Boston and Maine Railroad

“ They dare not but learn. On this point the figures of the Massachusetts annual returns between the year 1871 and the year 1878 speak volumes. At the time of the Revere disaster, with one single honorable exception,—that of the Boston & Providence road,—both the atmospheric train-brake and the Miller platform, the two greatest modern improvements in American car construction, were practically unrecognized on the railroads of Massachusetts. Even a year later, but 93 locomotives and 415 cars had been equipped even with the train-brake. ”

“ Business can be done cheaper in Boston than in New York; and yet New York has drawn away from us a large proportion of our legitimate business,—the sale of our manufactured goods; and this loss can be directly attributed to a defect in our railroad system, which can and should be remedied. I say defect, but, more properly, the want of a strong and independent line of railroad through to the West, controlled in the interest of Massachusetts. ”

“ Because of its isolated position Boston had not shared in the direct trade with the Central States, but had been compelled to buy and sell through the merchants of New York and Philadelphia. The new railroad completely altered the position of Boston and brought an era of great prosperity to the city, at the same time demonstrating the practicability of the steam road as a carrier of nearly all kinds of freight. ”

“ It is not a little strange that, with all the ambitious effort of Boston to become a mercantile emporium, rivaling New York, and with its vast manufacturing interest, it should have but a single direct avenue of traffic with the West. Yet such is the fact. The Western Railroad between Albany and Boston is the sole route now in existence except those circuitous lines via New York City or through Canada. ”

“ It is doubtful if any other large American city would tolerate for a month the sort of suburban service which to-day is doled out to the Boston metropolitan district. Ancient and dilapidated cars, pulled by equally ancient and dilapidated locomotives, are the sad lot of the Boston commuter. The records of the railroad companies themselves show that some of these ancient coaches date from as far back as the early eighties; many of them go back into the nineties. Nightly the trains are crowded, not only to the extent of their seating capacities, but well beyond them. ”

“ And in that mental brilliancy it gave back to Boston its old railroad. As this is being written "Boston & Al [8] bany" is reappearing upon whole brigades of engines and regiments of freight and passenger cars. A friendly sentiment, reared in traditions, has not been slow to show its appreciation of the act of the railroad in New York. And the men in charge of the great consolidation of the other railroads east of the Hudson river have not been slow to follow in their action. They have announced that they plan to build their railroads into one great system called the "New England Lines." ”

“ Each evening at a quarter after seven a fast-freight train of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford railroad leaves the Mott Haven terminal of that system, in the upper section of New York, for Boston. With selected equipment, it makes good time on the 229-mile run to Boston and pulls in there shortly before six o’clock in the morning. A hard-headed and long-visioned motor-truck concern in New York fills three to a dozen box-cars in that train each night. ”

“ Massachusetts was one of the first states to build railroads. Hoosac Tunnel, one of the first long tunnels, cut for five miles through Hoosac Mountain, costing $16,000,000 and taking 20 years to build, was undertaken by the state. The street-railway companies own nearly 3,000 miles of track, and almost all the principal cities and towns are connected by electric lines. Boston has both a subway and an elevated railway, and its shipping-trade is next to that of New York. ”

“ Great improvements of the harbour were undertaken in 1902 by the United States government, looking to the creation of two broad channels 35 ft. deep. Railway rates have also been a matter of vital importance in recent years; Boston, like New York, complaining of discriminations in favour of Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans and Galveston. Boston also feels the competition of Montreal and Portland; the Canadian roads being untrammelled in the matter of freight differentials. ”

“ A natural evolution of traffic alongshore has been seen in the extension, so to speak, of the railroads across both salt and fresh water. Soon after the Boston and Providence Railroad was opened (June 15, 1835) , its directors made an agreement with a line of steamers to New York under which the vessels of rival lines were excluded from the terminal facilities of the railroad, and the passengers from the rival lines had to wait hours for a train on which to continue their journey. ”

“ There is not a wharf along the whole circuit which may not, without great expense, be made available for the export of the productions of the country, brought by the railroad car to the side of the ship, which shall convey it to the freight market. If we can secure to Boston a fair share of the export trade of the country, the import and domestic trade will follow, and we ensure the building of a city within the limits of my friend's annexation project, that will equal the greatest city of the continent. ”

“ Chelsea folks come to the city by ferry or by electric car, while those from East Boston have two ferry lines as well as a tunnel for cars under the harbor.
The city proper has two immense union railroad depots, the North and the South station, where hundreds of local, as well as long-distance, trains leave and arrive each day. The railroads entering Boston are the Boston & Albany, which, by means of the New York Central lines, connects with the West ”

“ To-day Boston is without a through and independent line to the West, and while we are shipping our goods to New York to be sold, to be transported over the great lines leading South and West, our own Western road, so called, in 1872, according to the annual report of the directors, carried through from Boston to Albany 112,071 tons of freight, and from Albany to Boston 556,202 tons—more than four times as much from the West than is carried to the West ”

“ At Newport there was a great exodus of passengers and baggage about 3 o'clock, and some two hours later the steamer, passing up Narraganset Bay, arrived at Fall River, where we landed, and took our places in a train of the Old Colony Railroad for Boston. Fall River, which one might take to be a cascading stream, turned out to be an enormous manufacturing town of some 50,000 people, all factories, chimneys, and storehouses, and what we saw of Massachusetts as we ran through it gave us a higher idea of its commercial activity and manufacturing industry than of its natural advantages. ”

