King's Cross Station

“ On one single exceptional occasion 1,111 trains, carrying 145,000 persons, were reported as entering and leaving this station in the space of eighteen hours, being rather more than a train a minute. Indeed it may well be questioned whether the world anywhere else furnishes an illustration so apt and dramatic of the great mechanical achievements of recent times as that to be seen during the busy hours of any week-day from the signal and interlocking galleries which span the tracks as they enter the Charing Cross or Cannon street stations in London. ”

“ No American walks through the immense concourse hall, lined with Roman travertine, of the Great Central Station in New York or penetrates the series of 36halls, like some vaster Baths of Caracalla, of the Pennsylvania Station, without a sense of pride in the two great railway companies who have given the country such noble monuments. The average New Yorker feels to these two stations as the average English schoolboy does to express engines. ”

“ The American railway stations have special waiting rooms for ladies—not, as in England, places furnished with looking-glasses, where they can go and arrange their bonnets, etc. No, no. Places where they can wait for the trains, protected against the contamination of man, and where they are spared the sight of that eternal little round piece of furniture with 79 which the floors of the whole of the United States are dotted.
At Cleveland Station, this morning, I met Jonathan, such as he is represented in the comic papers of the world. ”

“ Thus have perished multiform openings for public expressions of interest, scenical yet natural, in great national tidings,—for revelations of faces and groups that could not offer themselves amongst the fluctuating mobs of a railway station. The gatherings of gazers about a laurelled mail had one centre, and acknowledged one sole interest. But the crowds attending at a railway station have as little unity as running water, and own as many centres as there are separate carriages in the train. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 streets that led from the station were poor and commonplace; and, indeed, a railway seems to have the effect of making its own vicinity mean. We noticed nothing remarkable until we got to the marketplace, in the centre of which there is a cross, doubtless of great antiquity, though it is in too good condition not to have been recently repaired. It consists of an upright pillar, with a pedestal of half a dozen stone steps, which are worn hollow by the many feet that have scraped their hobnailed shoes upon them. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Through the doorway of our stifling compartment, which up until the last moment was left open for air, we could see the train on the opposite platform silently, rapidly filling with men, each carrying a new pair of shoes either slung over the shoulders or neatly tied in a box or paper parcel. Then without any warning, without any hilarious vociferations on the part of its occupants, it quietly drew out of the station, to be instantly replaced by another train of cars.
Five times we watched the same operation recommence ere the ten o'clock train decided to leave Paris. ”

“ The crowds in the terminal, as we hurried from ferry to the railroad yard, cheered us, too, and men rushed out to shake hands with us and crowded cigarettes and cigars into our pockets as we marched on.
We had been told that the Red Cross would feed us. It did, to the extent of a single sandwich and a cup of coffee, hastily snatched as we wended our way through the railroad yard to the train.
Long tourist sleepers are our lot. They stood on a siding, dimly lighted with a single candle at either end of the car when we climbed into them and were assigned to our seats. ”

“ Charing Cross holds up the symbol of Christendom; the next station is called a Temple; and Blackfriars remembers the mediaeval dream of a Brotherhood.
If you wish to find the past preserved, follow the million feet of the crowd. At the worst the uneducated only wear down old things by sheer walking. But the educated kick them down out of sheer culture.
I feel all this profoundly as I wander about the empty railway station, where I have no business of any kind. I have extracted a vast number of chocolates from automatic machines ”

“ Did you get into a carriage that had a lamp, sir?”
“I’ve seen some bungling at railway stations before now,” said Harold, “but bang me if I ever met the equal of this.”
“This isn’t properly speaking a station, sir, it’s a junction,” said the official, mildly, but with the force of a man who has said the last word.
“That simply means that greater bungling may be found at a junction than at a station,” said Harold. “Is it not customary to give some notice of the departure of a train at a junction as well as a station, my good man?” ”

“ As I have stated, it was at the railway terminus, which had been converted into a Hospital by the Prussians the day after they took possession of the town.
Entering from the Place in front of the station into the principal waiting-room, we passed through two lines of soldiers, drawn up at attention, and out on the platform. There were no carriages within the precincts of the terminus, but some dreary-looking trucks might be seen scattered about on the sidings, and, except a few [163] men on guard at the coal depôt, there was not a human being within sight. ”

