, where they
are balanced between the roads with the general freight
and passenger accounts.

This movement of freight cars makes a valuable
barometer of the general condition of business. The daily
papers have a custom of making national compilations of
car-service reports part of their most interesting market
news. In dull seasons the cars come home from long serv-
ice on other roads. But in very busy seasons all roads
have little compunction about borrowing " foreign " cars
for use in their local service. With shippers begging cars
from every quarter and threatening all manner of dire
things, 35 cents daily is a small rental to pay for the use
of a roomy car. Besides, the other fellows are all doing
the same thing, and no one road can hope to get all its
cars back even with the use of a vigilant corps of young
men who search " foreign " yards. But in the dull sea-
sons they come trundling home, like lost cattle finding the
big barn once again. In the business depression of 1907,
a Western car-service man received cars that had been
absent from the home road for seven years.

We turn from the car-service men back into a depart-
ment that is strictly traffic. Coal service is one of the
principal sources of income for this particular railroad.
It stretches some of its branches into bituminous fields,
and others through the anthracite fields that Nature, in
some freakish mood, implanted in just a few counties of
Northeastern Pennsylvania. That entire country is com-
parable to a cut of beef, the coal veins resembling streaks
of fat that run hither and thither. As in beef, the lean
predominates. The fat streaks are the valuable coal
veins, the lean the earth, slate and rock in which the coal

340 THE MODERN RAILROAD

was planted during some great convulsion of Nature in
the process of the creation of the world. How it got into
this particular spot science cannot tell. What it is,
further than the fact that it is mostly carbon, science only
guesses. It guesses that it was originally bituminous coal
and that by some process of intense squeezing in an up-
heaval of Nature, the oil and tar and gas of the bitumi-
nous coal was squeezed out and the much more valuable
anthracite deposits created.

Mining consists in getting the streaks of fat anthracite
out of the bulk of lean earth and rock. The veins run
well down into the mountains, and, as do the little streaks
of fat, lose themselves in the rock, or lean, to continue
the simile. Some of the veins are but a few feet in thick-
ness, while some run to as high as twenty and thirty feet,
and, as a rule, the farther down into the earth they go
the better the coal ; and the farther down you go the more
difficult and expensive is the mining.

Now, here is a traffic that demands and receives special
attention. In other days the mining of anthracite coal
was, itself, merely a department of operating for the
half-dozen systems that stretched their rails into that valu-
able Pennsylvania corner. That work has now been re-
moved into the control of separate mining companies; but
the handling of coal is a great function of not only these
roads, but of the systems that reach their tendrils into
the valuable bituminous fields here and there about the
country.

To fill the coal-bins of New York City alone, requires
some 10,500,000 tons of anthracite yearly. Now you
cease to wonder why this road has a coal traffic expert, a
man of surpassingly good salary. He keeps keen over-
sight over the operating department in its handling of
this giant traffic, sees to it that the trains come over the
mountains and into the great terminals at Jersey City in
good order, and that the railroad's marine department is
ready with tugs and scows and lighters to handle the prod-

THE GREAT BRIDGE OF THE NEW YORK CENTRAL AT

WATKINS GLEN

BUILDING THE WONDERFUL BRIDGE OF THE IDAHO & WASHINGTON
NORTHERN OVER THE PEND OREILLE RIVER, WASHINGTON

FREIGHT TRAFFIC 341

uct as it comes in, in thousands of tons every twenty-
four hours. This would all be quite simple if the trains
and the boats were always running on schedule. But the
unexpected constantly comes to pass in railroading, and so
the railroads provide against emergencies by establishing
great coal storage plants outside of New York and other
large cities — communities that would be in dire distress
if their coal supply were cut short even for twenty- four
hours. Sometimes about 500,000 tons will be kept in a
single one of these storage piles — a black mountain run-
ning lengthwise between sidings and served with giant
cranes.

We are back in the traffic-manager's comfortable office
for a final word with him. He is fumbling with his own
correspondence. It seems that a lawyer down in Wash-
ington has been saying that he could save the railroads
of the land a million dollars a day in the economical oper-
ation of their property, and the railroader is exceedingly
wroth at that assertion.

" He speaks of pig iron, and says that we should teach
our laborers the minimum movements necessary to put a
single pig in a car — just as masons have been taught to
handle brick with minimum effort and a maximum econ-
omy in work accomplished has been effected." The traf-
fic-man laughs, rather harshly. " The lawyer is all right,
except for two things; and his anecdote about the brick
is certainly well told. Only it just happens that the rail-
road does not load or unload freight by the carload —
that is the duty of the consignor and the consignee —
and it also happens that pig iron rarely is handled
" L.C.L." In carload lots it is not loaded or unloaded
by hand, but by big magnets on a crane which picks up
a ton of the bars at a time and thinks nothing of it."

The freight traffic-manager has made his point once
again, and he is satisfied. He tells a little of the modern
methods in freight handling, one of them how an in-
genious packing-house expert in Chicago saved thousands

342 THE MODERN RAILROAD

of dollars annually in the handling of lard. In other
days lard was rolled aboard box-cars, a barrel to a hand-
truck, a rather slow and a rather costly process. The
Chicago man devised a method of melting lard and, while
it was fluid, pouring it, like petroleum, into a tank-
car. When it reached its destination at some big termi-
nal, the lard was again melted to fluid and poured out
from the tank. That is the science of big freight han-
dling to-day. Not alone do cranes, with magnet-bars
handle pig-iron and castings by the ton, but great hoists
at Cleveland and Conneaut and the other big lake towns
close to the Pittsburgh district reach deep into the hearts
of giant ships, bring from them the ore of Lake Superior's
shores, and fill the whole waiting trains within fifteen
or twenty minutes. Into the empty holds of the ships
they pour bituminous coal from Western Pennsylvania
and West Virginia, a carload at a time. The hoist-crane
reaches down to the dock siding for a gondola, snaps the
car-body off from the trucks, lifts it aloft over the open
hatch of the waiting vessel, and turns it upside down. In
less time than it takes to tell it, the coal is in the ship,
and the car-body is being slipped back again upon its
trucks.

CHAPTER XXI

THE DRAMA OF THE FREIGHT
FAST TRAINS FOR PRECIOUS AND PERISHABLE GOODS — CARS INVENTED

FOR FRUITS AND FOR FlSH — MlLK TRAINS — SYSTEMATIC HANDLING

OF THE CANS — AUCTIONING GARDEN-TRUCK AT MIDNIGHT — A HIS-
TORIC CITY FREIGHT-HOUSE.

PERHAPS you have seen a gay Limited in green and
gold start forth with much ado from some big city
station, and have concluded that the romance of the rail-
road rests with it ; that the long lines of murky-red freight
cars have little of the dramatic about them. If you have
thought that, you have thought wrong.

Romance and drama reach high climax sometimes in the
transportation of commodities. Fast trains, running
upon the express schedules of the finest Limiteds, some-
times bring silk, $2,000,000 or $3,000,000 worth to the
train, across the continent. A special may be hired by
some impatient manufacturer to send a shipment through
half a dozen States. There are notable speed records in
the handling of fast freight, records of notable trains that
are as well known among the traffic specialists as the
Limiteds are known to the outside world.

There is drama, too, when the railroad brings the food
up to the city, for it counts as one of its greatest func-
tions this filling of the city's larder. It sets aside certain
high officers in its traffic department for the handling of
market produce; it provides special facilities for gather-
ing it, special facilities for moving it, special terminal
facilities for delivering it in the hearts of the great cities.
Sometimes it even goes further and provides and organ-
izes great wholesale markets, building up its traffic by

343

344 THE MODERN RAILROAD

going as far as possible in facilitating the constant re-
plenishing of the city's larder.

That is why these long dark caravans, the fast prefer-
ence freights that are the pride of the railroad's traffic
head, go so quickly over the rails to town. One of them
halts in block for an instant to let a brightly lighted pas-
senger train go in ahead of it. While it is halted we
climb aboard and engage its conductor in conversation.
He is a clever fellow, of the type of the coming railroader.
Only last summer, we found a freight conductor thumb-
ing his " Sartor Resartus," and discussing Carlyle as a
stylist.

' Yes, we do bring some food up to town," he admits.
" I Ve got enough grub aboard these eighty cars to feed
several regiments. We Ve two refrigerators of meat
from Omaha, two from Kansas City, one from Chicago.
The Chicago car has been iced twice — at Elkhart and at
Altoona. The other cars had to have an extra filling at
Hammond, on the outskirts of Chicago. Soon we '11 have
crisp cold weather and we can cut out the icing.

' The boss? The boss will be worrying still. Just as
soon as he can cut down his refrigerating stations at the
division yards, he '11 be fretting about getting those big
ice-houses filled for next summer. He 's got a lake
tucked up in the mountain divisions somewhere, and we Ve
got a branch running in a couple of miles there, and we
just pull out the ice during the winter months. You take
any of these trunk-lines and it has to have a lake for its
refrigerating stations. It 's just one of the many little
kinks in running a road."

We express a desire to see the big preference train,
and — the block being still set against her — we go for-
ward in the black shadows of the cars, the train boss's
arm-set lantern showing our way to us. He stops beside
a string of white and yellow box-cars.

"California fruit," he says; "they don't think any-
thing of sending it all the way across the continent. You

THE DRAMA OF THE FREIGHT 345

might have thought those ranchers over there on the
Pacific coast would have been discouraged when they were
told that there were a dozen icing stations between the
two oceans, and that the icing cost was prohibitive.
They were n't a bit. They just sat down and did some
tall thinking, and after a while they developed this type
of car. We call it pre-cooled. The car is cleaned and
brought to a chill before loading. After that the tem-
perature is not allowed to rise while the fruit is being piled
away inside. It is closed and sealed, while still ice-cold,
and icy-cold she comes bumping her way east over three
or four thousand miles of track. It may be scorching
down there along the S. P. ; they may be just gasping for
air in the Missouri bottoms ; but that pre-cooled car comes
right along, keeping its cargo fresh and cool and pure.
We can deliver her anywhere here on the Atlantic sea-
board, and no risk of spoiling the stuff."

We slip along another half-dozen cars. The conductor
halts again and fumbles with his way-bills.

"There's the boy," he laughs. "He's halibut.
There 's half a dozen halibuts along here in a string."

We do not like to show an utter ignorance of the food
question and we venture an assertion.

"Halibut comes from Newfoundland?" we ask.
" How do you get it around here? "

The freighter grins sympathetically at our lack of
knowledge.

" Bless you," he says. " That little fishing pond up
there on the Banks is n't big enough for a land which has
27,000,000 folks gathered in its cities. These cars have
come in from big Yem Hill's road — all the way from
Tacoma up on Puget Sound — State of Washington.
Some of those people who live in Boston might have a fit
if they knew that their beloved halibut was born and
raised in the Pacific Ocean ; but that 's the truth of the
matter.

" This fish (and some of it 's going straight to Boston

346 THE MODERN RAILROAD

to be sold in the very shade of Faneuil Hall), has come
7,000 miles to be eaten on the very shores of the Atlantic.
When the fishing ship that caught this cargo was fifty
miles off the docks, she began calling Tacoma with her
wireless. The yardmaster of the Northern Pacific was
ready there for the news from that rat-a-tap. He had a
string of refrigerator cars ready; they were ready and set
out along the wharf by the time the ship was made fast.

" Five minutes later the fish were being loaded into the
cars. They had a gang of stevedores working there
clock-like, as those fellows work around the big tents of a
three-ring circus. First there went in a layer of ice, then
a layer of fish, then another of ice. In thirty minutes the
job was done. In forty-five minutes that string of fish-
cars was coming east on an express-train schedule. It was
knocked apart at St. Paul and again at Chicago. Here 's
our share of the spoils, and we 're not loafing here on
the old main line.

'* We 're preference freight, if you please, and no old
bumpety-bump with coal and ore taking the low-grade
tracks. They sandwich us in among the all-Pullmans,
even when we 're on the four-track divisions, for food is
quick; food won't keep forever; and those folks down in
the city are getting hungry."

He starts to say more, but the engine call halts him.
The block is clear once again. The conductor catches a
car step, the " preference " starts forward with all the
rattling shakes and bumps peculiar to a long freight train.
In a minute or two the red tail-lights are grinning at us
from half a mile down the track. Another big freight
goes scurrying by us — more market stuff, more meat,
more fish for the hungry town, a town which houses 4,000
folk within a single congested tenement square. A third
train follows; all refrigerator cars it is too. They come
in quick succession, these market trains, to the metropolis.
The railroad is doing its part. To-night again, the food
is going up to the city.

THE DRAMA OF THE FREIGHT 347

The scene changes. Now we are off in the rolling
country of up-State — dairy country, if you please. The
railroad that stretches its thick black trail the length of
the valley is no four-track line, with heavy trains coursing
over it every three or four or five or ten minutes. This is
but a single-track branch; in the parlance of the rail-
roaders it is a "jerkwater"; and the coming of its two
passenger trains and that of the way-freight each day are
events in the little towns that line it. Still, even this little
branch is doing its part in the filling of the city's larder.
This branch has the filling of the city babies' milk bottles
as its own particular problem.

At early dawn, the muddy brown roads that lead to the
little depot there at the flour mills are alive. The farmer
boys are bringing the milk to the railroad. Down the
track a few hundred yards beyond the depot is the slick,
clean, new milk-station. Over across the brook is the
cheese-factory, deserted and given over to the gentle
fingers of decay. Those two buildings tell the story of
changing times; in their mute way they tell the growth
of the American city.

In other days this township made cheese. To-day they
drive the milk to the depot. Each morning finds a big
refrigerator car, built in the fashion of passenger equip-
ment, so that it may be handled on passenger trains, at the
milk station. The farmer boys are prompt with their
milk, it is checked and weighed and placed in the car, in
cans and in bottles. Hardly has the last big ten-gallon
can gone clattering into the car before the whistle of the
warning local is heard up the line, just beyond the curve
at the water-tank. While the train is at the depot, in all
the bustle of the comings and goings at a country station,
the engine makes quick drill movement and picks up the
milk-car.

Farther down the line that same train picks up more
milk-cars. By the time it reaches the junction where it
intersects the main line it is a considerable train for a

348 THE MODERN RAILROAD

branch line. Indeed at the junction there are more milk-
cars, from other branches that ramble off into the real
back-country. There are enough of them now to make a
train through to the city. The trainmaster has a good
engine ready for every afternoon, and the milk express
goes scurrying into town with passenger rights and on
passenger schedules. You cannot hurry the babies' milk
through to town any too quickly.

This is all first-day milk. You can take a compass,
place the pin-leg squarely in the heart of the busy town —
a place of brick and asphalt, of steel and concrete, with-
out ever a hint of growing things — and with the pencil-
leg trace a segment of a circle — the outer line some 200
miles distant from the centre. Afterwards you can draw
a second circle segment, its outer line some 350 miles from
the same town centre. From within the inner circle
comes the first-day milk, delivered to the railroad during
the early part of a day and on the householder's table in
the big city the next morning. From without this inner
circle and within the outer, comes the second-day milk
which has another twenty-four hours in its transit to town.
The whole thing, once rather badly handled by itinerant
single dealers, has been reduced to scientific business by
skilful cooperation between the big milk-dealers of the
present day and the railroads.

It is night.

The last of the office lights in the towering buildings
has been snuffed out. Downtown is quiet — quiet for a
little time, for soon after sun-up it will be a vortex once
again; these narrow, deep-canyoned streets will be astir
and human-filled once again. But at nine o'clock in the
evening the policeman's footfall on the pavement echoes
in lonely streets. A tired bookkeeper scurrying home
after a vexatious hunt for his balances gets sharp scrutiny
from the policeman. Downtown is asleep.

Then, from around the turn of a sharp corner comes a

THE DRAMA OF THE FREIGHT 349

night train of wagons, drawn by a small brigade of horses.
These are not filled with market-truck; market-truck will
not reach the town till midnight at the earliest. These
are great high-boxed vans, painted white, a bit gaudy in
lettering. They make you think of those long-ago days
when you used to go down to the depot to see the circus
come in, for the big wagons are precisely like those that
used to shroud mystery as they rolled from the trains
down to the show-lot. We follow this procession of half
a dozen great vans, follow it through the twisting, narrow
streets of downtown, across a famous old ferry, straight
up to the long sheds of a railroad terminal.

On the one side of the terminal, the passenger trains
are coming and going at all hours. By day this shed at
which the big vans back, each into its own carefully
marked place, is a general freight-house; by night it is
given over to the stocking of the city babies' milk bottles.
The ferried vans are hardly emptied of their empty cans
and cases before the first of the milk trains comes back-
ing in at the other side of the long covered platform.
Hissing arcs up under that slimsy roof throw high lights
and deep shadows here and there and everywhere. They
show the platform-men tugging at the car fastenings be-
fore the brakes are fairly released. In another minute,
the big side-doors are thrown open, almost simultaneously,
in still another, the place is alive with the rattle of trucks.
The milk — tons upon tons of it — in ten-gallon cans
and in cases of individual bottles, is being loaded within
those circus-like cans. A second milk-train comes bump-
ing in at a far platform. There is another brigade of
vans waiting for it there. A third train is due to arrive
in another half-hour. The vans that it will fill are al-
ready beginning to back into place and unload their cans
and cases upon the platforms.

Here are almost 200 great four-horse trucks being filled
simultaneously, and all working with the almost rhythmic
harmony of organization. You want to know how they

350 THE MODERN RAILROAD

do it? Ask that man over there, he in a short rough
coat, who carries a lantern on his arm and with it peers
interestedly into every one of the cars. That man's word
is law on this platform, for he is its boss. He has been
filling the babies' milk bottles from this particular terminal
for almost a quarter of a century now. His railroad was
the first to bring milk into a large city.

;< We get it over," he will tell you, " by the experience
of some little time, and by planning. You saw the num-
bers on the team side of this milk platform. That 's only
half the problem. There are a dozen different milk-
handling concerns doing business at this shed, and their
stuff comes together on this one train. Yet we get the
thing out by having each concern — each truck — come
up to its own position at the team side. The other half
of the problem we solve by having a certain position for
each milk-car.

" Here is the Hygienic Milk Company up on the
Heights. You have seen their fancy dairies all over town.
Well, the Hygienic has a station up at Bottger's, on our
Lancaster & Essex division, that fills two cars at that sta-
tion every blessed day. Their two cars stand in beyond
this No. 14 pillar every night; so we know just were to
direct their trucks. That 's business — just system. We
spot the cars every night."

"Spot the cars?" you interrupt. He smiles a bit at
your ignorance.

' This train is made up in just the same fashion every
night," he explains. " These two Hygienic cars are al-
ways the fifth and sixth. If they were the eighth and
ninth some nifty evening — if some smart Aleck of a
yardmaster up the line would take to shuffling up these
cars as you shuffle a deck of cards — we would have a
near riot here, and I could n't get these platforms cleared
of the milkmen for that market-truck train that backs
in here from the south every night at 1 1 155.

" So they keep closely to the formation of our trains,

INSIDE THE WEST ALBANY SHOPS OF THE NEW YORK CENTRAL
PICKING UP A LOCOMOTIVE WITH THE TRAVELLING CRANE

A LOCOMOTIVE

UPON THE TESTING-TABLE AT
SHOPS OF THE PENNSYLVANIA

THE ALTOONA

" THE ROUNDHOUSE IS A SPRAWLING THING "

DENIZENS OF THE ROUNDHOUSE

THE DRAMA OF THE FREIGHT 351

and that of itself is no terminal problem. Away up the
line 90 miles — 150, — 250, — everywhere that we have
a big junction yard, the yard boss has his positive instruc-
tions about these milk trains. By the time this fellow has

cleared out of P J , 90 miles up the road and our

nearest road yard outside of the metropolitan district, it 's
always in just the shape you see it to-night. After that
there 's nothing to be done here except cut off the road
engine at our terminal yard and pick out a switcher to
back her into position at this shed. It 's nice work, and
night after night that engineer of the switcher does not
vary four inches in the locations of these car-doors."

He lifts his lantern, and we peek into the interior of
one of these cool milk-cars. This has the bottled milk
in cases. The cases are packed four tiers high — never
higher — and your guide explains to you that four cases
is the limit of a hand-truck. All these things make for
simplicity in handling. You peer into another car. The
ten-gallon cans are in long diagonal rows, covering the
entire floor of the car. They form a regular tessellated
pattern, like the marble tiling of old-fashioned hotels and
banks.

" Those little farmer boys," says the platform boss,
" sure do that trick well. That speaks pretty neat for
Sullivanville. They all used to put the cans in straight
rows, running lengthwise of the car. One day one of
the smartest of those Sullivanville boys discovered that by
putting the cans in diagonal rows, this-wise, he would
gain a hundred cans in the loading. That added a thou-
sand gallons to the capacity of the car. The Super gave
him a good job, and some day you '11 see he '11 be running
a railroad of his own."

Midnight.

Downtown is still more deserted, if that is possible,
than when we first saw it three hours ago. The stillness
of the deep night is hard upon the city; yet here on this

352 THE MODERN RAILROAD

broad quay street which runs its stone-paved length up
and down past the wharves of the harbor-front, all is
alive.

This is the midnight market. Under the very noses
of the steamships that have brought this garden-truck up
from the south, it is being auctioned off to a hundred or
so keen-nosed, keener-witted wholesalers. They wander
about under long awning roofs erected in the centre of
the street, through the gaunt open shadowy spaces of the
piers, poking into the tops of barrels, pinching, tasting,
critically examining all the while that they are dickering
in prices. When the day is fully born and downtown
alive once again, there will be other wholesale markets,
more sedate-looking affairs in rooms that have been built
for the purpose by the traffic departments of the railroads.
In these rooms, with the seats arranged in tiers and each
seat having a broad writing arm like a college classroom,
fruit and vegetables will be sold in carload lots. There
will be records of prices — quotations. The thing will
approach the dignity of those bourses where cotton and
coffee and metals and securities are sold.

But the midnight market scorns such formalities, such
dignities. It clings to its own hubbub — its own unsys-
tematic way. of accomplishing a great business. It pre-
fers to sell as the stuff is unloaded; that has been its
method for three-quarters of a century and any method
that has stood 75 years is at least entitled to a measure of
consideration. But not all its offerings have come by
these big coasting steamships, whose outlines show vague
at their piers in the darkness of the night. For, grind-
ing against the piles of these same wharves, as the unseen
tide changes, are groups of car-floats that have been
ferried from the great railroad terminals across the river.
Each car-float has two trackfuls of refrigerator cars — 12
or 14 or 1 6 in all — lined against a long roofed platform
running just above keel. When the pert and busy little
tugs have pushed and pulled and bunted the floats all

THE DRAMA OF THE FREIGHT 353

into position, the platforms are quickly connected by gang-
ways, canvas-covered against the stress of hard weather.
A great freight-house, almost Venetian in type, floats upon
the surface of the silent river and becomes part and parcel
of the pier itself. After that it is quick work to open
each of the cars — to wheel out sample barrels of pota-
toes, of cabbage, of celery, of lettuce, of cauliflower —
all the growing things of country farms that go to feed
the hungry city.

The trading here is over in an hour, or two hours at
the longest when the shipments are heavy; and then the
wholesalers are wheeling their wagons into place to cart
away their purchases to their own stores and warehouses.
From these the retailers — the men who carry on their
businesses in stalls in the public market-houses and those
that have their own little shops on the street corners —
make their selections. If you are a city man, you may now
know that your grocer at the corner is up betimes, when
the sun is just showing himself on lazy September morn-
ings. He has been poking his way with his own horse
and wagon down to the wholesalers, buying his day's
stock and getting it placed just before the earliest of the
housewives begins her marketing.

You demand a concrete example of a city freight-house;
and here it is — the historic St. John's Park of the New
York Central & Hudson River Railroad in New York.
Up over the lines of the Central, back for hundreds of
weary miles, you may hear the railroaders speak of
" the Park," you may see long strings of cars, bearing
merchandise tagged through to it. At Sixtieth Street,
where the big freights of the New York Central come
to a final halt, you see the cars sent south in long strings,
each hauled by a red dummy locomotive and preceded
by a boy astride a horse and holding a red flag, a familiar
sight to all New Yorkers who reside upon the far west
side of the town.

St. John's Park handles a very large percentage of all
23

354 THE MODERN RAILROAD

the perishable food that comes into New York each day.
It is the dingy freight-house that fills the double block
between Hudson and Varick and Beach and Laight
Streets; and when you ask, " Where is the park?" they
will tell you that there was a day when the entire site of
this freight-house — possibly the most congested in the
world — was a gentle tree-filled square that faced old St.
John's Church. There is never a trace of the park nowa-
days. The old church now faces a narrow street wherein
truckmen shove and elbow and disappear in the gates of
the freight station.

On the Hudson Street side of the structure six pairs
of railroad tracks curve into it; and far above on the
cornice of the structure one can see the benign figure of
the old Commodore — a heroic bronze surrounded by
replicas of the trains and the steamships that he loved
so well. The building of the large freight station on
the site of St. John's Park away back in 1868 was a real
accomplishment to the first of the house of Vanderbilt.
Think of it: that freight-house could hold 100 cars.
There was nothing else in all the broad land quite like
that !

Into St. John's Park at dawn come trainloads of pro-
duce. Even before the doors of the freight-house have
opened, at six, a string of " coolers " has stopped in Hud-
son Street and the commission men are carting out the
poultry. As soon as the station gets down to real busi-
ness, butter and eggs and cheese pour in through it in
carload lots.

" It does n't bother us much," the foreman tells you.
" Still, on the Monday before Christmas we had a
fairly brisk day. We had 155 cars of turkeys alone that
morning."

CHAPTER XXII

MAKING TRAFFIC

ENTICING SETTLERS TO THE VIRGIN LANDS OF THE WEST — EMIGRATION
BUREAUS — RAILWAYS EXTENDED FOR THE BENEFIT OF EMIGRANTS —
THE FIRST CONTINUOUS RAILROAD ACROSS THE AMERICAN CONTINENT

— CAMPAIGNS FOR DEVELOPING SPARSELY SETTLED PLACES IN THE WEST

— UNPROFITABLE BRANCH RAILROADS IN THE EAST — DEVELOPMENT
OF SCIENTIFIC FARMING — IMPROVED FARMS ARE TRAFFIC-MAKERS —
NEW FACTORIES BEING OPENED — How RAILROAD MANAGERS HAVE
DEVELOPED ATLANTIC CITY.

YOUR railroad manager of other days was content
with the traffic that was offered him — if indeed
he deigned to accept it all. For those were the business
methods that obtained everywhere in the other days.
When competition became the moving force in modern
business, the railroad felt it. The land had become
gridironed with tracks; business did not offer itself so
freely as it had at the outset. When there came a divi-
sion between routes of a traffic that had formerly belonged
to a single route, earnings fell away and stockholders
began to ask uncomfortable questions of the men who
operated their railroad properties. Then the fight for
business began — at first, as we have already seen, by a
lively rivalry which showed itself in a merciless slashing
of rates. Such fighting methods reacted on the railroads,
and their rate-sheets became code and law, only a little
less holy than the Federal Constitution, long before the
Interstate Commerce Commission exerted its beneficent
paternalism over the railroads of the land. But with the
rates equalized between the railroads, the competition
remained. The one obvious solution of the situation
which was left was put into effect. The railroads began
to make traffic.

355

356 THE MODERN RAILROAD

The making of traffic is the most recent and the most
highly developed branch of the science of railroading.
The first of this specialized business-getting began just
before the Civil War. Some of the railroads had put
their lines back a little way from the western portion of
the Great Lakes along in the late fifties, and they needed
folks to live along those lines. It goes without saying
that a railroad going into an unpopulated country would
never be any great " shakes " of a railroad until people
came to dwell along its lines. So the railroad from
Galena to Chicago — afterwards the foundation stone for
the mighty Northwestern — the Chicago, Milwaukee &
St. Paul, and one or two others started emigration
bureaus. Then men who owned those early railroads
knew the possibilities of the virgin lands into which they
stretched their rails. The proposition that confronted
them was to let the folk who lived in the East and even
those who were herded in the crowded lands across the
Atlantic, know these same possibilities. By means of
their first emigration bureaus they accomplished their
proposition. Advertising was a crude science in those
days, but advertising helped. Throughout the troublous
years of the war the men from the East who had read
of the glories of the Middle West, who had listened to
the tales of the agents of the railroad and coupled them
with those of returning travellers, began pouring over
the new and struggling railroads. They carried their
goods and chattels with them; and so the railroad men
knew that they were not going back to the old homes
again.

At the close of the war these tides rose to flood. The
railroads no longer struggled. There was a steady flow
of traffic over their rails, and they were able because of
it to engage capital to stretch their rails a little farther
west. After they had moved another stretch, the tides
of emigration still flowed. That process might have

MAKING TRAFFIC 357

gone ahead in orderly fashion until the Pacific had been
reached, if the scheme had not been upset.

