THE MODERN RAILROAD
[Illustration: READY FOR THE DAY'S RUN]
THE MODERN RAILROAD
BY EDWARD HUNGERFORD
AUTHOR OF "LITTLE CORKY," "THE MAN WHO STOLE A
RAILROAD," ETC.
WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1911
COPYRIGHT
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1911
Published November, 1911
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England
PRESS OF THE VAIL COMPANY
COSHOCTON, U. S. A.
TO MY FATHER
IN RECOGNITION OF HIS
INTEREST AND APPRECIATION
THIS BOOK
IS DEDICATED
PREFACE
To bring to the great lay mind some slight idea of the intricacy and the
involved detail of railroad operation 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 competently 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 permitting 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 compilation 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 Railroads." 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 1, 1911_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
THE RAILROADS AND THEIR BEGINNINGS 1
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--Locomotives
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 making of
the Baltimore & Ohio--The "Tom Thumb" engine--Difficulties in
crossing the Appalachians--Extension to Pittsburgh--Troubles of
the Erie Railroad--This road the first to use the telegraph--The
prairies begin to be crossed by railways--Chicago's first
railroad, the Galena & Chicago Union--Illinois Central--Rock
Island, the first to span the Mississippi--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 charter--
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 tunnel.
CHAPTER V
BRIDGES 56
Bridges of timber, then stone, then steel--The Starucca
Viaduct--The first iron bridge in the United States--Steel
bridges--Engineering triumphs--Different types of railroad
bridge--The deck span and the truss span--Suspension
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
yardmaster.
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--Increase
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 improvements
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
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 employees 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
superintendent deals with men; the general manager with
superintendents"--"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 commuters--His
manner with a spiteful "kicker"--A dishonest conductor who had a
"pull"--A system of demerits for employees--Dealing with
drunkards--With selfish and covetous men.
CHAPTER XIV
OPERATING THE RAILROAD 220
Authority of the chief clerk and that of the assistant
superintendent--Responsibilities of engineers, firemen, master
mechanic, 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--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 brakeman'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'hôte_ and _a la
carte_--_Café_-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 volume of
suburban travel--Electrification of the lines--Long Island
Railroad almost exclusively suburban--Varied distances of
suburban homes from the cities--Club-cars for commuters--
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.
CHAPTER XXI
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 developed
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 express
service--Postage rates--Establishment and organization of great
express companies--Collection and distribution of express
matter--Relation between express companies and railroads--
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 404
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.
CHAPTER XXVI
KEEPING IN TOUCH WITH THE MEN 418
The first organized branch of the Railroad Y. M. C. A.--
Cornelius Vanderbilt's gift of a club-house--Growth of the
Railroad 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
traction--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
engines" 39
Cutting a path for the railroad through the crest of the
high hills 44
A giant fill--in the making 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 together the different parts of his new
construction 69
The new Brandywine Viaduct of the Baltimore & Ohio, at
Wilmington, Del. 69
The Northwestern's monumental new terminal on the West
Side of Chicago 82
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 constantly 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 Railroad 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 in 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 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
Railroad 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
modern 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
quadrant" signal 249
The wrecking train ready to start out from the yard 262
"Two of these great cranes can grab a wounded Mogul
locomotive and put her out of the way" 262
"The shop-men form no mean brigade in this industrial army
of America" 263
"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, Philadelphia, 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
Northern 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
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
agricultural 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 presents 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
railroading" 373
A famous cantilever rapidly disappearing--the substitution
of a new Kentucky river bridge for the old, on the Queen &
Crescent 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 Weehawken, opposite
New York City 406
High-speed, direct-current passenger locomotive built by
the General 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
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 Railroad, in New York 434
Two triple-phase locomotives of the Great Northern Railway
helping a double-header steam train up the grade into the
Cascade 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 uplands. 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 become 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 stagnation begone. It
creates. It reaches forth with its life, and life is born._
_The railroad is life itself!_
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--LOCOMOTIVES 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.
Fifteen or twenty great railroad systems are the overland carriers of the
United States. Measured 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 Central 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 comparatively 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 bringing 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 ranking as great railroads within this
territory are the Chesapeake & 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 interchange point, about half way
between New York and Chicago. There are important roads in the South,
reaching 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 tonnage; 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 Canadian Pacific Railway,
another approaching completion in 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 railroad has been in the making. These busy years are
illuminating. They tell with precise accuracy the development 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 improvement and development. Under the control of a distant and
unsympathetic nation there had been very little encouragement for
development; but with an independent 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 dollars 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 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 development lay in the canal
works. Canals had already proved their success in England and within
Continental Europe, and their introduction into the United States
established 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 encouragement 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 conservative 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 solution of
the transportation problem upon which rested the internal development of
the United States.
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 earnest 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 railroad 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
investigation and report. Allen was filled with the enthusiasm of youth.
He went prepared to look into a new era in transportation.
In the meantime other railroad projects were also under 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 became at a much later day president of the Pennsylvania Railroad
Company, and who is known as one of the master minds in American
transportation progress. Similar records remain of the existence of a
short line near Richmond, 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
considerable distinction and became of such general interest that a public
house was opened alongside its rails to accommodate 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 January, 1829,
with glowing accounts of the success of the English railroads, he found
the progressive men of the Delaware & Hudson anxiously awaiting an
inspection of the _Stourbridge Lion_, the first of four locomotives
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 resembled 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, seventeen
miles distant. A few days later--the ninth of August, to be exact--he ran
the _Lion_, the first turning 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 resounding 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 experiments with the locomotive
ranked him as a railroad engineer 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 service, 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 service. A little later, a bigger and better engine,
also of 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 antagonism that the
railroad was to face. The owners of the canals were keen-sighted enough to
discover a dangerous 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 ambitions 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 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 obstacles 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 Boston & Worcester 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 steamboat to Norwich, then by coach over the post-road up to
Boston. Norwich saw the railroad take away its supremacy in the through
traffic. Finally it awoke to its necessity, and arranged to build a
railroad to reach the existing line at Providence.
Between New York and Philadelphia railroad communication 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 steamboat 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 Chesapeake Bay before
Baltimore was finally reached. A little later there developed an all-rail
route between Philadelphia and Baltimore although not upon the line of the
present most direct route.
From Philadelphia an early double-track railroad extended 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 unexampled 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 railroad. There are ten
inclined planes, five ascending and five descending; the carriages are
dragged up the former and slowly let down the latter by means of
stationary engines, the comparatively level spaces between being
traversed sometimes by horse and sometimes by engine power, as the
case demands.... The journey 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 system 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 locomotives 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 Pennsylvania 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 Portage
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 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 popularize 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. Railroads 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
Schenectady to Utica, another from that pent-up city to Syracuse, still
another from Syracuse to Rochester. From Rochester 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.
Even after that it was a crude sort of affair. At several of the large
towns across the State the continuity of the rails was broken. Utica was
jealous of this privilege 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 passengers 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 carrying 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 ultimate destiny in
railroading. The little weak roads across the Empire State were first
gathered into the powerful New York Central, and after a time they were
permitted 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.