Gare du Nord

“ It is where the ebb and flow of the human tide of life is.
But I think in this time of war, especially, there is no place which so well shows up the psychology of the people as the railroad depot. Often have I stood in those large Paris stations and watched the people come and watched them go. The Gare du Nord, the Gare du Lyons, and the Gare la Chapelle are full of sentiment and pathos.
Once at the last named station I was standing in the background in the shadow of a pillar, where I was unobtrusive and unnoticed, and watched the anxious people. ”

“ This ancient and important town, which should be visited both on account of its magnificent Hôtel-de-Ville, and in order to make a better acquaintance with Dierick Bouts, the town painter, can be conveniently reached by train from the Gare du Nord. The best trains take little more than half an hour to do the journey. A single morning is sufficient for the excursion, especially if you start early. ”

“ Off again in the morning, this time by rail. In the best of times the ordinary train in France is not the most comfortable traveling equipage in the world. In war time Ruth found the journey most abominable. Troop trains going forward, many of them filled with khaki-uniformed fighters from the States, and supply trains as well, forced the ordinary passenger trains on to side tracks. But at length they rolled into the Gare du Nord, and there Helen and Jennie were waiting for the girl of the Red Mill. ”

“ I arrived in Paris early the following morning, before the sleepy officials at the Gare du Nord, seemed to have shaken off their slumbers. I had no time to think of putting up at any hotel; speed was a question of life and death with me; so summoning a fiacre, I had my valise put inside, and told the driver to take me to the Hotel Vaupin. He had never heard of it, he said. I started, surprised that a man like Captain Dillington, whose ideas I had always thought were of the most extravagant, could be found at an hotel unknown to a station cab driver. ”

“ Poirot left the villa rubbing his hands in great satisfaction.
"What are we going to do now?" I asked.
"Now, Hastings, we are about to leave Paris—for England."
"What?"
"We will pack our effects, have lunch, and drive to the Gare du Nord."
"But the radium?"
"I said we were going to leave for England—I did not say we were going to arrive there. Reflect a moment, Hastings. It is quite certain that we are being watched and followed. Our enemies must believe that we are going back to England, and they certainly will not believe that unless they see us get on board the train and start." ”

“ I went straight to the Élysée Palace Hotel, where I had never stopped before—a long drive from the Gare du Nord—and claimed the rooms for which “Mr. George Sandford” had wired from London. The suite engaged was a charming one, and the private salon almost worthy to receive the lovely lady I expected. Nor did she keep me waiting. I had had time only to give instructions about sending a man with a key to the station for my luggage, to say that a lady would call, to reach my rooms, and to draw the curtains over the windows, when a knock came at the salon door. ”

“ The intelligent English traveller, in this fortunate age for him, is aware that, half-way between Boulogne and Paris, there is a complex railway-station, into which his train, in its relaxing speed, rolls him with many more than the average number of bangs and bumps prepared, in the access of every important French gare, to startle the drowsy or distrait passenger into a sense of his situation. ”

“ The embankments are in spring often covered with a myriad wild flowers; the viaducts give a human interest to coombe and gully. Lovers of the country can certainly point to places which, once remote and solitary, have been populated and spoiled by the readiness of railway access; but the locomotive has rendered more holidays possible, and has kept the roads in a decent solitude for the cyclist. Imagine, if you please, the Great North Road nowadays without the railway. ”

“ For the Gare de l'Est was where the majority of French soldiers took their trains to go back to the front after their occasional week's furlough with their families.
No words of mine can convey any impression of what she saw there. No one who has not seen the Gare de l'Est night after night can ever imagine the sum of stifled human sorrow which filled it thickly, like a dreadful incense of pain going up before some cruel god. ”

“ A roadside enigma that doubtless puzzled our forefathers, and afforded food for discussion when journeying in these parts, the railway traveller misses them and much else besides as he is whirled through the land at a speed that only permits of a blurred impression of fields and woods, of rivers and hills, of church towers, towns, hamlets, and farmsteads—that is, when the train is not rushing through a cutting, or plunging into a darksome tunnel. In a scenic sense between the Great North Road and the Great Northern Railway is a vast gulf! ”

“ At dawn I was obliged to leave the express and wait at a junction for the local train which should bring me to my journey's end. Against a misty sky, filled with clouds, in the uncertain glimmering light, the silhouettes of the mountains softly massed themselves, surrounding with a vast amphitheatre the hideous buildings of the station, the long lines of empty cars, the idle locomotives. Near by some factory chimneys, tall and unsymmetrical, sent their smoke into the morning twilight. ”

“ In southern Sweden there is scarcely a parish without a railway, and in the northern part of the kingdom, where the railway facilities are limited, posting stations are maintained by the government similar to those in Norway. There is a railway running as far north as the 67th parallel of latitude, about fifty miles beyond the polar circle into Lapland, to the famous mines of Malmberget, with a branch to Trondhjem, Norway. ”

“ Railway-building in these twin countries has been attended always with grave difficulties, owing to the rugged nature of the country and the extreme hardness of the rock. When the sea is left, and the interior plateau is gained, the full brunt of the Arctic weather is experienced, and it is of a character to deter the most intrepid engineer.
One of the most momentous enterprises that has been carried to fulfilment in this northern country is the trans-Norwegian railway, whereby Christiania is brought into direct communication with the Atlantic seaboard at Bergen. ”

