THE LUXURY OF MODERN RAILROAD TRAVEL
SPECIAL TRAINS PROVIDED--PRIVATE CARS--SPECIALS FOR ACTORS, ACTRESSES,
AND MUSICIANS--CRUDE COACHES ON EARLY RAILROADS--LUXURIOUS OLD-TIME
SLEEPING-CARS--PULLMAN'S SLEEPERS MADE AT FIRST FROM OLD COACHES--HIS
PIONEER--THE FIRST DINING-CARS--THE PRESENT-DAY DINING-CARS--DINNERS,
TABLE D' HÔTE AND A LA CARTE--CAFÉ-CARS--BUFFET-CARS--CARE FOR THE
COMFORT OF WOMEN.
If a man stops you in Nassau Street, New York, in the late afternoon, and
you miss your favorite eighteen-hour train; if it is imperative that you
be in Chicago the next morning at ten o'clock, and (this a most important
"if") if you are willing to spend your money pretty freely, the railroad
will accomplish it for you. If you are well known, and your credit
accomplished with the railroad folks, it is highly probable that you will
find your special, ready to accomplish an over-night run of nearly 1,000
miles, standing waiting in the train-shed when you hurry to the station.
Even if your credit is not so established, the sight of several thousand
dollars in greenbacks will accomplish the trick for you. The train will be
ready in any event almost as soon as you.
If you are planning a novel outing, you may ring for a railroad
representative and he will bring to your house or to your office tickets
on any train and to any part of the world, or he will be prepared to
arrange a special train for a night's run or for a three months' swing
around the country. Your train may be of any length you desire and are
willing to pay for. You can hire a car and it will be handled either as
regular express trains or with special engines. You pay the bills and you
have your choice.
A run in a private car is the acme of luxury to the average man. These are
used for a variety of purposes in these comfort-loving days, and the sight
of one or more of them attached to the rear of a heavy train has ceased to
excite comment. The average luxury-loving millionaire has one--possibly
two--of these expensive toys attached to an entourage that embraces
ocean-going yachts, complete stables, and dozens of motor-cars of every
description. If he can claim some sort of responsible connection with a
large railroad system, he is likely to have his car hauled free from one
ocean to the other; and the millionaire likes these little perquisites. He
is not so far removed, after all, from the man who huddles in the corner
of the smoking-car and secretly hopes and prays that the conductor will
forget to collect his ticket.
To appreciate the number and variety of these cars take a look at the
passenger sidings at any of the large Florida beach hotels in midwinter.
Better still, run down to Princeton or up to New Haven at any large
football game. You will see parked there at such a time from sixty to one
hundred of these palatial cars, some of them private property, others
chartered for the occasion.
Even in the middle of the night this branch of luxurious railroad traffic
is still at your disposal. An emergency call summons you out of town for a
distance, and the night train schedules do not meet your needs. The night
train-master will meet your needs. He will act as the agent of the
railroad and arrange, while you hold the telephone receiver in your
fingers, the entire schedule for you. Trains will be held, connections
made; the telegraph is capable of arranging the details. If you demand
speed, the railroad will give it to you--if you are willing to pay the
price and give a release against damage to your precious bones. Increased
speed means increased risk to your railroader.
Maude Adams uses a special many Saturday nights to carry her down to her
Long Island farm at Ronkonkoma. Her place is far out of the regular
suburban district, and there are no regular trains that will enable her to
reach it after the evening performance. For ordinary service she is quite
content with a private car--the mania has its deathly grip on a good many
of our prosperous theatrical folk.
Lillian Russell used to live down in the Rockaway section of Long Island,
hardly outside of the New York City limits. When she played in the
metropolis a special train carried her six nights in the week out to her
suburban home. There were plenty of regular trains--theatre trains, in the
colloquialism of the railroaders--but the prima donna would have none of
them. She had acquired the private-car mania while she was on the road. So
her special stood night after night in the big railroad terminal in Long
Island City--a neat little acquisition for a prosperous lady. The nightly
ride cost her fifty dollars to the railroad company; and the generous tips
she lavished, from the engine-cab back, doubled that sum.
Hardly a prosperous star, these days, but demands in the contract a
fully-equipped car for the long, hard days on the road. The car has some
value for advertising; its greatest value, however, lies in the maximum
degree of comfort that it affords, as compared with the constant changing
from one country hotel to another. Sometimes the biggest of these folk let
the mania seize so tightly upon them that they go to excess.
