Brandy Station

“ I simply procured a stiff portion of brandy neat, drank it at a gulp, purchased a few articles of clothing from an accommodating waiter, dressed myself with all speed, and set off to the principal railway station, or "depot," of San Francisco.
"It's dogged as does it," I quoted to myself, with a certain grimness of resolution, when my spirits began to flag. ”

“ About five miles from Lexington, a little to the left of the present road leading thence to Maysville, and on a gentle rise of the southern bank of the Elkhorn, at the time of which we write, stood Bryan's Station, to which we must now call the reader's attention. This station was founded in the year 1779, by William Bryan, (a brother-in-law of Daniel Boone,) who had, prior to the events we are now about to describe, been surprised and killed by the Indians in the vicinity of a stream called Cane Run. ”

“ Her mother was delighted with the thought, and at 4 o'clock that afternoon they took a cab to Braamfontein Station.
The train had been delayed, and would be in at 6 instead of 5 o'clock, so they were told, but, for fear of having been misinformed, they decided to wait at the station.
Cold, dusty, pitiless, the keen wind blew on that unfriendly platform. There was no ladies' waiting room—in fact, it seemed as if the rooms had all been utilised for other, perhaps military, purposes.
It is incredible the amount of suffering that can be crowded into one hour of waiting! ”

“ Sixty freight cars can be loaded there at one time. One thinks what emotions that glass-roofed shed must have seen in Civil War times. I suppose many a train of men in blue said good-by to mothers and sweethearts along those platforms. That thought was with me as I stood inside the old station, which in spite of its bustle of freight is filled with the haunting sadness of all places that are old and decayed and echoing with the whispers of long ago. Does it seem absurd to sentimentalize over a railway station less than seventy years old? ”

“ Brainton is a large station—a junction of many lines. Engines are snorting and puffing about; boilers letting off steam, with a noise calculated to break the drum of any ear; tarpaulin-covered waggons standing shunted on side lines. A train has just come in, and is disgorging its human load; a man with a hammer is walking along by the side of it, stooping and tapping the wheels ”

“ The Union Terminals Company is owned entirely by the New York Central, the New York, Chicago, & St. Louis Railroad Co. (Nickel Plate) , and the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway Co. (Big Four) .↑ The land upon which the station was to be constructed was owned by the Cleveland Terminals Building Company. It conveyed the ground to the Terminals Company, reserving the air rights to itself. ”

“ As he walked along, considering, his attention was caught by some red and green lights a little way off, to one side of the town, and the sound of the puffing and snorting of engines and the banging of shunted trucks fell on his ear. "Aha!" he thought, "this is a piece of luck! A railway station is the thing I want most in the whole world at this moment ”

“ The sudden change from the dreary lifelessness of the veldt to the exciting crush and bustle of the station platform crowd is almost bewildering, because it is so different from what is expected in interior Africa. The station, a magnificent structure of stone and iron, presents more animated scenes whenever trains arrive than the Grand Central in New York or the Victoria in London, because every passenger is invariably met at the train by all his friends and as many of their friends as the station platform will accommodate. ”

“ But they very rarely go out and find things for themselves, and they rarely see country. Between stations on the trains they read books or play cards—unless of course the railway folders tell them to observe. When the train stops they come to, and hang out the windows, and stare fascinated at the newsstand, or the station building (which needs painting) , or the buildings across the street. They would never have thought of going out to Banksia Heights, or anything similar, unless lured thereto by the band and the free lunch ”

“ And it undertook to procure for Terminals an easement in Wheeling's site.↑ Five contracts was executed by the Wheeling: (a) A contract with the Building Company containing an option to sell the Ontario street site for $1,600,000; (b) a contract with the Terminals for the use of the Union Depot; (the provisions of this contract are set out in detail in the report of the Commission) ; (c) a contract with the Erie Railroad for the temporary use of its Superior Avenue Station pending completion of the union terminal ”

“ The boy from the ranch got in and took a seat. The next moment the train started off at great speed, for it was an express, and made but few stops. Leaving the brilliantly-lighted station the cars plunged into darkness, relieved by an occasional electric lamp.
"Must be a tunnel," thought Roy. "We'll come out on top of the ground in a minute, and I can see what New York looks like. Space is so crowded down town, I s'pose they have to tunnel for a few blocks." ”

“ Three hundred yards before the station is reached the flame-throated iron monster, uncoupled from its burden of cars, darts forward on a siding like a spirited horse unharnessed from its load, while the train glides forward with its own momentum, slowly and more slowly as the brakes are applied, until it comes to a stop under the depot shed. Hardly have the passengers poured forth when another train rolls in, and then another, the pathway in each instance cleared by those keen men at the levers in this tower-house of the yards of the Grand Central station in New York city. ”

“ One sunny morning, about a month after the occurrence of that little love scene in Regent’s Park, Bradley rose early, packed a small hand valise, and drove off in a hansom to Victoria Station. He was quietly attired in clothes not at all clerical in cut, and without the white neckcloth or any other external badge of his profession.
Arriving at the station, he found himself just in time to catch the nine o’clock train to Russetdeane, a lonely railway station taking its name from a village three miles distant, lying on the direct line to Eastbourne and Newhaven. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are hurried good-byes, gathering together of souvenirs, wistful eyes of those who cannot yet go, watching those who can. Cars are brought round to the side entrance, stretchers slipped into their grooves, and the convoy is off to the station. The long train, already half filled, lies waiting. There is a last little passage across the platform, coming and going of bearers, the inevitable argument with the R.T.O., a warning shriek from the engine, and the train to the base has gone. [Pg 45]
II
'Do you think that sort of thing matters now?'
A clearing station is just what its name denotes. ”