“ THE GREAT NORTH ROAD TO not every Londoner of this generation is the Great North Road as well known even by name as the Great Northern Railway running near it. The highway that led so many a hopeful youth across the northern heights, to see the lights of London at last shining before him, has more than once shifted its course, and now falls into the Metropolis by a delta of branches, among which one might be at a loss to pick out the main stream. ”

“ The railways which centre upon Paris are indeed the ties that bind Paris to the rest of France, and vice versa. Their termini—the great gares—are at all times the very concentrated epitome of the life of the day.
The new gares of the P. L. M. and the Orleans railways are truly splendid and palatial establishments, with—at first glance—little of the odour of the railway about them, and much of the ceremonial appointments of a great civic institution; with gorgeous salles à manger, waiting-rooms, and—bearing the P. L. M. in mind in particular—not a little of the aspect of an art-gallery. ”

“ CHAPTER XXX. BY RAIL TO CHRISTIANIA—FARE ON THE ROAD—NORWAY’S CAPITAL—THE VIKING-SHIP—AN INLAND TOUR.
“Twenty minutes for dinner!” supper, or breakfast, as the case may be. The conductor on the Swedish or Norwegian railways announces this important fact to English-speaking travelers in the sign-language. He spreads out all his fingers and thumbs twice. It speaks volumes to the hungry man. He jumps from the train to the platform of the pretty little station. He enters a room where he finds the feast all spread, but no waiters. Behind a desk in a corner sits a woman calmly knitting. ”

“ Blue Anchor station must in its time have misled many strangers, for where a railway station is, there one expects a town, or village, also. But here is a void, an emptiness, a vacuum. Only a solitary bay is disclosed before the astounded stranger’s gaze. It is a noble bay, it is true, and commands lovely views of the great North Hill at Minehead, with Dunster nestling midway; and the sunsets are magnificent. But railway companies don’t build railway stations merely for the convenience of those few people who would take a journey especially for sake of a view or a sunset ”

“ A railway journey is not interesting anywhere, and less so in Norway than other countries, as there is not even the sensation of speed to divert your mind, and keep you excited in momentary expectation of a smash. ”

“ To the fantastic mood which possesses you equally, sleeping or waking, the stoppages of the train have a weird character, and Worcester, Springfield, New Haven, and Stamford are rather points in dreamland than well-known towns of New England. As the train stops you drowse if you have been waking, and wake if you have been in a doze; but in any case you are aware of the locomotive hissing and coughing beyond the station, of flaring gas-jets, of clattering feet of passengers getting on and off; then of some one, conductor or station master, walking the whole length of the train ”

“ The Norwegians call a railway a jernbane, literally "an iron path." Their cars are made on the conventional European pattern, and are light and comfortable. They are furnished with toilet rooms, and run smoothly and noiselessly. Most of the trains are equipped with Westinghouse brakes, steam heat, and electric lights. The trains run very slowly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the date of this story, 1862, Norway was not yet traversed by the railroad that now enables one to go from Stockholm to Drontheim, by way of Christiania. Now, an extensive network of iron rails extends entirely across these two Scandinavian countries, which are so averse to a united existence. But imprisoned in a railroad-carriage, the traveler, though he makes much more rapid progress than in a kariol, misses all the originality that formerly pervaded the routes of travel. ”

“ Before the train is out of the station, you can see the once busy, and in his own opinion, all-important railway official, vanishing down the road to carry his spoils to his suffering comrades. Railway travelling is indeed expensive in France. No matter what time of day or night, wet or fine, the trains are met at each station by devoted women who extract contributions for the Red Cross Funds from the pockets of willing givers. ”

“ Away in the heath and winding onward by many a curve may yet be traced the first railroad in the West Country. It started here, upon the frontier hills of Dartmoor, and sank mile upon mile to the valleys beneath. But of granite were wrought the lines, and over them ran ponderous wagons. Many thousand feet of stone were first cut for the railway, before those greater masses destined for London set forth upon it to their destination.
Like the empty quarry this deserted railway now lies silent, and the place of its passing on the hills and through the forest [51] beneath is at peace again. ”

“ The most unique of railroads, however, is still the little line in Norway, north of the arctic circle, carrying the product of far northern mines to the sea, and famous as the only railroad that has yet invaded the polar regions. ”

“ In the great English cities and towns, the stations are vast iron, glass-roofed structures, kept in excellent order. The waiting-rooms are divided into first, second, and third class, and the door opening upon the platform is not opened until a certain time before the train starts. Porters in uniform take the luggage to the train, and the "guard" who acts as conductor knows nothing about any railway train connections or line beyond his own. The passenger is supposed to know all that sort of thing, and he who "wants to know, you know," is at once recognized as an American. ”

“ A similar posting system obtains by rowing-boats on lakes and fjords.
The first railway, that between Christiania and Eidsvold, was constructed by agreement between British capitalists and the Railways. Norwegian government, and opened in 1854. The total length of railways is only about 1600 m., Norway having the lowest railway mileage in proportion to area of any European state, though in proportion to population the length of lines is comparatively great. Almost the whole are state lines. Railways are most fully developed in the S.E., both N. and S. of Christiania. ”