Boxcar

“ Locomotive driving at a hundred miles an hour is but mild exhilaration as compared to the feelings of the motor-car driver who travels at fifty miles an hour on the public highway.
Gigantic motor trucks carrying tons of freight twist in and out through crowded streets, controlled by one man more easily than a driver guides a spirited horse on a country road.
Frail motor bicycles dash round the platter-like curves of cycle tracks at railroad speed, and climb hills while the riders sit at ease with feet on coasters. ”

“ Box-cars, and even platform-cars, answer the purpose well enough, but they, should always have rough board-seats. For sick and wounded men, box-cars filled with straw or bushes were usually employed. Personally, I saw but little of the practical working of the railroads, for I only turned back once as far as Resaca; but I had daily reports from the engineer in charge, and officers who came from the rear often explained to me the whole thing, with a description of the wrecked trains all the way from Nashville to Atlanta. ”

“ Boxcraft automobiles are the best there are. They do not cost you a single penny! Repairs are always very easy to make, too.
If you care to add a hood to the automobile, it may be made from the cover of your large box. Cut the front rim of the box cover down, and slant the long sides of the cover down to the uncut end.
Paste an upright piece of cardboard about four inches high behind your rear seat. To its top, glue the higher end of the box cover. ”

“ Inspectors always check journal boxes carefully, but it sometimes happens that the oil gets used up while the car is moving. The unoiled axle grows hotter and hotter until the waste begins to smoke and burn. Then the car has a hot box, which railroaders also call a stinker. Hot boxes can be dangerous. If an axle goes too long without grease, it may break off and cause a bad accident.
When the train goes around a curve, the engineer or the fireman looks back for smoking journal boxes. The brakeman in the caboose keeps an eye out for{43} them, too. ”

“ This vehicle, like the bicycle, is not essentially a modern invention; the reason any one can manufacture it is that practically all the basic ideas antedate 1840. Indeed, the automobile is really older than the railroad. In the twenties and thirties, steam stage coaches made regular trips between certain cities in England and occasionally a much resounding power-driven carriage would come careering through New York and Philadelphia, scaring all the horses and precipitating the intervention of the authorities. ”

“ One of the thread boxes has the cover glued on, and to the top is glued also one large wooden spool for the engine’s smoke stack, and a block for the engineer’s cab. [112] These little box cars are coupled together by short lengths of braided cord. Holes are punched in the ends of the cars with an awl and the cord is pushed through and knotted at each end to hold it in place. A long piece of cord is fastened to the engine and is used to draw the cars by.
There is no end to the entertainment and fun to be had from a pile of empty boxes. ”

“ Our engine has a bogie on four small wheels, and is thus able to negotiate the sharpest curves; a tender with water and fuel; then come a front van, three first-class cars with twenty-four places each, a restaurant car with pantry and kitchen, four second-class cars and a rear van; in all twelve vehicles, counting in the locomotive and tender. The first class cars are provided with dressing rooms, and their seats, by very simple mechanism, are convertible into beds, which, in fact, are indispensable for long journeys. ”

“ A bogie truck is really a short carriage frame complete in itself, with its wheels, springs, and brake appliances, and is attached to the under side of the carriage body by a central pivot, round which the truck can swivel or rotate sufficiently to adapt itself to the curved portions of the line. With a bogie truck at each end of a long carriage, the vehicle will pass as easily round curves as on the straight line, side pressure, or grinding against the rails, is obviated, and friction is reduced to a minimum. ”

“ Another locomotive whistled, and another train came through at top speed, and another, and another, train after train, train after train, till toward the last the trains were composed of passenger coaches, box-cars, flat-cars, dead engines, cabooses, mail-cars, wrecking appliances, and all the riff-raff of worn-out and abandoned rolling-stock that collects in the yards of great railways. When the yards at Council Bluffs had been completely cleaned, the private car and engine went east, and the tracks died for keeps. ”

“ Springfield Mechanics Devise a New Mode of Travel.
Ingenious Wagon Now Being Made in This City for Which the Makers Claim Great Things.
A new motor carriage, which, if the preliminary tests prove successful as is expected, will revolutionize the mode of travel on highways, and do away with the horse as a means of transportation, is being made in this city. It is quite probable that within a short time one may be able to see an ordinary carriage in almost every respect, running along the streets or climbing country hills without visible means of propulsion. ”

“ It met the competition of the gasolene locomotive upon the highroad, how? By cutting its all-the-year train service to two trains a day and gradually raising its fare to five cents a mile. People who have to go from one end of its main line to the other, about 110 miles, are still likely to patronize it. The motor-bus is hardly more effective in the long haul than is the motor-truck. And in the really bleak days of winter its snug little passenger-cars, well lighted and warmed, have more appeal than the poorly lighted and heated motor-buses that traverse the State highway. ”

“ In Paris, London, Berlin, the motor mail van is a common sight. It has even penetrated the interior of India, [147] where the Maharajah of Gwalior uses a specially fitted steam car for the delivery of his private mails. And, as though to show that man alone shall not profit by the new mode of locomotion, Paris owns a motor-car which conveys lost dogs from the different police-stations to the Dogs' Home! In fact, there seems to be no purpose to which a horse-drawn vehicle can be put, which either has not been, or shortly will be, invaded by the motor. ”

