THE PASSENGER STATIONS
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.
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 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 running down
the platform. In fifteen seconds, the platform is black with men.
There are many more of these trains, a great multiplication 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 clatter 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 population 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 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 human 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 coming 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 nearest 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.
[Illustration: THE NORTHWESTERN'S MONUMENTAL NEW TERMINAL ON THE WEST SIDE
OF CHICAGO]
[Illustration: THE UNION STATION AT WASHINGTON]
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 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 complicated 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 compelling 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, apparently,
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 signal 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 constantly 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 roundabout 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 compass set within the brain of the terminal.
This illuminated map sets upon the best piece of mechanism that has yet
been devised for the operation of the terminal yard. It is a long boxed
affair, not entirely unlike the box of the old-fashioned square piano, but
in this case (the terminal we are watching being of unusual capacity) 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 simplest equivalent--the separate hand operation of a gigantic 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 switchman. 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 railroad 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 condensation of the switch and
signal control and interlocking devices. The men who designed this
particular city gate designed it to accommodate more than a thousand
outgoing 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 bringing 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 160 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, working 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 installed; 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 direction 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'll stop on
the same nick as the express. Watch them both, carefully."
"Isn't it quite a trick handling those trains simultaneously?"
"Not much," a smile fixed itself upon the chief towerman's features, as he
fingered his greasy timetable. "Here's four trains pulling out here
simultaneously at 5:40. On top of that we get a Forest Hills local in at
5:39, a Hudson Upper local at 5:40, an Ogontz at 5:42, a Readville at
5:43, all incoming, and pull out two more at 5:43. Ten trains in just four
minutes isn't bad, and we haven't begun to feel the capacity of this
terminal yet.
"That isn't all of it. We get the whole thing criss-crossed on us
sometimes; and perhaps they'll put on an extra getting out of here at
5:40, and that'll 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.
"It's as easy for him as unbroken rail off in the country," 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 signal, 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 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 passenger, 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
handling 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 impracticable and an abomination to the
operating department. 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 converge. 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 convergence
is known to the towerman and all the other workers as the "throat" of the
yard. It is by far the most important point of the terminal, and is the
usual location of the control tower, with its authority over several
hundred switches and signals.
Upon the number of main tracks in this "throat" depends 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 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, 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 coaling the locomotives--several at
a time--as well as supplying them with water, sand, and other necessities.
Possibly the terminal will be big enough to demand shop facilities for
trifling repairs and maintenance of both cars and motive power. A big
passenger terminal is a much bigger 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 operate 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
roundhouse, without another thought of the train. Its responsibility ended
as soon as the run ended in the train-shed. The engineer simply has to
see that his locomotive is carefully 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
contain 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, compressed air being used in many cases and
to great advantage. 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 addition, 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 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 engineers who design it is the point that we
have just considered--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 extravagance 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 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 require 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 terminal building. Upon it some
persons congregate preparatory 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 convenience. Arriving and
departing passengers, with a percentage 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 building, 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 portion 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 unnumbered
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
facilities, with their necessary addenda of store-rooms, refrigerators
and kitchens, as complete as those of the largest hotels.
The baggage accommodations deserve a paragraph by themselves. Americans,
due to the liberal baggage provisions of our railroads, travel each year
with increased impedimenta. Each year the task of the baggage-handlers
multiplies. Making room for trunks has come to be an important terminal
provision. In the large terminals, this traffic is divided, an 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
platforms 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 unusually 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 express facilities among
these structures, but these, as has already been intimated, are generally
apart and quite separate from the passenger facilities. A power plant is
another necessity. The buildings must be heated, cars warmed in freezing
weather long before the locomotives are attached, ice-machines operated
for the station restaurant, 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 commercial structures.
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 foremost 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 terminal in an important city ten years ago
and blindly imagined 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 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 another 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 & Providence 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 engineer 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 railroads 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 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 century--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 Susquehanna 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 American 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 Cleveland 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 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 system being made second to none
in the world. To the traveller, the ivory-white waiting-room, where
Philadelphians 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 terminal rivalling Broad Street in beauty, and only slightly inferior in
capacity. Philadelphia possesses two distinguished 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 overwhelming; 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 railroad lines entering from the north. This
terminal--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 possibility. Boston, like
Philadelphia, spreads out well beyond 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 Southern 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 Station. To accommodate the vast traffic of all these railroads, 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 suburban 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 underneath 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. 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 themselves, 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 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 arrangements,
and lesser evils. Within two years, they had substituted, without
increasing the area of the Union Station property, a 10-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 wonderful 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 buildings but even in
that day the white marble station, exceeding in size all other Washington
buildings save the Capitol itself, will remain the dominating feature of
that facing plaza. It has been created in simple classic outline, a
vaulted train-shed being purposely omitted, in order that the station
should not overshadow the proportions 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 architectural features of Chicago--a structure of
classic design, the dominating feature of which is a colonnaded portico,
monumental in type and towering to a height of 120 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 features 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 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 themselves 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 excavated 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 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.
[Illustration: A MODEL AMERICAN RAILROAD STATION--THE UNION STATION OF THE
NEW YORK CENTRAL, BOSTON & ALBANY, DELAWARE & HUDSON, AND WEST SHORE
RAILROADS AT ALBANY]
[Illustration: THE CLASSIC PORTAL OF THE PENNSYLVANIA'S NEW STATION IN NEW
YORK]
[Illustration: THE BEAUTIFUL CONCOURSE OF THE NEW PENNSYLVANIA STATION, IN
NEW YORK]
[Illustration: "THE WAITING-ROOM IS THE MONUMENTAL AND ARTISTIC EXPRESSION
OF THE STATION,"--THE WAITING-ROOM OF THE UNION DEPOT AT TROY, NEW YORK]
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 Dresden, Germany, individual stairs and
elevators lead to each of the track platforms. A sub-concourse, hung
directly underneath the main structure, is reserved for exit purposes
only, and serves to separate the streams of incoming 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. Similarly, 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.
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 Station upon the site of and during
the use of the old. The Grand Central Station, used by both the New York
Central and the New York, New Haven, & Hartford Railroads, has been for
many years New York's great gateway 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 substitution 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 excavation of several million
cubic yards of rock and earth.
To accomplish the work of reconstruction and still enable the station to
handle its great traffic without serious interruption, serious forethought
and definite plans of action 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 dimensions 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 architectural feature, a concourse of
mammoth proportions. The lesser features of the new Grand Central will
contribute 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. An age in which the American
demands the exquisite and the monumental in his architecture, palatial
homes, palatial shops, palatial hotels, demands that the railroad station
be something more than the mere expression of a commercial utility. Stone,
the sturdy and durable building 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 Springfield, 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 elaborate 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.