They built too many railroads, they overworked their
idea. In the broad reaches of the Middle West, lines
of steel crumbled into rust, and cross-roads dreamed
vainly that they would become villages. Many a strug-
gling village failed to become the city that her enthusias-
tic residents had fancied. They had the big boom in
Kansas, and the bigger collapse that followed. After
that, folk stayed East for a while, and the business of
making traffic in that territory became an advanced science.

There was another factor in the situation. You will
remember that the Summer of '69 saw the first continu-
ous railroad across the American continent — the com-
bination of Central Pacific and Union Pacific. The huge
success of that railroad was inspiration for others. In
the generation of men that followed the rails that reached
from Atlantic to Pacific were multiplied. After that there
was a new problem for the owners of the transcontinental
railroads. Their statistical charts of originating traffic
showed great black masses at either end of the line —
where connections were made with the great traffic-
bringers from the East, and where the rails ran upon the
docks of the Pacific shore. Between those two points was
a thin black line, like spider-thread. To make that line
black and firm at all points, to bring masses of new traffic
at intermediate points, was the demand that the railroad-
owner made of his traffic-manager.

It is being done to-day. It has taken time, money
and almost incredible patience; but it is being done.
This is a broad land, and there is still much to be done.
In Montana, there is a single county with an area exceed-
ing that of Maryland and a population less than that of
the smallest ward of Baltimore; and near-by there is an-
other county, as large as Delaware and Connecticut com-
bined, with mere handful of residents. These are typical.

358 THE MODERN RAILROAD

There are great open stretches to the southwest ; and the
Santa Fe, working hand in hand with the Harriman lines,
is busy populating and developing these. In the North
Country, James J. Hill's railroads and the new out-
stretched arm of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul
are doing much to exploit the unfarmed lands of Mon-
tana, and the intensive possibilities of Washington for
fruit-raising, market-gardening and the like. Up and
down the Pacific coast, the railroads are uniting in similar
campaigns of development.

Hill began the campaign in Montana. He is a
dreamer and a far-seer. When he began making presents
of blooded bulls to the farmers out along the Great
Northern, folk laughed at him, some of his directors
thought that he had gone crazy. They thought differ-
ently when they knew the results, when they got the traffic
reports of the cattle business that was growing along the
line.

That thing was typical. The railroad — Hill's rail-
road and all the other big transcontinental — lent itself
to the fine development of all the traffic that might pos-
sibly be obtained within its territory. Heretofore it had
roughly combed traffic possibilities, now it began to screen
them with a fine mesh screen. The emigrant bureau did
its part of the work; the railroad went further and set
itself to develop every inch of available land along its
lines. Attractive excursions brought settlers to the new
country, the railroad was of practical assistance in finding
locations for them. Everything is being brought toward
the development of those great new States of the West:
cross-roads are beginning to become villages; villages,
cities. A little time before his death, Mr. Harriman an-
nounced that there would be four great cities spread across
the American continent — New York, Chicago, Salt Lake,
and San Francisco. He then took it upon his own rather
roomy shoulders to make Salt Lake City worthy of a
place in the file.

MAKING TRAFFIC 359

From this activity in the West, the Eastern railroads
have stolen a lesson. Originally built in many cases to
serve the needs of the farmers of some particular locality,
they have become merged and welded in a way that has
caused them to serve the industrial interests of the country
more particularly than the agricultural. One of the valu-
able old properties of the Pennsylvania Railroad in New
Jersey rejoices in the name of Freehold and Jamesburg
Agricultural Railroad.

When, after the serious slump in traffic that followed
the panic in 1907, the railroads of the East found them-
selves, for the first time in a decade, with more facilities
than freight, they began to cultivate more carefully the
traffic branch of transportation science. They took quite
readily to the lesson that the transcontinental gave them.
Then they proceeded to put it into effect in practical
fashion.

For some years past the problem of the unimportant
branches has been a serious one with the big Eastern
systems. These branches, many of them once profitable
feeders, have been allowed to deteriorate and retrograde,
while main-line traffic developed and increased under
active conditions of competition. The little towns along
the branches seemed to retrograde too; while the busy
cities of the country, strung along the main lines of the
railroad, absorbed new growth and new energy. Some-
times the branch lines were paralleled by interurban elec-
tric railroads, which were able to operate at far less cost
than steam railroads, and consequently to charge lower
rates of fare ; and their slight passenger traffic continued to
grow lighter. The freight traffic had long since dwindled
to slim proportions; the branch lines were almost entirely
agricultural railroads; and the farmers of the East were
discouraged and disheartened.

The new movement began in Western New York,
which is fairly gridironed with a network of these un-
profitable branch railroads. It was started even before

360 THE MODERN RAILROAD

the panic of 1907. New York State, with its great re-
sources and its fat treasury, has long been engaged in the
development of scientific farming — which means farming
for the largest profit that can be brought from the soil.
It has a great agricultural school as a part of Cornell
University, and an interesting experimental school along
similar lines at Geneva. These schools have done a great
work. They have educated young men to be modern
farmers, in every sense of that phrase; and they have sent
leaflets to every corner of the Empire State. But even
these methods were not far-reaching enough. It is not
every farmer's boy in these days who can afford to go
down to Ithaca for a college education in the tilling of
the soil; few of the older men care to mingle with the boys
at such an institution. Even the pamphlets sent out from
Geneva were not sufficient.

So when the railroads, seeking to make traffic in a dull
time and to rehabilitate their branches in the farming
districts, made alliance with the agricultural schools, spe-
cial trains were sent out into the farming districts, and
these trains carried a competent corps of instructors from
the schools. Day coaches made good school-rooms for
the itinerant institutions; and a baggage-car, filled with
specimens of fruit and grains grown under scientific
methods, was generally attached. The Western roads
had used similar trains with success in building up their
virgin territories. The use of the scientific schools in
connection was the Eastern adaptation of the idea.

A train of this sort will " make " half a dozen towns
in the course of a day. The towns are not far apart, and
the schedule generally permits a stop of about an hour in
each. The coming of the " farmers' special " has been
thoroughly announced by handbills, posters, and the local
newspapers. Whether the day be wet or fair, the appre-
ciation of the enterprise that started the special out is sure
to be manifest in a crowd that packs the day-coaches and

•\

" EVEN IN NEW YORK STATE THE INTEREST IN THESE ITINERANT

AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS IS KEEN, INDEED "

INTERIOR OF THE DAIRY DEMONSTRATION CAR OF AN
AGRICULTURAL TRAIN

MAKING TRAFFIC 361

not infrequently causes overflow meetings to be held from
the rear platform of the train.

There is no cause for disheartenment in the soul of the
farmer after he has been down to the train. He learns
the things that his land is capable of and yet has never
reared for him. Take the perennial and hardy alfalfa,
for instance. Crowd into the car, where a hundred ear-
nest men from the country-side are gathered and listening
to the man from the State Agricultural College, who talks
on it.

" An acre of good alfalfa, " he is saying, " produces
twice as much digestible nutriment as an acre of good
clover. It is therefore profitable to our farmers to make
every effort to establish alfalfa fields. Your climate is
favorable to alfalfa, which can be grown on a variety of
soils. The most favorable is a gravelly loam with a porous
sub-soil. There must be drainage, fertility, lime, and in-
oculation. Alfalfa is a lime-loving plant, and if you
have n't a limy soil, apply lime at the rate of one to two
thousand pounds per acre. These figures will be given
you in a pamphlet as you leave the car."

And so it goes. If the train is in one of the great fruit-
growing districts of western New York, fruit is the theme
of the lecturers. There is no product that the soil may
give, directly or indirectly, that is too humble for the at-
tention of the farmers' special. All the roads in Western
New York have taken part in the campaign — the New
York Central, the Erie, the Lehigh Valley, and the smaller
roads have sent out the train over the lines, each in due
turn.

The idea has gone into the Middle West and back to
Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Railroad, which creates
traffic from every conceivable source, has operated since
November, 1908, four agricultural specials and two fruit-
tree and shrubbery specials. The agricultural schools of
the great territory it traverses have furnished the lecturers

3«2 THE MODERN RAILROAD

and the material. Now it is preparing to establish down
in the Eastern Shore country between the Chesapeake Bay
and the Atlantic Ocean, a development farm, in which it
will show the farmers of that agricultural district the
greatest use that they can make of their land, the greatest
results that it can be brought to yield. It has gone down
into the sandy southern part of New Jersey and made the
potato crop for New York and for Philadelphia into a vast
yield, — a profit both for the farmer and for the railroad
which has created the traffic.

The first of these development farms in the East was
that established by H. B. Fullerton, under the auspices of
the Long Island Railroad, at Wading River, N. Y. The
Long Island possesses a territory that particularly needs
development of that sort. It has a good suburban terri-
tory adjacent to New York City, but after that there is
not a town of importance the entire length of its lines.
There is no manufacturing of consequence out upon its
line and it has been driven to the necessity of making
traffic.

Fullerton's Farm is another traffic-maker by educational
process. He has taken the worst of the sandy soil that
makes thousands of acres at the east end of the Island,
and he has created from it a model farm. The farm has
had to pay its way. It has not been nurtured under any
extensive appropriations from the railroad, but it has had
to win its success under the same conditions that would
confront the farmer who measured his capital in hundreds,
rather than in thousands of dollars. It is teaching the
lesson that it has sought to teach. Arid soil, on the very
hearthstone of a metropolitan city, is being given over to
profitable truck-farming; and the Long Island Railroad
for its modest farm investment is beginning to harvest ap-
preciable traffic returns.

The New York Central, under the guidance of its presi-
dent, W. C. Brown, who is keenly interested in the revival

MAKING TRAFFIC 363

of farming in the East, and who personally directed the
operation of the " farm specials " over its lines, has pur-
chased two demonstration farms — one in Central, the
other in Western New York. It has hired a competent
farmer to have charge of them — T. E. Martin, of West
Rush, who made a famous record for himself in growing
300 bushels of potatoes to the acre on land that had
never before grown more than sixty. They will also
serve as object lessons, and when they have been developed
to their capacity, they will be sold at a far higher price
than the song for which they were purchased in run-
down condition. The proceeds will be turned over to
the purchase and development of neglected acres in other
sections along the lines of that system.

The New York Central is also making its own special
development of the " farm special " idea, by taking two
coaches and making them into " agricultural cars " at its
West Albany shops. These cars will not run sporadically
on special trains but will be in use the entire year round,
being dropped at one little town after another for a day
or two days or three days, in order that the farmers from
the surrounding district may drop in to receive a little
practical information.

Through the schools of a number of corn-growing
States, into which this work has spread, boys and girls
are being stimulated by prizes to plant little patches of
corn. Out of each community where such an exhibit is
held, ten prize-winning ears are sent to the country fair.
From this the best ten ears are sent to the State fair, and
interstate competition is already being developed.

There is another side to this. The railroads are making
more than a new traffic for themselves, they are making a
new wealth for the communities through which their rails
are stretched. It has been estimated by a Pennsylvania
agronomist that the value of the staple farm crops in the
Keystone State in a single year exceeds $170,000,000; and
that some 224,000 farmers entered into this production.

3 64 THE MODERN RAILROAD

If by training and education each of these farmers can in-
crease his yield of corn one bushel to the acre, the addi-
tional corn revenue from that one State would be $1,044,-
ooo. Further than that, he says that $780,000 would
roll into the pockets of these farmers if they would choose
their seed corn carefully and thus add ten kernels to each
ear of corn grown by them in the course of a twelvemonth.
That sort of thing looks like a cooperative benefit from
almost any angle from which you may view it.

The Rock Island Railroad has begun to preach dry
farming down through the Southwest. Wheat six feet in
length is exhibited by that railroad in its offices through-
out the East as sample of what the farmers in its territory
do, under its help and supervision. That sort of thing
silently makes traffic every day in the year. It is worth
a dozen times what it costs the railroad.

But the railroad is not confining its efforts at making
traffic to the products of the soil. What is good method
with the farmer is similarly good method with the manu-
facturer. So you now see the railroads, east and
west, working with the aid of industrial commissioners.
The industrial commissioner is like a High Minister of
Commerce.

Take, for instance, a typical railroad running from New
York to Chicago. It has* ample docks upon the sea
board, extensive ramifications within the coal-mining dis-
tricts; in the West it taps both the Great Lakes and the
transcontinentals, which reach across the land to the Pacific.
In all this district it is under hard competition, gaining
its traffic — every ton of it — by the sweat of the general
traffic-manager's brow. That railroad has its Industrial
Commissioner, and if you are a prospective manufacturer
looking for a site for a new plant, you are sure to come to
him. You tell him that you want to build a factory. He
tilts back his chair and looks at you easily.

" What kind of a factory? " he asks. " We Ve room
for 10,000 more along our rails. If it 's a silk mill I can

MAKING TRAFFIC 365

suggest Paterson, where the help is trained, and the dyes
and raw materials handy. If you are going to turn out
a steel product somewhere in the Pittsburgh district,
Youngstown, Ohio, is the most economical point in the
United States to-day for the turning out of finished steel.
Perhaps yours is a canning factory," he laughs. " If you
want to can fruit we can fix you out up in Western New
York among the orchards; if you want to can tomatoes,
well, sir, there is nothing like Indiana for tomatoes."

You specify your new business and its requirements in
some detail. The eye of this practical Minister of Com-
merce illumines.

" I have the very thing you want," he says, without hes-
itation. " Over at W , just half a mile above the

city limits along the river. It has siding facilities."
(You may be fairly certain that the siding facilities give
chief access to the railroad that employs this particular
Commissioner.) " And you say you want fresh water.
Well, there 's five thousand gallons a day of the purest
soft water in the East for you."

His eyes shine with enthusiasm. He reaches for his
paper block and the next instant he is sketching the plot
for you with remarkable accuracy, and with a similitude
of scale. Here is the river and there is where you can
build your dam. Over there is the main line of the best
railroad in America (he leaves no doubt in your mind as
to that) ; and your siding can go in there with less than a
quarter of one per cent grade. The highroad is there,
and close by it the trolley leading into town.

" They Ve a surplus of help of the kind you want in

W ," he adds. " You '11 never run short of hands

there."

It sounds good, and within a week you are bound to

W with him to meet the Secretary of the Chamber of

Commerce. If things are as he has represented them to
you, and your mind is unbiased, you build your factory,
and the railroad picks up 200 tons a day off your siding.

366 THE MODERN RAILROAD

That single transaction has been worth the Commissioner's
salary for a year to it. There is a variety of method in
making traffic.

The general passenger agent has to keep his end up.
Any G. P. A. of to-day found entertaining the old-fash-
ioned idea that the traffic that flows of its own volition up
to the ticket-wickets is going to be sufficient to satisfy his
employers is out of present-day development. The gen-
eral passenger agent who gets patted on the back now-
adays is the man who goes to the president in a dull season
with a sheet showing gains over a preceding busy season.
He may have to bring water from stones to increase that
tide of traffic, but it must be increased. There are no two
ways about what is expected of him.

So he gets out, like the traffic people from the freight
end of the railroad, and he keeps in constant touch with
his territory, with the towns along the line and the agents
who are working under him. If he is instrumental in
locating a big convention at some point where his line will
receive the lion's share of the business, that is a good
trick and worth while. A lively convention will do a lot
toward bracing up a weak passenger sheet in some dull
month.

One railroad reaching out of New York into the moun-
tains at the northeastern corner of that State and losing
itself at some obscure town, a railroad without valuable
connections and ramifications, has made its passenger busi-
ness a little gold-mine by scientific nurturing. It sent its
passenger representatives up into the country towns, and
they sought to improve conditions of every sort there.
They started agitation for better roads from the railroad
into the uplands where city folk were prone to wander;
they helped the boarding-house landlord and the country
hotel-keeper to bring their facilities up to attractive stand-
ards. In some cases they induced capital to come in
and build new hotels. In every case they offered free

THE FAMOUS THOMAS VIADUCT, ON THE BALTIMORE & OHIO AT
RELAY, MD., BUILT BY B. H. LATROBE IN 1835, AND STILL IN USE

THE HISTORIC STARUCCA VIADUCT UPON THE ERIE

THE CYLINDERS OF THE DELAWARE & HUDSON MALLET

THE INTERIOR OF THIS GASOLINE-MOTOR-CAR ON THE UNION

PACIFIC PRESENTS A MOST UNUSUAL EFFECT, YET A MAXIMUM OF

VIEW OF THE OUTER WORLD

MAKING TRAFFIC 367

space in the railroad's summer resort literature. Under
a single general passenger agent pursuing such a campaign
unflaggingly the passenger receipts of that small railroad
increased 125 per cent in eight years!

Take the case of Atlantic City. That town used to be a
collection of wooden hotels, set along a sandy pleasant,
beach, which were content with six or eight weeks of
good business in midsummer. The railroads that stretched
their rails down to it registered good earnings during that
hot season, and they had to put in extensive plants to
handle that six or eight weeks of heavy traffic. The ex-
tensive — and expensive — plants were idle a great part
of the year, and there was a lot of capital wasted. The
managers of the railroads told the summer hotel pro-
prietors that, and asked why beach property should be a
losing investment ten months out of the year. That was
a new sort of proposition for a summer resort hotel pro-
prietor but it seemed sound argument and the hotels
extended their seasons at either end. They combined with
the railroads in making attractive special rates for these
duller parts of the season, and before long the spring was
well nigh as popular and as profitable as midsummer.

Folk came over from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and
up from Baltimore and Washington, to spend their sum-
mers at Atlantic City, and the scientific business-making
there created a fashionable season for Northerners from
Easter forward. The building of wooden hotels ceased,
and fireproof structures of brick and stone, steel and con-
crete, began to rise along the beach. Capital ceased to
lie idle at Atlantic City. The hotels began to keep open
the year around, and the scientific method of the biggest
of the railroads had been so effectual that it built a million-
dollar bridge across the Delaware at Philadelphia to
handle through traffic down to Atlantic City.

Still the railroads worked in harmony with the hotels,
and the fashionable season began at Christmas instead of
Easter. Before long they will make the fall fashionable,

3 68 THE MODERN RAILROAD

and then the hotels will be crowded all the year round.
When there is a lull in the season they bring on half a
dozen conventions and fill the trains and the hotels with
the delegates. That Atlantic City plant does not lie idle
much of the time. There are nearly 800 hotels there
to-day — more than fifty of them huge structures — and
on a busy day 300,000 people are along the famous board-
walk above the beach. In dull days the big hotels are
comfortably filled. The hotel men have made fortunes,
the railroads have added millions of dollars to their pas-
senger earnings because of Atlantic City.

There you have the best example of this new creed of
the practical railroader — making traffic. It is not a lost
example. Across the land every city and town, every re-
sort, from the haughty spa with a cluster of brilliant hotels
down to the humblest inn that ever cuddled by the shore
of a silvery lake, is taking notice of the creed. The
farmer is bending himself to increase the yield of his land,
while the railroad reaps a benefit. The marketman from
town is reaching out for better sources for his needs; the
railroad helps him and reaps a benefit. The resort hotel
arranges a joint rate and ticket with the railroad, which
covers both transportation and board for a " week-end " in
the dull season, and the passenger receipts are swelled in
some degree.

That is what the railroader calls making traffic.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE EXPRESS SERVICE AND THE RAILROAD MAIL

DEVELOPMENT OF EXPRESS BUSINESS — RAILROAD CONDUCTORS THE FIRST
MAIL AND EXPRESS MESSENGERS — WILLIAM F. HARNDEN'S EXPRESS
SERVICE — POSTAGE RATES — ESTABLISHMENT AND ORGANIZATION OF
GREAT EXPRESS COMPANIES — COLLECTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF EX-
PRESS MATTER — RELATION BETWEEN EXPRESS COMPANIES AND RAIL-
ROADS—BEGINNINGS OF POST-OFFICE DEPARTMENT — STATISTICS —
RAILROAD MAIL SERVICE — NEWSPAPER DELIVERY — HANDLING OF MAIL
MATTER — GROWTH OF THE SERVICE.

WHILE the great transportation functions of the
railroad are devoted to the comparatively simple
problems of soliciting and carrying both passengers and
freight in ordinary channels, there are, nevertheless, spe-
cial functions of the carrier that demand some slight at-
tention in passing. These functions might quite prop-
erly be known as the by-products of transportation. The
most important of them are the carrying of small pack-
ages of rather greater value than that the railroad ordi-
narily gives to the goods that it handles in its own cars,
and the carrying of letters and periodicals. These last
two are handled as a monopoly by the Federal Govern-
ment, which also competes with a half-dozen big private
corporations in the transportation of merchandise in small
individual lots. The Government calls its service the
railroad mail and it is the bone and sinew of the Post-
office Department. The private corporations, creeping in
upon what is also generally a government monopolistic
privilege in other lands, handle what they are pleased to
call the express business. Their business has grown up
alongside of that of the United States Government and
*4 369

370 THE MODERN RAILROAD

the development of the two has run in very similar
channels.

The express business, like a good many other big busi-
nesses, began in rather simple fashion. Before the rail-
road came into being, the citizens in the different towns
of the young and rather sprawling nation along the At-
lantic seaboard found it a difficult problem to communi-
cate with one another. They used to entrust letters and
valuable packages to the drivers of stage-coaches or to
the captains of coasting-vessels. If the drivers or the cap-
tains remembered the letter-packet or the package, it was
safely delivered. If they forgot — ! So, when the rail-
road came and drove the old stage-lines out of business,
the conductors of the trains were asked to accept this side
responsibility as an informal part of their work. As long
as this messenger function remained a slight thing, the
railroads paid little attention to the practice, but after a
while, the conductors got to paying more attention to it
than to running the trains and the railroads finally had to
stop it.

In the golden age when the conductor's job was devel-
oping this valuable perquisite, William F. Harnden had
charge of a passenger train on the old Boston & Worces-
ter Railroad — a part of the Boston & Albany, which, in
turn, is a part of the New York Central lines. Harnden
had entered railroad service in 1834, when he was but
twenty-two years old. He Foresaw the day when the
railroads would have to put a stop to their conductors
acting as messengers for the general public, and so, a few
years after he had gone to work for the Boston & Worces-
ter, he went to the superintendent of that highly prosper-
ous little line, as well as to the highly prosperous Boston
& Providence, and asked for an exclusive contract for an
express service over it as part of a through route between
New York and Boston. So it came about that in a Bos-

EXPRESS SERVICE AND MAIL 371

ton newspaper of February 23, 1839, the following ad-
vertisement appeared:

" Boston and New York Express Car. William F. Harn-
den has made arrangements with the Providence railroad and the
New York Boat company to run a car through from Boston to
New York and vice-versa four times a week commencing Mon-
day, March 4. He will accompany the car himself, take care of
all small packages that may be entrusted to his care and see
them safely delivered. All packages must be sent to his office, 9
Court street, Boston; or i Wall street, New York."

That " car " was a flight of Harnden' s imagination,
because for several months a valise sufficed to carry all the
packages that were entrusted to his care. But he pro-
gressed, and after a little time he found it necessary to en-
gage his brother and still another man to act as messengers
with him. The following year he extended his express
service to Philadelphia and to Europe. You may be sure
that the success of Harnden's experiment was being no-
ticed by the thrifty New Englanders. Alvin Adams, who
had been in the grocery commission business up in Ver-
mont, established an express service of his own in 1840,
which in due course of time was to become the Adams
Express Company. It is possible that there might have
been to-day a Harnden Express Company as well, if
America's pioneer expressman had not died six years after
establishing his interesting venture.

After Alvin Adams, came a host of express services
springing up all over the eastern end of the United States.
Henry Wells, who had been the associate of Harnden in
the development of his business, formed a partnership
with one George Pomeroy for a service between Albany
and Buffalo. William G. Fargo, the freight-agent for
the one-time Albany and Syracuse Railroad, was the
freight-agent for Pomeroy and Wells at Buffalo in 1842.
Wells and Fargo eventually got together, and in the

372 THE MODERN RAILROAD

throbbing days of the late forties and the fifties, Wells,
Fargo & Co. became an express service of magnitude, a
concern not to be lightly reckoned with.

Strangely enough, the express companies came to their
first prosperity through the thing that they are now for-
bidden to carry — letters. For in the early forties the
United States Post-office Department demanded six cents
for carrying a letter thirty miles, eight cents for sixty
miles, ten cents for one hundred miles — the ratio stead-
ily progressing until twenty-five cents was charged for
450 miles. Those rates had been in effect since the de-
partment was first established, and the service was fear-
fully slow, and untrustworthy into the bargain. The new
express companies took advantage of their opportunity
and — to cite a single instance — they would carry a let-
ter from Buffalo to New York for six cents, while the Gov-
ernment charged twenty-five cents for a similar, but an
inferior service.

In 1850 the express services were beginning to be
merged — Livingston & Company and Wells & Company
had already formed the American Express Company.
Four years later, Adams & Company, Harnden & Com-
pany, and some of the smaller express services united in
the formation of the Adams Express Company, — and in
that year the minstrel men began to ask the question:
" For whom was Eve made? " The United States Ex-
press Company was also organized in 1854, and all this
while Wells, Fargo & Company were forming history
for themselves in the Far West — carrying mail out to
the gold miners and their precious dust east in return.

By the beginning of the Civil War, there was a well
established business, a business established with admirable
foresight. Such men as Adams, Wells and Fargo, and
Benjamin F. Cheney, one of the founders of the American
Express Company, said that the express business should be
kept within narrow limits — so within narrow limits it has
been kept, and to-day when Harnden's suitcase has devel-

IN SUMMER THE BRAKEMEN HAVE PLEASANT ENOUGH TIMES OF
RAILROADING "

A FAMOUS CANTILEVER RAPIDLY DISAPPEARING THE SUBSTITU-
TION OF A NEW KENTUCKY RIVER BRIDGE FOR THE OLD, ON THE
QUEEN & CRESCENT SYSTEM

EXPRESS SERVICE AND MAIL 373

oped into a business paying luscious dividends on more
than a hundred million dollars of capital stock, there are
five great companies: the American Express Company,
the Adams Express Company, the Wells, Fargo Express
Company, the United States Express Company, and the
National Express Company. The interests of these
companies are closely interwoven — for instance : while
the National Express Company is operated as a separate
business, it is absolutely controlled by the American Ex-
press Company. In addition to this Big Five, there is
a cluster of smaller companies, such as the Great Northern
Express Company, of J. J. Hill's system, the Southern
Express Company, the Long Island Express Co., and
two thriving carriers in the Dominion of Canada. These
in turn are more or less closely affiliated with the larger
companies.

The express companies no longer force a man to bring
his shipment to their offices. In every considerable town,
there are whole fleets of wagons that reach to the outer-
most limits, both for collection and for distribution. In
this service the automobile truck has begun readily to dis-
place the older type of horse and wagon. The wagon
service brings the express package, no matter how small
or how large, to a central distributing depot, where all
are gathered together and sent, in through railroad cars,
to their destinations, being handled very largely as we
have seen the L. C. L. freight handled in the great trans-
fer houses of the railroads. The express company guar-
antees the safe delivery of the package that is entrusted
to its care. This package may be of the smallest sort
imaginable, or it may be a consignment of a million dol-
lars in specie. In either case, the express company still
accepts the entire responsibility.

If there are whole brigades of delivery wagons in the
cities there are also whole platoons of special cars owned
by the railroads and dedicated to the express service.
This brings us to the crux of the express question — its

374 THE MODERN RAILROAD

relations to the railroad. These are embraced in volumi-
nous contracts and subcontracts — which are generally
placed among the secret archives of all the companies
that subscribe to them. The Interstate Commerce Com-
mission, at Washington, has had, however, access to most
of these contracts and of them it has said:

" The contract between an express company and a railroad
company usually provides that the express company shall have
the exclusive right to operate upon the lines named for a definite
term of years; that all matter carried on passenger trains, except
personal baggage, corpses, milk cans, dogs, and certain other com-
modities, shall be turned over by the railroad company to the
express company ; that the railroad company shall transport to and
from all points on its lines all matter in charge of the express
company; that special or exclusive express trains shall be pro-
vided by the railroad company when warranted by the volume
of express traffic; that the railroad company shall furnish the
necessary cars, keep them in good repair, furnish light and heat
and carry the messengers of the express company as well as all
necessary equipment; that the railroad company shall furnish such
room in all its depots and stations as may be necessary for the
loading, unloading, and storing of express matter; that the ex-
press company may employ during the pleasure of the railway
any of the agents of the latter as express agents and may employ
the train baggage-men as its messengers.

" The express company, on its part, agrees to pay a fixed per
cent of its gross receipts from handling express matter; to charge
no rate at less than an agreed per cent of the freight rates on the
same commodity — usually one hundred and fifty per cent; to
handle, free of charge, money, bonds, valuables, and ordinary ex-
press matter of the railway."

The railroad mail service is, in many ways, closely anal-
ogous to that of the express service. To it also, are de-
voted whole platoons and brigades of especially equipped
cars, and it comes under the direction of the capable traffic
officers of a great government department.