“ He and I met accidentally, about nine o'clock on a hot, sultry evening, at a flag railroad station about twenty miles west of Springfield, on my return from a great meeting at Petersburg in Menard County. He had been driven to the station in a buggy and left there alone. I was already there. The train that we intended to take for Springfield was about due. After vainly waiting for half an hour for its arrival, a thunderstorm compelled us to take refuge in an empty freight-car standing on a side track, there being no buildings of any sort at the station. ”

“ There is a new station at Merion. In old bucolic days the Main Line station masters lived and kept house in the depots, and if one had to wait for a train one could make friends with the station master's little girl and pet cat. But all those little girls are grown up now and are Bryn Mawr alumnæ.
At Narberth one sees clustered roofs embowered in trees, in the hollow below the railway, and a snatch of plowed land. Now one is really in the country. Narberth, Wynnewood, Ardmore, Haverford—so it runs, like a chapter of begats. ”

“ As a rule, however, nobody looks as if he liked being in a railway station or would stop there if he could go anywhere else. I trust the Ministry of Reconstruction will see to it that the railway stations of the country are rebuilt and vivified. One does not really wish to stop at any station at all except one's own station. ”

“ In October 1840, we find Branwell clerk-in-charge at the Station of Sowerby Bridge on the Leeds and Manchester Railway, and the following year at Luddenden Foot, where Mr. Grundy, the railway engineer, became acquainted with him, and commenced the correspondence contained in Pictures of the Past. ”

“ As the vehicles rattled along the deserted streets, the noise of the horses' hoofs and the wheels striking against the paving stones sounded unusually loud in the general hush, and caused the echoes to answer again and again from the silent streets and alleys.
In a short time we were at the station. In our impatience we had come too early, and now the waiting was very tiresome. Everybody knows how lively and noisy it is at a railroad station when a train is expected. ”

“ We fly over narrow streets, and complex webs and networks of railway lines, and thread our way through telegraph and telephone wires, myriad smoking chimney-pots, steaming, throbbing works of all kinds, sky signs, and the wonders of the parti-coloured poster hoardings—which [pg 209] pursue one into the station itself, flaring on the reluctant and jaded sight with ever-increasing importunity and iteration, until one recalls the philosopher who remarked "Strange that the world should need so much pressing to accept such apparently obvious advantages!" ”

“ It was a little wayside place without even a village that I could see to justify its claim to a station at all. Nobody else got out; and as soon as the train had gone, I was left to explain my presence to what appeared to be the entire population of the district, to wit, a station-master, a porter, and a constable who carried a carbine. ”

“ Thompson had appointed to meet me this morning in the Limerick station, from which we were to start together for his home at Shaunganeen, but as he was coming from the south, and I from Castle Connell, our trains did not fit in, and I had to wait nearly three-quarters of an hour. What can be done in a railway station, unless one dreams? ”

“ They are banded together in a secret society for this one purpose and have what they call stations scattered all along at a certain distance apart—a night's travel—from the Mississippi to the Canadian line, where the fugitives are hidden and fed. The runaways are passed from one station to the next under cover of darkness, and are seldom recaptured. A station keeper, I am told, is only permitted to know a few miles of the route, those he must cover—the system is perfect, and many are engaged in it who are never even suspected. ”

“ At the station we found two orderlies, one with my things, the other with von Boden's luggage and fur pélisse. The platforms were now deserted save for sentries: all life at this dreary frontier station seemed to die with the passing of the mail train.
I could not help noticing, after we had left the car and were strolling up and down the platform waiting for the special, that my companion kept casting furtive glances at my feet. I looked down at my boots: they wanted brushing, certainly, but otherwise I could see nothing wrong with them. ”

“ Around the tables, from opening until closing hour, crowd women derelicts; each train that stops at the station below the wonderful terraces brings more. The veriest ingénue might read the stories of wreck and disaster, yet the warning makes not the faintest impression upon the fair feminine craft steering head on toward the rocks. ”

“ The youth was in fine physical condition, and he knew he could easily reach the freight train before it passed entirely beyond the station, for it was a long one.
“But I counted on having time to pick out a car,” thought Joe, still running toward the railroad. “I wonder what I can do now?”
The matter worried him. It is not easy to “jump” a moving freight train. There are no cars with steps, such as passenger coaches have, with convenient hand rails. Jumping a moving freight train is a risky matter, even for a trained railroad brakeman. ”

“ Presently it came along, making the station and track rock and sway with the vibration.
"Come on," cried De Royster.
"Where are you going?" asked Roy, hanging back.
"On the elevated train, of course."
"It isn't safe!" exclaimed the boy from the ranch. "It is shaking now. It'll topple down! It needs bracing! Do you mean to tell me they run trains up in the air, on a track, and they don't fall off?"
"Of course. Come on. It's safe, even if it does shake a bit. It always does. There's no danger of it falling off. Next time we'll take the subway." ”

“ Certainly we would think a man queer who placed the back-door of his house to the street, but the railroad station is usually the back-door of the community instead of the main entrance as it should be. On the other hand, on alighting at a well-kept station, with a neat lawn, good walks and roads, which is not surrounded by the village rubbish heaps and dilapidated buildings, the newcomer feels that here is a place which invites further acquaintance, while the native has a sense of satisfaction rather than of apology. ”