“ Some such motive, we doubt not, moved one or two of our natural and experimental philosophers to get up the project of a railroad from Boston to Albany; a project which every one knows, who knows the simplest rules in arithmetic to be impracticable but at an expense a little less than the market value of the whole territory of Massachusetts, and which if practicable, every person of common sense knows would be as useless as a railroad from Boston to the moon. ”

“ Our blunders are often very expensive. The only redeeming thing about them is that we pass our experience on to others and save them from tumbling into the same pit. Thus it was with the early railroad builders. When the Boston and Providence Road was constructed this mistake was not repeated and a flexible wooden roadbed was laid. In the meantime a short steam railroad line had been built from Boston to Newton, a distance of seven miles, and gradually the road to this suburb was lengthened until it extended first to Natick and afterward to Worcester, a span of forty-four miles. ”

“ An old man jumped off the train as it approached his house, and was severely injured. Thus, in 1842, chiefly through the exertions of Lemuel Pomeroy, the Western Railroad was completed, and trains ran from Albany to Boston. Several short local roads have since been constructed, which have done more to bind the county together, and have contributed greatly to its wealth and comfort. On the west the physical barriers were less difficult to surmount, and the advent of railroads has only diminished the inequality. New York is still the metropolis ”

“ Some of these trains pass through the Washington Street tunnel, from which numerous well-lighted, well-ventilated stations lead directly to the shopping and business section of the city. On this elevated road are two huge terminal stations, into which rush countless surface cars, bringing from all points north and south the immense crowds of suburbanites who come to Boston proper each day, to work or on pleasure bent. ”

“ Rail Connection from the United States and Montreal, Canada.
The most direct all-rail route from New England to the Maritime Provinces is via the Boston and Maine, Maine Central and Canadian Pacific Railroads from Boston to St. John, N. B. Thence by way of Moncton and Truro to Halifax or Sydney (Intercolonial Railway) ; and by way of Moncton and Painsec Junction to Point du Chene where the steamer is taken across Northumberland Strait to Summerside, Prince Edward Island. The "Provincial Express" leaves Boston daily at 7:30 p. ”

“ That the Boston, Hartford & Erie Railroad Company was a corporation created by the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts for the purpose of building, acquiring, and operating a railroad from Boston, in Massachusetts, to Willimantic, in Connecticut, and from Providence, in Rhode Island, to Willimantic, and from Willimantic through Waterbury to the state line of Connecticut, and thence to Fishkill, in New York ”

“ Taken altogether the situation illustrated in a very striking manner that singular reliance of the corporation on the individuality and intelligence of its employés, which in another connection is referred to as one of the most striking characteristics of American railroad management, without a full appreciation of which it is impossible to understand its using or failing to use certain appliances.
According to the regular schedule four trains should have left the Boston station in succession during the hour and a half between 6.30 and eight o'clock P.M.: a Saugus branch train for Lynn at 6.30 ”

“ It will be seen that while the total product for these industries increased greatly, there was an actual decrease in the number of establishments, the tendency toward centralization being most marked in the boot and shoe industry.
Transportation and Commerce. A majority of the many railway lines centre in Boston, and the mileage for the eastern end of the State is greatly in excess of that of the other parts. The first railroad in the United States was the Quincy Railroad, three miles long, constructed in 1826-27 to convey granite from the Quincy quarries for the Bunker Hill Monument. ”

“ The New Haven monopoly in New England might be managed rather in the interest of New York than of the port of Boston. The Illinois Central, once devoted whole-heartedly to the upbuilding of New Orleans, must now, as a part of the Union Pacific system, comprehend San Francisco and even Savannah within the scope of its plans. New systems implied new traffic arrangements. Railroad policy must of necessity involve a choice, not between two evils, perhaps, but between a resultant good and a necessarily attendant evil. ”

“ The railroad journey from Boston to Terre Haute, the western terminus of the road, was a very different one from that of today, taking then a week instead of a few hours.
They went down from Anson and Norridgewock to Boston where they exchanged their “money at Suffolk Bank for their bills, as they were good anywhere West, and none others were.”
Leaving Boston at 8 A.M., an all day ride took them to Albany, where they spent the night at the Delavan House. They went on early the next morning to Buffalo, which was reached at 11 P.M. Here they “put up at the Clarendon House. Tired. Sleepy.” ”

“ As the Portland express was about to leave the Boston station, the superintendent of the road, knowing by the non-arrival of the branch train from Lynn that there must be a block at the Everett junction, had directed the depot-master to caution the engineer to look out for the trains ahead of him. ”

“ Intimates of James J. Hill, the transportation giant of the northwest, say that the ambition of his life is to [632] encircle the world with a system of railroads and steamships, all of which shall be under his guiding hand. He has nearly attained it. He owns the Great Northern railway, which stretches from Seattle, Washington, to St. Paul and Duluth, Minnesota. He is proprietor of the line of steamers which ply between Duluth and Buffalo. He is largely interested in the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, which covers the territory between Chicago, Philadelphia and New York. ”

“ And the Follow He's crew were scarcely less regretful. A study of the railroad schedule showed that the next train for Boston left at five-fifty-five in the morning and that the only other train was at two-forty in the afternoon.
"Five-fifty-five's a perfectly punk time for a train to leave anywhere, even Provincetown," objected Neil. "And the two-forty will get me to Boston too late for anything but a midnight train to New York."
"Bother trains," said Steve. "We'll run you to Boston tomorrow in the boat. We can do it in four hours or so. ”