The Post-office Department is practically as old as the
nation itself. For it was away back in November, 1776,

EXPRESS SERVICE AND MAIL 375

that Ebenezer Hazard, who had been appointed Post-
master General to the Continental Congress, filed a
memorandum of gentle complaint because of the long dis-
tances he was compelled to travel to keep pace with the
wanderings of the Continental Army. But it was not
until George Washington had become President of the
United States, in April, 1789, that the Post-office De-
partment came into any real semblance of organization.
Samuel Osgood, of Massachusetts, was the man to whom
was given the task of making a real business out of what
had once been a haphazard courtesy of the past of stage-
drivers and ships' captains. Some men had made in-
dividual businesses out of the management of stage-routes
— in fact, Benjamin Franklin was an early postman.
But the United States Government from the beginning
created the mail service as a monopoly for itself — fol-
lowing the rule of other nations.

In 1789 the Post-office Department was a crude enough
affair. The Postmaster General had but one clerk, there
were but 75 post-offices and 1,875 miles of post-roads in
the whole country. In the first year of the department's
activities the cost of mail transportation is given as being
$22,081, with the total revenue $37,935. The total
expenditures of the department that year were $32,140,
leaving a surplus for the twelvemonth of $5,795, a some-
what better showing than has been made in some years
since that time.

The report of the Post-office Department for the year
ending June 30, 1910, lies before us as we write this chap-
ter. It tells the graphic growth of a great business in
one hundred and twenty years. For in this last twelve-
month the receipts were $224,128,657 — a really vast
sum compared with that modest $37,935 for 1789-90.
The expenditures for this year ending June 30, 1910,
were even higher — $229,977,224 — leaving a deficit of
$5,848,567. The Postmaster General has asserted, how-
ever, that he will have succeeded in turning that loss

376 THE MODERN RAILROAD

into a slight profit for the year ending June 30, 1911.
These figures do not alone show the growth of the mail
service of a great land that has become entirely dependent
upon this great function of its business and social life.
Think of the 75 post-offices of 1789, compared with the
59,580 offices of 1910 — and that because of the marvel-
lous development of the rural free delivery during the
past ten or twelve years, a decrease from the high-water
mark of 76,688 in 1900. Figures are sometimes im-
pressive and the statistics of the Post-office Department
show that 78,557 postmasters, clerks, and carriers give the
major portion of their time to its service. In addition
to these, those same statistics enumerate 40,997 rural
delivery carriers, who bring the entire post-office force up
to the astounding total of 119,554 men and women.

Without the railroad the Post-office Department could
not have come to its present great development as one
of the chief arms of government activity. The postal
service is an interesting adjunct of the railroad; the rail-
road is a vital factor in the successful conduct and de-
velopment of the postal service. Away back in 1836,
Postmaster General Barry, in his annual report, spoke of
the rapid multiplication of railroads in all parts of the
country and asked if it was not worth while to secure
the transportation of mail upon them. He added :

" Already have the railroads between French Town,
in Maryland, and New Castle, in Delaware, and between
Camden and South Amboy, in New Jersey, afforded great
and important facilities to the transportation of the great
Eastern Mail."

As General Barry wrote, the Baltimore & Ohio was
spinning its extension lines from Baltimore to Washing-
ton, and he expressed an opinion that with that line a
through mail service from New York to Washington
might be accomplished in sixteen hours. That service is
now made between those cities in five hours. General

EXPRESS SERVICE AND MAIL 377

Barry's appeal must have brought fruit, for Congress,
on July 7, 1838, passed an act approving every railroad
in the United States as a post-route.

The railroads accepted this responsibility with alacrity.
The Baltimore & Ohio equipped compartments in bag-
gage-cars running between Baltimore and Washington,
which were kept tightly locked and to which only the
postmasters of those two cities had access. Still the early
methods of handling merchandise of every sort were crude
and it was not until the days of the Civil War that the
railroad mail service began to attain anything like its pres-
ent precision and despatch. Most great organisms are
apt to trace their development to the brilliancy or the
inspiration of one man or a group of men, and the rail-
road mail service has been no exception to that rule. *

W. A. Davis, a clerk in the post-office at St. Joseph,
Missouri, in 1862, conceived the idea that railroad mail
could be assorted on the cars before it reached St. Joseph.
In those days, St. Joseph was a pretty important sort of
a place. The overland mail started west from there, and
Davis thought that if it could be at least partly assorted
before it reached St. Joseph, there would be no delay in
starting overland. The Post-office Department encour-
aged him and he began what was destined to become the
most important and interesting function of the railroad
mail service.

In the same years that Davis was studying out postal
problems at St. Joseph, Col. G. B. Armstrong was as-
sistant postmaster at Chicago. He was asked by Post-
master General Montgomery Blair, of President Lincoln's
Cabinet, to undertake the development of the railroad
mail service. He accepted the task August 31, 1864, and
a little later was made General Railway Mail Superin-
tendent, a position which he held until 1871, when he was
compelled to retire because of ill health. Col. George S.
Bangs, of Illinois, succeeded him, and to Col. Bangs was
given the opportunity of the third great development in

378 THE MODERN RAILROAD

the railroad mail service. In his report for the year 1874
he discussed the possibilities of establishing a fast and ex-
clusive mail train between the two great postal centres of
the land — New York and Chicago. To quote from
Colonel Bangs' report:

" This train is to be under the control of the department so far
as it is necessary for the purpose designed, and to run the distance
in about twenty-four hours. It is conceded by railroad officials
that this can be done. The importance of a line like this cannot
be overestimated. It would reduce the actual time of mail be-
tween the East and the West from twelve to twenty-four hours.
As it would necessarily be established on one or more of the
trunk lines having an extended system of connections, its bene-
fit would be in no case confined, but extended through all parts
of the country alike."

Postmaster General Jewell liked Col. Bangs7 idea and
told him to arrange with the Lake Shore Railroad and
the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad for a
fast mail train to leave New York at four o'clock in the
morning and make Chicago in twenty-four hours. But
the Post-office Department, while it might grandly order
fast mail trains into service, had no appropriation from
which to pay for them. Nevertheless, Col. Bangs ap-
pealed to the older Vanderbilt, owner of both the New
York Central and Lake Shore Railroads. Commodore
Vanderbilt was not a sentimentalist. He had little use
for men who came to him with risky propositions and
empty pocketbooks. Nevertheless, the mail train idea
appealed to the old railroader, and he turned to his son,
William H. Vanderbilt, and asked him what he thought
of the idea. The younger Vanderbilt suggested building
the special cars needed for this service and placing the
train in operation, with hopes of remuneration by the fol-
lowing Congress. He felt that the new trains would
instantly become so popular as to compel Congress to pro-
vide for their up-keep.

EXPRESS SERVICE AND MAIL 379

" If you want to do this, go ahead," said Commodore
Vanderbilt, " but I know the Post-office Department, and
you will, too, within a year."

William H. Vanderbilt went ahead. He constructed
and placed in service such trains — of glittering white and
gold — as the railroad had never seen. Nightly they
made their spectacular run between New York and
Chicago with clock-work regularity. They never missed
connections. The Pennsylvania Railroad quickly fol-
lowed the example of its traditional rival. Within a half-
year the United States had such a mail service as it had
never dreamed of possessing, a mail service a quarter of
a century ahead of any other nation in the world.

And yet Congress did the very thing that the sagacious
old Commodore Vanderbilt had predicted. It absolutely
refused to pay for the fast mail trains, and they were
taken out of service. There was another factor in the
situation, however, and that always a lively factor — the
public. When the man out in Sioux City found that his
mail was again taking eighteen additional hours to reach
him frorrl New York, he rose up in all the fulness of up-
strung wrath and let his Congressman hear from him.
And he was only one of tens of thousands whose business
comfort had been heightened, quite imperceptibly, by the
new trains, and upset very perceptibly by their with-
drawal. They were returned to service in 1877, and have
since become so recognized and useful a function of the
mail service that it would be a brash Congress or Post-
master General who would even attempt to tinker with
them.

Sometimes you brush elbows with the railroad mail
service. You notice perhaps, the big heavy car up for-
ward in the long train, with its open door and its gallows-
like crane for snatching mail-bags, at cross-road stations,
where the through train does not even deign to slacken
speed. If you have had an important and delayed letter

38o THE MODERN RAILROAD

to post, you may have breathed your little prayer of
thanks to the railroad mail because you are able to drop
it into the slot of a car that stood, that was halted for an
impatient minute or two in its race overland. But these
are hardly more than superficialities of the service. If
you wish to come closer to its heart, present yourself some-
times just before dawn at one of the great railroad ter-
minals of a really metropolitan city. You had better
present yourself in spirit and not in flesh, because this busy
time — when most honest men are asleep — is not a time
when visitors are welcomed. The Government is singu-
larly diffident about showing the inner workings of its
Post-office Department.

But these inner workings are alive and alert at three
o'clock of the morning that you come to the platform
sheds of the big terminal — you can see the shadowy out-
line of the darkened building itself rising up behind you.
Most of its platforms which by day are constant and brisk
little highways, are also darkened. The long files of
empty coaches that line these platforms reflect in their
many windows the signal lights of the outer yard. Now
and again you catch the flicker of a pointed yellow light
against the background of blackness — the bobbing of a
watchman's lantern as he sees that all is well in the few
hours of comparative quiet that come to this great
terminal.

This one train platform is alert and alive — brilliant
under the incandescence of electricity. A brigade of shirt-
sleeved men line it, while to its outer edge one great
wagon after another — each showing the red, white, and
blue of government service under the reflections of the
arcs — comes rolling up, with a fearful clatter over the
rough pavement of the station yard. From the cavernous
recesses of these great wagons their stores are poured forth
— dozens and dozens of mail sacks of leather and canvas,
each tagged and directed with absolute accuracy.

EXPRESS SERVICE AND MAIL 381

The grimy granite bulk of the general post-office is a
scarce half-dozen blocks away from this terminal — an
easy span for each of the great mail-wagons. Into that
general post-office the mail — letters, newspapers, pack-
ages, all of inconceivable variety — has been pouring at
flood-tide ever since the close of business nine hours be-
fore. The carriers with their heavy pouches began this
tide; wagons bringing their contribution greatly swelled
it. From the nearer stations the mail came, silent and
unseen, through the giant pneumatic tubes that reach out
from the general post-office, under city streets, like great
arteries. Underneath the ghastly green mercury lamps of
the distributing floor of the general post-office, the first
steps were taken toward separating the flood. Expert
mail-clerks, working under tremendous tension, made a
rough classification of all that come under their trained
fingers — sometimes by counties, again by States, or even
a group of States. One great subdivision was transcon-
tinental and transpacific. This train with its close con-
nections on the Western lines will reach San Francisco
just in time to catch there a big, red-funnelled steamship
about to depart for Yokohama and Hong Kong. At
Hong Kong the red-funnelled boat will connect with a
P. & O. steamer whose screws will hardly cease revolving
until she reaches Calcutta. The railroad mail service is
a thing that reaches much farther than the rights-of-way
of the railroads themselves.

There are seven cars in this train — five cars for the
postal service and two chartered by the morning news-
papers. There are no coaches. Now and then one of
these flyers will deign to carry a single sleeper, but such
is the exception. The fast mail does not stop to quibble
with such trifles as passengers. It even turns its shoulders
upon the express companies — they have their own fast
special trains across the continent.

The last of the mail-wagons has delivered its valuable

382 THE MODERN RAILROAD

load to the cars. The final newspaper wagon comes
dashing up to the platform — its horses a-froth and its
driver on the edge of profanity.

" Here 's the firsts," he yells. " Big fire down the
water-front and they wanted to make the edition with it.
We were three minutes late."

Three minutes late! Seventeen minutes ago the last
of the smoking-hot forms came from that newspaper's
stereotyping rooms and here are the first ten thousand
copies of the morning's run — fresh and damp smelling
of the forest. Before the driver began his hurried ex-
planation of delay, the copies were being thrown into the
last car. He had hardly finished before a big bell, high-
hung somewhere in the invisible blackness, speaks its one
brief note of authority; lanterns are raised alongside the
full length of the train — the seven big cars are softly
getting into motion. And before this train is fully in
motion the newspaper's messengers are busy with the
papers that have been thrown in at the open door; before
it has bumped its way over the wide-spreading " throat "
at the entrance of the terminal, they are bringing the first
semblance of order out of the miniature mountain of news-
papers piled high on the car floor.

Chaos, did we say? Well, hardly that. The circula-
tion manager of the metropolitan morning newspaper has
been called a " field marshal of the empire of print," and
field marshals incline to order rather than to chaos. It
is less than seventeen minutes from the first of that torrent
of newspapers pouring from the hopper of the grinding
press, yet here they are, each in an accurate bundle of
not more than two hundred and fifty copies, and accu-
rately tagged. The label of each bundle bears in big
clear letters the news company or dealer to whom it is
consigned, the town, the railroad and its connections.
There is not much chance for errors here.

As the newspaper messengers begin to arrange their
stock — the papers for the nearest towns on top so that

EXPRESS SERVICE AND MAIL 383

they may be most easily reached, to be thrown off while
it is still dusk, so that Mr. Early Riser may read his
favorite metropolitan journal as he sips his breakfast
coffee — so are the mail-clerks in the cars ahead bending
to their tasks. Roundabout them are rows of pouches
held in iron frames, with their hungry throats held wide
open, and infinite racks of small pigeon-holes — the same
kind that you remember in the up-country post-offices.
When the pouches first come into the car they are opened
and their contents " dumped-up," to use the parlance of
the service, upon the shelf-like tables that run the length
of the place. The next process is " facing-up " — bring-
ing addressed sides of all the matter uppermost for fa-
cility in distribution. And after that the distribution
itself — no easy matter when all the world is constantly
writing to all the world, and the criss-cross currents are all
but innumerable.

So come all classes of mail to these swift-flying cars —
letters, newspapers, packages, the specially protected reg-
istered mail, — and for all of these classes the apparently
endless sorting goes steadily forward, while the train
rounds sharp curves and sends the ordinarily sure-footed
clerks clutching handrails for balance, under the dead
glow of acetylene, holding each separate mail-piece for a
fraction of a second — sometimes longer if it be a
" sticker " in the chirography or the detail of its address
— and then shooting it into the proper pigeon-hole or
open-mouthed pouch. Some of these cars are destined
for cities or States or groups of States — the wheels under
one of them are not going to cease revolving for any
length of time until it stands on the long Mole, opposite
San Francisco, and the through pouches, with the British
coat-of-arms and the meaningful " G. R." stamped upon
them, are being shipped aboard the red-funnelled steam-
ship which is to carry them on the last leg of their long
journey over two seas and a broad continent, from Lon-
don to Hong Kong.

384 THE MODERN RAILROAD

These trains are no longer novel on the modern rail-
road. They are established features of the train service.
From New York City goes forward one-sixth of all the
mail matter originating in the United States. The aggre-
gate circulation of all the New York morning newspapers
is somewhat larger than the aggregate circulation of the
morning newspapers of the other cities of the country, so
from New York there goes forth between midnight and
dawn a flotilla of special mail and newspaper trains.
Two of the fastest of these start from the Grand Central
Station. The " Boston Special " of the New York, New
Haven & Hartford leaves that spacious terminal at just
2 :io A. M., no matter what desperate excuses may be tele-
phoned at the last moment by some circulation manager
who is confronted by a disabled press, or some such dis-
aster. It slips through the suburban territory without
halting — the nearby commuters are served with their
papers and their mail by the early morning locals.
Bridgeport, at 3:31 A.M., is the first halt; New Haven,
at 3:52, the second. At New Haven, the papers for
Hartford, Springfield, and the whole Connecticut valley
country are thrown off. At New London, which is
reached at 4:53 A. M., go the papers for Norwich, Wor-
cester, Newport, and New Bedford. One more halt, at
Providence, and the train, running as fast as the fastest
of New Haven flyers, is at the South Station, Boston —
at just 7 120 o'clock. A Boston & Maine flyer, taking
mail and newspapers away up the coast through three
States, leaves the North Station at 8:01 A.M., and so
there follows a quick transfer of mail and newspapers
through the twisting streets of the Hub.

The other early morning flyer leaves the Grand Central
at 3 105 o'clock, and it makes its course over the main
stem of the New York Central Lines. It reaches Albany
at 6:30 o'clock and not only distributes there for Western
Massachusetts and Vermont, the upper Hudson Valley
and the Lake Champlain territory north to Montreal, but

EXPRESS SERVICE AND MAIL 385

overhauls a passenger train that left New York a little
after midnight. It continues its course through the heart
of the Empire State — reaching Syracuse at 10:05 A.M.
and Rochester at 1 1 147 A. M. At Buffalo, which is
reached at i :2O P. M., there are important connections for
the West and Southwest, and the Chicago letters in that
grimy train are going out on the first delivery from the
Chicago post-office the next morning.

The Pennsylvania hauls two great trains — built up of
mail sections from its new terminal on Manhattan Is-
land, which has a great post-office in process of growth,
built over a portion of its platform tracks, and newspaper
sections from the old Jersey terminal, which is still most
convenient to a majority of the metropolitan papers.
The first of these trains is bound for the South and the
Southwest. It leaves New York at 2 120 A. M., passes
Philadelphia at 4:25, and steams into Baltimore at 6:40
A. M. Another hour sees it in Washington and trans-
ferring its load to the mail-trains that are about to start
for the long journey to Atlanta and New Orleans. A
New Yorker sojourning for a part of the winter at Palm
Beach, Florida, can be sure of having his favorite Sunday
paper not later than Tuesday morning.

The second Pennsylvania train leaves thirty minutes
later and follows the main line of that much-travelled
highway all the way to Pittsburgh, which it reaches just
at noon. Other railroads out of New York start fast
newspaper and mail trains just before dawn and combine
regular passenger facilities with them — the Lehigh
Valley despatching a flyer at 2 :oo o'clock from the old
Pennsylvania terminal in Jersey City for the populous
northeastern corner of Pennsylvania and the so-called
Southern Tier of New York State. The Lackawanna
reaches a somewhat similar territory by its fast express,
which leaves Hoboken at 2 130 o'clock.

A similar cluster of mail and newspaper flyers starts
out of Chicago early each morning — east over the Lake
25

386 THE MODERN RAILROAD

Shore, the Michigan Central, and the Pennsylvania, south
over the Monon and the Illinois Central, and west and
northwest over the Northwestern, the Rock Island, and
the Santa Fe. Other great cities follow the same pro-
gramme in lesser scale — there are many important fast-
mail trains that make their departures from initial ter-
minals throughout all the daylight hours and late into
the evening. A regiment of mail-cars make their way
over the face of the land on fast through expresses of
every sort. The postal service is a business of magni-
tude within itself.

The Postmaster General's report for the year ending
June 30, 1910, gives a clear conception of its magnitude.
He showed then that there were 176 full railroad post-
office lines, manned by 1,736 crews of 8,332 clerks.
There were also 1,392 compartment railroad post-office
lines — lines in which a portion of a baggage or smoking-
car is partitioned for the sole use of the postal service —
manned by 4,085 crews of 5,407 clerks, 18 electric car
lines with 20 crews and 22 clerks, and 55 steamboat lines
with 98 crews and 86 clerks. Of the cars built for the
exclusive use of the railroad mail service, 1,114 were in
use and 206 held in reserve, while 3,208 of the compart-
ment cars were in use, 559 of these being held in reserve.
In addition, the Post-office Department operates 25 trolley
mail-cars.

Great progress has been made in the substitution of
steel mail-cars for wooden ones — a real step forward
when one pauses to consider the dangerous position in
which the mail-cars are placed in most trains. The records
of the Post-office Department are filled with stories of
heroism on the part of mail-clerks in saving, both the ex-
tremely valuable merchandise that is given to their care,
and vastly more valuable human lives. The list of the
post-office employees who have met death while on duty
in the railroad mail service is not a short one.

But the railroads are cooperating with the Government

EXPRESS SERVICE AND MAIL 387

in giving the finest type of steel cars to its mail service, —
sixty of these are already in use on the Pennsylvania sys-
tem,— for, as we stated at the outset of this chapter, the
transportation of Uncle Sam's mail is no slight function
of the modern railroad. The big operating men across
the land are constantly bending their heads with those of
the post-office officials toward the betterment of that
transportation.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE MECHANICAL DEPARTMENTS

CARE AND REPAIR OF CARS AND ENGINES — THE LOCOMOTIVE CLEANED
AND INSPECTED AFTER EACH LONG JOURNEY — FREQUENT VISITS OF
ENGINES TO THE SHOPS AND FOUNDRIES AT ALTOONA — THE TABLE
FOR TESTING THE POWER AND SPEED OF LOCOMOTIVES — THE CAR
SHOPS — STEEL CARS BEGINNING TO SUPERSEDE WOODEN ONES —
PAINTING A FREIGHT CAR — LACK OF METHOD IN EARLY REPAIR SHOPS
— SEARCH FOR FLAWS IN WHEELS.

TO care for its rolling-stock the railroad creates two
distinct functions of its business. All the care of
its permanent way, including tracks, tunnels, bridges,
comes under the control of the Maintenance Way De-
partment. Similarly, the Mechanical Department assumes
control of the cars and engines, sees to it that each is main-
tained to its fullest efficiency, both by care in daily service
and by certain visits to the shops at regular intervals, for
repairs, reconstruction, and painting.

To do all this requires a large plant, both in buildings
and machinery. It is distributed at every important point
along the railroad. At terminal and operating points,
roundhouse facilities of greater or less extent are sure to be
located, and at the headquarters of each division these are
generally expanded into shops for the making of light re-
pairs and to avoid handling crippled equipment for any
great distance. One large shop plant is apt to suffice the
average railroad for the heavy repair work. If the road
stretch to any extraordinary length, even this feature is apt
to be duplicated in order to concentrate this repair work
as far as possible.

All this concerns the care and repair of the locomotive
— which the railroader quickly groups under the title

THE MECHANICAL DEPARTMENTS 389

" motive-power." To care for the engines while they are
in use out upon the line, to see to it that engineers and
firemen alike handle these mechanisms with economy and
skill, is a responsibility that is placed upon the road fore-
man of engines of each division. He has supervision over
smaller roundhouses but at any of the larger of these struc-
tures there is a roundhouse foreman in direct charge. The
railroad long ago learned that its best economy rested in
having plenty of executive control. That has come to
be one of the maxims of the business.

There is a master mechanic in charge of the division
shops and in many cases he has authority over the road
foreman of engines and the roundhouse foremen. Then
under him he has his various assistants, forming a work-
ing force not at all unlike that of the average iron-working
shop. All this organism is gathered together under a su-
perintendent of motive power, who in turn may report to a
general mechanical superintendent. This official answers
only to the general manager, or, in some cases, to a vice-
president to whom these functions of the care of the rail-
road are delegated.

The proposition of the cars is generally treated quite
apart from that of the locomotive, and separate shops
under the direction of a master car-builder and his assist-
ants are located at a few points upon the system, where
they may be of fairly easy access. Rough repairs (the
car-builders term these " light " repairs) to cars are car-
ried forth at each division yard. This work is almost
entirely confined to the freight equipment, and a good
part of it goes upon " foreign " cars — cars that do not
belong at all to the railroad making the repairs.

This feature of the repair work is a direct result of an
elaborate system of interchange in freight equipment upon
American railroads, in order to prevent the breaking of
bulk in the shipment of merchandise from one line to an-
other. Cars will break down when they are many hun-
dreds of miles away from home, and the railroad upon

390 THE MODERN RAILROAD

which they are operating at the time carts them to the
nearest temporary repair yard or to its own shops, makes
the necessary repairs, and charges for them in accordance
with a scale prepared by the national association of Master
Car-Builders. This necessitates a vast deal of bookkeep-
ing and is only one of the many complications brought
about by our extensive plan of railroading in America.
The railroad will probably build the greater part of its
freight equipment, although in these days of the sup-
planting of wood by steel in car-construction the com-
panies are apt to stand appalled at the cost of the steel
working machinery, and to buy their cars direct from the
manufacturers very much as they purchase their locomo-
tives. Passenger equipment is almost invariably secured
in this way. It is a big railroad indeed that seeks to
construct for itself the huge travelling palaces that the
passenger of to-day has come to demand for his comfort.
The repairing and the painting of these elaborate vehicles
is enough of a proposition in itself.

To begin at the beginning, one first comes in contact
with the mechanical department as it comes into constant
contact with the operation of the railroad. This is the
more quickly observed at the roundhouses, those great
circular structures that are a feature of the railroad sec-
tion of every important town. In England the " engine
sheds," as they are there known, are simple enough struc-
tures, housing a series of parallel tracks, which are served
by either a transfer table or switches. Such a plan is pur-
sued in this country only where space is at a premium —
as in the heart of some great city where realty is ex-
ceedingly high-priced; for the heads of our railroads have
held tenaciously to the easily operated turntable and
roundhouse scheme. The table, generally driven by elec-
tricity or a small dummy engine, forms the centre, the
roundhouse a segment of the entire rim of the wheel. The
great advantage of its simple design lies in the fact that it

TRIPLE-PHASE ALTERNATING-CURRENT LOCOMOTIVE BUILT BY THE
GENERAL ELECTRIC Co. FOR USE IN THE CASCADE TUNNEL, OF
THE GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY

THE MONOROAD IN PRACTICAL USE FOR CARRYING PASSENGERS AT
CITY ISLAND, NEW YORK

THE CIGAR-SHAPED CAR OF THE MONOROAD

THE MECHANICAL DEPARTMENTS 391

is instantly possible to get at any one of the fifty or more
locomotives that it houses. It is this feature that has en-
deared it to the railroad man for many years.

The locomotive that hauls the train goes to its " stall "
in the roundhouse directly after its work is done. Its
crews, having finished their run, desert it for the time be-
ing, and it comes within the charge of the roundhouse
foreman and his " hostlers." These old terms are remi-
niscent of the days when the roundhouse was a real stable
and its denizens flesh and blood horses. Now the deni-
zens of the roundhouse are iron horses, and in their great
size as they rest within their house they are indicative of
the progress that has been made in the design and construc-
tion of railroad equipment.

On the way to the roundhouse, possibly on the way from
it (the practice varies on different railroads) the engine
will stop at the ash-pit. It will have its fires cleaned in
a long pit that runs underneath a section of track, and
then pass on to the coaling-shed. The long pit at some
points is filled with iron buckets that run on wheels into
which the ashes are dumped and these are emptied by
overhead crane apparatus into a nearby line of empty
gondolas, ready to be taken away to be disposed of.

At the coaling shed the tender is filled, some twelve
or fifteen tons being required if the engine is large; the
water-spout fills the capacious tanks, while the hostlers
take good care to see that the sand-box is filled, as a pre-
caution against slipping on the next steep grade. Then
on to the turntable and the waiting stall, until ready to
go out again upon the regular service or extra duty.
During that time it will be both cleaned and inspected.
The fireman may be held responsible for the cleanly ap-
pearance of his engine above the running-board. Below
that, the work will be delegated to the roundhouse force.
The fireman will probably feel that it should clean all the
engine. When he feels particularly aggrieved over the
matter it is time for him to meet one of the veterans of

392 THE MODERN RAILROAD

the service, who will tell him of the days when the engines
were gayly ornamented with brass and light-colored paints,
and the fireman's career had added to it an endless cam-
paign with his wiping rag against the tendency of the
bright-work to tarnish. There are some things that de-
cidedly favor the fireman of the present time.

There are not always sufficient roundhouse facilities at
every point; the traffic of our railroads has a way of con-
stantly running away from the facilities; and so there are
many times when the engines must be housed in the open.
But the vigilance and the care upon them are never re-
laxed. The railroad that is foolish enough to try to
save upon the maintenance of its motive power sooner or
later pays a terrible price for its penurious folly.

So it comes to pass that every engine makes a regular
visit to the shops, generally at periods of from ten to
fourteen months, depending upon the service in which it is
engaged. On some of these visits, it will be pretty com-
pletely dismantled, and a travelling crane running the full
length of the erecting shop will soon lift the heavy boiler
from frame and wheels and carry it down to the boiler-
makers, with no more difficulty than an automatic package
carrier in a dry-goods store would have. There is a deal
of pride and rivalry between the men as to the facility
and speed that can be shown in taking an engine in hand,
dismantling it completely, making necessary repairs, setting
it up again and placing it in service once more. The men
of the Erie shops at Hornellsville succeeded in doing the
trick a year or so ago in the remarkably short time of
twenty-four hours. In that brief time a locomotive came
in from the road, bedraggled and begrimed and marked
" TBMF " for the benefit of the shop-men. " TBMF "
translated means " Tires, Boxes, Machine, Flues/' so
specifying the engine parts to be repaired. In the slang
of the repair shop the men say " To Be Made Fast."
These four requisites are the ones most necessary to make
the locomotive fit for from 50,000 to 75,000 miles of serv-

THE MECHANICAL DEPARTMENTS 393

ice before she shall again turn into the shop. To make
them in twenty-four hours required some planning on the
part of the Erie shop foremen at Hornellsville, and yet
it was only a few weeks after 1734 had come out of the
Hornellsville plant fit for revenue service in a single day
and night, before the men of the rival Susquehanna shop
wished a chance at a contest of that sort. " TBMF "
generally keeps a locomotive in the shop for from a fort-
night to three or four weeks; the Canadian Pacific con-
sidered that it had done a remarkable thing in effecting
these repairs on a locomotive, with a super-heater, at its
Winnipeg shops in 57^ hours. The Hornellsville record
was one most remarkable. But the Susquehanna shop
men took 2018 in off the road after 70,000 miles without
repairs ; took in the big puller at 7 o'clock in the morning,
made the heavy "TBMF" repairs, and turned her out
for revenue service at 7 134 o'clock in the evening — thir-
teen hours and thirty-four minutes. At midnight she was
pulling a heavy through freight west once again, and a
most astounding record in American shop work had been
consummated.