Paderewski, on his first trip to America, made a flying journey up to
Poughkeepsie to bewilder the fair Vassarites. He shuddered at the thought
of what he was pleased to call the provinces. He had the popular European
notion of American small towns and their hostelries. Poughkeepsie has very
comfortable hotels, but Paderewski would not risk them. He would not sleep
in them, neither would he eat in them. A private car solved the first of
these problems; the second was met by bringing two cooks and a waiter up
from the New York hotel in which he was staying. He was paid $1,000 for
the concert, and his travelling expenses cost him more than half that sum,
which was a pretty good ratio.
Still, stage folk are not in the habit of counting either ratios or their
pennies, and the average prima donna would make some sacrifices at the
savings-bank in order to indulge herself in this extravagant and purely
American mania. The grand-opera folk indulge themselves to the limit,
invariably at the expense of the beneficent _impresario_. But even this
long-suffering publicist does not feel the expense so bitterly. Special
trains for opera companies make splendid advertising, but they do not cost
one cent more than regular transportation. For the railroads, acting under
the guidance of an all-wise and all-powerful commission down at
Washington, will issue, without extra cost, from sixty to one hundred
tickets for the man who orders a special train at two dollars a mile. In
this way the wise theatrical manager keeps his little flock segregated
while _en route_, and reaps gratuitously the prestige and the advertising
that ensue.
Even the cheaper companies have their own cars--gaudy affairs most of
them, their battered sides still reflecting the brilliancy of some gifted
sign-painter. You must remember seeing them in the long ago, back there at
the home-town, stuck in the long siding next the coal-shed, and surrounded
by admiring youth, getting its first faint taint of the mania. The
All-Star Imperial Minstrel Troupes, and the Uncle Tom shows, are the
graveyards of the private cars. Proud equipages that in their days have
housed real magnates and have been the theatres of what we like
mysteriously to call "big deals," once supplanted, drop quickly down the
scale of elegance. In their last days they come to the hard use of some
itinerant band of entertainers, to squeak their rusty joints and worn
frames as if in protest against a fly-by-night existence over jerkwater
railroad branches.
Come back again to those cars you see at the college football games, the
travelling private palaces that migrate up to Newport, the White
Mountains, and the Adirondacks in summer; that flock south in the winter
like the birds. The astonishing thing is that few of these cars are owned
by the persons who are using them. Of course, as we have already said, if
a man can lay claim to some railroad connection, he can get his car hauled
free over other lines and, perhaps, get it built for him; but more of that
in a moment. There are probably not more than 40 private cars in the land
that are owned by persons not connected with the railroads. This is an
astonishingly low figure, considering the number of these craft that are
constantly drifting about our 200,000 miles of track. Some society folk
have cars as a part of their daily life, but the storage costs are apt to
cause a man to think twice before he buys one. Mr. Rockefeller and Mr.
Morgan have managed to worry along very comfortably without contracting
the disease. As a rule, both of these men are willing to accept the
comfort of any of the fast limited trains that form part of the luxurious
equipment of the American railroad.
But the fact remains that the average citizen, when he is felled by an
intermittent attack of the private-car mania, is content to hire one of
the very comfortable equipages that the Pullman Company keeps ready at big
terminals at various points across the country. The arrangements for these
are exclusive of the price paid to the railroad companies for their haul.
A complete private car, equipped with staterooms, baths, private
dining-room, observation parlor and the like, costs seventy-five dollars a
day. For two or more days this rate drops to fifty dollars a day. An extra
charge is made for food; but the railroad will deliver the car without
charge at the point from which you wish to begin your journey.
[Illustration: CONNECTING DRAWING ROOM AND STATE ROOM]
[Illustration: "A MAN MAY HAVE AS FINE A BED IN A SLEEPING CAR AS IN THE
BEST HOTEL IN ALL THE LAND"]
[Illustration: "YOU MAY HAVE THE MANICURE UPON THE MODERN TRAIN"]
[Illustration: "THE DINING-CAR IS A SOCIABLE SORT OF PLACE"]
For the haul of these cars the railroads will charge you according to
their regularly filed tariffs, unless you have that valued connection with
some common carrier. This varies from a minimum of from eighteen to
twenty-five first-class fares. In other words, let us assume that the
minimum in a particular case is twenty fares. That particular railroad
will carry up to twenty persons in the car at its regular fares; if there
are more than twenty aboard it will get a full fare ticket from each over
the minimum allowance. That is all a matter established as the special
train rates are established, not by whim, but by law.