“ Railway porters were standing at intervals, with lanterns and all the attaches of the station, the clerks from the ticket-office, and the young waitresses from the refreshment-rooms, were looking on in evident expectation of some event, though no one seemed to speak, and everybody looked sad at heart There were not half-a-dozen other persons in the great station: I was only admitted on explaining that I wished to go by the mail train. ”

“ Stretching away on either side of us, as far as the eye can reach, we see the passengers’ arrival and departure sheds, booking offices, refreshment rooms, goods and carriage depots, waterworks, gasworks, and all the other facilities and conveniences which are the usual characteristics of the railway system; while beyond the limits of the Station, and indeed of the city itself, which here intrenches upon the township of Hoole, the busy hum of life is ceaselessly heard spreading itself in every direction, and rapidly transforming the region of the plough into the turmoil of the town. ”

“ I paid up my reckoning at the hotel, directed that my baggage should be sent on next day, and in less than half an hour from the time I had opened the telegram I rushed, heated and breathless, into the primitive little railway station—the only one which that part of the country boasted for miles round. I gained the platform in time to see the red light on the end of the departing train as it disappeared into the mouth of the tunnel a few hundred yards down the line. For a moment I was unable to realize my ill fortune. ”

“ From the standpoint of æsthetics, the railroad station in the average New England{35} town is a monstrosity, although in all fairness it should be said that within a decade there has been a notable improvement in this respect. But from the standpoint of economics and social science, the railway station is subordinate only to the church and the school in its service to society; and the degree of civilization in any community may be accurately computed by the volume and variety of the traffic done with its station agents. ”

“ GEORGE STEPHENSON. If a town, or even a village, is of any importance nowadays it is sure to have within it or alongside it a railway station, a place that brings it into touch with the great outside world. Some seventy-five years ago there were no railways or railway-stations in Great Britain, or anywhere else, and people were content to post or coach along roads behind horses. ”

“ As we approached the station the guide said in his whining German:
"Pay attention to me now. I shall leave you here. Go to the suburban booking-office—the entrance is in the street to the left of the station hall. Go into the first-class waiting-room and look out of the window that gives on to the station hall. There you will see some of the forces mobilized against you. There is a regular cordon of guides—like me—drawn across the entrances to the main-line platforms—unostentatiously, of course. If you look you will see plenty of plain-clothes Huns, too. ”

“ Notice how little townships have grown up round the railway stations, especially on the main lines in districts near a big town. Houses spring up for the hosts of people who, like streams of human ants, hurry to the station to catch the early morning trains, and, as the afternoon wears into evening, come again from the station to snatch a few hours' rest at home. ”

“ Take the half-past-seven Sunday morning train from the New York Grand Central station, and you will see at every way-station a swarm of dark, sturdy foreigners entering or quitting the train at the little towns along the way—for this is a local train and makes all the stops—and these people are thus enabled to visit their friends and acquaintances. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Suddenly they are made prisoners by a band of twelve masked and heavily-armed men. They are marched to the little railway station, where the telegraph-operator, an old woman, and the railway auditor, are added to the number. They comprise the entire population of the very picturesque and romantic station. ”

“ At the next station the reporter had a chance to examine the office of the Illinois Central agent, all decorated with shells picked up on the famous battlefields at the head of the line, and to see the bunk house and restaurant for the men who lay over there. Every station on the line—there are seven—has an American station master, and all the yards have American yard-masters and American switchmen. There is, strictly speaking, no block system in France, but each station is supposed to be the boundary of a block, and a train simply stays in one station until the one ahead is clear. ”

“ It has been well said that a railway station is a fit emblem of human life, with its brief merriment and grief, its greetings and good-bys, its clamor of coming and going.
[Pg 9]
Be this as it may, it is probable that of the half a thousand people in the Lowell Depot that morning, but few abandoned themselves to moral reflections. Certainly Tom Percival was not occupied with philosophical meditation, as he stood on the lowest step of the car “Kamloops,” looking out eagerly over the crowd that surged to and fro on the platform beside the train. ”

“ My impression is that you habitually drive to a London station as nearly in time to take your train as may be, and that there is very little use for waiting-rooms. This may be why the waiting-room seems so small and unattractive a part of the general equipment. It never bears any such proportion to the rest as the waiting-rooms in the great Boston stations, or even that of the Grand Central in New York, and is by no chance so really fine as that of the Atchison and Topeka at Omaha, or that of the Lake Shore at Pittsburg. ”