The United States have few such towns as England
possesses in Swindon and in Crede, railroad towns in the
distinctive sense that they were the absolute creation of the
railroad in the first instance. There is many a town from
one ocean to the other that has owed its stimulus and
development to the location of large railroad shops and
terminals within its boundaries, but the railroads have, as
a rule, dodged the creation of distinctive towns. Pullman,
within the outskirts of Chicago, was a monumental failure
in this very sort of enterprise. It was designed and built
to accommodate the great car-building shops of that man
who did the most of all men to make luxury in railroad
traffic — George M. Pullman; and no greater care was
shown in the construction and design of the works than
was given toward the stores, the churches, the schools, and

394 THE MODERN RAILROAD

the homes of the workmen. Pullman was decidedly a
model town; yet Pullman was a failure. Other model
towns of the same sort in Europe have been marked suc-
cesses, and that very thing may well serve to illustrate
the difference in temperament between the American and
the European workingman. The American resents too
much being done for him; he is instinctively jealous of
his individuality.

Away back in the long-ago the Erie created a railroad
town at Susquehanna in the extreme north part of Pennsyl-
vania. It built shops there and soon after repeated the
experiment at Hornellsville in the southwestern part of
New York State. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad simi-
larly developed Cumberland, Maryland; and the Lake
Shore, Elkhart, Ind. These are few of many instances
where a great railroad shop has served to develop a siz-
able town. In some others they have developed impor-
tant suburbs of large cities, as the Lake Shore's plant at
Collinwood, at the eastern edge of the city of Cleveland;
and the great shops of the New York Central at Depew, in
the outskirts of Buffalo, which were built when the plant
at West Albany could no longer accommodate the rolling-
stock of a rapidly growing system.

In Altoona, Pa., the United States possesses probably
the only distinctive railroad town of extent within its
boundaries. Altoona was the creation of the Pennsyl-
vania Railroad more than half a century ago, and its
progress, carefully stimulated, has proceeded step by step
in company with the progress of one of the largest of
American railroad systems. The mistakes of Pullman
have not been repeated at Altoona. If the Pennsylvania
Railroad has ruled the city in the hills, it has ruled it
tacitly and tactfully at all times. It has avoided even the
appearance of paternalism, and the growth of Altoona has
been measured by the growth of the country, which in its
turn is measured with marvellous accuracy by the growth
of the railroad traffic. So a trip to Altoona and through

THE MECHANICAL DEPARTMENTS 395

its great shops will be illustrative of the very best practice
in the construction and maintenance of a railroad's car and
engine.

The Altoona shops are unusual in the fact that both
locomotives and cars of the highest capacity and finest
type are built within them, in addition to a great repair
and refurnishing work being carried forward there at all
times. To do this work, the plant, employing during the
seasons of heaviest traffic something like 15,000 men —
is divided into several divisions that stretch themselves
along the railroad tracks for about six miles.

The first of these divisions consists of the foundries, de-
voted largely to the manufacture of cast-iron car-wheels
of every size and grade. Extensive cupolas, core-rooms
and moulding-floors are provided for making 1,000 car-
wheels every 24 hours. There is the blacksmith shop as
part of this particular plant. The blacksmith is one of
the handiest of men about a railroad shop and one of the
few to survive the almost universal introduction of machine
processes. There are also the machine and pattern shops,
together with a large foundry for the manufacture of cast-
ings for cars and locomotives, having a capacity of 200
tons a day.

The second division of industrial activity at Altoona is
the locomotive repair shop. This is the largest of all the
individual plants at that point, employing about 5,000
men, and with its three- and four-story structures built
closely within a busy yard it is a veritable city within a
city. It has a capacity of about 1,800 reconstructed and
repaired locomotives a year and is a shop well calculated
to fill any one with respect.

The third division is the Junction shops, where the new
locomotives are built; 1,800 men are employed within it,
and there men take the new castings and forgings (most
of the castings coming up from the giant foundries that
we have just noticed), and from them they create that
almost human thing, the railroad locomotive. When the

396 THE MODERN RAILROAD

locomotive emerges from that shop it takes its turn upon
the testing-table, the mechanical experts place their final
stamp of approval upon it, and at last it goes out from
the shop, under its own steam, to perform the great work
for which it was created.

The testing-table is one of the most interesting of Al-
toona's activities. The engine is run upon a series of
wheels that fit exactly underneath its own; it is fastened
snugly into place; connections are made with a score of
pipes and rods that fit upon its mechanism, and it starts
off for a run up over the division. It runs miles and
miles, snorting furiously over the hard grades and under
the heavy loads it has to haul, and yet it does not move
even the finest fraction of an inch from that testing table.
Its mechanism throbs with energy, its wheels revolve at a
fearful rate; yet it is a helpless caged creature in a seem-
ingly impotent energy, as the men in charge of the test
watch a dozen dials, notebooks in hand. The big driving
wheels turn only upon the friction wheels beneath them
but the engineers who are conducting the test can tell the
speed at which the locomotive is travelling — in theory —
by the almost human needles upon the dial- faces. There
is more delicate scientific apparatus behind the engine. It
is stripped from its tender for this test, and by this ap-
paratus the pull of the engine upon the dead load of the
train can be exactly estimated in pounds and ounces. Nor
is this all. The friction wheels underneath the drivers
are controlled by powerful water brakes, and by the regula-
tion of these brakes, strains or handicaps can be placed
upon the engine exactly similar to those of the grades it
may have to reach over a heavy mountainous stretch of
railroad.

There is no guess-work about modern railroading.
Many hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent each
year in expert scientific tests of every sort, in the salaries
of men who devote their entire time to this work; and the
railroads reap the benefits in many more hundreds of

THE MECHANICAL DEPARTMENTS 397

thousands of dollars in operating economies. Railroad-
ing is a pretty exact science ; the big engine on the testing-
table at Altoona is only one of a host of evidences of the
skill and genius that are being brought to bear upon the
operation of the great railroad properties of the country at
the present time.

This engine goes upon diet. Dr. Wiley down at Wash-
ington with his young men sustaining themselves scientific-
ally upon measured and selected foods has something of
the same method that is shown with the test engine up at
Altoona in the hills. Its supply of coal is carefully
weighed and analyzed by sample. An accounting of the
amount consumed down to ounces is carefully kept, the
water supply is also examined and measured with great
care. When the test is finished and the big chaotive en-
gine has covered miles of theoretical grades with a long
theoretical train hitched on behind, the experts get busy
with their pencils and begin to prepare the reports upon
which their chief may rely when he goes ahead to construct
another gross of loo-ton locomotives.

The car shops rank next in importance to the locomotive
shops. The foreman of this plant tells you casually that
it has an annual capacity of 300 new passenger cars and
3,600 new freight cars. It is a great plant of itself, some
seventy acres of ground covered with great construction
buildings. Some of these are in roundhouse form, for con-
venience in handling equipment under construction ; others
are set side by side and easily reached by use of a long
transfer table.

The work of erecting the freight equipment is carried
on quite separate from that of the passenger car work.
The almost universal use of steel in the manufacture of
every sort of freight car, save the box-cars, which still have
wooden walls and roof built upon a steel foundation, has
made a large steel-working shop a necessary adjunct of
every car-building plant. One of the most interesting fea-

398 THE MODERN RAILROAD

tures of the Altoona car-building plant is a giant hydraulic
press situate in the open, just outside of the steel-working
plant. This press brings a dead weight of 1,500 tons
down upon the sheet of steel that it receives. It is used
in making the sills of the freight-cars — " fish-bellies," the
master car-builders call them — and under that giant press
a sheet of steel, one-half inch in thickness and from thirty
to forty feet in length, is bent into shape as easily as you
might bend a sheet of soft cardboard within your fingers.
The press makes many hundred " fish-belly " sills every
working day, and it pays its way.

The steel-working in this shop has been carried forth
into passenger car construction and a great shed given
over for that work. Within it one sees the gaunt frames
of the cars that are to be, gaining shape, until at the far
end of the shop is a line of the cars, completed as far as
the steel workers can carry them, and ready to be swung
by one of the ever-busy switch-engines to the finishing shop,
and then finally to the paint shop.

Even with the steel car coming into its own, there are
still hundreds of thousands of wooden cars in operation;
and the construction of wooden cars will not cease for many
years. While steel as a raw material is not far in advance
of the cost of wood these days, the cost of fashioning it
into cars is still so excessive as to make it impracticable
save in cases of extremely profitable operation. One of
the strongest points in favor of steel in car-construction is
that of the economy of its maintenance, always a strong
point with railroad men. The wooden car feels the wear
and tear of life upon the rail keenly; in the case of a wreck
it is not to be even compared with the steel car.

It should not be forgotten,, though, that the railroads
have many thousands of wooden passenger-coaches still in
service, and the substitution of steel equipment for these
has only just begun. The average life of a car approxi-
mates twenty years, and the simplest of railroad economics
demands that these cars be retained for their active life.

THE MECHANICAL DEPARTMENTS 399

As they wear out steel cars can be, and they already are
being, substituted by the great systems. This new equip-
ment is being used at first upon the main lines and through
trains,, where both speed and density of traffic demand the
railroad's best equipment. Gradually it will be spread to
the trains and branch lines of less importance.

With the wooden car still a factor in railroad equipment,
the carpenter has not yet lost his vocation in the shops.
There is much of the coarser work on the freight cars for
him; in the elaborate passenger coaches, dining-cars and
other equipment of that class, the great mass of cabinet
work still demands the cunning of his hands. Here in
the miscellaneous carpenter-shop he is at work upon a seat
frame for a day-coach, a shade fixture, a broken chair
from a dining car, a baggage truck from some station;
there is plenty of work for the carpenter around a car-
shop.

It is a matter of pride with the railroad to keep its
passenger equipment bright and shiny and new of appear-
ance. It is part sentiment and part good business. For
a railroad cannot hope to attract passengers with dirty, un-
kempt, weather-beaten cars. So it is that the paint-shop is
a large function of the car-shop. American railroads may
not go quite as much into gaudy car decoration as do the
railroads of England and continental Europe. Each year
the canons of simple good taste are driving the car-design-
ers to plainer models, but no expense is spared to make
car-surfaces, within and without, as bright and shiny as
those of a private carriage or an automobile.

So it is that a passenger coach spends from eighteen to
twenty days in the paint-shop alone, in its period of refur-
bishing. It is primed at first and then it receives from
three to five coats of surfacer. This is all hand-work, re-
quiring both strong muscles and infinite patience on the
part of the painters. Two or three coats of the standard
color of the railroad, by which its equipment is known
distinctively, are given to the exterior. Lettering and

400 THE MODERN RAILROAD

striping follow, then finally two coats of fine varnish are
flowed and rubbed to a high and brilliant polish.

The car is now ready for the dust and the dirt of the
line. About every year it will come back again for re-
varnishing and at the end of about eight years it will
again undergo practically the same treatment within the
paint-shop as was given it at the beginning. It will come
in rusty and begrimed after many thousands of miles up
and down the toilsome line. Within three weeks it will
emerge from the paint-shop fresh and radiant, having
obtained a new lease of life.

If the same process were to be applied to the freight
equipment, the paint-shop would be of almost unlimited
size. But freight-cars are not varnished. They are
merely painted with the best of time-resisting pigments,
usually a dull and sombre red. The freight-cars literally
go through a bath in the paint-shop. Expert painters
stand, like fire-fighters, with a hose-nozzle in their hands.
Through the hose the paint is forced, gallons upon gallons
of it ; and when it is all over the freight-car is a fine, even
red, just like the painters themselves. The lettering is a
quick matter, with the use of stencils.

There remain two other great divisions of a central
plant of this sort — locomotive repair shops and car re-
pair shops, for the needs of the immediate divisions with
their heavy traffic. These shops, extensive in themselves,
present no radical differences from the usual division shops
which a great railroad maintains at every division opera-
ting point in order to keep its rolling stock in the best of
order. They are used to make light repairs. The master
mechanic is a discerning man. He must know and judge
accurately when a disabled car or locomotive should go to
the company's main shops, when the repairs can best be
made at the local plant. It is one of the points upon which
the economy of the shop system depends.

On this matter of shop economy whole volumes might be

THE MECHANICAL DEPARTMENTS 401

written, and have been written. In the beginning of shop
practices there was little system in these matters, just as the
shop work was reckoned far below its real importance.
One of the earliest of real railroads was the Columbia &
Philadelphia — nowadays one of the main stems of the
Pennsylvania's trunk line — and it was from the beginning
a railroad of quite heavy traffic, double-tracked and reach-
ing into a fat country. Yet a shop at Parkersburg, half-
way up the line, employing forty men in all, was considered
quite enough for the maintenance of equipment. If one
of those early engines broke down at either terminal,
the engineer, the fireman and perhaps the local blacksmith
had to make their own repairs.

Nothing was standard, not even the sizes of such simple
affairs as nuts and bolts. Years of railroading have
changed all this. The master-mechanics and the master
car-builders meet in annual sessions; and by means of re-
ports from their expert committees have been evolved
standards in every detail of rolling stock — standard ma-
terials, standard compositions, standard sizes, even stand-
ards in nomenclature of railroad apparatus down to the
smallest parts.

Even with this assistance there still remains a mass of
detail in every railroad shop ; and a large clerical force is
one of its greatest efficiencies. A sharp and accurate ac-
counting is kept of the cost of repairs upon each locomotive
and car, even such general shop costs as gas and heat are
pro-rated against it. There is no time that the railroad
cannot tell to a nicety the precise cost of each unit of its
equipment.

These units are not, in many roads, increased, without
precise orders from the board of directors or the execu-
tive committee of the board. In order to get around this
rule some niceties in reconstruction have been known. A
single timber of a worn-out freight car has kept the unit
and the number of the old car, and going into the new has

prevented the creation of a forbidden unit.

26

402 THE MODERN RAILROAD

The system upon which cars and locomotives are num-
bered varies greatly upon different systems. In some cases
the first figures of the numbers indicate the class and style
of the car or locomotive, in others they mean nothing.
When a car or a locomotive is nigh worn out its number
passes from it and is given to some newcomer. The old
servant has a neatly painted " X " placed before its num-
ber. That " X " is its death warrant. In a little time it
leads the way to the scrap heap.

The men who labor in the railroad shops see little of the
romance of the line. Their work is much like that of the
men who work in every sort of large shop. Their re-
sponsibility is not less than that of the other railroaders,
the men to whom 150 or 300 miles of line and out-spread
towns are as familiar as the very rooms of their own
homes. A flaw in the steel, a careless bit of shopwork,
may serve to derail the express at the least foreseen mo-
ment, to cause disaster in the ringing way that every rail-
road man sees at one time or another. It may not always
be possible to trace the responsibility for such an accident.
But there is a responsibility, and the men who work at
forge or lathe, at press or planer feel that it is there.
They form no mean brigade of this great industrial army
of America.

Such responsibility continues outside of the main shops
to the smaller shops, down to the roundhouse forces, by
whose care and vigilance the big locomotives are kept fitted
for their important work; down still farther to the car-
inspectors, who, blue signal-lights in hand, creep through
the long freight-yards of a winter's night to strike the flaw
in the metal, to sound the note of alarm before the worst
may come to pass. Some of these last you hear in the
night as you scurry across the country. As you rest in
your berth, and the express is changing engines at some
division point, you may hear the car inspectors coming
along the train, striking with their hammers against the

THE MECHANICAL DEPARTMENTS 403

wheels, listening intently for the false ring by which they
may. detect trouble. If you trouble yourself to lift the
curtain of your berth, you may see them, a grimy crew,
working busily with their hammers, thrusting their torches
in among the trucks to see that all is well.

Responsibility for the safety in railroad operation does
not cease at the doors of the mechanical department.

CHAPTER XXV

THE RAILROAD MARINE

STEAMSHIP LINES UNDER RAILROAD CONTROL — FLEET OF NEW YORK
CENTRAL — TUGS — RAILROAD CONNECTIONS AT NEW YORK HARBOR —
HANDLING OF FREIGHT — FERRY-BOATS — TUNNEL UNDER DETROIT
RIVER — - CAR-FERRIES AND LAKE ROUTES — GREAT LAKES STEAMSHIP
LINES UNDER RAILROAD OWNERSHIP.

IN the beginning land transportation must have looked
up in something resembling fear and awe to water.
We can picture the railroad of the thirties as a slender
but resourceful David facing the veritable Goliath of
water carriage. In earlier chapters of this book we have
shown how the canals, representing a distinct phase of
water transportation, sought to throttle the railroads at
the beginning. But the modern railroad has no fear of
water rivalries, either upon the coast or inland. Just as
the first railroads were ofttimes timidly built as feeders or
complements to water routes, so to-day almost every in-
land water route is part of a railroad — in operating fact
if not in actual ownership. The tables have been turned
— - the railroad finally dominates. Nine-tenths of all the
great water routes in and aroundabout the United States
are more or less directly owned and controlled by the
railroads. They have become, in every sense, corollaries
to land transportation.

This is more distinctly shown in some sections of the
land than in others. For instance, up in New England,
where the interests owning the New York, New Haven &
Hartford Railroad have accomplished direct or indirect
control of all but a comparatively few miles of the steam
and electric railroads in five great States, they have also
acquired the steamship interests of that district. The

404

THE RAILROAD MARINE 405

New Haven's original excursion into the steamboat busi-
ness was when it absorbed the Old Colony Railroad —
almost a score of years ago — in order to ensure its en-
trance into Boston. The Old Colony owned a well-famed
and highly prosperous steamboat line from Fall River,
Massachusetts, to New York City, part of its through
New York-Boston route. Eventually the New Haven
acquired all the brisk and busy steamboat lines which ran
up the Sound from New York . to several Connecticut
ports — Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford, New Lon-
don, and Stonington. Any one of these lines was not,
perhaps, so much of an acquisition in itself, but all of
them were potentials in a future rate situation that might
arise. It was good executive management to have these
potentials under firm control, and so the New Haven es-
tablished water routes as a recognized factor of its busi-
ness — under the separate corporation title of the New
England Navigation Company. Once when a new com-
pany, under the mellifluous title of the Joy Line, sought
to injure its coastwise business by establishing cut-rates
from Providence to New York, the New Haven placed
two of its older boats in a rival and lower-priced service,
and, by means of its great resources, was able to bring
the Joy Line into its fold. Later, when the Enterprise
Line tried a like programme, the New Haven followed
the same aggressive tactics and brought the Enterprise
Line to bankruptcy. These things are mentioned here
in no spirit of criticism. But they are the facts that make
it impossible for really independent lines of steamboats
to run between New York and Providence for any great
length of time, despite ample docking facilities and a great
free port at each of these cities.

The Metropolitan Line tried to maintain an independ-
ent line between New York and Boston with the two finest
steamers ever placed in coastwise service — the Yale and
the Harvard. One of these boats left each city at five
o'clock in the afternoon and performed the ocean voyage

4o6 THE MODERN RAILROAD

of 330 miles over the " outside route " in just fifteen
hours — and with amazing regularity. But the New
Haven Railroad found it to its interest to control the
coasting lines around about New England, and so the Yale
and Harvard were last winter banished to the Pacific
coast.

This is all part of the business of managing great rail-
road systems. For similar reasons the Pennsylvania
Railroad found it advisable to bring a group of steam-
boat lines plying on Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries
under its control, the Harriman lines to reach out and
establish ownership of the lines plying up and down sev-
eral thousand miles along the Pacific coast — these are
but a few instances out of many. As yet no large Ameri-
can railroad has essayed to control a transatlantic line,
although both the Hill and the Harriman properties are
interested in the transpacific carrying business. The Can-
adian Pacific, however, has already well-established lines
across both of the great oceans — making a continuous
route under one management from Liverpool, England,
to Hong Kong, China. Moreover, it is now building
four great steamships which are to be finished simultane-
ously with the Panama Canal and which will ply through
it from New York direct to Hong Kong. The Canadian
Northern has also recently embarked in the transatlantic
carrying business. The Canadian Pacific and several of
the large railroads of the northern part of the United
States maintain lines of sizable gross tonnage on the
Great Lakes — but of these, more in a little while.

Even if a railroad is not engaged in the steamship busi-
ness, as such, even to the extent of one or two small steam-
boats on inland waters, it may still possess a considerable
harbor fleet, — wharves, and slips — that, taken together,
make a sizable aggregate. Every railroad that has any
sort of ambition to be considered a trunk-line will count
upon having one or two or even more terminals upon navi-
gable streams, and at these it will protect itself by having

THE RAILROAD MARINE 407

its own wharves and landing-stages — even grain eleva-
tors, if it is putting out its hungry fingers for the great
traffic in food-stuffs that sweeps out over the land and
water transportation routes of America. Such a terminal
means a railroad fleet — ferries, scows, lighters, a little
company of stout and busy tugs. It means that the rail-
road must pay attention to marine laws and marine
customs.

When a railroad boasts of a terminal in such a city as
Boston, New York, Baltimore, New Orleans, or San Fran-
cisco, its fleet of harbor craft is apt to be quite a sizable
navy. Take, for instance, the New York Central's fleet in
and around New York harbor. It consists of 269 vessels,
divided into the following classes: 9 ferry-boats, 22 tugs,
7 steam-lighters, 50 car-floats, 10 steam-hoist barges, 25
open barges, 6 scow barges, 105 covered barges, and 35
grain-boats. And out of all these barges, 10 are further
equipped for refrigerator use.

In such a fleet, eliminating of course the ferry-boats
which have their own peculiar uses, the tugs are almost
the sole motive power. There is a bit of poetry about
them, too, even if they are short and stubby, ofttimes
poking their cushioned noses impertinently up against
larger and far more stately craft. But no captain, even
though he walk the bridge of an eight-hundred foot steam-
ship, sneers at a tug. It takes eighteen of them to place
the new giant Olympic in her wharf on the North River,
and no crack company of horsemen ever moved in more
precise drill or better cooperation than these noisy, punt-
ing, helping-hands of the harbor of New York. For
ocean ports are different from those along the lakes. A
captain sailing a five-thousand ton ship on fresh water
would be ashamed to use a tug at Detroit, or any other
of the Great Lake ports, even where the current runs
almost like a mill-race, unless he was turning in a chan-
nel whose width was but a wee bit more than the length

4o8 THE MODERN RAILROAD

of his ship. But Detroit and Cleveland and Buffalo
and Chicago do not have the tides — and it is the tide
that makes harbor navigation a finely specialized science
at the big ocean ports.

All of the big Atlantic ports save New York have
abundant track facilities alongside the piers, where berth
the ships from half the world over. In New York, the
same geographical conditions that have gone to make her
so superb a port and given her so generous a harbor-front-
age have blocked the railroads in their efforts to reach all
her piers with unbroken rails. So the railroads entering
that harbor have found it necessary to provide themselves
with such fleets as we have noticed as belonging to the
New York Central. For inland shippers seem to have a
preference for sending their east-bound export merchan-
dise through New York, because of the frequency of sail-
ings from her wharves to half the recognized ports of the
world.

If you are a manufacturer — at Utica, N. Y., let us
say — and you wished to send a carload of your product
to London, Eng., you would find that the railroad defi-
nitely^grees to do certain things for you. On your mini-
mum basis of a carload lot it will place that carload at any
pier in the harbor of New York. Indeed, it would do a
little more. If some of that carload lot that starts down
out of Utica is going to London, some more on a different
ship to Calcutta, and still some more on a tropic-bound
liner to South America, the railroad would make free de-
livery of your consignment to the piers of these three
ships. It limits, however, the delivery of a carload lot
to three different piers.

This sounds simple, perhaps, and, in reality, is not.
For in a single day of twenty-four hours there may arrive
at Weehawken and Sixtieth Street, Manhattan — the two
great freight terminals of the rails of the New York Cen-
tral system at New York — from four to six hundred,
eight hundred cars, perhaps, filled with merchandise bound

THE RAILROAD MARINE 409

for half a hundred different piers, along from forty to
sixty miles of water-front.

Now you see the use of all this army of lighters and
barges — stubby-nosed craft, awkward craft, boats that
have not even a single stanza of the poetry of the sea writ-
ten upon their contents. By night, by day, when an im-
perial city throbs with the bustle of brisk endeavor, and
still when it tries to snatch a few brief feeble hours of
rest, in summer, in winter, when the two rivers and the
great upper bay of New York harbor are alive with gay
pleasure craft, and in the trying hours when a pilot's path
is fraught with the dangers of drifting ice and laid
through gray blankets of mist, this great interchange of
freight of every sort goes forth. The eight or ten great
railroads that terminate in New York are pouring export
merchandise to all of her piers, while from those long
sprawling structures they are drawing up imported goods
to go forward to every corner of the land. And in addi-
tion to this there is the vast local commerce of the
City of New York, which, as we saw when we were con-
sidering the freight terminals, back in Chapter VII, is no
slight matter of itself. But this traffic, as well a§. much
of that of the great interchange between the railroads
terminating at New York, is handled most effectively by
the car-floats on each of which twelve to sixteen standard
box-cars may be loaded with great expedition.

But the clumsy barges and the lighters and the still
clumsier car-floats are of little use without the tugs, and
these last are the quick couriers of the harbor. Twenty
of that New York Central fleet are kept in constant use
in the North and East Rivers, and along the harbor shores
to Jersey City, Bayonne, and the southern parts of Brook-
lyn. They do not lie idle, save when they are finally
forced to "lay up " for a little time for repairs. And
then a reserve tug is in service without delay.

Here is the modern economy of railroad equipment —
even though this be the part of the railroad that is afloat.

4io THE MODERN RAILROAD

A tug pulls up to a dock, its crews are off almost before
their " relief " is standing at its station, and making sure
that the craft is in as good order as they left it. While
the " relief " is finding its tired way toward home the tug
is off again. Its work is constant. Its work is not easy.
It does not seem to be systematic and yet it is — wonder-
fully systematic.

For here and there about the harbor the captains of
these N. Y. C. tugs get their orders — just as conductors
of the trains upon the steel highways get their clearance
cards and yellow tissues. A half-dozen stations give or-
ders, and these are but the speaking stations of a single
man who sits before a telephone switchboard close by a
narrow street of down-town Manhattan and directs tug
movements through the crowded harbor, just as easily as
a despatcher moves extra freights over a crowded stretch
of single-track line.

The traffic runs flood-high and the station men gossip
of the whispered complaints of the tug-crews, but the man
at the switchboard only smiles. A traffic solicitor who
plies his heartbreaking work on the floor of the near-by
Produce Exchange comes over to him and says :

" I Ve promised Smith & Russell delivery of ten cars
of flour at Pier 32, East River, at seven o'clock to-morrow
morning. We can't go back on them."

The man at the switchboard does not lose that smooth-
set smile, even though the loudly ticking clock, just above
the plugs and cords, shows him that it is already six
o'clock of the evening of a day when the harbor freight
has run flood-high.

" All right," he laughs, " Smith & Russell can count
upon us."

And the next moment he is ordering Tug Twenty-seven
to go from the Sixtieth Street pier over to Weehawken
to get that small mountain-range of flour-bags that the
" huskies " have already begun to build on a pier-floor,

THE RAILROAD MARINE 411

alongside of a string of dusty, grimy cars that have
bumped their way east from Minneapolis.

Perhaps you are interested in the personality of Tug
Twenty-seven. Take yourself away from the cool-witted
despatcher and look down upon this craft — the queen of
a railroad pet marine. She is as resplendent in her green
and gold as any gentleman's yacht, and her crew even
more proud of her. She stands in the water, a mere no
feet long and 24^ feet beam, but those wonderful shining
engines in her heart can develop 1,200 horse-power —
as much as many steamboats of three times her size. Her
watertube boilers can withstand a locomotive pressure of
185 pounds to the square inch, she has all the accoutre-
ments of coast liners — steam steering gears and electric
lights among them. No wonder that her captain waxes
eloquent about her.

Now ask him about what she can do. That he takes
as personal achievement, and these harbor men are a bash-
ful lot. Still, you can worm it out of him, and after a
while you find that Tug Twenty-seven has just brought a
punt-nosed car-float, with sixteen loaded cars upon her
rails, around from Corlears Hook, through the press of
shipping, and around the Battery where cross-tides battle
against one another and against craft of all sorts, up to
Weehawken " bridge " in forty minutes — which is not
so very bad for a ten-mile run through a congested harbor.

