Philadelphia and Reading Railroad

“ In southeastern Pennsylvania the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad carried many slaves on their way to freedom, and according to Smedley, "All who took the trains at the Reading Railroad stations went directly through to Canada." [444] E. F. Pennypacker often forwarded negroes from Schuylkill to Philadelphia over this road, and William Still sent them on their northward journey. [445] Fugitives arriving at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, sometimes took passage over the Northern Central Railroad to Elmira, New York. ”

“ The industrial development of Philadelphia has been greatly aided by the favorable location of the city for commerce, and especially by its proximity to raw materials. The city has the advantage of superior railroad facilities. The great Pennsylvania Railroad system, with 10,484 miles of owned and leased lines, and the Philadelphia and Reading Railway, with $140,000,000 capital and 1457 miles of track, terminate and have home offices near the City Hall. ”

“ It is enough here to say that eventually it obtained trackage rights from Philadelphia to Jersey City over a combination of certain lines of the Reading and the Central Railroad of New Jersey. Recently, as we have seen, these were so extended as to bring it into the Pennsylvania Station. Railroad competition to-day in a good many parts of the land is not a very serious thing—save, possibly, for publicity purposes. ”

“ It also owns the $20,000,000 purchase money mortgage bonds issued by the Philadelphia & Reading Railway Company, the locomotives, cars, steam collieries, tugs, and barges constituting the railway and marine equipment, and all the real estate of the old Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company which was not appurtenant to the railroad itself. ”

“ The Pennsylvania lines give Philadelphia more direct communication with the productive Middle West than is enjoyed by any other Atlantic port. The general offices of the Lehigh Valley Railroad are in the city. The Baltimore and Ohio enters where Chestnut Street crosses the Schuylkill. The tracks of the Pennsylvania are nearly all elevated or below grade, the Baltimore and Ohio below, and the Reading partly above, partly below, but mainly at grade. The Delaware River admits of the entrance of ocean vessels, and is navigable the entire length of the city's frontage, 18 miles. ”

“ Here, then, we have the two extremes: first, spending more money than the expected traffic will warrant, to cut down hills and fill up valleys; and second, introducing grades so steep that the amount of traffic does not authorize the use of engines heavy enough to work them.
The direction of the traffic, to a certain extent, determines the rate and direction of the inclines. Thus, the Reading Railroad, from Philadelphia up the Schuylkill to Reading, and thence to Pottsville, is employed entirely in the transport of coal from the Lehigh coal-fields to tide-water in Philadelphia ”

“ Like the Baltimore & Ohio and the Erie, the Reading has benefited largely from the favorable business conditions of the last decade. The combined income of the three Reading companies has grown from $48,422,971 in 1898 to $95,715,088 in 1907.283 Earnings on the Philadelphia & Reading Railway alone are now nearly as great as the combined income of the three companies at the earlier date. ”

“ Within the last year the largest railroad station in the world, in the yards of which there is an immense amount of traffic, and from whose signal towers are worked switches and signals innumerable, has been opened. This immense station is situated at St. Louis. It covers an area of about twelve acres, and is larger than the two magnificent depots of Philadelphia combined. The second largest railroad station in the world is at Frankfort, Germany. The third in order of size is the Reading Station at Philadelphia. The four next largest being the Pennsylvania Depot at Philadelphia, St. ”

“ Even so important a city as Philadelphia has had serious complaints to make at times of the favoritism shown New York by sending many of the best trains from Washington north through Philadelphia without running into Broad Street Station, but stopping only at West Philadelphia, and by arranging excursion tickets so that southern buyers would go to New York instead of Philadelphia. ”

“ The work of extension has ever kept pace with the opportunity to develop this great railroad system until it includes, in whole, or in part, more than one hundred lesser lines of road, with its main line, branches and spurs.
The great terminal station in Philadelphia, recently damaged by fire, will soon be replaced by one of the finest railroad stations in the world, even comparable with the great Pennsylvania Station in New York City. ”

“ Also, a train starts from Philadelphia on the same Sunday as the train starts from San Francisco, another on Monday, another on Tuesday, etc., up to Saturday—that is, seven trains, all of which it meets, making, with the six trains previously started, thirteen trains in all which it meets. A train leaves Philadelphia on Sunday at the same time the Pacific Express reaches there, but this is not counted as a meeting.
A switch siding to a single-track railroad is just long enough to clear a train of eight cars and a locomotive. ”

“ M. W. Baldwin of this city will depart daily when the weather is fair with a train of passenger cars. On rainy days horses will be attached.”
Besides the American railroads using Baldwin locomotives, engines built in this plant are in use in many foreign lands. There is hardly a part of the world to [72] which one can go where a Philadelphia-made locomotive is not to be seen.
THE FIRST TRAIN ON THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD
Philadelphia holds an important place in the construction of high-grade machine tools. ”

“ The third-rail was installed, and the new line became at once popular for suburban traffic in and out of Philadelphia and for the great press of local traffic between Philadelphia and Atlantic City. Of the success of that move on the part of the Pennsylvania there has never been the slightest question. Regular trains have [Pg 436] been operated for several years over this route at 60 miles an hour, and not the slightest difficulty has been found in maintaining the schedules. ”

“ At the present time (1903) there is under construction a subway system of four tracks from the Delaware to the Schuylkill, with an elevated extension along Market Street from the Schuylkill to the city line. Twelve public and twelve railroad bridges cross the Schuylkill, and one railroad bridge the Delaware; and among these are some of the finest structures of the kind in the country.
It is possible to characterize with tolerable accuracy the various sections of Philadelphia. The business life centres around Market Street. ”