Strange as it may seem, the private car mania, in chronic form, seems to
attack some railroad presidents most violently. For reasons which show
that railroading is a business filled with fine tact and diplomacy, these
cars are called business cars. It is also remarkable that for size and
elegance they vary in almost inverse ratio to the size and importance of
the railroad that owns them. Big railroads, like the Pennsylvania, the
Harriman lines, and the New York Central rather pride themselves upon the
simplicity of their official cars. Some of these are plain almost to the
point of shabbiness. Contrasted with these are the private cars belonging
to the head of a great interurban electric line in Southern California, a
car so wondrously beautiful that it was carried all the way to Washington,
in the Spring of 1905, so that a thousand foreign railroad managers there
gathered in convention, might see the attainments of American
car-builders. Another Western railroad, a small steam line this time,
boasts a president's car with a dining service that cost $2,500. A little
Mississippi lumbering road spent $40,000 in providing a private car for
its operating head.
The big Eastern roads know about all of these cars. Their heads get
frequent invitations to take a run over the K., Y. & Z., or some other
enterprising jerkwater road that runs from the back waters to the bad
lands. Of course, they never take the trip, but they invariably see the
next step in the developments. It comes in the form of requests for a
"pass for haul of car and party" from Chicago to New York and return.
Time was when the New York Central and the Pennsylvania were laid low
under the avalanche of requests of this sort. Some of their slower trains
were laden down with long strings of these deadhead caravans, and on one
memorable occasion a whole section was made up of the prominent private
cars of decidedly unprominent railroad officers.
Since the introduction of the eighteen-hour trains between these two most
important cities of the country this burden has been lessened. These
fastest trains will absolutely not haul any private cars at any price; it
is a rule that would not be abrogated for the President of the United
States. So the railroaders of the West, from the big men like Stubbs and
Kruttschnitt of the Union Pacific down to the small fry, leave their cars
in the roomy terminal yards at Chicago and come to New York most of the
time on one or the other of the eighteen-hour trains. About the only time
their cars come East nowadays is when they are bringing their families to
the seashore for the Summer.
So much for the private cars. They are perhaps one of the most typical
things of the America of to-day, as we have seen. Actresses and
millionaires use them for their private comfort and convenience; tourist
parties roam forth in them; delegations proceed in them to conventions;
civic bodies find them agreeable aids to junketing. Sometimes a party of
sportsmen will charter a car and hie themselves off to a secluded spot
where the railroad roams through the forest, find an idle siding and use
their car for a camp for a week, a fortnight, or even a month. Cities and
States use private cars as travelling museums to exploit their charms,
some of them are travelling chapels for religious propagandism. The uses
of the private car are nearly as manifold as those of the railroad itself.
* * * * *
In the beginning things were different. Our great grand-daddies drew no
class lines when they travelled, but were content to find shelter from
the storm, or upon pleasant days from the showers of sparks scattered by
the locomotive. But when the railroad began to stretch itself and to be a
thing of reaches, it was found advisable to run trains at night in order
to make quick communication between distant points. Travelling at night in
the crude coaches of the early railroads was an abominable thing, and
before the forties the old Cumberland Valley Railroad was operating some
crude sort of sleeping-cars. Within another decade there was much
experimenting of this sort. Old-timers on the Erie still remember the
sleeping-cars that were built on that road soon after the close of the
Civil War. There were six of them, more like summer cottages than cars,
for the Erie was then of 6-foot gauge, and its cars were 12 feet wide. The
berths were made up in crude form by hanging curtains from iron rods and
bringing the bedding from a storage closet at the end of the car. There
was a little less privacy in them than in the modern Pullman, but in the
eyes of Jim Fisk, whose love of elegant luxury was first responsible for
their construction, they were nothing less than palaces. One of them was
named after Fisk and carried his portrait in an immense decorative
medallion on each of its sides. The other cars were the _Jay
Gould_--without decorative medallions--the _Morning Star_, the _Evening
Star_, the _Queen City_, and the _Crescent City_. All you have to do
to-day, to set an old Erie man's tongue wagging, is to speak of one of
these cars. They were triumphs, and away back in that day and generation
they cost $60,000 each.