" Time counts,1' adds the captain. " If they had given
me another twelve or fifteen minutes I could have brought
around two of the floats — put together * V ' fashion and
the Twenty-seven with her nose stuck up into the ' V V

In the harbor of New York is a great cluster of ferry-
boats operated to overcome her barrier rivers by the sev-
eral trunk-line railroads whose systems terminate at a long
water-jump from the congested Island of Manhattan. To
compete with railroads boasting terminals on Manhattan

4i2 THE MODERN RAILROAD

Island itself, these lines have been compelled to equip and
operate extensive ferry fleets across both the East and the
North Rivers. Across the first of these streams operates
the navy of the Long Island Railroad, while across the
Hudson ply in an intricate interlacing more than a dozen
ferry routes of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, the
Pennsylvania, Erie, Lackawanna, and the West Shore
Railroads. The recent completion of the New York-Jer-
sey City-Newark routes of the Hudson tunnels, as well as
the inauguration of passenger traffic through both North
and East River tunnels to the new Pennsylvania terminal
in Manhattan, has caused the abandonment of two ferry
routes and curtailment of service upon several others.
Tunnel-diggers and bridge-builders make havoc with
ferry routes, which must always remain liable to many
delays because of fog, floating ice, and such other adverse
weather conditions.

Still the railroad ferries round about New York derive
no small income from the trucking service of a metropol-
itan city which has had to struggle for many years against
great intersecting rivers, and so they will probably con-
tinue to be for many years interesting and picturesque
features of New York harbor.

But perhaps the most interesting of all the ferry routes
of New York harbor is the attenuated line from the New
York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad's waterside ter-
minal at Port Morris in the Bronx, for ten miles through
the East River, Hell Gate, around the sharp turn and
tides of Corlears Hook and again of the Battery, and
across the Hudson River to the old terminal of the Penn-
sylvania Railroad in Jersey City. Over this route goes
through traffic — freight and passenger — from New
England to the South and the Southwest. The freight-
traffic is handled largely by car-floats in charge of the
busy puffing tugs, while the passenger traffic goes in ferry-
boats different from the others that ply in New York
harbor.

THE RAILROAD MARINE 413

For these ferry-boats are really nothing more than a
bettered type of car-float — a type equipped with power-
ful engines for self-propulsion. Through passenger
trains run each day and each night between Boston and
Baltimore and Washington, and these trains are handled
between Port Morris and Jersey City upon them. The
familiar Maryland, which is operated jointly by the New
Haven and the Pennsylvania systems upon this route, will
receive an entire passenger train of ordinary length, ex-
cepting, of course, the locomotive, upon her great deck,
which is, in reality, a miniature railroad yard, equipped
with two long parallel tracks that can be quickly attached
to the ferry-bridges at Port Morris and Jersey City. The
trip, with the loading and unloading of the train, is ac-
complished, under favorable weather conditions, in about
an hour.

It makes a pleasant break in the day trip from the cap-
ital of New England to the capital of the United States,
to spend an hour tramping up and down a broad ship's
deck, or dining in a roomy, sun-filled cabin, while New
York itself is as completely ignored as any small way-
station along the run. New Yorkers themselves have long
since become too accustomed to seeing the long train
ferried upon the water-way that separates the two great-
est boroughs of the city, to give it more than passing
thought. This ferry is also finally threatened by the
bridge-builders. As this is written, workmen are already
preparing the pier foundations for a great railroad bridge
that is to span the East River not far from Hell Gate, and
which is to give an unbroken line of rails from the New
Haven's terminal at Port Morris, through Long Island
City, to the Pennsylvania's tunnels and terminal in Man-
hattan Island.

So, also, have the tunnel-builders contrived to rob the
through traveller on the Michigan Central of the more
or less thrilling water transfer from Canada to the United
States at Detroit. The Detroit River tunnel has super-

4i4 THE MODERN RAILROAD

seded one of the most important car-ferries in the country,
but it has given to the operating heads of the Michigan
Central one of the very shortest through routes from
New York to Chicago and robbed them of one of the
fearful handicaps of their main line — the possibilities
for constant and exasperating delays to their through
trains while being ferried across the Detroit River.

Do not underestimate the possibilities of those delays.
Within the past ten years, the transport Michigan, plying
from Detroit to Windsor, the Canadian town directly op-
posite, and carrying a Chicago-Montreal flyer, was stuck
for ten hours in the ice, so near the slip that a long plank
would have almost reached from her deck to the wharf.
That, in the lesser form, has been the history of winter
after winter at the Detroit ferry. Shipbuilders have done
their best to meet the obstacle by building car-ferries of
tremendous power, sometimes even equipping them with
both side-wheels and screws. But the real problem of
possible delay can only be solved there by tunnels, and it
is expected that the Grand Trunk, the Canadian Pacific,
and the Wabash — which still use the car- ferries across
the Detroit River — will sooner or later either tunnel be-
neath it or acquire trackage rights through the Michigan
Central tubes.

The Detroit River is a narrow but important part of
the tremendously important water highway up the Great
Lakes, and at every part of the whole length of that high-
way the railroads have tried to break their way across.
It has not been found impossible to bridge the St. Law-
rence or the Niagara Rivers or the wide straits at Sault
Ste. Marie, but there are other points, even besides De-
troit, that have as yet baffled the genius of the bridge-
builder. One of the most important of these is where
Lake Michigan forces its outlet into Lake Huron through
the two peninsulas of the great State that bears its name.
To make the two parts of Michigan physically one with
unbroken rail will probably not be accomplished in many

THE RAILROAD MARINE 415

years. In the meantime the stout and tremendously pow-
erful ferry Algomah — built so as to literally crush the
ice down under her tremendous bows — plies between
Mackinac City, the Island of Mackinac, situated mid-
stream, and St. Ignace, on the north shore of the broad
strait. Despite the fearful severity of the winters in
northern Michigan the Algomah keeps that important
path open the year round — not only for herself but for
the great car-floats that follow in her wake.

What is possible at the Straits of Mackinac is also pos-
sible across the widest part of any one of the Great Lakes
— excepting always the emotionless Superior. At least
that is the way the railroad traffic men have argued for
many years, and so for these many years car-ferries have
plied successfully across the very hearts of three of the
lakes. Of all the chain, Lake Michigan offers the great-
est natural obstruction to the natural traffic movements of
the land — its great length, stretching north and south,
forming an obstacle to through rail movements, and con-
tributing not a little to the railroad importance and the
wealth of Chicago.

So it was that car-ferries were established many years
ago across Lake Michigan and are operated throughout
the lake to-day — from Manitowoc, Kewaunee, Milwau-
kee, Menominee, and Manistique on the west shore of the
lake, to Frankfort, Ludington, Northport, Grand Haven,
St. Joseph, and Benton Harbor upon the east shore.
These vessels are of different construction from the fer-
ries that cross the narrow Detroit River. They lack the
low freeboard and the other typical ferry construction,
and are, instead, deep-gulled vessels, generally built of
steel and always of great structural strength.

" Like the river ferries/' says James C. Mills, " they
are ice-crushers, but of greater size and power. During
two or three of the winter months the lakes are frozen in
a solid sheet of ice for twenty and thirty miles from the
shores, and in extremely severe winters the ice-fields meet

4i 6 THE MODERN RAILROAD

in mid-lake. To keep a channel open in the depth of
winter even for daily passages back and forth, is a haz-
ardous undertaking for the hardy mariners. The fre-
quent gales which sweep the lakes break up the fields into
ice-floes which, driven one way or another with great
force, pile up in huge banks, often in the direct course of
the transports and as high as their upper decks. At such
times they free themselves only after repeated buckings
of the shifting mass of ice, sometimes miles in extent, by
running their stout prows up on the edge of the mass,
breaking it down by their sheer weight, and ploughing
through the ragged, grinding blocks of ice thus formed.'* *

Four tracks, running the full length of the ship, gen-
erally fill the main deck of these trans-lake ships. The
loading of the cars on to these tracks is accomplished at
the stern, the bow being built high and, as we have just
seen, somewhat after the fashion of an overhanging prow.
The main deck is completely roofed over with cabins and
deck-houses, so that, viewed from the rear, the ship seems
to be an itinerant pair of railroad tunnels, dark and
gloomy. The upper decks are gay with the resources of
the marine architect — for the greater part of these boats
offer accommodations for passengers as well as for from
eighteen to thirty freight cars. These great ferries form
valuable feeders to the Grand Trunk, the Pere Marquette,
the Ann Arbor, and Grand Rapids & Indiana, and some
minor routes crossing Michigan.

Similarly, car-ferries crossing Lake Erie from Cleve-
land to Port Stanley are considerable factors both in gen-
eral merchandise and in the coal trade. Another Lake
Erie route of heavy tonnage extends from Ashtabula,
Ohio, to Port Burwell, Ontario. Within the last few
years a car-ferry has been established across Lake On-
tario, from Charlotte — which is the port of Rochester,
N. Y. — to Coburg on the Canadian side, which has al-
ready developed for itself a considerable traffic.
* " Our Inland Seas," by James C. Mills, 1910.

THE RAILROAD MARINE 417

But the car-ferries, extensive as they are, form but a
small portion of the railroad interests upon the waters of
the Great Lakes. Almost all of the great lines through
those much-travelled waters are the property of some rail-
road system whose rails touch one or more of their termi-
nals. Thus the Northern Steamship Company, running
from Buffalo to Chicago and Duluth, touches the rails
of its parent company, the Great Northern Railroad, at
this last port. The Erie & Western Transportation Com-
pany — popularly known as the Anchor Line — also run-
ning from Buffalo to Duluth, is a Pennsylvania property.
Both of these lines are operated for passenger service, as
well as freight. The New York Central and the Erie
cover the same territory with exclusively freight routes.
The Rutland Railroad has a line all the way from its
western terminal at Ogdensburg, on the St. Lawrence
River, to Chicago. The Canadian Pacific and the Grand
Trunk operate important lines through Georgian Bay and
Lake Superior. Even a small road, like the Algomah
Central, has its own freight and passenger steamboats
running south from the Soo as far as Cleveland, Ohio. It
is a pretty poor line with Great Lakes terminals that can-
not boast some sort of steamship service of its own.

In the development of the coastwise and the inland
waterways of the United States, the railroad may be do-
ing the nation a far greater service than it imagines. For
the general trend of railroad expansion in the country to-
day seems to be toward a development of the auxiliary
water-routes rather than toward their curtailment. The
railroad has finally realized that some coarse commodities
can be carried far more economically by water than by
rail. It is to-day seeking to avail itself of that acquired
knowledge. If competing and feeding trolley lines are
good things for railroads to own — and the present-day
judgment seems to be that they are — the same rule holds
doubly good in regard to both competing and feeding
water-routes.
27

CHAPTER XXVI

KEEPING IN TOUCH WITH THE MEN

THE FIRST ORGANIZED BRANCH OF THE RAILROAD Y. M. C. A.— CORNE-
LIUS VANDERBILT'S GIFT OF A CLUB-HOUSE — GROWTH OF THE RAIL-
ROAD Y. M. C. A. — PLANS BY THE RAILWAYS TO CARE FOR THE SICK
AND THE CRIPPLED — THE PENSION SYSTEM — ENTERTAINMENTS —
MODEL RESTAURANTS — FREE LEGAL ADVICE — EMPLOYEES' MAGAZINES
— THE ORDER OF THE RED SPOT.

THE historic gray Union Station, which still stands at
Cleveland, housed what was destined to be the very
first systematic effort of the railroad to get in touch and
keep in touch with its men. In that building, once new
and splendid, but now old and grimy, George Meyers,
the depot master, gathered a group of railroaders on a
Sunday away back in 1870. The man came again on a
second Sunday, still again on a third; after a little while
those Sunday afternoon gatherings became habitual, and
a new kink in all the intricacy of railroading was estab-
lished. The meetings were partly religious and partly
social, and eventually they led to a distinct innovation in
that depot.

This little conference of Meyers was, in 1872, devel-
oped into the first organized branch of the railroad Young
Men's Christian Association. General John H. Devereux,
the general manager of the Lake Shore & Michigan Souths
ern Railway; Reuben F. Smith, of the Cleveland & Pitts-
burgh Railroad, and Oscar Townsend of the Big Four
Railroad were chosen directors of the branch. Henry W.
Stage, a train-despatcher on the Lake Shore, was earnestly
and intensely enthusiastic in this work; and because of his
zeal and enthusiasm, together with that of George Meyers,
this branch was successful from the outset.

418

IN TOUCH WITH THE MEN 419

The Lake Shore Railroad, whose headquarters were in
that same Union Depot at Cleveland then was and still is '
a pet property of the Vanderbilt family, also owners of
the great New York Central system. The heads of that
family began watching the Cleveland experiment with un-
usual interest. The reports that came from them were un-
usual. That scheme of the depot master's seemed to be
making a better grade of railroader in and around Cleve-
land, and any institution that bettered the type of railroad-
ers interested the Vanderbilts. So the thing that Meyers
had founded soon had wealthy patrons and strong
friends.

The Vanderbilts kept their shoulders to the wheels of
the railroad Y. M. C. A., kept it out of the ruts and from
falling. They saw it introduced here and introduced there
on their group of railroads; saw it spread to other lines;
and finally, Cornelius Vanderbilt himself built a splendid
club-house for railroad men at the great terminal of his
road in New York City and turned it over to the manage-
ment of the railroad Y. M. C. A. That house, stand-
ing almost in the shade of the Grand Central Station, after
a quarter of a century, still ranks as one of the distinctly
fine club-homes of a city that is opulent in club-houses. It
is still dedicated to simplicity, to democracy, to decency,
and to good fellowship.

There is not a railroader coming into the big passenger
terminal — from either the New York Central or the New
Haven system — who is not welcome to it, day or night.
Engineers, firemen, conductors, trainmen all come into its
hospitable door after a long hard run to find the clean com-
fort of good meals, bath, comfortable beds, good fellow-
ship awaiting them. There^s the peculiar and the success-
ful field of the railroad Y. M. C. A.; perhaps as much
as any, the real reason for its pronounced success.

Few railroaders in train service can leave their homes
in the morning, " double their runs," and be home at night.
The hard part of the business is that in most cases a man

420 THE MODERN RAILROAD

will have to spend one night, occasionally two nights, out
on the run. The difficulties of this are not readily un-
derstood without a slight examination. In a large city
the railroader finds that it is a shabby sort of a hotel or
lodging-house that can come regularly within his scheme
of economy. When he strikes the little town, or frequently
the big terminal or division freight-yard around which is
no town at all, the problem only multiplies. J. M. Bur-
wick, a veteran conductor of the Duluth & Iron Range
Railroad, told that problem in his own sincere way last
year at a big dinner of railroad men in St. Louis.

" I left home a beautiful morning in '72," said Mr.
Burwick. " I went down to Lafayette and to my first
boarding-house; and up to that time I don't think any
railroad man ever found a boarding-house except it was
tied up to a saloon. I was in a place like that. Another
place I was running into was where they made a division
point in a corn-field. The company built a large building
for the benefit of the men, and then they rented it to be
run as a hotel. But the man in charge ran it to make
money, and the steak he cut with his razor. I know he
did, because it was so thin. At other places we had to
sleep in a hot yard, in a hot caboose not fit for a man to try
and sleep in; and then we had to stay awake on the road
that night."

That was Burwick's testimony as to the conditions just
before the coming of the railroad Y. M. C. A. An en-
gineer from the New York Central, a man who had slept
many nights in that comfortable club-house at the Grand
Central, went up into Canada a few years ago and took an
engine on a division running out of Kenora. The only
place that a railroad man could find board and lodging
in that town at that time was a boarding-house with the
saloon attachment, and he was welcome there for but a
limited time, unless he was a reasonably liberal patron of
the saloon. The engineer — his name is McCrea —

THIS is WHAT NEW YORK CENTRAL McCREA DID FOR THE MEN
OF THE CANADIAN PACIFIC UP AT KENORA

A CLUBHOUSE BUILT BY THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC FOR ITS MEN AT

ROSEVILLE, CALIFORNIA

THE B. & O. BOYS ENJOYING THE RAILROAD Y. M. C. A.,
CHICAGO JUNCTION

' THE BROOKLYN RAPID TRANSIT COMPANY HAS ORGANIZED A
BRASS BAND FOR ITS EMPLOYEES "

IN TOUCH WITH THE MEN 421

changed that order of things and established a branch of
the railroad Y. M. C. A., which in four years gained
300 members and threatened to close the saloons of the
place.

Now you get the reason for the welcome that the rail-
road-owners gave this work of the Y. M. C. A. It was
not the religious idea alone — men differ in their views of
that sort of thing — but one of the most stringent of all
railroad rules is that prohibiting the use of liquor by the
men, or their frequenting bar-rooms. The necessity of
that rule appears upon the face of it. But the Canadian
railroad could do little toward enforcing it in a place
like Kenora, before McCrea, of the New York Central, ar-
rived there. The railroad Y. M. C. A., with its comfort-
able housing facilities, its vigorous stand for better morals
and better men, has made that rule one of the easiest in
the book to be strictly observed. That is why the rail-
road-owners and the railroad heads, whose religious views
have sometimes been at variance with those of the Y. M.
C. A., have given hearty endorsement to its work along
their lines. They like the sort of man it finishes.

So the railroad Y. M. C. A. has grown. It now has
some 240 branches reaching from Hawaii, in the West,
to some important division points in Eastern Maine.
None of these have houses that can be compared, of
course, with the comfortable home at the Grand Central
Station in New York. In fact, some of them are still
housed in crude fashion, in an abandoned shed or depot
that some railroad has fitted up as a start in the work,
over some store or freight-house perhaps; but each year
sees these replaced by neat homes, such as those at Har-
risburgh, on the Pennsylvania; at Collinwood, O., on
the Lake Shore; at Baltimore, on the B. & O. ; at the
St. Louis Union Station, and the Williamson, W. Va.,
on the Norfolk and Western Railway. On a single
system — the New York Central — there are 38 asso-

422 THE MODERN RAILROAD

ciations, with 27 buildings built for the purpose and
valued at $700,000, and a very active membership of
12,799 railroaders. In the national organization mem-
bership there are more than 85,000 men, representing
every department of the railroad service. An average of
15,500 meals — and mighty good reasonably priced
meals they are, too — is served daily, while more than
50,000 railroaders come to the club-houses each twenty-
four hours.

Beyond the necessity for maintaining the moral fibre
of the railroader (and it is astonishing how little main-
tenance such a corps needs) is the decent necessity of
taking care of him in case of illness. Railroading, with
all the safety devices that have multiplied in its service
within the past quarter of a century, is still a hazardous
occupation to the men who are out upon the line. The
list of cripples, and the death-list of a twelvemonth, are
still appalling things — appalling in the aggregate, fear-
ful in any single concrete case, a case where there may be
a helpless wife and little children to be brought into the
reckoning.

The railroads have begun to shoulder their responsibility
in this matter. Legislation has helped in the matter but
to-day big carriers are preparing to do even more — to
pay premiums and carry some form of casualty insurance
on each of their employees, who may be engaged in a
hazardous part of the work. That thing is going to do
more than any other one thing possibly could do. When
a big railroad realizes that its bill for premiums is going
to be reduced by the addition of many simple protective
devices, those devices are going to be instantly adopted.
That is the way of railroads, and of business, although it
is not to be charged for a single moment that the Amer-
can railroads have not done much within the past 25 years
toward raising the margin of safety for their employees.

IN TOUCH WITH THE MEN 423

Of course, the railroaders have long since had their in-
surance, although the regular life companies look upon
them with distrust as risks. They have been forced either
to pay high premiums in the regular companies or else to
organize insurance of their own. Their brotherhoods
have carried forth this work with interest and with skill.
These brotherhoods, or unions, of the locomotive engi-
neers, the firemen, the conductors, the trainmen, and sev-
eral other branches of the service, have been mighty
agents, too, in the development of the moral fibre of the
American railroader. Lack of space prevents a considera-
tion of each in detail. To do them but simple justice, to
sing the epic of the mighty Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers, for instance (which has only recently finished
a great building of its own in Cleveland), would require
a volume for itself.

But the railroads have not been negligent in this mat-
ter. For instance, a man on the Baltimore & Ohio can
pay $1.00 a month out of his pay envelope and have
$1,000.00 life insurance. He can likewise pay $3.00 a
month, and $3,000.00 will be paid his heirs upon his death.
The railroad company stands back of this fund and guar-
antees the insurance. It makes good from its own
treasury any deficit or shortage that might be incurred in
its operation.

For twenty years the Pennsylvania has conducted a
similar work, under the title of the Voluntary Relief De-
partment. Membership in this is, as the name indicates,
purely voluntary, the road's employees being admitted,
after favorable physical examination, up to the age of 45
years and 6 months. The Pennsylvania Railroad Com-
pany in this instance also stands as guarantor of the in-
surance fund.

A close examination of it in some detail may interest.
The following table shows the detail — the five classes into
which employees may enter:

424

THE MODERN RAILROAD

ist 2nd 3rd 4th 5th

Class Class Class Class Class

Monthly pay Any $35 or $55 or $75 or $95 or

rate more more more more
Contributions per month:

Class $0.75 $1-50 $2.25 $3.00 $375

Additional Death Benefit,

equal death benefits of

class :
Taken at not over 45 years

of age 30 .60 .90 1.20 1.50

Taken at over 45 years

and not over 60 years

of age 45 -9O i-35 "» 2-25

Taken at over 60 years of

age 60 1.20 1.80 2.40 3.00

Disablement benefits per

day, including Sundays

and holidays:
Accident :

First 52 weeks 50 i.oo 1.50 2.00 2.50

After 52 weeks 25 .50 .75 i.oo 1.25

Sickness :

After first three days and

not longer than 52

weeks .40 .80 1.20 1.60 2.00

After 52 weeks 20 .40 .60 .80 i.oo

Death Benefits:

For Class 250.00 500.00 750.00 1000.00 1250.00

Additional that may be
taken 250.00 500.00 750.00 1000.00 1250.00

An employee, however, who is under forty-five years of
age, who has been five years in the service and a member
of the relief fund for one year, may enter any higher class
than that determined by his pay, upon passing satisfactory
physical examination.

Payments from the fund vary from forty cents per day
for sickness and fifty cents for accident in the service, for
members in the first class, to $2.00 per day for sickness
and $2.50 for accident with a death benefit of from
$250.00 to $2,500.00, according to class of membership
and death benefit held.

Since the fund has been in operation, the following

IN TOUCH WITH THE MEN 425

payments have been made, to December 31, 1909, in-
clusive : —

For Accident death benefits $2,185,343.40

Sickness death benefits 5,914,811.18

Accident disablement benefits 4,076,636.89

Sickness disablement benefits 7,855*069.73

Superannuation allowances 415,367.55

Operating expenses 3,207,131.06

Total $23,654,359.81

During the same period, the Pennsylvania has contrib-
uted to the fund in operating expenses, gratuities, etc.,
exclusive of interest, the following:

For Operating expenses $3,207,131.06

Special payment, etc 424,571.91

For deficiencies 733,913-89

Total $4,365,616.86

In addition to what the Pennsylvania is doing in the
payment of the pensions and contributions for the main-
tenance of the relief fund, the relief and pension depart-
ments have the use of the telegraph and the train service
free of charge; and in case of accident in the service to
employees, free surgical and hospital attendance is fur-
nished, and, where necessary, artificial limbs or other appli-
ances, without cost to the employee. No figures are
available as to the cost of surgical attendance, or the fur-
nishing of artificial limbs, but it is conservatively estimated
by the Pennsylvania officers as equalling the amount paid
for the operation of the relief department.

The modern railroad does not wait, however, for a man
to become injured or to die before assuming any respon-
sibility for his care. There may come a day when the
burden of years makes him a little less fit for the stren-
uous service of railroading. It is Nature's way of tell-
ing man that he has labored well and that he is entitled
to a rest. In other days, the railroad recognized this in
a rather informal way. It took its veteran employees, re-

426 THE MODERN RAILROAD

tired them into a comfortable ease, and had the paymaster
send them checks each month for a part of their old wages.
Out of that custom the railroad pension system was born,
only with this sharp distinction : In the old way the man
was taught to believe his monthly check a favor or gratu-
ity on the part of the railroad; under the pension system
he comes to know it, not as an act of charity but as his
right, a right earned by long hard years of faithful
service.

This idea has begun to be recognized as fundamental
by railroad managers. Directors and officers now realize
that the pension fund and some of these other features
that we have just considered, are causes directly contrib-
uting to the efficiency of the railroad. The policy is
merely one of good management. Again, let us see the
way the Pennsylvania handles this matter, not because the
Pennsylvania is alone in this thing, but rather because it
is one of the largest and most distinctive of American
railroads, and almost a pioneer in this work. Before it
began paying pensions to retired employees, the Penn-
sylvania had already long conducted a relief fund and a
savings fund, and had contributed to libraries and railroad
branches of the Y. M. C. A.

The pensions are paid entirely by the company. In
the year 1909, for instance, $594,000 was paid out to the
men who had retired between the ages of 65 and 70.
From the time the fund was established until the end of
1909, appropriations for it amounted to more than
$4,000,000, now paid to some 2,300 men annually.

Employees may retire for age at 70, or for physical
incapacitation between 65 and 69. If they have been in
the service as long as 30 years, they are granted an allow-
ance based on one per cent of the monthly wages for each
year of service. The percentage is based on the wages
received for the ten years preceding retirement.

Thus, if an engineer, or a brakeman, or a fireman, has
served the Pennsylvania 30 years, he may retire between

IN TOUCH WITH THE MEN 427

65 and 70 and receive not less than 30 per cent of his
monthly wages during the last 10 years of work.

The other railroads using the pension scheme have
followed these general outlines for their work. It has
become an established feature of railroad operation, and
recently a second vice-president was created on the Bal-
timore & Ohio for the express purpose of handling the
company's relief work. Sometimes the railroad organ-
izes savings-funds for employees, paying from three and
one-half to as high as five per cent on their deposits, lim-
iting these to something like a hundred dollars a month,
and making every agent on the system a depositary of
the fund.

The street railroad systems in the large cities, together
with a few of the larger interurban systems, have recently
begun to adopt systematic methods of keeping in touch
with their employees. The Brooklyn Rapid Transit
Company, operating a great system in a part of metropoli-
tan New York, and employing more than 15,000 men,
was a pioneer in this work. It found that while the
railroad Y. M. C. A. was efficient for the club-house work
on steam railroads, there were local conditions in Brook-
lyn that made it best for the company to build and operate
its own club-houses.

The first of these was remodelled from an old car-barn.
It became a very interesting club, with reading-rooms,
baths, a barber-shop, a gymnasium, class-rooms for even-
ing study, and a theatre, seating some 1,200 folk. For
the theatre the railroad hires vaudeville actors, and gives
its great semi-official family free entertainments — fol-
lowed by dancing and refreshments. On very especial
nights the talent is furnished entirely by the trolley-men
and very effective talent it is, too. On all nights the
music is furnished by the Brooklyn Rapid Transit band,
made up entirely of street-car men and men from the ele-
vated roads of the system. The railroad company has

428 THE MODERN RAILROAD

furnished the music, the uniforms, the instruments, and
the directors — all that the men have had to furnish is
their time and interest, and these they have furnished in
such good measure that there is a waiting-list now large
enough to equip a second full brass band.

The Brooklyn system has also begun to establish model
restaurants in its outlying barns, where clean and good
food is furnished to the men at cost. The street railroad
is, in some such cases as these, confronted with a steam
railroad problem. Many of the big car-barns are in
sparsely settled suburbs of the city where the only eating-
places have been saloons or their adjuncts. The street
railroad can no more afford to have its men in saloons,
than its bigger brother. To take from them the one
decent excuse for being in such places it is establishing its
restaurants, where the men can have cleaner and better
food than in the saloons, and without the risk to the
railroad.

The Brooklyn road and the other large systems have
adopted the relief and pension funds; the idea seems to
spread as rapidly among the electric as it did among the
steam railroads. Some of them have added odd and
efficient '* kinks " of their own. For instance, the Boston
Elevated Railway makes presents of gold at New Year's
Day, ranging from $20 to $35 each, to each of its men
who has a clean record for courtesy to patrons, and Bos-
ton gains a reputation through that for the uniform
courtesy of her trolley-men. The Boston Elevated has
also inaugurated a policy of giving free legal advice to
each of its employees who may need it. It has always
been a perquisite of high railroad officers to avail them-
selves of the road's legal department for their personal
needs. Under the Boston plan this perquisite is extended
to every man on the road — the young motorman who
had foolishly gone to a loan shark, and who is now
being harried by him; the old conductor who wishes to
convey a house or draw a will. The road's legal depart-

IN TOUCH WITH THE MEN 429

ment will advise him sincerely, in his own best interest.
It will draw up his legal papers, do anything for him
except take his case into court, and even then it will
advise an honest and capable attorney for him. As for
that motorman who went to the loan shark when he found
an immediate need of fifty dollars, the road stands ready
to advance him the money upon good cause, and will
charge him only a nominal rate of interest until it has
gradually repaid itself from his wages. His division
superintendent is empowered to hear his story with sym-
pathetic ear, and to arrange for the loan.

