Central Railroad

“ The establishment of five great railroads extending continuously from the Atlantic seaboard to Chicago and the West was perhaps the most remarkable economic development of the ten or fifteen years succeeding the war. By 1875 these five great trunk lines, the New York Central, the Pennsylvania, the Erie, the Baltimore and Ohio, and the Grand Trunk, had connected their scattered units and established complete through systems. ”

“ But service as it is conceived by the New York Central, involves many aspects. One is the careful provision for the comfort and convenience of passengers; another is adequate and efficient facilities for serving the interests of shippers. In other words, New York Central service means not only fast and luxurious passenger trains, but also the rapid handling of freight. To give such service requires the highest class of equipment—the best rails, the finest cars, the most powerful locomotives, etc.—but it also requires an operating force of loyal, highly trained employees. ”

“ In the autumn of that year a railroad was opened between 200New York and Philadelphia. At first horses were used to draw the train, but by the end of the year locomotives, which ran at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, were introduced. This was a tremendous stride in the progress of railroad traffic.
Comparison of “DeWitt Clinton” Locomotive and Train, the First Train Operated in New York, with a Modern Locomotive of the New York Central R.R.
To be sure, the locomotives were small, but two or more started off together, each drawing its own little train of cars. ”

“ The lake trade grew to enormous proportions, and the building of the railways, especially the New York Central Lines connecting Chicago with the East, as well as other lines connecting it with the Northwest, and the South, gave the city an extraordinary impetus. ”

“ Twenty of that New York Central fleet are kept in constant use in the North and East Rivers, and along the harbor shores to Jersey City, Bayonne, and the southern parts of Brooklyn. They do not lie idle, save when they are finally forced to “lay up” for a little time for repairs. And then a reserve tug is in service without delay.
Here is the modern economy of railroad equipment—even though this be the part of the railroad that is afloat. ”

“ There is not a railroader coming into the big passenger terminal—from either the New York Central or the New Haven system—who is not welcome to it, day or night. Engineers, firemen, conductors, trainmen all come into its hospitable door after a long hard run to find the clean comfort of good meals, bath, comfortable beds, good fellowship awaiting them. There is the peculiar and the successful field of the railroad Y. M. C. A. ”

“ The New York Central Lines enter twelve states and serve territory containing 51,530,784 inhabitants or 50.3 per cent of the nation's population. This rich and busy territory produces 64 per cent of the country's manufactured products and mines a similar proportion of its coal.
This system does approximately 10 per cent of the railroad transportation business of the United States, although its main-track mileage is only 6 per cent. In other words the business it handles exceeds that of the average railroad, mile for mile, by nearly 100 per cent. ”

“ Johnstown, Pa., the first railroad tunnel in the United States
On the other hand, the New York Central has also [Pg 155] been brought into a high state of organization, and stands firmly on the departmental plan.
“We believe that our superintendents should specialize in train operation,” says one of the high officers of that road. “In other words, we do not believe that a man, to get his traffic through over a stretch of line, should necessarily know to a fraction of an inch the best wheel-base for an engine of a given type or the precise construction of a truss bridge. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII. Completion of the Line. Connection Made Between Union and Central Pacific Railroads May 9th, 1869 — Ceremonies at Promontory May 10th, 1869 — Celebrations in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Omaha, Salt Lake City and San Francisco.
By the terms of the supplementary Charter of 1864, a great incentive was given the two Companies, the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad to get down as great a mileage as possible. In addition to the Government grant of Land and Bonds based on mileage, there was the traffic of the Mormon country and Salt Lake City at stake. ”

“ The New York Central Lines comprise 14,242 miles of track. As part of the track equipment, there are 40,000,000 wooden ties, worth about $1 each. On these ties are 1,727,000 tons of steel rail, worth $96,000,000. There [130] are 32 tunnels, costing $10,000,000, and 19,000 bridges and culverts, costing $60,000,000. In the principal cities the New York Central's terminals cover about 4,800 acres, assessed at more than $100,000,000. The deeds for right-of-way for the section east of Buffalo alone number more than 30,000.
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This booklet is based on The Encyclopædia Britannica. ”

“ And since the De Witt Clinton train crept from Albany to Schenectady, the New York Central Railway has become great also, for every day hundreds of trains of goods and men are coming and going between the Lakes and the city by the sea. ”

“ Culverts have been laid for each small run or kill or creek; the bridge-builders along the new line finish their work and cart off their kits; the day comes when there is an unbroken railroad from one end of the new line to the other. It links new rails and new towns; its localities produce for new markets, commerce from strange quarters pours down upon the land that has known it not. Passenger trains begin regular operation, the fresh-painted depots are brilliant in their newness, the shriek of the locomotive sounds where it has never before sounded. ”

“ On shot the locomotive, like an arrow from the bow, the men throwing over the ties until the train was well nigh unloaded, when just as they were close to the curve by which the train arrives at the station, they saw the dreaded cars strike a tie, or something equally of service, and with a desperate plunge rush down the embankment, some fifteen feet, to the little valley, and creek below. ”

“ How the sight of a single fast freight speeding from Chicago to Pittsburg would have made a laughing-stock of the fondest theories of the great and wise men who were at the nation’s helm in those days! It is well known how the great transportation companies struggle to get and hold certain strategic acres of land only wide enough, it may be, for a [Pg 32] single railway track. Who can believe that any portion of this Central West, covered with swamps and primeval forests, could have been so greatly prized a century and a quarter ago? ”