But while many men were fussing in futile ways to build comfortable cars
for long journeys, a man named George M. Pullman, over in Western New
York, was packing his goods and making ready to go to Chicago and build
his world-famed car-works there. Pullman's cars survived the others. He
bought in the Woodruff Company and some lesser concerns, and for many
years his only important rival was the Wagner Palace Car Company, a
Vanderbilt property. In course of time this too was absorbed, and the
Pullman Company had virtual control of the luxurious part of American
traffic, few railroads caring to run their own parlor and sleeping-car
service.
There are economic and sensible reasons for this in many cases. Some
railroads have great through passenger traffic, demanding Pullman
equipment in summer and little or none in winter. Others reverse this need
and so whole trains of sleeping and parlor cars go flocking north and
south and then north again with the private cars. Special occasions, like
great conventions, call for extra Pullmans by hundreds; and because of the
enormous capital that must be tied up, a single supplying company is best
able to handle the problem. Still, big roads like the New Haven, the
Milwaukee, and the Great Northern have been most successful in building
and operating their own sleeping and parlor-car service. A great road like
the Pennsylvania might do the same thing, and because of that possibility
the Pennsylvania was one of the first roads in the country to make the
Pullman Company pay it for the privilege of hauling its cars. As a rule,
the railroad pays the Pullman Company for hauling by the mile--a very few
cents a mile--and the Pullman Company also takes the entire receipts to
itself.
* * * * *
The body of Abraham Lincoln was carried to its final resting-place in the
first real Pullman car that was ever built. President Lincoln rode in one
of Pullman's earliest attempts at railroad luxury, some sleeping-cars that
he had remodelled from day coaches on the Chicago & Alton Railroad and
that were put in service between Chicago and St. Louis in 1860. These cars
were almost as crude as the barbaric predecessors that had induced Pullman
to tackle the problem of railroad comfort approaching the standards of
boat comfort.
Leonard Seibert, a veteran employee of the Chicago & Alton, told a few
years ago of Mr. Pullman's first attempts to remodel the old coaches of
that road into sleeping-cars. Said he:
"In 1858 Mr. Pullman came to Bloomington and engaged me to do the work of
remodelling the Chicago & Alton coaches into the first Pullman
sleeping-cars. The contract was that Mr. Pullman should make all necessary
changes inside of the cars. After looking over the entire passenger car
equipment of the road, which at that time constituted about a dozen cars,
we selected Coaches Nos. 9 and 19. They were 44 feet long, had flat roofs
like box cars, single sash windows, of which there were fourteen on a
side, the glass in each sash being only a little over one foot square. The
roof was only a trifle over six feet from the floor of the car. Into this
car we got ten sleeping-car sections, besides a linen locker and two
washrooms--one at each end.
"The wood used in the interior finish was cherry. Mr. Pullman was anxious
to get hickory, to stand the hard usage which it was supposed the cars
would receive. I worked part of the Summer of 1858, employing an assistant
or two, and the cars went into service in the Fall of 1858. There were no
blue prints or plans made for the remodelling of these first two
sleeping-cars, and Mr. Pullman and I worked out the details and
measurements as we came to them. The two cars cost Mr. Pullman not more
than $2,000, or $1,000 each. They were upholstered in plush, lighted by
oil lamps, heated with box stoves, and mounted on four-wheel trucks with
iron wheels. The berth rate was fifty cents a night. There was no porter
in those days; the brakeman made up the beds."
Pullman built his first real sleeping-car in 1864. It was called the
_Pioneer_ and he further designated it by the letter "A," not dreaming
that there would ever be enough Pullman cars to exhaust the letters of the
alphabet. The _Pioneer_ was built in a Chicago & Alton car shop, and it
cost the almost fabulous, in those times, sum of $18,000. That was
extravagant car-building in a year when the best of railroad coaches could
be built at a cost not exceeding $4,500 each. But the _Pioneer_ was
blazing a new path in luxury. From without, it was radiant in paints and
varnishes, in gay stripings and letterings; it was a giant compared with
its fellows, for it was a foot wider and two and a half feet higher than
any car ever built before. It had the hinged berths that are to-day the
distinctive feature of the American sleeping car, and the porter and the
passengers no longer had to drag the bedding from closets at the far end
of the car.