“ A whole railroad system subsidiary to this road has been developed in Delaware, and to-day, with the best road-bed, double tracks, steel rails, the best locomotives, the best passenger cars in the country, supplied with all the modern improvements of brake, platform and signal, and a perfectly drilled corps of subordinates, this road may challenge the attention of the country, and be pointed out as one of the best evidences of the growth and prosperity of Philadelphia. ”

“ While Daniel Drew was lining his pockets with loot from the Erie Railroad and Commodore Vanderbilt was piling up his colossal fortune through consolidation and manipulation, J. Edgar Thomson was steadily building up the greatest business organization on the continent. In 1860, the entire Pennsylvania Railroad system was represented merely by the main line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, with a few short branches. By 1869 the road had expanded within Pennsylvania alone to nearly one thousand miles and also controlled lines northward to the shores of Lake Erie, through the State of New York. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No one would assert that one daily train each way between New York and Philadelphia would furnish adequate facilities for the transportation of passengers. Twenty times that number of trains would be necessary, and yet one through train a day, each way, through so small a place as Latta to New York or Tampa would, in all probability, easily transport all the passengers desiring transportation between these places. ”

“ A few typical ones will suffice to show how common the evil is. President Ramsay of the Wabash has testified as to the roundabout competition with the Pennsylvania Railroad between Philadelphia and Pittsburg by which sometimes as much as fifty-seven per cent. of traffic between those two points may be diverted from the direct route. "They haul freight 700 miles around sometimes to meet a point in competition 200 miles away." [251] Chicago and New Orleans are 912 miles apart, and about equally distant—2,500 miles—from San Francisco. ”

“ One of the earliest of real railroads was the Columbia & Philadelphia—nowadays one of the main stems of the Pennsylvania’s trunk line—and it was from the beginning a railroad of quite heavy traffic, double-tracked and reaching into a fat country. Yet a shop at Parkersburg, halfway up the line, employing forty men in all, was considered quite enough for the maintenance of equipment. If one of those early engines broke down at either terminal, the engineer, the fireman and perhaps the local blacksmith had to make their own repairs. ”

“ One engine could haul the same train from Derry to Philadelphia that it took two engines to haul from Pittsburgh to Derry. "Double-headers" had been previously run between these two points, especially coal trains, but no general order for all freight trains to run as "double-headers" had ever before been issued. In selecting men to discharge under the order to run "double-headers," single men, and men who had been the shortest time in the employ of the company, were chosen, and the men with families, and old men, were kept so far as they could be. ”

“ There were still further incentives to immediate action on the part of the Pennsylvania Railroad. While the New York Central was in an ideal position for handling all traffic destined for the New England States, the Pennsylvania could control practically none of this business, as its terminals were on the wrong side of the Hudson and necessitated not merely the inconvenient transfer of passengers but also the much more expensive handling of freight. ”

“ Any person was supposedly free to use its rails for the hauling of his produce in his own cars. The theory of the Columbia & Philadelphia Railroad was simply that of an improved turnpike. For ten years after the opening of the line in 1834, the horse-teams of private freight haulers alternated upon the tracks between steam locomotives hauling trains. A team of worn-out horses hauling a four-wheeled car, loaded with farm produce could, and frequently did keep a passenger train hauled by a steam locomotive fretting along for hours behind it. ”

“ The plan adopted for the afternoon's operations was for a portion of the Philadelphia troops to take possession of the premises of the railroad company at and in the vicinity of Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth streets, where the freight trains that had been prepared to send out stood, and clear this portion of the tracks from the crowd, so that when the tracks and switches at Twenty-eighth street were cleared and put in possession of the company, the trains could at once be moved, as the engineers and men were said to be ready to start with the trains. ”

“ Later, he became manager of his father's great traction interests. The ability with which he managed the business played an important part in the history of the Philadelphia street railway system. Like his father, he was of the constructive type, a builder rather than a financier. He never handled railroads for stock market purposes. His conception of the duties of a railroad man included the improvement of his properties in accordance with the most modern ideas in traction, and the building of new lines where they seemed needed. ”

“ In 1832 a few adventurous men obtained a charter for a railroad from Baltimore to Port Deposit: other charters were granted by Delaware and Pennsylvania in succeeding years, and at last in 1838 all were consolidated as the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company, and became a through all-rail line, interrupted only by the Susquehanna and some minor water-courses, under one management, beginning at Philadelphia and ending at Baltimore. But the country was too young and weak to make this a strong road, either in capital or business. ”

“ Warfare between railroads became intensified by the competition between the cities which the railroads served, and by 1876 the question of relative rates to New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore had grown to be of primary importance.12 By an agreement in 1869 Baltimore had been given a differential on east-bound freight of 10 cents per 100 pounds, which had been reduced to 5 cents on grain in 1870. ”

“ The Philadelphia branch of the Underground Rail Road was not fortunate in having very frequent arrivals from North Carolina. Of course such of her slave population as managed to become initiated in the mysteries of traveling North by the Underground Rail Road were sensible enough to find out nearer and safer routes than through Pennsylvania. Nevertheless the Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia occasionally had the pleasure of receiving some heroes who were worthy to be classed among the bravest of the brave, no matter who they may be who have claims to this distinction. ”