Employees' magazines have been decided factors in both
bringing and keeping the railroad in touch with its army
of men. The Erie was a pioneer in this work five years
ago; the plan has since been adopted with signal success
by the Northwestern, the Illinois Central, the Santa Fe,
the Pere Marquette, and some other lines. These little
magazines, made interesting enough in a general way to
catch and hold the attention of their readers, are sent
out each month to every man on the system with his
pay-check.

They spread railroad interest and railroad enthusiasm
among their readers. On one page they tell of styles
for the engineer's wife, and on the next they show an
economical use of coal for the engineer; and so they may
help to pay their way. They tell of errors and mis-
takes among the railroad's employees, without mention-
ing names, so that men may profit by them and act dif-
ferently. But they print the names of the railroaders
who do the good things, the novel things, the practical
things, the economical things, the heroic things, out along
the line. And this roll of honor is a long one.

But it is not always in the big things that a railroad
keeps in touch with its men, sometimes it is in very small
things. Some time ago, a division superintendent on the
Erie Railroad decided that for each of his engineers who
kept his engine in particularly good order for a given

430 THE MODERN RAILROAD

length of time, he would have the number plate on the
front of the boiler painted in red. " We will have the
Order of the Red Spot," laughed Superintendent Parsons,
of the Susquehanna Division, as he signed a bulletin an-
nouncing the thing. Now that was a little thing. The
cost of painting that red spot on the breast of some proud
locomotive was but nominal ; but listen to the result !

A big Erie officer was up the line a few months later,
and was loafing in a junction-town on the Susquehanna
Division, waiting for a through train. He walked down
to the end of the station platform and there stood a
passenger locomotive waiting to take a train in the other
direction. It belonged to the proud Order of the Red
Spot, an order of which this particular officer had not
heard; and the engineer was already about it with his
long-handled oil-can. The officer did not reveal his iden-
tity, but said:

;< Waiting to take out a special? "

The engineer did not look up, but said :

14 We carry forty-six over the division."

" I did n't think that forty-six was due for two hours
yet," said the railroad officer.

" She is not," answered the engineer, " but I Ve been
down here an hour and a half already fussing with this
baby to have her in shape. You may notice that she be-
longs to the Order of the Red Spot."

Then that particular man came to know about the Red
Spots. All the way back to Jersey City he kept looking
for Red Spots, and every time he saw one, he saw an
engine slick and clean, as if she had just come from the
shops. That set him to thinking; and after he was done
thinking, Parsons was promoted in service, and the Order
of the Red Spot was established for the system. There
has been an exalted division made of that order recently.
When a man can be assigned to one engine and he brings
her into the Red-Spot class and keeps her there, the rail-
road dedicates that engine to him for the rest of his life-

IN TOUCH WITH THE MEN 431

time upon the system. His name, in gilt letters, goes
upon the cab-panel of the engine, whereas in other days
you used to see those of statesmen and of railroad-owners ;
and there it stays until the engine goes to the scrap-heap.
The other day the first of these engines, drawing a Wald-
wick local, pulled into the Jersey City passenger terminal;
on its cab was " Harvey Springstead " so large and clear
that you could read it across the yard; in the cab-window
was Harvey Springstead, prouder for that moment than
any earthly prince or potentate.

Sometimes the competitive idea is the best to foster to
accomplish results from the men, and to bind them and
the road a bit closer together. We have seen how a
fortnight of " T. B. M. F." repairs to a locomotive has
been quickened down under contest to 13 hours and 34
minutes. Many of the more successful railroads began
some years ago to institute annual contests between their
section-bosses. The section-boss who kept his stretch of
the right-of-way in cleanest, trimmest shape for a twelve-
month got a black and gold sign at his hand-car house,
so big that folk who rode in the fast expresses could read
the honor that it conferred upon him. Sometimes he gets
more — a trip pass for his wife and himself to some dis-
tant point, or even a cash prize. Annually the superin-
tendent of maintenance may run a special train, with a
specially devised observation grandstand at its rear or
pushed ahead of the engine. On that grandstand sit all
the section bosses and other track maintenance experts.
They see the other fellow's sections — and their own ; and
some time on that trip there is a little dinner and the
awarding of the prizes.

Do not even dare to think that these things count for
little upon the railroad. They are mighty factors in the
maintenance of one of its very greatest factors, the human
one.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE COMING OF ELECTRICITY

ELECTRIC STREET CARS — SUBURBAN CARS — ELECTRIC THIRD-RAIL FROM
UTICA TO SYRACUSE — SOME RAILROADS PARTIALLY ADOPT ELECTRIC
POWER — THE BENEFIT OF ELECTRIC POWER IN TUNNELS — ALSO AI
TERMINAL STATIONS — CONDITIONS WHICH MAKE ELECTRIC TRACTION
PRACTICAL AND ECONOMICAL — HOPEFUL OUTLOOK FOR ELECTRIC TRAC-
TION— THE MONORAIL AND THE GYROSCOPE CAR, INVENTED BY Louis
BRENNAN — A SIMILAR INVENTION BY AUGUST SCHERL.

IT is barely more than a quarter of a century since
electricity first became practical for use as a motive
power upon railroads. The early experiments of Thomas
A. Edison at Menlo Park, N. J., and upon the now
abandoned railroad up Mount McGregor, N. Y., soon
gave way to real electric street railroads in Montgomery,
Ala., in Richmond, Va., and from Brooklyn to Jamaica,
N. Y. These, in turn, gave way to still better forms oi
electric traction, until the trolley has not only all but
entirely driven the horse-car and the cable-car from cit)
streets, but has performed a notable new transportation
function in giving quick communication from one town
to another in the well-settled portions of the country,
These enterprises are quite outside of the province of this
book; the cases where the electric locomotive and electric
motor-car have usurped the steam locomotive upon its
own rails are pertinent.

As soon as the electric railroad had begun to reach out
into the country from the sharp confines of the towns, the
steam railroad men began to take interest. It would have
been even better for them if some of them had taken
sharper interest at the beginning. But the few men whc
were long-sighted enough a dozen years ago to see the

432

THE COMING OF ELECTRICITY 433

development possibilities of a form of traction that was
comparatively inexpensive to install and to operate have
been repaid for their sagacity. These men began a dozen
years ago to wonder if electricity could not be brought
to the service of the long-established steam railroad.

In most cases the short suburban steam roads outside
of large cities, which were as apt to be operated by

dummy engines " as by standard locomotives, were the
first to be electrified, and in these cases they usually became
extensions of the then novel trolley lines. Folk no longer
had to come in upon a poky little " dummy train " of
uncertain schedule and decidedly uncertain habits, and
then transfer at the edge of the crowded portion of the
city to horse-cars. They could go flying from outer coun-
try to the heart of the town in half an hour, and upon
frequent schedule, and the business of building and boom-
ing suburbs was born. After these roads had been devel-
oped, other steam lines began to study the situation. A
little steam road that had wandered off into the hills of
Columbia County from Hudson, N. Y., and had led a
precarious existence, extended its rails a few more miles
and became the third-rail electric line from Albany to
Hudson, and a powerful competitor for passenger traffic
of a large trunk-line railroad. The New York, New
Haven, & Hartford found the electric third-rail of good
service between two adjacent Connecticut cities, Hartford
and New Britain; the overhead trolley a good substitute
for the locomotive on a small branch that ran a few miles
north from Stamford, Conn.

But the problems of electric traction for regular rail-
roads were somewhat complicated, and the big steam roads
rather avoided them until they were forced upon their
attention. The interurban roads had spread too rapidly
in many, many cases, where they were made the oppor-
tunities for such precarious financing as once distinguished
the history of steam roads — and they had in most of
these cases made havoc with thickly settled stretches of

434 THE MODERN RAILROAD

branch lines and main lines. In a great many cases the
steam roads have had to dig deep into their pockets and
buy at good stiff prices the very roads the building
of which they might have anticipated with just a little
forethought.

The New York Central & Hudson River took such fore-
thought after some of its profitable branches in western
New York had been paralleled by high-speed trolleys, and
a very few years ago installed the electric third-rail on its
West Shore property from Utica to Syracuse, 44 miles.
The West Shore is one of the great tragedies in Amer-
ican railroading. Built in the early eighties from Wee-
hawken (opposite New York City) to Buffalo, it had
apparently no greater object than to parallel closely the
New York Central and to attempt to take away from the
older road some of the fine business it had held for many
years. After bitter rate-war, the New York Central, with
all the resources and the ability of the Vanderbilts behind
it, won decisively, and bought its new rival for a song.
But a property so closely paralleling its own tracks has
been practically useless to it all the way from Albany
to Buffalo, save as a relief line for the overflow of through
freight.

So the West Shore tracks for high-class high-speed
through electric service from Utica to Syracuse was a
happy thought. Under steam conditions only two pas-
senger trains were run over that somewhat moribund
property in each direction daily, while the two trains of
sleeping-cars passing over the tracks at night were of prac-
tically no use to the residents of those two cities. Under
electric conditions, there is a fast limited service of third-
rail cars or trains, leaving each terminal hourly; making
but two stops and the run of over 44 miles in an hour
and twenty minutes. There is also high-speed local serv-
ice, and the line has become immensely popular. By
laying stretches of third and fourth tracks at various

A HIGH-SPEED ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE ON THE PENNSYLVANIA

BRINGING A THROUGH TRAIN OUT OF THE TUNNEL UNDERNEATH

THE HUDSON RIVER AND INTO THE NEW YORK CITY TERMINAL

HIGH-SPEED DIRECT-CURRENT LOCOMOTIVE BUILT BY THE WESTING-
HOUSE COMPANY FOR THE TERMINAL SERVICE OF THE PENNSYL-
VANIA RAILROAD, IN NEW YORK

TWO TRIPLE-PHASE LOCOMOTIVES OF THE GREAT NORTHERN RAIL-
WAY HELPING A DOUBLE-HEADER STEAM TRAIN UP THE GRADE INTO
THE CASCADE TUNNEL

THE OUTER SHELL OF THE NEW HAVEN'S FREIGHT LOCOMOTIVE
REMOVED, SHOWING THE WORKING PARTS OF THE MACHINE

THE COMING OF ELECTRICITY 435

points, the movement of the New York Central's over-
flow through freight has not been seriously incommoded.
The electric passenger service is not operated by the New
York Central, but by the Oneida Railways Company, in
which the controlling interests of the steam road have
large blocks of stock.

Similarly, the Erie Railroad disposed of a decaying
branch of its system, running from North Tonawanda
to Lockport, to the Buffalo street railroad system, al-
though reserving for itself the freight traffic in and out
of Lockport. The Buffalo road installed the overhead
trolley system, and now operates an efficient and profitable
trolley service upon that branch.

• Perhaps it was because the Erie saw the application
of these ideas, and decided that it was better to take its
own profits from electric passenger service than to rent its
branches again to an outside company; and perhaps be-
cause it also foresaw the coming electrification of its net-
work of suburban lines around New York, and wished to
test electric traction to its own satisfaction; but five years
ago it changed the suburban service of its lines from the
south up into Rochester from steam to electric.

It is now preparing to continue this work further. The
Pennsylvania, while its great new station in New York was
still a matter of engineer's blue prints, began practical
experiments with electric traction in the flat southern por-
tion of New Jersey. It owned a section of line ideally
situated in every respect for such experiments, its original
and rather indirect route from Canada to Atlantic City,
which had since been more or less superseded by a shorter
" air line " route. The third-rail was installed, and the
new line became at once popular for suburban traffic in
and out of Philadelphia and for the great press of local
traffic between Philadelphia and Atlantic City. Of the
success of that move on the part of the Pennsylvania there
has never been the slightest question. Regular trains have

436 THE MODERN RAILROAD

been operated for several years over this route at 60 miles
an hour, and not the slightest difficulty has been found
in maintaining the schedules.

But nowhere has the substitution of electric locomotive
for the steam worked greater comfort for the railroad
passenger — to say nothing, of the raising of that some-
what intangible factor of safety — than in long tunnels.
The Baltimore & Ohio, which was a pioneer among the
steam railroads in the use of electric locomotives, began
to use them in 1896 in its great tunnel that pierces the
very foundations of the city of Baltimore. That system,
once adopted, became permanent. What was at one time
a fearful summer experience between Camden Station and
Mount Royal Station in that city has become merely a
pleasant novelty upon the trip.

What could be done at Baltimore has been done under
the Detroit River, twice. The Grand Trunk pierced under-
neath that stream in 1890, by a single-track tunnel 6,000
feet in length, in which for seventeen years both freight
and passenger trains were hauled by special locomotives,
fitted for the burning of anthracite coal. Although these
engines rendered rather satisfactory service, it was found
desirable to substitute electric locomotives for them in
order to remove the limitations of haulage capacity in the
tunnel; for it is a known fact that electric trains can be
operated much more rapidly and also more closely
together than steam. The change obviated the danger
and inconvenience due to locomotive gases in the tunnel.
The electric locomotives first went into service in February,
1908. The tunnel is now clean, well-lighted, and safe
to work in; and trains of much greater length than before
can be hauled, thus relieving the congestion in the freight-
yards on both sides of the river.

Similarly, electric locomotives have become the tractive
power in the great new tunnel which the Michigan Cen-
tral has just completed across the Detroit River at De-
troit, and upon the Cascade Tunnel where the Great

THE COMING OF ELECTRICITY 437

Northern Railroad pierces one of the great ranges of the
Western Divide. The Cascade Tunnel is interesting from
the fact that it is entirely built upon a heavy grade of 1.7
per cent for its length of more than three miles. The
steam locomotives are cut out from the service, while on
the heavy up-grade of the tunnels an electric locomotive, of
tremendous pulling power, will carry even the heaviest
freights through the bore at an average speed of fifteen
miles an hour. These Cascade Tunnel locomotives are the
only ones in the country taking alternating current at triple
phase and at the tremendous voltage of 6,600 directly
from an overhead trolley wire. And that will bring us
in a moment to another consideration of this question of
the development and the delivery of power.

The most recent of tunnel installations has just been
completed in the greatest of all American mountain bores
— the Hoosac Tunnel. This famous tube, four and
three-quarters miles in length, gave itself very readily
to the skill of the electric engineer, with the result that
the Boston & Maine system, its present owner, finds the
greatest impediment to the operation of its main line
from Boston to the west entirely removed.

The earlier installations were all what is known as direct
current; that is, the power is brought directly from the
dynamos in the power-houses and by means of third-rail
or overhead trolley it is delivered to the motors of the
locomotives of the cars. But some years ago the larger
of the distinctively electric railroads found that for great
current demands over a large distributing district, this
system was expensive and impracticable ; that, for the chief
thing, it required copper cables for carrying long-distance
current so large as to be of very great cost. So some
of these, with the aid of the electrical manufacturers,
experimented and developed the alternating current of
high voltage and low amperage, which is capable of being
carried to distant transforming or sub-stations and there
reduced to low voltage and high amperage. This alter-

438 THE MODERN RAILROAD

nating current system, because of its great operating econ-
omies, is rapidly becoming the standard for the city rail-
road systems of metropolitan communities, as well as for
the great trunk-line interurban electric roads that are
beginning to gridiron the country. The New Haven
Railroad, when it first began to electrify its extensive sub-
urban service into New York City, was the first to bring
it to the service of a standard steam road, and by a clever
adaptation of its locomotives was able to bring a single-
phase alternating-current directly to them at the enor-
mously high voltage of 11,000, without the use of
transforming stations or direct-current transmission.
After some fearfully disappointing experiments at the out-
set, the New Haven system has finally proved the worth
of its alternating-current, and the road is now engaged in
erecting its overhead transmission construction all the way
from Stamford (the present terminal of the electrical
service) to New Haven, 72 miles distant from New York.
Within ten years its heavy New York and Boston traffic
will probably be entirely handled by electricity, and the
run of 232 miles will be made without difficulty in four
hours or even less.

At present the steam locomotives of these trains and the
other trains that serve almost all of New England are
detached from the inbound movement at Stamford, and
the remaining 33 miles of the run into the Grand Central
Station is made behind a powerful electric locomotive.
The process is, of course, reversed on outbound trains.
For the 1 2 miles from Woodlawn into the Grand Central
the run is made over the tracks of the Harlem division
of the New York Central Railroad which uses direct cur-
rent at a voltage of 650, and third-rail instead of overhead
transmission. The wonderful adaptability of the alter-
nating current is shown, not in the fact that a change must
be made from overhead trolley to third-rail alone, for that
is merely a slight mechanical problem, but in the fact that
a locomotive hauling a heavy train can, without a great

THE COMING OF ELECTRICITY 439

slacking of speed, change from receiving an alternating
current of 11,000 volts to a direct current of 650 volts.
Outbound, it reverses the process.

The necessity of clearing out the smoke-filled Park
Avenue Tunnel approach to the Grand Central Station
brought both the New York Central, its owner, and the
New Haven, its tenant, to electric traction for terminal
and suburban service at New York. The New York Cen-
tral's system, as has already been stated, is direct-current
and it is supplied from two great power-houses in the
suburban district. Through trains are hauled in and out
of the station by electric locomotives, while suburban
trains, which make their round-trip runs entirely within
the 25 or 30 miles of electric zone, are run without loco-
motives, the steel suburban coaches having motors set
within their trucks, after the ordinary fashion of electric
cars across the land. The change from steam to electricity
at the Grand Central Station did more, however, than
merely clear the long-approach tunnel of smoke and foul
gases, so that nowadays a man can ride on the observation-
platform over its entire length. The traffic in that won-
derfully busy station has for many years had sharp limita-
tions because of the four tracks in that tunnel, two tracks
being used for the train movement in each direction. The
limited station-yard capacity at the terminal has necessi-
tated many trains being stored at Mott Haven yards; and
the drilling of these empty trains in and out of the station,
combined with the normally heavy movement of regular
and special trains, has only added to the great congestion.
The minimum three-minute headway between trains
operated by steam through the tunnel, and its four-tracked
viaduct approach, fixed the maximum traffic at 40 trains
an hour in each direction. The capacity of the terminal
with this limitation of service was taxed to its utmost, and
some relief for the constantly increasing traffic was impera-
tive. Now, owing to the improved conditions of electric
operation, trains may be run on a two-minute headway,

440 THE MODERN RAILROAD

or less — this one measure thus increasing the station
capacity by 50 per cent at the least.

The New Haven road has also adopted the practice
of running some of its suburban trains without locomotives,
but by means of motors underneath each coach — the mul-
tiple-unit system, as electrical engineers have come to know
it. This is the system, with some slight variations, upon
which the elevated and subway lines of New York, Brook-
lyn, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago are operated; and
it is quickly applicable, as we have just seen, to some phases
of terminal operation for the standard steam railroads.
But the steam locomotive is to hold its own for many
years, in many, many phases of railroad operation ; electric
traction is practical and economical only when there are
fairly congested traffic conditions. The coaches that are
standard for it, and which it must haul for many miles
across the land, must be handled in the electrically equipped
terminals by electric locomotives of one type or another.
These locomotives are generally equipped with coal-heaters
for maintaining the steam in the heating-pipes of the
through equipment; and in these days, when the electric
lighting of through trains is all but universal, they may
supply current for this purpose also.

Electric locomotives have been completely successful
where they have been used, both alone and in connection
with multiple-unit suburban trains, in the Grand Central
Station and the Pennsylvania Station in New York City as
the first complete installations. But what has been so suc-
cessfully done in New York will soon be repeated in other
big cities in the land; Boston is already insisting that the
network of suburban lines that spreads over her environs
be electrified; Philadelphia is preparing for the electrifica-
tion of the Pennsylvania's fan-work of lines into Broad
Street Station ; Baltimore is demanding that what has been
done in one great tunnel underneath her foundation hills
be repeated in two others. Chicago will see great instal-
lations of this service within the next few years.

THE COMING OF ELECTRICITY 441

Nor is the use of electricity upon the standard steam
railroad to stop bluntly with these terminal changes and
improvements ; many and many a decaying branch is yet to
be fanned into new life, new strength, new activity, through
a skilful transformation of its tractive powers. What has
been done at the Detroit River and the Cascade tunnels
is to be done elsewhere across the land — through the
dozens of points where railroads pierce the mountains
and go under the rivers by tunnels. Electric tunnels are
yet to bring the Pennsylvania at lower grade at Gallitzin
and the Southern Pacific through the high crest of the
Sierras. Electric traction for the big steam roads is still
in its infancy. Only 1,000 miles out of a total of 220,-
ooo miles of steam railroad in the land are as yet operated
by electricity. The other day a big traffic-man sat in his
Chicago office and said:

' The first railroad that electrifies for the thousand or
less miles between this town and New York is going to
get all the rich passenger business. Not a big portion
of it, mind you, but every single blessed bit of it! "

Consider for a final moment, in passing, the mono-rail,
the gyroscope. If you are a practical railroader you may
laugh and say : " A toy." Perhaps it is a toy to-day. But
just remember history and you will recall that the toy of
to-day becomes the tool of to-morrow, and then give the
mono-rail a moment of sober thought. Less than 2,000
feet of this construction formed a most interesting exhibit
at the Jamestown Exposition of 1907. A railroad man
who rode on that experimental track said:

" If you had built more than 300 feet of track you
could have given a better demonstration of your system."
To this the inventor smilingly replied:

" You have gone over 1,800 feet."

The investigator had ridden faster than 45 miles an
hour and had not realized the speed. You never do in
the mono-rail car. It rides more gently over the roughest

442 THE MODERN RAILROAD

bit of track than the finest Limited moves over heavy
rail and stone ballast, the best track that men can maintain.

An actual railroad of the mono-rail type has been built
and is being developed in the suburbs of New York City.
It supersedes a railroad of the oldest type — horse-cars —
from Bartow to City Island, in the Bronx. Balance is
kept for its cars by means of a light overhead metal con-
struction, hardly more conspicuous than that of the over-
head trolley-work used in city streets. This overhead
work, like the trolley-wire, supplies electric power to the
cars; only in emergencies will it come into play to hold
the one-legged car erect. On this stretch of line speed
and balance tests will be made when passenger traffic is at
low-tide. Upon the result of these tests will be drawn
the construction plans for a four-track rapid transit rail-
road from New York to Newark, ten miles. This last
plan has already been financed by New York men who have
made transportation their chief problem for many years.
It may be developed upon the rails of a double-track rail-
road, more than doubling its capacity, without increasing
the width of the right-of-way.

All of these mono-rail roads will become applicable to
the gyroscope when that wondrous man-toy becomes a man-
tool. And the gyroscope demands no overhead construc-
tion of any sort. It simply asks a single rail upon which
to find a path and offers no objections either to the steepest
of grades or to the sharpest of curves. The first model
of gyroscope car showed its ability to navigate easily the
full length of a piece of crooked gas-pipe, laid in rough
semblance of a track.

For there is a gyroscope car already — in fact, several
of them. On May 8, 1907, Louis Brennan, a brilliant
Irish inventor, living in England, exhibited the first model
of the gyroscope car, and the news was flashed in detail
all the way around the world. The little car he then
showed was enough to interest the keenest of scientists. It

THE COMING OF ELECTRICITY 443

traversed every sort of mono-rail track that could be de-
vised, at varying rates of speed, it stood still at the in-
ventor's command and retained its balance perfectly.
When a man's hand was pushed against it as if to throw
the car off its seemingly slight balance, it pushed back,
stanchly held that balance, and Brennan laughingly said
that there was something that compared with the velocity
of the wind. When he spoiled the even trim of his ship
(it did look like a boat as it sped around the lawn upon
its narrow, guiding thread) and placed the weights upon
one side of the car, that side rose up to receive them. The
car still held its balance perfectly, and Brennan said that
his act represented forty or fifty persons moving suddenly
across a full-sized passenger coach. Finally, he placed his
little daughter in the car and sent it out over a deep gully
where a single stout steel cable served as a suspension bridge.
The inventor's assistant swung that bridge like a hammock
but the car laughed at the old-fashioned domineering laws
of gravity, and the little girl waved her hand at her daddy.
Well might she wave her hand at him. His achieve-
ment was a real triumph. From a top revolving in a
frame at any angle he had evolved the gyroscope car, the
one thing required for the successful development of the
mono-rail. From that car he has been steadily devel-
oping better ones. On the tenth of November, 1909, he
built a full-sized car upon which twenty men and boys
rode in glee. On that self-same day, by strange coin-
cidence, a German inventor, August Scherl, exhibited in
a large hall in Dresden, a mono-rail car, held at perfect
equilibrium by a gyroscope which he had quietly built and
perfected. The car was 18 feet long and 4 feet wide,
and mounted on two trucks. The net weight was 2^
tons, while the gyroscope itself, turning in a vacuum at
the fearful rate of 8,000 revolutions a minute, weighed
but 5 Y-Z per cent of the total weight of the car. It carried
eight persons, and when first shown in Berlin it caused a

444 THE MODERN RAILROAD

tremendous sensation, 60,000 persons witnessing the trial
during a period of five days. Even royalty took its turn
at riding in the novel conveyance.

The first question that the average man asks when he
sees a gyroscope is:

' Well, this thing may be all right when it is in motion,
but how the deuce is it going to support itself when it is
standing still ?"

But it does support itself. The gyroscope wheels con-
tinue to revolve at something close to 8,000 revolutions a
minute, and they hold the car, so that the fluctuation in
the weight it carries, due to loading or unloading, does
not affect it, even in slight degree. The average man
remains unconvinced.

" Suppose the electric power that spins the gyroscope
goes back on you?" he demands. The inventor tells
him that that is easy enough. The gyroscope, revolving
in a vacuum, will keep on turning at sufficient speed to
balance the car for nearly an hour. Long before that the
side-stays, that make the car a three-pronged structure
while out of service, can be dropped.

When To-morrow finally comes and the gyroscope car
is in its own, provision will be made on all through mono-
rail routes against just such an emergency. At various
points sidings will be constructed with low walls, just
high enough to receive the cars when their gyroscope
equilibrium ceases. These will be just as much a part of
the equipment of the mono-rail trunk line as wharves are
a part of steamship service. It will be a part that will
receive less and less attention as folk begin to realize how
little dependent the gyroscope car is upon the old laws of
gravity.

" We will have billiard cars in our fastest trains," says
Brennan. " A man will be able to play that delicate
game on a railroad train all the way from New York to
San Francisco, if he chooses."

THE COMING OF ELECTRICITY 445

Contemplate that, you railroaders and travelled folk
of to-day. Those cars will make the cars of to-day seem
like pygmies. Each will be 200 feet in length and 30
feet in width. No wonder that people can talk of bil-
liard tables. A train of six of these cars will be longer
than the longest of our transcontinental expresses of to-day.
They will be fastened together with vestibule connections,
and the forward end of the first car will have a sharp
beak. The blunt front of an ordinary train begins to be
a speed obstacle at more than 50 miles an hour.

Speed? Do you think that 50 miles an hour is speed?
Our locomotives do far better than that every day in
the United States. A train on a standard railroad and
hauled by steam as a motive power has gone faster than
the rate of 135 miles an hour. With the mono-rail and the
gyroscope, with the countless mountain brooks and rivers
harnessed and grinding out electricity, the inventors say
calmly that they will begin at 200 miles an hour.

Do you realize what 200 miles an hour means? It
means that your grandson or your grandson's son can
leave New York in the morning, do half a dozen errands
in Cincinnati, and be back in his home in West Four
Hundred and Thirty-eighth Street in time for a late sup-
per. It means that he can lunch in Chicago, span half a
dozen mighty States, threading the mountains, through
the towns and over the cities, skimming the broad expanses
of fat farms, and dine in New York the same night. It
means that he can go from one ocean across the continent
to the other in twenty-four hours.

But To-morrow is not yet here. Yesterday was just
here. In Yesterday men were boasting of their ability
to go from New York to Philadelphia by coach in two
nights and two days and were asking:

"What next?"

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

EFFICIENCY THROUGH ORGANIZATION

IN a local freight-house in an inland manufacturing
city of thirty thousand inhabitants between forty and
fifty freight-handlers had been employed for a term run-
ning from twelve to fifteen years. The freight-house
boss was of the old school. When he thought that he
needed more help, he made a fearful noise, scared head-
quarters, and more help was given him. The strong-
armed gang reported at seven o'clock in the morning and
then held a two-hour conversazione, while the book-
keeping force in the dingy office at the end of the freight-
shed arranged the way-bills and the bills-of-lading for
the day's work. Before ten o'clock, if all went well, the
freight-house gang was generally at work pushing its way
through a seeming chaos of less-than-carload freight.

After a time the old freight-agent died and a new one
came in his place. The new man was on his job less
then three months before he arranged a new schedule
in that freight-house — and dropped twenty-five men
from its pay-roll. First he summoned the bookkeeping
force together, and announced that it would report at
five o'clock in the morning, instead of seven; of course,
leaving two hours earlier each afternoon. The book-
keeping force demurred. It was not pleasant getting up
before daybreak in the winter darkness of a chill northern
town, and such a scheme interfered with the social plans
of one or two of the bookkeepers. But the new boss
only smiled and said, " Try it."