“ At the time he was writing, 1835, there were seven hundred and ninety-seven miles of railroads in operation in the United States. Passenger coaches were patterned after the old stage coach, the track iron straps on wooden stringers, yet here he was outlining what today is an accomplished fact. A railroad with stone ballast from Chicago to the South Pass (Granger, Wyo.) one branch diverging from there to the mouth of the Columbia, (Portland, Ore.,) the other to California, (San Francisco and Los Angeles, Cal.,) traversed by trains comprised of sleeping cars, dining cars and buffet cars. ”

“ The balance is built and operated on private right of way, and goes around, rather than through, the cities. The tracks are standard gauge and of standard railroad construction, were, at the time they were laid, of higher class than those of the Southern Railway Company in the same territory, were intended for handling substantial interchange freight traffic in connection with steam railroads, have the same ruling grades as the latter in the same territory, and are of 80-pound rail. ”

“ Probably never in the history of railway building, not even in the case of the 'Big Four' who built the Central Pacific—Huntingdon, Stanford, Crocker, and Hopkins—had the call of the railway brought together in a single enterprise men of such outstanding individuality, of such ability and persistence, and destined for success so notable. ”

“ In every activity of life, whether it pertains to industry, commerce, science, art, sport or recreation, the Encyclopædia Britannica will furnish you on demand, at the very moment when you want it, the most readable, entertaining and authoritative information available in English or any other language.
"The Encyclopædia Britannica is as necessary in your home as electric light, and more useful, day in and day out, than an automobile. It is as necessary for your children as for yourself. It will teach them to find their own way in the great realm of knowledge. ”

“ We wait patiently upon a long siding until everything else has been moved—through fast expresses heavily laden with opulent-looking Pullmans, jerky little suburban trains, long draughts of empty coaches, being drawn by consequential switch-engines in and out of the train-shed of the passenger station. Finally a certain semaphore blade drops, we cross over to the important main line and begin pulling on a sharp curve, across the river, clear of the station with its confusion, through and past the city to a busy division yard. ”

“ For few practical railroaders will deny certain vast advantages to be gained by the complete centralization of our rail properties—not only in financing and in rate-making, but also in traffic solicitation and control, in expert staff study of mechanical and operating problems, and in the production of proper personnel, particularly for the filling of future executive positions. All of these functions and more too, the United States Railroad could and would undertake. ”

“ Canals might indeed linger for a time as feeders, even, as in the case of the Erie and a few others, as more or less important transportation routes, but every one now realized that the railroad was to be the great agency which would give plausibility to the industrial organization of the United States and develop its great territory. ”

“ In any event, however, the general introduction of the interlocking apparatus into the American railroad system may be regarded as a mere question of the value of land and concentration of traffic. So long as every road terminating in our larger cities [198] indulges, at whatever unnecessary cost to its stockholders, in independent station buildings far removed from business centres, the train movement can most economically be conducted as it now is. ”

“ For many years Syracuse was the principal seat of the salt industry in the United States, but the development of salt deposits in other parts of N.Y. State and in Michigan caused a decline in the Onondaga product, though Syracuse still produced 2,000,000 bushels of salt a year. The Onondaga deposits were mentioned in the journal of the French Jesuit Lemoyne in 1653, and before the Revolutionary War the Indians marketed salt at Albany and Quebec. ”

“ The conductor catches a car step, the “preference” starts forward with all the rattling shakes and bumps peculiar to a long freight train. In a minute or two the red tail-lights are grinning at us from half a mile down the track. Another big freight goes scurrying by us—more market stuff, more meat, more fish for the hungry town, a town which houses 4,000 folk within a single congested tenement square. A third train follows; all refrigerator cars it is too. They come in quick succession, these market trains, to the metropolis. The railroad is doing its part. ”

“ Up to the time of the building of the Erie Canal, Schenectady had been an important depot of the Mohawk River boat trade to the westward, but after the completion of the canal it suffered a decline. The modern manufacturing era, beginning about 1880, brought Schenectady growth and prosperity. To-day the city can boast that its products "light and haul the world." As we enter the town we pass on the left the main establishment of the General Electric Co., the largest electrical manufacturing plant in the world, with 200 buildings and 26,000 employees. ”

“ For its time it was the most audacious essay in railway building the world had known, for be it known it was begun barely twenty years after the first railroad had been built in the United States and before either railroad engineers or railroad labor had a recognized place in industry. ”

“ The new railroad, the first public line, was opened in September, 1825. As its construction progressed, its engineer had become increasingly sanguine of success. He said to his son Robert at this time: "I venture to tell you that I think you will live to see the day when railways will supersede almost all other methods of conveyance in this country—when mail coaches will go by railway, and railroads will become the great highway for the King and all his subjects. The time is coming when it will be cheaper for a workingman to travel upon a railway than to walk on foot. ”

“ This, in the growing, progressive, and expanding states of the West, is a steady and constant complaint, and it requires much time, money, and energy for the railroad-owners and officers to keep the supply of transportation up to the demand. The complaints come in for more freight-cars, for more passenger-trains, for better passenger-stations, for more side-tracks, for more switch-engines, for under-crossings and over-crossings in growing cities, for branch lines into new and undeveloped sections of the country ”

“ The railways of the country, in their present form, have been built since the close of the Civil War, or in less than fifty years, and are the wonder and admiration of students of the transportation problem who come here from other countries. There are 234,182 miles of railway, and more than 340,000 miles of track in this country, as compared with a trifle less than 300,000 miles of railway in all the other countries of the world combined. There are nearly 58,000 locomotives; more than 45,000 passenger-train cars; nearly 2,200,000 freight- and service-cars. ”