The _Pioneer_ was not only wider and higher than other passenger cars, it
was also wider and higher than the clearances of station platforms and
overhead bridges. But when the country was reduced to the deepest distress
because of the death of President Lincoln, the fame of Pullman's _Pioneer_
was already widespread, and it was suggested that the fine new car should
be the funeral coach of the martyred president. This involved cutting
wider clearances all the way from Washington by the way of Philadelphia,
New York, and Albany to Springfield, Ill.; and gangs of men worked night
and day making the needed changes. Pullman knew that the increased
convenience of an attractive car built upon proper proportions would
justify these changes in the long run, and it is significant that the
height and width of the Pullman cars to-day are those of the _Pioneer_;
the changes have been made in the length. Not long after that car had
carried President Lincoln to his grave, General Grant started on a trip
west, and the Michigan Central Railroad anxious to carry him over its
lines from Detroit to Chicago, widened its clearances for the same
celebrated car. After that there were several paths open for the big car,
and work was begun upon its fellows. It went into regular service on
the Chicago & Alton Railroad; and the Pullman Palace Car Company was
formed in 1867. The alphabet soon ran out, and the company to-day operates
between four and five thousand cars in regular service. There is a popular
tradition, several times denied, to the effect that Pullman for many years
gave his daughters $100 each for the names of the cars, and that that
formed the source of their pin money.
[Illustration: AN INTERIOR VIEW OF ONE OF THE EARLIEST PULLMAN
SLEEPING-CARS]
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A STANDARD SLEEPING-CAR OF TO-DAY]
While the dimensions of the car were largely set, improvements in its
construction have gone steadily forward, as has been told in an earlier
chapter. The interior of these luxurious modern cars has not been
neglected. From the beginning they have been elaborate in rare woods and
splendid textile fittings. The advancing era of American good taste has
done much toward softening the over-elaboration of car interiors--the sort
of sleeping car that George Ade used to call "the chambermaid's dream of
heaven." The newest cars present the quiet elegance and good taste of a
modern residence. Nothing that may be added in wealth of material or of
comfort is omitted, but the foolish draperies and carvings that once made
the American car the laughing-stock of Europeans have already gone their
way.
To make for luxury all manner of devices have been added to these cars.
The superintendent sometimes hears complaints from a traveller that the
sharp curves on some mountain division have spilled the water on his
bath-tub; and the switching-crews at the big terminals know that
turntables are kept busy turning the big observation platform cars so that
they will "set right," and the big piazza-like platform will rest squarely
at the rear of the train. For those persons who wish to pay for the luxury
there are staterooms, and the best of these staterooms have the baths and
big comfortable brass beds. After many years of unsatisfactory experiment
the electric light has come into its own upon the railroad train; and
even upon unpretentious trains the night traveller no longer has to
wrestle with the difficulties of dressing or undressing in an absolutely
dark berth.
* * * * *
Once the problem of housing folk at night had been met and solved, another
rose. If travellers might sleep upon a train, why might they not eat
there, too? The American eating-houses had met with a degree of fame.
There are old fellows who will still tell you of the glories of the
dining-rooms at Springfield, at Poughkeepsie, at Hornellsville, and at
Altoona. But the eating-house scheme had its great disadvantages. For one
thing, it caused a delay in the progress of through fast trains to halt
them three times a day while the passengers piled out of the cars and went
across to some lunch-counter or dining-room to ruin their digestions in
the twenty minutes allotted for each meal. For another thing, the process
of clambering in and out of the comfortable train in all sorts of weather
was unpopular. The well-established and equally well-famed eating-houses
along the trunk-line railroads were doomed from the time that the Pioneer
won its first success.
No more should a train tie up at meal-time than a steamboat should tie up
at her wharf for a similar purpose. The first dining-cars were called
hotel-cars; and the first of these, the _President_, was placed in
operation by the Pullman company on the Great Western Railway--now the
Grand Trunk--of Canada, in 1867. The hotel-car was nothing more or less
than a sleeping-car with a kitchen built in at one end and facilities for
serving meals at tables placed at the berths. It was well enough in its
way, but travellers demanded something better, something more hygienic
than eating meals in a sleeping place.
Pullman went hard at his problem, and in another year he had evolved the
first real dining-car, the _Delmonico_, which went into regular service on
the Chicago & Alton Railway. The _Delmonico_ was a pretty complete sort
of a restaurant on wheels, and not far different from the dining-car of
to-day.