And after they had tried it, the way-bills and the bills-
29 449

450 THE MODERN RAILROAD

of-lading were ready at seven o'clock when the handlers
reported for work, and the freight-house got to work
upon the shriek of the roundhouse whistle. After that,
the pay-list was cut — you may be sure that a house-boss
who could scheme out such a plan could weed out the
shirkers and the idlers among his staff — and, better
still, the consignees began to get their freight sooner than
ever before in the history of that town.

Eventually — and a wonderfully short " eventually "
it really was — the freight-agent climbed the ladder to
the superintendent of that division and under his baili-
wick came a railroad which had recently become attached
to the parent system through the process of benevolent
assimilation. The ordinary less-than-carload business
was moved out of the freight-house of the smaller road
and it was given over entirely to carriage and automo-
bile shipments — the inland city makes a specialty of
manufacturing vehicles of every sort. The division
superintendent went over to the carriage freight-house
and saw that it took a dozen men to man it, although
it was not more than a six-car stand. Carriage bodies
and automobile bodies crated are both heavy and awk-
ward, and the boss of that house was asking for more
help.

The superintendent went straight from that freight-
house to a local foundry, sat there for fifteen minutes
with its draughtsman and then and there evolved an
overhead trolley-arrangement, very much the same as the
big packing-houses use for handling heavy carcasses. A
requisition for the thing went through a-flying, and now
the carriage-house in that city is handled with two trained
men. The scheme is fast becoming standard in the
newer freight-houses and in St. Louis, the M. K. & T.
has just adopted it for its splendid new terminal, whole
fleets of platforms hung close to the floor and suspended
from an overhead " trolley arrangement " entirely super-
sede the brigades of hand trucks formerly in use.

APPENDIX 451

That is the point of it. There must be dozens of
other cities of thirty thousand population, of sixty thou-
sand, of ninety, of one or two or three, of five hundred
thousand, where a little such method would produce sim-
ilar results. In that first house, a saving of about $350
a week was made, when the young freight-agent brought
some system into the dusty place. A dozen such savings
or even greater, would be quite a help on the railroad's
balance sheet At least that is the gospel which Louis
Brandeis, of Boston, preached, and which attracted world-
wide attention when he made the exact statement that
he could save the railroads of the country a million dol-
lars a day in the operation of their lines.

The railroads made a perfectly good legal case before
the Interstate Commerce Commission — or let us assume
that, at any rate, in the present instance. But one such
clarifying statement as that of Brandeis' produced more
effect both upon the land and the Commissioners than
all the legal briefs that together were filed in advocacy
of the raises in the freight tariffs. At no time did the
railroads successfully controvert Brandeis' sweeping
statement, and so they lost their fight.

And yet the railroads are accomplishing some remark-
able improvements in their internal affairs — for which
they are being given not an iota of credit. And one
of the most interesting of these is the promotion of effi-
ciency through organization, or better yet, through re-
organization.

Along in the fifties, Herman Haupt, who was after-
wards a brigadier-general of the United States army
and brevetted major-general, devised the wonderful or-
ganization scheme of the Pennsylvania system, which is
still in use to-day on that well-managed property. The
scheme has been adopted since then by practically all the
large railroads in the country. Before General Haupt
evolved it, there was no real organization among the

452 THE MODERN RAILROAD

great railroads. Like Topsy, they " just growed " from
the little individual horse and steam lines from which
they were formed and they were even more like Topsy
in some other details. But Haupt's plan brought dig-
nity to a great business that needed dignity — and sys-
tem. For fifty years it has been accomplishing something
more than merely serving its purpose. But railroad ter-
minals and railroad equipment of fifty years ago are long
since obsolete, and so within recent years the larger rail-
roads have found their organization schemes not up with
the times. The growing complexity of their work, the
intricacy of their relations with the various city, state,
and national governing boards, the constant tendency to
enlarge and to consolidate these, have all proved fearful
taxes upon the Haupt plan. Great masses of correspond-
ence have accumulated, the whole business of conducting
the railroad has been enmeshed in whole miles of red-
tape — and men like Brandeis, of Boston, have been per-
mitted to make their challenges and stand unconnected.

Go back into the sixties for this last time, and pause
for a moment at the fighting of the American Rebellion.
Men in the North were beginning to hear that the Con-
federate army had something different, something better,
in its organization than the Union army. It was an in-
tangible something, but it seemed to make for efficiency,
and, after all, that was the main thing. So after the
war was history, there were far-sighted Northerners who
said that it would be well to bring that intangible some-
thing into the United States army. At such a time that
thing was, however, tacitly impossible, and it was
dropped for more than thirty years.

But Von Moltke picked up the idea, and incorporated
it in the intensely modern army of modern Germany.
It helped to win the great Franco-Prussian War, and when
the other nations of Europe began to examine it it had
a name; it was beginning to be a tangible something.
Military men called it the " staff idea," and when you

APPENDIX

453

asked them to explain it they told you that officers who
handled men were known as " line officers," and those
who handled things as " staff officers." In other words,
men could be lifted — as it were, in an aeroplane of
scientific organization — away from their commands and
their narrow environments, up to a point where they
could have perspective, where they could handle men,
regiments, small arms, heavy ordnance on a large scale.
The staff officers work in things in the abstract, just as
the line officers mould men in the concrete.

There then is the rough theory of staff organization
which was picked up and adapted to its use by the United
States army at about the time of the Spanish-American
War. Of its value there can be no doubt; of its effi-
ciency no question.

A young man — Major Charles Hine — who had
seen the operation of modern staff in the regular army,
decided that it was a good thing for the great railroad
systems of the country. Hine knew railroads. In order
that he might know them thoroughly, he one day packed
his uniforms and his saddle away in his trunk and went
quietly out and got a job as brakeman on a freight train.
He did not stay on the car roofs very long; he has
served in about every conceivable post in railroad di-
visional organization, and he has had a good chance to
study the weaknesses of those very organizations.

" We have got to eliminate government by chief
clerks," said Major Hine at the very beginning. " We
are growing too rapidly for the men higher up. We
are forced to delegate official authority to clerks and
foremen, and then we build up an autocracy around some
person of official rank. It is pernicious feudalism, this
permitting the chief clerk, and a good many times some
other clerks, to sign the name of the officer whom they
attempt to represent."

A railroad is really so spread out that its officers live

454 THE MODERN RAILROAD

a double official life; a part of the time they are at their
desks, and another part out upon the line. Yet the aver-
age railroad officer, be he of high or low degree, flatters
himself that by some subtle method of personal supe-
riority, he is enabled to act intelligently in two places
at the same time.

Major Hine saw how that worked at the very begin-
ning of a special service with the Southern Pacific Rail-
road. He was down in the Yaqui River country in Mex-
ico, where heavy construction work was under way. In
company with the division engineer, he was riding the
line mule-back. The division engineer had several parties
under him, each in charge of a resident engineer, and all
engaged in laying out and checking the contractor's work.
The headquarters of the division engineer were presided
over by a ninety-dollar-a-month chief clerk, who was
dealing in the absence of his superior with one hundred
and twenty-five dollar resident engineers. The division
engineer assured his guest that the telephone permitted
close personal contact with headquarters, that every hour
questions were referred to him. The vice-president of
the company, desiring to change the assembling point for
luncheon, sought for two hours from engineering head-
quarters to locate the division engineer, who was on the
grade all the time.

The condition mentioned necessitates the chief clerk's
signing the name of his superior to heads of departments
lower down, which heads are receiving lower salaries,
and are presumably of wider experience than the chief
clerk who essays to be their monitor. This is done in
the name of routine business. Unfortunately no two
men often agree upon what constitutes routine business.
Almost every railroad officer will tell you that " my chief
clerk handles only routine business and never assumes
too much authority." When closely questioned, the same
officer will reveal in the utmost confidence the fact that the
same condition does not obtain with the chief clerk of the

APPENDIX 455

officer who is over the informant. Strangely enough, if
the complaining witness is promoted to his boss's job,
the same condition still exists, showing that the system
is at fault, rather than its individual members. Worst
of all, the chief clerk has to break in all the new bosses
and thus has only limited promotion himself.

Major Hine has said that the bigness of things on
the Harriman lines, the breadth of the policies of Napo-
leon Harriman and Von Moltke Julius Kruttschnitt, the
vice-president in the change of the operation of that far-
reaching group of railroads, strengthened his nerve to
advocate radical departure from preconceived notions of
railway organization. Hine, at his home in Virginia,
had once acted as receiver of a suburban trolley system,
where he had introduced a simplified organization. He
found, at that time, that the underlying principle of that
organization would apply to a thousand times as many
men on the great Harriman lines. Incidentally, after
the receivership was lifted, the new owners of the prop-
erty discontinued the organization which Major Hine
had created, for they took the ground that no other
electric road had such a system, and that therefore there
could be nothing in it.

Kruttschnitt decided to let Major Hine begin on the
Harriman lines with the reorganization of the divisions.
He declined to order any changes, but placed the burden
of missionary work and conversions among his subordi-
nates on the shoulders of his special representative.
There are not a dozen letters bearing on this subject in
Kruttschnitt's office. The work was done by personal
contact, which in two years involved over one hundred
thousand miles of travel by Hine. Major Hine states
that, notwithstanding the splendid spirit of the officers
of the Harriman lines, little would have been accom-
plished without the tactful support of Kruttschnitt, the
man whose supremacy and whose brilliant abilities are
unquestioned in the railway world. On the other hand,

456 THE MODERN RAILROAD

Kruttschnitt has been heard to say that the credit lies
with the enthusiastic younger man whom he attached to
his staff.

Most of the divisions of the Harriman lines had an
assistant superintendent, engaged mainly in outside duties,
with an office near the superintendent's, presided over
by a chief clerk. Both the superintendent and the as-
sistant superintendent had his own chief clerk, who con-
sumed reams of paper annually in intercommunications
over their respective superior's signatures. The new
system provides, as a first step, that if the division has
no assistant superintendent, one shall be appointed. The
next step is to order the assistant superintendent to re-
main at headquarters in charge of the office, in effect,
but not in name, the chief-of-staff idea, so successfully
applied by the Germans through Von Moltke. When
necessary, an additional trainmaster is appointed for the
previous outside duties of the assistant superintendent.
The old chief clerk is placed in line of promotion by
appointing him, when possible, to a position with outside
duties on the road.

Next, the division shop is raided, the division master
mechanic and the travelling engineer (road foreman of
engines) are moved bodily to the same building with the
division superintendent, where are usually already lo-
cated, the division engineer, the trainmaster, and the
chief despatcher. The old theory has been that the
master mechanic should be at his shop to supervise the
shop force. The new conception is that the master
mechanic has passed the stage of a shop foreman; that,
located at one shop, he unconsciously comes to underesti-
mate the importance of roundhouses and car repair plants
at outlying points on the division. He is brought to
division headquarters to get the atmosphere of trans-
portation, to be in touch with the train sheet, and to
realize that motive power is one of the component ele-

APPENDIX 457

ments of transportation; that the shop is incident to the
railroad, not the railroad to the shop.

The official family, now being gathered under the
parental roof of the superintendent, are politely requested
to deposit the official shooting-iron, the typewriter, in
one official arsenal, from which all shooting will be done
in the future. The office files are consolidated in one
office of record. This idea is borrowed from the courts
of justice, where one clerk of the court, with as many
deputies as necessary, records all transactions regardless
of the number of judges and other officers.

You must have worked in a railroad office to appre-
ciate the fearful condition of official files in this year of
grace, nineteen hundred eleven. You ask for the file on
that culvert at Jones* farm on the Martinsburgh branch,
and an anaemic office-boy staggers toward you with
enough manuscript to be the making of a novel. There
are the contract arrangements and the correspondence
with the J. B. & G. concerning the union station priv-
ileges that are enjoyed with it at Blissville; why, there
was a whole chapter given over to that episode of July,
three summers ago, when the leaders had to be renewed
on that magnificent structure, and its roof re-shingled.
Here is the contract for handling milk on a single side-
line division — and the accompanying symposium of
thought from chief clerks and minor officers in the form
of miscellaneous — and entirely useless — correspond-
ence. This is the agreement with the bridge-builders'
union — four inches thick. No wonder the shelves of
the record room sag, and that the clerks are hollow-eyed.
Tons of unprotected paper have been scrawled upon, per-
fect rivers of helpless black ink have done the work —
and all for that!

The heaviest file in the office of the Harriman system
to-day is half an inch in thickness, and there is no one
to deny that the property is being run at a high stage of

458 THE MODERN RAILROAD

efficiency — particularly in comparison with some other
railroad systems of the land. As the result of a single
record system at any division headquarters, the astound-
ing saving has been to that group of railroads, of five
hundred thousand letters a year, and it now goes with-
out saying that they were unnecessary letters. In a year
or two, that figure will cross the million mark — and
you must take second breath to imagine the time and
thought that goes into the making of a million letters
in a twelvemonth. The material saving in stationery is
considerable — although trifling in the operation of a
system that spends about $225,000,000 a year, but the
logical claim is made that the five hundred thousand let-
ters eliminated retarded rather than helped administra-
tion, that they produced more harm than good. Deeper
than all this is the dwarfing effect upon the individual
initiative of the man below, for whom the letter attempts
to think.

Elimination of red tape is not the sole object of the
new system. Mr. Kruttschnitt regards this as incidental.
What has appealed to him is the final step in the organ-
ization which is to confer the uniform title of " assistant
superintendent " upon the former division engineer, mas-
ter mechanic, trainmaster, travelling engineer, roadmas-
ter, and chief despatcher. These officers retain their
former duties and responsibilities, but they broaden au-
thority to meet emergencies on the spot. This means
increased supervision of employees, more scientific man-
agement of men. The officials of the Harriman lines
faced here a ticklish problem. The attitude of organized
labor was in doubt. Would the men object to too many
bosses? Would confusion result from several men issu-
ing orders that might possibly conflict? The results have
been a splendid vindication of the intelligence of the
men who are close to things. The men were often
quicker to catch the idea than were the officers. What

APPENDIX 459

appealed to them most of all was the dictum that no
man could sign another man's name or initials.

;t We old men do our work, no matter how many
bosses there are; we realize that younger men need more
instruction than supervision," said a veteran conductor
on the Union Pacific, when the matter was brought to
his attention. '* We used to make one report to the
master mechanic and another to the superintendent. Now
one report addressed simply ' assistant superintendent '
is enough. It means less red tape. But what we like
best of all is that some smart Aleck of a clerk can no
longer jack us up."

That veteran ticket-puncher recalled that in older days
conductors had been dismissed for allowing operators to
sign their names to telegraphic train orders; perhaps the
letter of dismissal was signed by the superintendent's
chief clerk. There was railroad system for you!

After a year and a half of what the local officers called
trial — for Mr. Kruttschnitt and Major Hine have al-
ways regarded that period as demonstration rather than
as experiment — the system was broadened. It was ap-
plied to some of the higher units. For nearly a year,
the U. P. general officers at Omaha have had five as-
sistant general managers. In other days there were a
general superintendent, a superintendent of motive power,
a chief engineer, a superintendent of transportation, and
an assistant to the general manager. The new million
dollar general office building of the U. P. at Omaha will
have its office space arranged according to the new con-
ception. Until it is completed, the consolidation of office
records will not be practicable, because the various gen-
eral offices are now scattered over town. But a start has
been made, and plans laid for full development.

What is good at the east end of a railroad is generally
as good at the west end, and so the plan, working handily
in general offices at Omaha, has been transplanted to

460 THE MODERN RAILROAD

the general offices of another Harriman road — the
newly combined Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navi-
gation Company at Portland, Ore., and at Seattle, Wash.
Other general headquarters of the Harriman roads are
only awaiting the construction of new and modern office
buildings, before they will be asked to fall in line with
the plan. Kruttschnitt does not order these things. He
is far too wise a railroader for that. He directs by
suggestion and the family circle talks of Major Hine.
And yet twenty-three out of the thirty-three divisions of
the Harriman railroad group have fallen into the new
groove within two short years.

" Consider for an instant the overwhelming importance
of a title to some railroaders," says a high officer of
one of that group as he sits at his desk. He is one of
the men to whom a title is as hollow as a brass cylinder.
" I have known a man to almost froth at the mouth be-
c&use some stupid underling wrote a letter and addressed
him as ' assistant to the general manager ' instead of
1 assistant general manager.' We have gone title crazy
on some of our railroads. Take that overworked word
1 superintendent.' We have more superintendents on this
system to-day than there used to be track hands on a
good sized road, and we have what is even worse, a
superintendent of motive power, and a superintendent of
transportation ranking the division superintendent who is
the head of an important subordinate unit, and entitled
to respect among the rank and file of our men as such.
Under the new plan, the superintendent of transporta-
tion together with the superintendent of motive power,
as you have already seen, become assistant general
managers.

" Right there is an impersonality that is delightful —
and efficient; it has proved most efficient in division or-
ganization. Out on our division we had several

washouts simultaneously last year. We sent at once an
assistant superintendent to each point of interruption and

APPENDIX 461

so we had at each vital place, a man with sufficient brains
and authority to use the forces on the ground to the best
advantage. Isn't that good railroading?"

It is good railroading all along the line. It is good
railroading to handle as big a question as the reorgani-
zation of a system employing a quarter of a million men
and women, without writing a whole library of rules and
regulations for its enforcement. Ask Major Hine, him-
self, how he handles that problem.

" Easily enough/' will be his reply to you. " We have
a constitution — also unwritten like that splendid old
bulwark of English liberties — and any superintendent,
any general manager, can make his own rules for his
division or his stretch of railroad as long as they will
stand the tests of that constitution. And the railroad's
bulwark consists of but three very simple principles :

1 The first of these is that no man may sign the name
or the initial of another. That is rank feudalism, and
out of place in the twentieth century sort of railroading.
Our second clause is that there must be at all times an
assistant superintendent in charge of the office. Nor-
mally, this assistant, in effect chief-of-staff, is the senior
or No. i on the list. Here again, elasticity is intro-
duced. The unwritten law provides that whatever as-
sistant may be assigned to the office is the senior of the
others for the time being. The chief-of-staff reviews
the incoming and outgoing correspondence and reduces
it to its lowest terms. Each assistant superintendent
signs his own communications, but they pass through the
focus of the administrative hour-glass on the desk of the
watchful chief-of-staff.

" In the third place, correspondence must be addressed
impersonally; from below, * assistant superintendent,'
from above, ' superintendent.' This requirement is based
upon the idea that authority, as in the courts, is abstract
and impersonal, that the exercise of authority is highly

462 THE MODERN RAILROAD

concrete and personal. The court exists if the judge is
dead; the court is silent until the judge speaks."

Already there is noted a greater willingness to take
responsibility. More and more is heard about " this
division " and " the company " and less and less about
" my department." The mathematical axiom that " the
whole is greater than any of its parts " is sometimes vio-
lated in corporate administration, because there is no
chief-of-staff to balance the specialization of some depart-
ment head.

This system of playing trumps in the new science of
railroads incidentally, but not essentially, provides for
rotation in the position of senior assistant or chief-of-
staff. Some conservative divisions have not availed them-
selves of this feature. On one division the superintend-
ent in the first year of the new organization had four
of his five assistant superintendents, each occupy the senior
chair at headquarters for three months each. Finally,
it came the turn of the old master mechanic.

" I am sweating blood," he said, " but I never knew
before how much there is about a railroad."

When that master mechanic returned to his shop inter-
ests, his vision had been broadened, and he was more
alert to protect the company's interests when riding over
the road. The sponsors for the new system deny that
this may lead to the neglect of an official's own special
responsibility. They point to the superintendent as a
balance wheel to maintain proper equilibrium. Over two
years' experience has led the high officials of the Harri-
man lines to lay some stress upon urging the assistant
superintendents forward rather than holding them back.
The tendency has been to settle back in former grooves.
As long; as no harm is done, those who avail themselves
of their new opportunities are becoming more valuable
assets both for themselves and for the company.

When a division is reorganized, the persons concerned

APPENDIX 463

are assembled to listen to a lecture by Major Hine. To
their great astonishment, he usually leaves town the same
evening. He takes the position that the system which
depends for its success upon the presence of any indi-
vidual is a system which the company has no business to
adopt. He says, " We have pushed you off the bank.
Now swim ashore." They all do. On the next visit
of his grand rounds, the instructor often finds his pupils
beating him at his own game. Dropping in one day
at the headquarters of a large division on the coast, he
found the senior assistant superintendent and the old
master mechanic in frequent conference. The senior as-
sistant tossed a letter over the desk, and asked, " Did
Jim here need to write this letter? " " It looks good to
me," said the instructor; "what is the matter with it?"
" You told us," said the interlocutor, " that one record
in this office is enough. I handled a letter this morning
from the mechanical assistant telling the foreman to re-
pair this outfit car. Now I get another letter this after-
noon about the same thing." " You are dead right,"
said the major; " you fellows will soon have me worked
out of a job."

The old master mechanic caught the spirit of the occa-
sion and said: " Yes, Jack, you caught that one, but
there were two just like it this morning that you did n't
catch. Next time I won't have to dictate them."

There then is efficiency through organization — the
playing of trumps in the developing science of railroad-
ing. Other railroads have been watching the reorgani-
zation plan upon the Harriman system with critical eyes,
and can find nothing but success in its workings. It is
paving its own way, and shouldering itself abreast of a
railroad generation that figures not in lines of from five
hundred to a thousand miles each, but giant systems of
grouped lines that may easily stretch their steel cobwebs

464 THE MODERN RAILROAD

for fifteen thousand miles — over whole sovereign States,
from ocean to ocean — properties whose management
calls for a degree of skill not yet demanded in the very
greatest of our industrial or manufacturing corporations.
The old order changeth and giveth way to the new.

INDEX

ACWORTH, the English economist,

330, 331-

Adams, Alvin, 371, 372.
Adams, Maude, 293, 294.
Adams Express Company, 371-

373-

Adams & Company, 372.
Ade, George, 303.
Advertising, railroad, 276 ; bill for

newspaper, 288; open terri-
tory, 356.
Agricultural schools maintained

by the railroads, 360, 361, 363.
Air-brake, 42, 125, 134, 249, 250.
Albany, bridge at, 14.
Albany & Syracuse Railroad, 371.
Algomah Central, 417.
Algomah, ferry, 415.
Alleghany Portage Railroad, n,

12, 48, 149.

Allen, Horatio, 5, 6, 7, 8, 119.
Altoona shops of Pennsylvania

Railroad, 12, 61, 154, 394, 395-

398.
American bridge-builders do work

of world, 74.
American Express Company, 372,

American Locomotive Company,

126, 127.
" American Notes," Dickens,

Atlantic City Railroad, 127.
Atlantic Coast Line, 127.
Atlantic type of locomotive, 127.

BAGGAGE, handling of, 93; duties
of baggagemen, 251, 252; use
of baggage-car, 322, 323.

Baldwin, Matthias, 122, 123.

Baltimore, railroad connections of,
10, n, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19; tun-
nels in, 49; stations in, 96,
436.

Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 2, 9,
15-23, 41, 49, 58-60, 64, 65, 77,
96, 120, 126, 132, 139, 144, 376,
377, 394, 421, 427, 436.

Baltimore & Potomac R. R., 20.

Bangs, Col. George S., 377, 378.

"Bends," cause and treatment of,
68, 70.

Bergen Tunnel, 318.

Bessemer, Sir Henry, 61.

Best Friend of Charleston, loco-
motive, 8, 1 20.

Big Muddy River, Illinois Cen-
tral's bridge over, 78.

Big Four, 27, 418.

Binghampton, N. Y., 81.

Black Diamond Express (Lehigh
Valley Railroad), 286.

Black River Road, 217.

Blair, Postmaster General Mont-

quoted, ii.
Anchor Line, the, see Erie & gomery, 377.

Western Transportation Com- Blizzards, fighting of, 268-275.

pany.

Ann Arbor railway, 416.
Arabian, locomotive, 120.
Armstrong, Col. G. B., 377.
Ashtabula, Ohio, bridge disaster,

61.
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe

Railroad, 2, 32, 126, 127, 358,

386, 429.
Atlantic City, 367, 368.

465

Boards of directors of railroads,
156-158.

Bollman, — , designer of bridges,
61, 63.

Bonds, railroad, 36, 37.

Boston Elevated Railway, 428.

Boston, in 1831, 9; railroad con-
nections of, 10; Josiah Per-
ham's excursions to, 29; sta-
tions in, 88, 95-99, 313, 319,

466

INDEX

320, 384; suburban traffic of,

98, 99, 319-
"Boston Special" (New York,

New Haven & Hartford Rail-
road), 384.
Boston & Albany Railroad, 60, 77,

98, 106, 136, 370.
Boston & Lowell Railroad, 9, 10,

96, 98.
Boston & Maine Railroad, I, 98,

319, 320, 333, 384, 437-
Boston & Providence Railroad, 95,

370.
Boston & Worcester line, 10, 124,

370.

Brakeman, duties of, 248-250.
Brandeis, Louis, 451, 452.
Brandy wine Viaduct, 77.
Brennan, Louis, 442, 443.
Bridge-builders, personality and

nationality of, 72-74.
Bridges —

at Albany, across Hudson, 14.
first across Mississippi, 28.
building of, 42, 56-79.
at Trenton, across Delaware, 57,

at Springfield, across Connecti-
cut River, 57.

of timber, 57-60, 62-64.

at Waterford, across Hudson
River, 57.

Permanent Bridge, across
Schuylkill River, 58.

of stone, 58, 59, 76, 77-

Starucca Viaduct, 58.

Thomas Viaduct, 58, 59, 76.

of iron, 60, 61.

of Rider design, 60.

B. & O. Monongahela River, 60.

Ashtabula, 61.

of steel, 61, 62, 76, 77.

at Portage, over Genesee River,
62.

forms of, 62-64.

through span, 64.

deck span, 64.

over Susquehanna River, be-
tween Havre-de-Grace and
Aiken, 64, 65.

at Cincinnati, over Ohio River,

65-
suspension, 65.

cantilever, 65, 66.

over Kentucky River, 66.

Minnehaha, at St. Paul, 66.

over Niagara River, 66.

over Frazer River, 66.

at Poughkeepsie, 66.

personality of builders of, 72-

74-

over Pend Oreille River, 73.
on line of Rio Grande & West-
ern, 74.

replacing of, 75, 76.
Roebling's, at Niagara Falls, 75.
at Steubenville, Ohio, 75, 76.
over Hackensack River, 76, 206,

207.

of concrete, 76-79.
Brandywine Viaduct, 77.
Pennsylvania, over Susquehanna

River, 77.
New Brunswick, over Raritan

River, 77.

over Florida Keys, 78.
at Slateford, Pa., 78.
over Big Muddy River, 78.
at Washington, D. C, 78.
Moodna Valley, steel trestle

over, 143.

at Towanda, Pa., 144.
first steel bridge in America, 144.
across the Delaware, 367.
Brilliant cut-off ( Pennsylvania

Railroad), 148, 149.
Britton, H. M., 269.
Broad Street Station, Philadel-
phia, 88, 96, 97, 154, 320, 440.
Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company,
its care for employees, 427,
428.

Brooks plant, Dunkirk, 127.
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engi-
neers, 423.
Brown, George, 16.
Brown, W. C, 167, 168, 362.
"Brown system," see Demerit

plan.

Bryant, Gridley, 6, 132.
Buffalo & Attica Railroad, 27.
Buffet sleepers, 307, 309.
Burlington, see Chicago, Burling-
ton & Quincy R. R.
Burr, Theodore, 57, 63.
Burwick, J. M., 420.

INDEX

467

CAB, use of, 123.
Caissons, their use in tunnel-con-
struction, 52.
in bridge-building, 66, 67, 68, 69,

70, 71, 77-

Calvert Station, Baltimore, 96.

Camden Station, Baltimore, 96,
43&

Camden & Amboy Railroad, 10,
121.

Campbell, Henry R., 122.

Canadian Pacific Railway, 2, 32,
141, 142, 406, 414, 417.

Canals, 4, 5, 9, 13, 34, 35-

Car- ferries, 416, 417.

Car-inspectors, duties of, 402, 403.

Cars, storage of, 89; cleaning of,
90; construction of, 132; plat-
forms and vestibules of, 134,
135, 398 ; use of steel for, 135 ;
" foreign cars," 389.

Carroll, Charles, of Carrollton, 17.

Carter, C. R, quoted, 24.

Cascade Tunnel, 436, 437, 441.

Cassatt, A. J., 160, 166.

Cathedral Mountain, the spiral
tunnel under, 142.

Cattle, shipping of, on railroads,
328, 329-

Central Pacific Railroad, 30, 31,

32, 45, 357-
Central Railroad of New Jersey,

2, 313, 412.

Central Vermont, 333.
Charleston & Hamburg Railroad,

8, 123.

Cheney, Benjamin F., 372.
Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, 2, 10,

16, 18.
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy

Railroad, 2, 127.
Chicago City Railway Company,

177.

Chicago Fast Mail, 189.
Chicago, Milwauke & St. Paul

Railroad, 3, 32, 300, 313, 356,

358.

