Perhaps there is nothing in the line of discovery and improvement that
has shown more marked progress in the last century than the railway and
its different auxiliaries. When we remember that much less than a
century has passed since the first patent for a locomotive to move upon
a track was issued, where now we have everything that heart can wish,
and, in fact, live better on the road than we do at home, with but
thirty-six hours between New York and Minneapolis, and a gorgeous
parlor, bedroom, and dining-room between Maine and Oregon, with nothing
missing that may go to make life a rich blessing, we are compelled to
express our wonder and admiration.
To Peter Cooper is largely due the boom given to railway business, he
having constructed the first locomotive ever made in this country, and
put it on the Baltimore & Ohio railroad.
The first train ever operated must have been a grand sight. First came
the locomotive, a large Babcock fire-extinguisher on trucks, with a
smoke-stack like a full-blown speaking-tube with a frill around the top;
the engineer at his post in a plug hat, with an umbrella over his head
and his hand on the throttle, borrowing a chew of tobacco now and then
of the farmers who passed him on their way to town. Near him stood the
fireman, now and then bringing in an armful of wood from the fields
through which he passed, and turning the damper in the smoke-stack every
little while so it would draw. Now and then he would go forward and put
a pork-rind on a hot box or pound on the cylinder head to warn people
off the track.
Next comes the tender loaded with nice, white birch wood, an economical
style of fuel because its bark may be easily burned off while the wood
itself will remain uninjured. Besides the firewood we find on the tender
a barrel of rainwater and a tall, blonde jar with wicker-work around it,
which contains a small sprig of tansy immersed in four gallons of New
England rum. This the engineer has brought with him for use in case of
accident. He is now engaged in preparing for the accident in advance.
Next comes the front brakeman in a plug hat about two sizes too large
for him. He also wears a long-waisted frock coat with a bustle to it and
a tall shirt-collar with a table-spread tie, the ends of which flutter
gayly in the morning breeze. As the train pauses at the first station he
takes a hammer out of the tool-box and nails on the tire of the fore
wheel of his coach. The engineer gets down with a long oil-can and puts
a little sewing-machine oil on the pitman. He then wipes it off with his
sleeve.
It is now discovered that the rear coach, containing a number of
directors and the division superintendent, is missing. The conductor
goes to the rear of the last coach, and finds that the string by which
the directors' car was attached is broken, and that, the grade being
pretty steep, the directors and one brakeman have no doubt gone back to
the starting place.
But the conductor is cool. He removes his bell-crowned plug hat, and,
taking out his orders and time-card, he finds that the track is clear,
and, looking at a large, valuable Waterbury watch, presented to him by a
widow whose husband was run over and killed by the train, he sees he can
still make the next station in time for dinner. He hires a livery team
to go back after the directors' coach, and, calling "All aboard," he
swings lightly upon the moving train.
It is now 10 o'clock, and nineteen weary miles still stretch out between
him and the dinner station. To add to the horrors of the situation, the
front brakeman discovers that a very thirsty boy in the emigrant car has
been drinking from the water-supply tank on the tender, and there is
not enough left to carry the train through. Much time is consumed in
filling the barrel again at a spring near the track, but the conductor
finds a "spotter" on the train, and gets him to do it. He also induces
him to cut some more wood and clean out the ashes.
The engineer then pulls out a draw-head and begins to make up time. In
twenty minutes he has made up an hour's time, though two miles of
hoop-iron are torn from the track behind him. He sails into the eating
station on time, and, while the master mechanic takes several of the
coach-wheels over to the machine-shop to soak, he eats a hurried lunch.
The brakeman here gets his tin lanterns ready for the night run and
fills two of them with red oil to be used on the rear coach. The fireman
puts a fresh bacon-rind on the eccentric, stuffs some more cotton
batting around the axles, puts a new lynch-pin in the hind wheels,
sweeps the apple-peelings out of the smoking car, and he is ready.
Then comes the conductor, with his plug hat full of excursion tickets,
orders, passes, and timechecks; he looks at his Waterbury watch, waves
his hand, and calls "All aboard" again. It is upgrade, however, and for
two miles the "spotter" has to push behind with all his might before the
conductor will allow him to get on and ride.
Thus began the history of a gigantic enterprise which has grown till it
is a comfort, a convenience, a luxury, and yet a necessity. It has built
up and beautified the desert. It has crept beneath the broad river,
scaled the snowy mountain, and hung by iron arms from the canon and the
precipice, carrying the young to new lands and reuniting those long
separated. It has taken the hopeless to lands of new hope. It has evaded
the solitude of the wilderness, spiked down valuable land-grants,
killed cheap cattle and then paid a high price for them, whooped through
valleys, snorted over lofty peaks, crept through long, dark tunnels,
turning the bright glare of day suddenly upon those who thought the
tunnel was two miles long, roared through the night and glittered
through the day, bringing alike the groom to his beautiful bride and the
weeping prodigal to the moss-grown grave of his mother.
You are indeed a heartless, soulless corporation, and yet you are very
essential in our business.