To-day there are 750 successors to the old _Delmonico_ in daily service on
the railroads of the United States. A small regiment of men earn their
livelihood upon them; some genius, handy with a lead pencil, has estimated
that these serve some 60,000 meals--breakfast, lunch, and dinner--every
day. The amount of food and drink consumed is a matter that is left to the
statistician.
The average full-sized dining-car seats 40 persons, but that does not
represent the business it does. Unless the car can be completely filled
two or more times at each meal, it is not considered a profitable run. The
European method of reserving seats at "first table" or "second table" has
never obtained in the United States, and the wise man on a popular train
sacrifices his dignity and hurries toward the dining-car at the first
intimation that the meal is ready.
To take care of the hungry folk a dining-car crew of nine men is kept
busy. The car is in absolute charge of a conductor or steward, who is held
sharply accountable by the dining-car superintendent of the road for the
conduct of his men and of his car. He signs a receipt for the car
equipment before starting on his run out over the line, and he must see to
it that none of that equipment, not a single napkin or spoon out of all
his stock, is missing at its end. He is held in as strict account for the
appearance and behavior of his men. The waiters must be neatly dressed,
must have clean linen; the conductor himself must be something of a Beau
Brummel, carrying a certain polite smile toward each one of the road's
patrons, no matter how disagreeable or cranky he or she may be. For all of
these things and many others--maintaining a sharp guard over the car's
miniature wine-cellars, adding "specials" to the bill-of-fare for a given
day, acting as a cashier for the service--he receives a princely salary,
varying from $75 to $110 a month.
His crew, as far as the passengers see it, consists of five men, almost
always negroes. Back in the tiny kitchen is the chef, with two assistants,
preparing the food. The kitchen is tiny. It is less than five feet wide
and fifteen feet long, and the three men who work within it must have a
place for everything in it, including themselves. Obviously there is no
room for the waiters, and these receive their supplies through a small
wicket window.
If the kitchen is tiny, it is also marvellously complete. An ice-box fits
upon and takes half the space of the wide vestibule platform; the range
has the compact dimensions of a yacht's range; sinks, pots, and kettles
fit into inconceivably small spaces. Yet in these tiny cubbyholes one
hundred, ofttimes many more dinners, of seven or eight courses each, are
carefully prepared, with a skill in the cooking that is a marvel to
restaurateurs.
The _table d'hôte_ dinner--the famous "dollar dinner"--of the American
railroad has almost disappeared. The constant increase in foodstuffs is
most largely responsible for this. The Pullman Company long ago gave up
this particular feature of passenger luxury, save in a few isolated cases.
It had ceased to be a particularly profitable business, this serving of
fine meals for a dollar each; and so the railroads themselves took it up
and prepared to make it a cost business for the advertising value to them.
Each railroad plumed itself upon its dining-car service--some of them
still do--and each was willing to lose a little money, perhaps, to induce
travel to come its way because of the superior meals it served upon its
trains. But as the price of food-stuffs continued steadily to rise, the
advertising feature of these meals began to be more and more expensive,
and the dollar dinner quickly disappeared. A high priced _à-la-carte_
service took its place, and the railroads sought to establish their
commissary upon a money-making basis.
The attempt has not been very successful. For the lifting of the
dining-car prices and the attempt to reduce running expenses has, on
some roads in particular, hurt the reputation of these "restaurants on
wheels," and so in due season hurt their patronage; brought their patrons
from folk who went out of their way to eat on dining-cars to folk who eat
there only because of dire necessity. And these last still have found
prices high and the result is to be eventually a return to former methods
in part--slower trains stopping again for meals at important stations, the
faster trains returning to the _table d'hôte_. Beginnings have been made
along that line recently. The dollar dinner may never return to some
roads--although it remains a joy and a delight to travellers upon the New
Haven system--but the "regular dinner" at least, capable of quick service
in a crowded car, bids fair to have a renaissance.
While the problem of dining-car economy, and profit even, remains a
problem, the idea is nevertheless being steadily extended all the while to
branches and to trains that could not support full-sized dining-cars. To
meet these needs smaller cars--generally called _café_-cars--in which the
dining-compartment is much reduced in size, have been built and operated.