Chicago-Montreal flyer, 414.

Chicago, railroad connections of,
27; Northwestern station at,
88, 101, 106, 321 ; La Salle Sta-
tion at, 101.

Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific
Railroad, 3, 28, 364, 386.

Chicago & Alton Railroad, 144,

300-304.
Chicago & Northwestern Railway,

3, 27, 28, 313, 356, 386.
Chicago & St. Louis Express

(West Shore Railroad), 265-

267.

Chief clerk, duties of, 220.
Civil War, railroad building dur-
ing period of, 19, 20; might

have been averted by railroad

development, 35.
Claim-agents, 174-179.
Cleveland stations in, 96, 418, 419.
Cleveland & Pittsburgh Railroad,

418.
Coal, handling of, 13 ; as a freight

business, 108, 109, 126, 339,

342 ; substituted for wood as a

fuel, 124; mining of, 340.
Collinwood, Ohio, the Lake

Shore's plant at, 394.
Columbia & Philadelphia Railroad,

12, 122, 401.
Commuter, the, 311; his use of

rapid transit, 313-324, 327,

384...

Competition among railroads, 355.
Complaints of public in regard to

railroad service, 290, 291.
Conductor, duties of, 250, 251.
Consolidation, locomotive, 124,

125.
Construction work of railroads,

454-

Cooper, Peter, 17-19, 120.
Cooperation of railroads, 328.
Cornell University, agricultural

school at, 360.
" Corridor trains," 134.
Cowan, John F., 22.
Crede, the English railroad town,

393-

Credit mobilier, 31.
Crescent City, the, 299.
Crocker brothers, 30.
Crossings, railroad, 42.
Cumberland, on the National

Highway, 16, 19, 394.
Cumberland Valley Railroad, 299.

DALY, C. F., 284.
Daniels, George H., 277.
Davis, Phineas, 120-122.

468

INDEX

Davis, W. A., 377.

Davis & Gartner Co., 120.

Decapod, locomotive, 126.

Dee, River, bridge, 60.

Delaware, Lackawanna & Western

Railroad, 2, 44, 78, 88, 102,

145, 313, 3i5, 317, 385, 412.
Delaware & Hudson Railroad, i,

5, 119, 126.

Delmonico, the, 304, 305.
Demerit plan, 211, 212.
Depew (New York), shops of the

New York Central at, 394.
Detroit River tunnel, 54, 55, 413,

436, 441.

Devereux, John H., 418.
De Witt Clinton, locomotive, 13,

120.

Dexter, Judge, 29.
Dickens's " American Notes,"

quoted, n.
Dining-cars, conveniences of, 134,

304-307.
Division superintendent, duties of,

187-189, 202-219, 272-275.
Dorsey, John M., 314.
Dresden, Germany, train-sheds in,

103.
Duluth & Iron Range Railroad,

420.

EAGLE Pass, 40.

Edison, Thomas A., 432.

Efficiency in railroad service, 449-
464.

Eighteen-hour trains, between
New York and Chicago, 298.

Electricity, its use in tunnel-con-
struction, 51, 52.
in bridge-building, 70.
substituted for steam, 104, 105,

137, 432-44I-

used for lighting, 303, 315-321.
Elevated and subway lines, 440.
El Gobernador, locomotive, 126.
Elkhart, Indiana, railroad shops

of the Lake Shore Railroad

at, 394.
Embankment, construction of, 44;

largest, 45.

Emigration bureaus, 356, 358.
Empire State Express (New York

Central), 285, 286.

Employees, protection of, 176-

179; 422,423-

" Engine sheds," 390.

Engine wheels, first turning of, in
America, 7.

Engineer, duties of, 90, 247, 248.

Engines in yards and round-
houses, 89, 90.

English roundhouse principle, 89.

Enterprise line, the, 405.

Erie Canal, New York State, 4,
13, 14, IS-

Erie, Pa., transfer of passengers
at, 14.

Erie Railroad, 22-25, 59, 60, 124,
126, 142, 143, 164, 299, 3I3-3IS,
317, 361, 392-394, 412, 417, 429,
. 430, 435-

Erie & Western Transportation
Company, 417.

Evening Star, the, 299.

Excursions, use of, 358.

Express business, 369.

Express messenger, duties of, 251,
252.

FARGO, William G., 371, 372.

" Farmers' special," 360, 361, 363.

Felton, S. M., 124.

Ferry fleets, 412-415.

Fillmore, President, his trip on the

Erie, 23.

Finances of railroad, 179-186.
Fireman, duties of, 90, 246, 391,

392.

Fish, shipping of, 345, 346.
Fisk, Jim, 299.
Fitchburg, Railroad, 96, 98.
Florida East Coast Railroad, 77,

78.

Florida Keys, 78.
Folders, bill for printing of, 288.
Food, shipping of, to the city, 343,

344-

Forbes, James M., 27.
Forney, M. N., 125.
Fort Wayne subsidiary, the, 147,

148.

France, railroad in, 35.
Frankfort, Germany, train-sheds

in, 103.

Franklin, Benjamin, 375.
Frazer River bridge, 66.

INDEX

469

Freehold & Jamesburg Agricul-
tural Railroad (Pennsylvania
Railroad), 359.

Freight claims, 183.

Freight, railroads once prohibited
from carrying, 9; Erie's
profits from, 25; handling of,
34, 88, 107-118; 104; traffic,
318, 325-354; rate system for,
329-331 ; threefold classifica-
tion of, 330-332 ; " back haul,"
334; Australian system of,
334-336 ; " demurrage," 338 ;
fast trains for, 343.

Freight terminals, 107-115, 408.

Freight traffic-manager, duties of,
326, 327.

Fruit, shipping of California, 344,
345.

Fullerton, H. B., 362.

GALENA & Chicago Union Rail-
road, 27.

Gallitzin Tunnel, 12, 50, 149, 441.

Garrett, John W., 20, 21.

Garrett, Robert, 21, 22.

Gasolene engine, use of, 137.

Gauge, standard, 46.

General attorney of the railroad,
duties of, 170-174.

General counsel of the railroad,
duties of, 170-174.

General manager, duties of, 187-
201.

General passenger agent, duties
of, 276-291, 366.

General superintendent, duties of,
190.

Genesee Valley Road, 143.

Geneva, N. Y., agricultural experi-
mental school, 360.

George Washington, locomotive,
122.

Gould roads, 2, 3, 32.

Government regulation of rail-
roads, 329.

Governor Paine, locomotive, 123.

Grades, railroad, 40, 41, 48, 139-

151.

Grand Central Railroad, 316, 317,

420.
Grand Canal (Erie), 4.

Grand Central Station, New York,
88, 95, 96, 104, 315, 32i, 384,
419, 421, 438, 439, 440.

Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad,
416.

Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, 3,
32, 42, 304, 333, 414, 416, 417,
436.

" Grangers" 3.

Grant, General, 302, 303.

Grasshopper, locomotive, 120.

Great Lakes, highway up the, 414.

Great Northern Express Com-
pany, 373-

Great Northern Railroad, 2, 32.
126, 147, 300, 358, 417, 437-

Great Western Railway, see Grand
Trunk.

Greenville, freight station at, 109,
no.

Gyroscope, see Mono-rail.

HACKENSACK River Bridge, 76,

206, 207.

Hadley, President, of Yale, 17.
Hand-brakes, use of, 250.
Hanson, Inga, 177.
Harbor fleet, a, 406, 407, 408.
Harlem River Branch (New

Haven), 316, 317, 438.
Harnden, William F., 370, 371,

372.
Harriman, E. H., 139-141, 159,

166, 167, 358.
Harriman lines, 2, 297, 358, 406,

455-458, 460-463.
Harsemus Cove, 109, no.
Harvard, the, 405, 406.
Haupt, Herman, 451, 452.
Hazard, Ebenezer, 374.
Headlight, first use of, 124.
" Head-room," 42.
Hill, J. J., his roads, 2, 147, 159,

1 66, 167, 358, 373, 406.
Hinckley, — , a locomotive builder,

122.
Hine, Charles, 453-455, 459~46i,

463.
Hoboken, Lackawanna Terminal

at, 88, 102, 109.

Honesdale, Pa., switchback at, 41.
Hoosac Tunnel, 49, 437.
Hopkins, Mark, 30.
Hornellsville, Erie shops at, 392-

394-

INDEX

Horse Shoe Curve, 12.
Hotel-cars, see Dining-cars.
Howe, — , designer of bridges, 63.
Hudson, Commodore, bronze

statue of, 354.

Hudson River Tunnel, 102, 412.
Huntington, Collis P., 30, 32.

ICE-FLOES, obstructions to the rail-
road marine, 416.

Idaho & Washington Northern
Railroad, 73.

Illinois Central Railroad, I, 28, 78,
31.3, 320, 321, 385, 429-

Imperial Limited (Canadian Pa-
cific Railway), 141.

Inland Water Ways, 404-417.

Insurance, for railroad employees,
423-

Interstate Commerce Commission,

13, 329, 333, 335, 355, 374, 451-
Interstate Commerce Law, 210.
Interurban electric service, 432-

434.
Ithaca, N. Y., switchback at, 41.

Jamaica, station at (Long Island),

3i8, 319-
Jamestown Exposition of 1907,

441.

Jay Gould, the, 299.
Jersey City, 109.
Jersey Heights Tunnel, 102.
Jervis, John B., 121.
Jewell, Postmaster General, 378.
John Bull, locomotive, 121.
Joy line, the, 405.
Judah, Theodore D., 29, 30, 31.

KANSAS, boom in, 357.
Kentucky River bridge, 66.
Kicking Horse River, tunnel near,

142.

King wood Tunnel, 41, 49, 122.
Kirkwood, James P., 59, 77.
Kruttschnitt, Julius, 298, 455, 456,

458-460.

LACKA WANNA cut-off, 145.

Lackawanna Railroad, see Dela-
ware, Lackawanna & Western
Railroad.

Lake Michigan, an obstruction to
land traffic, 415.

Lake Shore & Michigan Southern
Railroad, 14, 27, 205, 378, 385,
394, -418, 419, 421.

Lane cut-off (Union Pacific), 44,
140.

Lard, shipping of, 342.

La Salle Street Station, Chicago,
101.

Latrobe, B. H., 19, 41, 49, 58, 60,
63, 122.

Lehigh Valley Railroad, 2, 144,
. 286 361, 385.

Leiper, Thomas, 6.

Lewis, Isaac, Erie engineer, 25.

Lickey plane, 122.

Lights, code of, 86.

Lincoln, Abraham, 300, 302.

Link device, use of, 124.

Liquor, prohibition of use of, 421.

Livingston & Company, 372.

Locomotives, 5, 7, 8, 18, 26, 119-
131.

Long Island commuters, 102, 103.

Long Island Express Company,
373-

Long Island Railroad, i, 109, 313,
318, 320, 362, 412.

Long Key Viaduct, 78.

Loree, L. F., 22.

Lowell, Mass., in 1831, 9.

Lucin cut-off, The (Southern Pa-
cific), 139, 140.

M., K. & T., 450.
McAdoo Tunnel, 317.
McCrea, James, 167, 194, 195.
McCrea, the engineer, 420, 421.
McGraham, James, 331.
McPherson, Logan G., quoted, 20.
Mad River & Lake Erie Railroad,

26, 124.
Magazines, railroad employees',

429.
Mail clerks, duties of, 251, 252,

. .377-383.

Mail-service, railway, 369-387.
Maintenance Way Department,

388.
Mallet articulated compound, 126,

127.

Manchester & Liverpool line, 9.
Mann, Col. W. D., 135.
Manunka Chunk, tunnel at, 145.
Marine, the railroad, 404-417.

INDEX

Market Street Station, Philadel-
phia, 88, 97-

Martin, T. E., 363.

Maryland, the, 413.

Mason, a locomotive builder, 122.

Master Car Builders, organization
of, 136, 137, 390, 401.

Master mechanic, duties of, 389,
400, 401.

Mastodon, locomotive, 125, 126.

Mauch Chunk, colliery railroad at,

9, 4i» 136.

Metropolitan Line, the, 405.
Metropolitan Street Railway Com-
pany, New York City, 172.
Meyers, George, 418, 419.
Michigan Central Railroad, 27, 28,

54, 302, 385, 4U, 4H, 436.
Michigan Southern Railroad, 27,

28.

Michigan, the transport, 414.
Middlesex Canal, traffic on, in

1829, 9.

Milholland, James, 124.
Military Academy at West Point,

parade-ground of, 265.
Milk, carrying of, to city, 347~35i-
Mills, James C, quoted, 415, 416.
Minnehaha Bridge, at St. Paul, 66.
Minot, Charles, 25.
Missouri Pacific Railroad, 29.
Missouri, steel bridge across the,

144.

Moguls, locomotives, 124.
Mohawk & Hudson Railroad, 13,

41, 121.

Mono-rail, 441-445.
Monon Railroad, 385.
Monongahela River Bridge, 60.
Moodna Valley, steel trestle over,

143-

Morgan, J. P., 296, 328.
Morning Star, the, 299.
Morris Run, the, 133.
Morse, William, 265-267.
Mott Haven yards, 439.
Mount Clare yards, Baltimore,

120, 132.

Mount Royal station, Buffalo, 436.
Murray, Oscar G., 22.

NATIONAL Express Company, 373.
Naugatuck Railroad, 135.
New Brunswick bridge, over Rari-
tan River, 77.

New England Navigation Com-
pany, 405.

New Haven Railroad, i, 109, 147,
300, 313, 315, 3i6, 413, 419,

New York Central, 2, 14, 22, 27,
41, 104, 126, 147, 151. J54, 155,
167, 205, 268, 284, 285, 297, 298,
313, 315-317, 320, 361-363, 370,
384, 394, 407-410, 419-421, 435,
438.

New York Central & Hudson
River Railroad, 14, 104, 353,
378, 417, 434-

New York Connecting Railroad,

New York, New Haven & Hart-
ford Railroad, 98, 104, 315,
320, 404-406, 412, 433-

New York, railroad connections
of, 10, 21 ; tunnels in, 49 ; sta-
tions at, 88, 95, 96, 102-104,
159-162, 315, 318, 319, 32i,
412, 419, 421, 438-440; harbor
and commerce of, 409-412 ;
ferries in, 413-415.

New York & Harlem Railroad,
14, 60.

New York & New England Rail-
road, 98.

Newspapers, rapid delivery of,
382.

Niagara River bridge, 66.

Norfolk & Western Railroad, 144,
421.

Norris, William, 122.

North Station, Boston, 88, 97, 98,
313, 319, 320, 324, 384-

Northern Central Railroad, n, 96.

Northern Cross Railroad, 26.

Northern Pacific Railroad, 2, 29,
32, 50, 51.

Northern Steamship Company,
417.

Northwestern station, Chicago, 88,
101, 106, 321.

Norwich, Conn., 10.

OBSERVATION cars, 308, 309.
Officials of railroads, 170-219.
Ohio & Mississippi Railroad, 19.
Old Colony Railroad, 98, 405.
Olympic, the, 407.
Oneida Railways Company, 435.

INDEX

Oregon- Washington Railroad &
Navigation Company, 460.

Organization, as a means to secure
efficiency, 449-464.

Osgood, Samuel, 375.

" Our Inland Seas," quotation
from, 416.

Oxford Furnace, tunnel at, 145.

PACIFIC coast, railroad connections

of, 28-32.

Pacific type of locomotive, 127.
Paderewski at Vassar, 294, 295.
Palmer, Timothy, 58.
Panhandle subsidiary, The, 147,

148.
Panic, of '37, 13; of '07, 162, 359,

360.

Pape, Edward, 176, 177.
Park Avenue Tunnel, 439.
Park Square Station, Boston, 95,

96, 98.
Parkersburg, W. Va., railroad

connections of, 19; grade at,

41.

Parsons, Superintendent, 430.
Passenger coaches, 132-134, 398-

400.
Passenger service, first road to

have regular, 8.
Paterson works, 121, 122, 124.
Pay-car, gradual disappearance of

the, 180.

Pend Oreille River bridge, 73.
Pennsylvania Railroad, 2, 12, 49,

50, 61, 76, 77, 96, 109, 1 10, 123,

135, 145, 146, 154, 159, 167, 170,

194, 297, 298, 300, 313, 317, 320,

359, 379, 385, 386, 394, 401, 406,

412, 413, 417, 421, 423-427,

435, 441, 451.
Pennsylvania Station, New York,

88, 102-104, 159-162, 318, 319,

412, 440.
Pensions, granted to employees,

425, 426.

People's line, 12.
People's Pacific Railroad, 29.
Pere Marquette Railway, 416, 429.
Perham, Josiah, 29, 30.
Permanent Bridge, across Schuyl-

kill River at Philadelphia, 58.
Philadelphia, Germantown, and

Norristown Railroad, 123.

Philadelphia, railroad connections
of, 10, n, 15, 21 ; stations at,
88, 96, 97, 154, 320, 440.

Philadelphia, Wilmington & Bal-
timore Railroad, 20.

Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad,
12.

Philadelphia & Reading Railroad,
2, 97, 124.

" Piano-box " system of switches,
84,85,86. '

Pig iron, handling of, 341, 342.

Pioneer, locomotive, 27.

Pioneer, sleeping-car, 301, 302, 303.

Pittsburgh, railroad connections
of, n, 12, 15, 18, 19; suburban
traffic of, 147, 148; Union Sta-
tion at, 148.

Planes, inclined, disuse of, n, 12.

Plumbe, John, 29.

Pomeroy, George, 371.

Pooling, objections to, 328, 331.

Portage, N. Y., bridge at, 62.

Portage Railroad, see Alleghany
Portage Railroad.

Post-office Department, United
States, 372-387.

Poughkeepsie Bridge, 66.

Prairie, type of locomotive, 127.

Pratt, — , designer of bridges, 61.

President, the, 304.

President of the railroad, the, 152-
169.

Prince Rupert, on Grand Trunk
Pacific Railroad, 32.

Private car lines, 13, 293-298.

Promotion in railroad service,
245, 255.

Providence, R. I., railroad connec-
tions of, 10.

" Public service stations," 287.

Pullman, George M., 134, 299, 393-

Pullman and its railroad shops,

_ ,393, 394-

Pullman cars, construction of, 303.

Pullman Palace Car Company,
303.

Bueen City, the, 299.
uincy Granite Railroad, 132.

RAILROAD, The.
history of, in United States, 3-

33-
English, 5, 7.

INDEX

473

Railroad, The (continued).
first American, 6.
horse-power, 6, 12, 17.
communal nature of early, 12.
paper of, 23.

treatment of bankrupt, 23.
telegraph first used by, 23.
development and building of,

34-48.

grants for, 35, 36.
cost of, 36.

financing of, 36, 37, 179-186.
keeping open for winter traffic,

38, 26^-275.
water for use of, 41.
crossings on, 42.
tunnels, 48-55, 145-150, 436, 437.
bridges, 42, 56-79.
stations, 80-106.
suburban service, 80, 81, 90, 311-

324-

roundhouses, 88-90.
yards, 83-91, 115-118.
freight terminals, 107-115, 408.
locomotives and cars, 119-137,

388-404.
building of the locomotive, 128-

132.

building of cars, 132-137.
reconstruction of, 138.
grades, 139-151.
officials, 152-169, 187-219, 276-

287.

legal department, 170-179.
financial department, 179-186.
tickets, 181-183, 288-290.
operating, 220-242.
time table, 221-223.
signals, 225-227, 236-238.
use of telephone, 235.
employees, 243-255, 418-431.
wrecking trains, 256.
rates, 282-287.
special trains and private cars,

292-310.

commuters' trains, 311-324-
freight traffic, 325-355.
freight rates, 3.27-337-
scientific farming, 359-366.
express service, 369-374.
mail service, 374-387-
marine, 404-418.
ferries, 407-418.
electricity, 432-445.
mono-rail, 441-445.
organization, 449-464.

Rails laid on stone sleepers, u.

Reading Railroad, 123, 313, 320.

Rebating, prohibition of, 328, 329.

Reconstruction of railroads, 138-
Kfi

Red Line, All-British, 141.

Red Spot, Order of the, 430, 431.

Repair shops, locomotive and car,
400.

" Residences," in railroad con-
struction, 43.

Richardson, the architect, 106.

Rider, Nathaniel, 60.

Rio Grande & Western Railroad,
74*

Roadmaster, duties of, 239, 240.

Roads as compared with canals, 5.

Rochester, railroad connections
of, 13, 14; depot, 96.

Rock Island, see Chicago, Rock
Island & Pacific R. R.

Rockaway section, Long Island,
home of Lillian Russell, 294.

Rockefeller, Mr., 296.

Roebling's suspension at Niagara
Falls, 75-

Rogers, Grosvenor, and Ketchum,
locomotive builders, of Pater-
son, N. J., 26; locomotive
works, 121, 122, 124.

Ronkonkoma, Long Island, home
of Maude Adams, 293, 294.

Roosevelt, Governor, 217, 218.

Rotary plough, 271.

Roundhouses, 88-90, 270, 388-402.

Rural free delivery, development
of, 376.

Russell, Lillian, 294.

Rutland Railroad, 417.

SACRAMENTO Valley Railroad, 30.
Sails on cars, experiments with,

17-

St. Albans, Vt, 333, 335-
St. John's Church, New York, 354.
St. John's Park, New York, 353,

354-
St. Louis, railroad connections of,

19, 29; Union Station at, 88,

97, 99, loo, 106.
St. Paul, see Chicago, Milwaukee

& St. Paul R. R.

Salaries, paid to railroad presi-
dents, 168, 169; to the general

attorney, 171.

474

INDEX

" Sand-hogs," 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 7L

73-
Sandusky, first locomotive with

whistle, 26, 124.
Santa Fe, see Atchison, Topeka

& Santa Fe R. R.
Schedules, Train, see Time Tables.
Scherl, August, 443.
Secret service, the railroad's, 177-

179.
Section-boss, duties of, 239, 240,

43i.
Seibert, Leonard, 301.

Signal, bell-rope, 124, 225, 226, 227;
along line of railroad, 236 ; in-
terlocking, 236; block system
of, 237; operation of, 236-239;
maintenance of, 239.

Signal towers, 82, 84-87.

Situation, The, the official daily
report, 196, 197.

Slateford, Pa., bridge, 78.

Sleeping-cars, introduction and
use of, 299, 301, 302,

Smith, A. H., 205.

Smith, C. Shaler, 66.

Smith, Reuben F., 418.

Snow-belt of Great Lakes, 268.

Snow ploughs, 38.

Snow-sheds, 268.

South Carolina Railroad, 8.

South Station, Boston, 88, 97-99,
313, 319, 320, 384.

Southern California, interurban
electric line in, 297.

Southern Express company, 373.

Southern Pacific Railroad, 2, 32,
126, 139, 144, 159, 441, 454.

Spearman, Frank H., 144.

Spiral tunnels, 141, 142.

Spokane case, the, 334, 335.

Springfield, Mass., bridge, 57.

Springfield, station at, 106.

Springstead, Harvey, 431.

Stage, Henry W., 418.

Stampede Tunnel, 50, 51.

Stanford, Leland, 30, 31.

Starucca Viaduct, 58, 59, 77.

Station-agent, multifarious duties
of, 253-255:

Stations, see under Railroad.

Statistics, making of railroad.
184-186.

Steam brake, 125.

Steamships, 352, 353, 404, 405.

Steel, use of, 56, 61, 72, 125, 386,
397-400.

Stephenson, George, inventor, 5,
121.

Stephenson, George & Robert &
Company, 121.

Stephenson, Robert, 125.

Steubenville, Ohio, bridge, 75, 76.

Stonington, Conn., railroad con-
nections of, 10.

Stourbridge Lion, locomotive, 7,
8, 119.

Street railroad systems, 427, 428.

Stubbs, of the Union Pacific, 298.

Suburban service, 80, 81, 90, 98,
99, 147, 148, 315-319, 440.

Superintendent of bridges, 239,
240.

Superintendents, 153-155, 187, 220,
221-242.

Susquehanna Railroad, see North-
ern Central Railroad.

Susquehanna River, Pennsylvania
R. R. bridge over, 77.

Susquehanna River bridge, be-
tween Havre-de-Grace and
Aiken, 64, 65.

Susquehanna shop, 393, 394.

Swindon, the English railroad
town, 393.

Switchback principle, 41.

Switches and switchmen, 84-86,
1 11-118, 252, 253, 320.

TACONY, Philadelphia trains
stopped at, 10.

Taylor, President Zachary, 123.

Telegraph, Erie first railroad to
use, 24; development of, in
1851, 24; introduction of, 25,
224; substitution of telephone
for, 235, 236; crippling of
service of, 267, 268.

Telephone, use of, 235, 236.

Terminal, keeper of the, 82; map
of tracks and station of, 83,
84; guarded by interlocking
switches, 84, 85.

Terminals, see Railroad stations;
also Freight terminals.

Thomas, Philip E., 16, 19.

Thomas Viaduct, 58, 59, 76.

Thompson, A. W., 65.
Thomson, J. Edgar, 6.
Thomson, John, 6.

INDEX

475

" Throat " of station yard, 87, 88.

Tickets and mileage-books, 182,
276-278, 286; bill for printing,
288; rate-sheet for, 289; re-
demption of, 289, 290.

Time Tables, 221.

Tioga Railroad, 133.

Tom Thumb, locomotive, 18, 120.

Towanda, Pa., bridge at, 144.

Towermen, 82, 83, 85, 274.

Townsend, Oscar, 418.

Track-laying, world's record of,
45 J profession of, 45» 46 ; ma-
chine for, 46.

Track, on which Stourbridge Lion
locomotive ran, 7.

Track-walker, responsibility of,

Traffic, making of freight and pas-
senger, 355-368.

Trailer, the, 128, 129.

Train-despatcher, 221, 223, 224,
228-231, 233-235, 261.

Trainman, see Brakeman, duties
of.

Train-master, duties of, 221.

Transcontinental railroads, 357,
358.

Transfer-house, 111-116.

Travelling passenger agents, duties
of, 278.

Trenton, bridge at, 57, 77.

" Trolley arrangement " in freight-
houses, 450.

Trumbull, — , bridge-builder, 60.

Tug, use of, 407, 409, 412.

Tunnels, 41, 48-55, 102, 104, 122,
141, 142, 145, 160, 161, 317-
319, 412-414, 436, 437, 439, 441.

Turner, John B., 28.

Turn-tables, 89.

UNDERWOOD, F. D., 23, 142, 143,

164.

Union line, 13.
Union Pacific Railroad, 2, 28, 31,

32, 44, 137, I39-I4I, 298, 357,

459'
Union Station, Cleveland, 96, 418,

419.

Union Station, Pittsburgh, 148.
Union Station, St. Louis, 88, 97,

99, loo, 106.

Union Station, Washington, 88,

100, 101, 106.

United States Express Company,

372, 373-
Utica, railroad connections of, 13,

14.

VANDERBILT, Commodore, 14, 22,

378, 379..

id(

Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 419.
Vanderbilt, William H., 378, 379.
Vanderbilt family, the, 354, 419,

434-

Vermont Central Railroad, 123.
Vice-presidents of railroads, 156.
Voluntary Relief Department, 423-

425.
Von Moltke, his reconstruction of

the German army, 452.

WABASH Railroad, 26, 51, 414.
Wagner Palace Car Company, 300.
Walcott, — , builder of Springfield,

Mass., bridge, 57.
Walsheart gears, 128.
Washington, George, 375.
" Washington cars," 132, 133.
Washington, Connecticut Avenue

Bridge at, 78; Union Station

at, 88, loo, 101, 1 06.
Water for use of railroad, 41.
Water transportation, see Inland

Water Ways.
Waterford bridge, over Hudson

River, 57.

Watertown, blizzard at, 268.
Waverley, the interchange yard,

no.
Webster, Daniel, and his trip on

the Erie, 23, 25.
Weehawken "bridge," 411.
Wells, Henry, 371, 372.
Wells, Fargo & Co., 372, 373.
West Perm Road, 149.
West Point, locomotive, 9.
West Shore Railroad, 75, 151, 265,

412, 434, 435.

Western Pacific Railroad, 29, 32.
Western Railroad, 10.
Westinghouse, George, 125.
Wheeling, railroad connections of,

18, 19.

Whipple, Squire, 61, 63.
Whistle on locomotive, first use of,

26, 124.

Whitney, Asa, 29, 30.
Whitney, Silas, 6.

476 INDEX

Whyte's classification, 127, 128. World's Fair of 1904, St. Louis,
Wiley, Dr., 397. 99-

Willard, Daniel, 22. Wrecks railroad, 189, 194-196;
Winans, Ross, 19, 122, 124, 132, wrecking-trams for, 257-265.

Winning shop.393. Sttt^d& of, ,89, W
Women, conveniences for travel- Io^j 227-229

ling, 309. York, see Arabian, locomotive.

Woodruff Company, 299, 300. Young Men's Christian Associa-
Worcester, station at, 106. tion, 418, 419.

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