In these two cooks, two waiters and a steward form the working force and
the fixed charges of the outfit are correspondingly reduced. They are
further reduced in the operation of the so-called broiler-coach, which is
nothing more or less than a day-car with a kitchen built in, the entire
service being performed by one or two cooks and a like number of waiters.
Some sleeping-cars and some parlor cars still have kitchens where a single
accomplished negro may act as both cook and waiter, and these cars are
designated commonly as buffet sleepers or buffet parlor cars.
The dining-car department of the railroad will probably have more to do
than supervise the operation of these various sorts of equipment.
Restaurants and lunch-rooms at terminals and stations along the line may
fall under its direct supervision, and it will probably also conduct the
cuisine of the private cars of the railroad's officers.
The dining-car department has direct charge of all the men employed on
cars and in the lunch-rooms; it sees to it that the railroad's culinary
equipment is fully maintained; it buys food and drink, linen, silver,
china, kitchen supplies of every sort. The routing of the cars is
carefully planned to secure the most economical use of them. Few trains
running from New York to Chicago will carry a single diner throughout the
entire trip. These trains will use two, sometimes three cars during a
single-way trip between the cities. A single car will generally make the
daylight run with the train, to be dropped at night to continue its course
west again at daylight upon some other train needing meal service. The
first train will pick up a fresh diner in the morning to carry into
Chicago. In this way, a diner may take a week or more to make the round
trip from New York to Chicago. Obviously, her commissary must meet all
needs along the way. Staple supplies, liquors, dry groceries are all
placed aboard the car at the terminals. Fresh meats and vegetables are
picked up along the route. This town has an especial reputation for its
chickens; this for its grapes; this other for its celery. The dining-car
department knows all these, and it selects under the rare opportunity of a
housewife who has a market nearly a thousand miles long within which to do
her marketing.
* * * * *
Just as the glorious comfort of the American river steamboat of the
fifties was responsible for the plans for eating and sleeping aboard the
railroad trains, so it was responsible for the introduction of a finer
luxury in railroad travel, until to-day, when the resources of the general
passenger agent are taxed to discover some new ingenious joy to add to the
pleasure of going by this particular line. The full development of the
protected vestibule platform and the opportunity it afforded of easy
intercourse between the coaches of a train led to many new devices to make
the long cross-country trip of the traveller more than ever a thing of
joy. First came the buffet-car, with all the conveniences of a man's club;
and the car-builders have shown remarkable ingenuity in imitating the
mission-like grillroom interiors, despite the many limitations placed upon
them. No club was complete without a barber-shop, and soon every
fast-rushing limited of any consequence had a dusky servitor whose
sharp-bladed razor was warranted not to cut even when the train struck a
sharp curve at fifty miles an hour. Stationery, books, and magazines
became features of the buffet-car. After that there came a stenographer,
whose services were free to the patrons of the train.
Most of these things were for the comfort of men, who form the majority of
patrons of the railroad. But a considerable portion of femininity travels,
and it sent in a complaint that its comfort was being neglected. The
general passenger agents gave quick ear. The men's buffet, with its
comfortable adjuncts of smoke and drink was at the forward end of the
train, the women were considered in the big, comfortable observation cars
at the rear. They were given more stationery, more magazines, even a
caseful of books, running from the severe standard works to the gayest and
lightest of modern fiction. Ladies' maids were installed upon the trains,
and the girl running from New York up to Albany could have her nails
manicured while upon the train.
These are all details, but each goes to make the comfort of the traveller
upon the American railroad train. Such comfort is not equalled in any
other country in the world. From the moment he steps from his cab, the
American traveller passing through the magnificence of superb
waiting-rooms enters palatial trains, superior to the private trains of
royalty upon the other side of the ocean. A corps of well-trained
_attachés_ look to his comfort and his ease, every moment that he is upon
the train, whether his ride be of an hour's duration or a four-days' run
across the continent. Other railroaders whom he does not see, engine
crews, changing each few hours upon his run, signalmen in the towers along
the route, telegraphers, despatchers, train walkers, car inspectors help
in their small but important ways to make his trip one of comfort and of
safety. The entire organization of the railroad lends itself to that very
purpose.
The railroad does not stop at the mere exercise of its great function as a
carrier; it does not even stop with the exercise of its every ingenuity
toward safety in its transportation; it goes a little further and gives to
the man or woman who rides upon its rails, a degree of luxurious comfort
equal to if not even greater than that man or woman can receive at any
other place.