“ The use of carriage trucks has greatly diminished upon railways, but the use of horse boxes has not diminished, partly because in recent years all over England, wherever there is hunting, a “horse and his rider” can go to the field, each with his return ticket, thirty, forty, and even fifty miles, making an early start in the morning, and returning in the evening in time, at all events, for the rider’s dinner. The other “partly” is, that horse boxes have for some years been employed in a traffic for which they were not originally intended ”

“ The event aroused the greatest interest, and the failure of the vehicle to realise the expectations formed of it by no means disheartened the horseless carriage enthusiasts. They declared that before long a reliable horseless carriage would certainly be invented. In 1790 there was a belief that their prophecy had been fulfilled, for invitations were sent out to members of the Society of Arts, engineers, and all interested in mechanics and vehicular tratlie to attend a certain place on a stated day to inspect a horseless carriage, which possessed the additional novelty of having one wheel only. ”

“ Forty men stretched out in a small box-car. Incidently it might be added that a French box-car is about one-half the size of similar type of car used on the railroads in the United States. It wasn't fair to kick your buddy in the face or get on his ear. The night, however, gradually wore on and the towns of Valognes, Isigny and Manche St. Lo, were passed. Thence out of the Manche department, through the railroad center at Vire, in Calvados, the special, with its side-door Pullmans, rolled on, enroute through Flers, Coutenne and Pre during the early hours of the morning of August 6th. ”

“ Hurry up and get her hitched," urged Paul.
Soon after Andy drove up to the door of the coast guard station with his jaunting car. The mare was hitched to the car with a curious combination of harness composed of twisted hay, rope, cords and leather. As nearly every one knows, a jaunting car is a two-wheeled affair. Over each wheel runs a seat, fore and aft, and in the centre is a little receptacle for small baggage, called the well. A car generally carries four passengers, two on each side. ”

“ It is amusing to watch the disappearance from the roads of our dear old wooden box on wheels,—politely called an omnibus—besmirched by advertisements until its destination is difficult to decipher. The horse omnibus has been largely superseded by the motor bus,—still in its infancy, judging by its breakdowns, its noises, and its smells,—and the lumbering carts of former years are giving place to whole trains of rattling vans headed326 by a puffing engine, which parade our streets to the misery of those on foot, and the positive terror of the aged and the young. ”

“ Especially in smaller communities and in the thinly settled outskirts of larger communities can one wagon or one motor truck often render the service now requiring one express wagon or motor truck and one post office wagon or motor truck. On less crowded routes and on less crowded trips, one railroad car can often render the service now requiring an express car and a railway post office car. ”

“ THE BOXVILLE RAILWAY STATION Material Required for Making a Boxville Railway Station: one shoe-box and four shoe-box covers, one small box about four inches square and without a cover, the shallow covers of two small boxes three inches long, two long pencils, and a small square of waxed paper.
Boxville’s Railway Station is a real railway station. It is not a tin thing such as you buy ready-made in a toy shop. Boxville Station has a waiting-room with a real ticket booth and benches. You can make just the same kind of little station as you see in this picture. It is easy to make. ”

“ It was also called in German Plantier-büchs, from plantieren, to plant, set up, because fired from a rest. Du. bus, like Ger. Büchse, means both "box" and "gun." In the bushes, or axle-boxes, of a cart-wheel, we have the same word. The ultimate origin is Greek πύξος, the box-tree, whence also the learned word pyx. Fr. boîte, box, is cognate, and Fr. boussole, mariners' compass, is from the Italian diminutive bossola, "a boxe that mariners keepe their compasse in. Also taken for the compasse" (Florio) . ”

“ Toys like trains may be built with little more than a long cracker box for a coach and some oblong box for engine. The engine’s smoke-stack is a round box. Its coal-car is a cover taken from a candy box. Its wheels are buttons or button molds placed on the ends of wire hair-pins that have been pressed through the sides of the cardboard boxes. ”

“ Before the advent of the motor-car, Society, though tired of “biking” and craving for a novelty, could not tolerate the notion of being seen in any other than a well-horsed vehicle. Society now thinks differently, as evidenced by a stroll in the Park during the season. There, in the midst of graceful landaus and other equipages drawn by the most splendid horses in the world, may be seen endless electric and steam barouches, broughams, victorias, and cars, all perfectly noiseless, and magnificent petrol motor-cars (not noiseless!) ”

“ It is to become universal; the wooden car will become extinct upon American railroads almost as soon as the present equipment is worn out and sent to the scrap-heap.
Of the forms and varieties of railroad passenger coaches there are many, and these will be described when we come to consider in a later chapter the luxury of modern railroad travel. But the variety of passenger equipment quite pales before that of the freight service. Flat-cars, coal-cars, box-cars, grain-cars, live-stock cars—the list runs on into catalogue form. ”

“ In 1909 Massachusetts box makers bought 600,000 feet, and a little more went to Maryland box factories. Its poor holding power on spikes limits its employment as railroad ties and in shipbuilding. Carpenters and furniture makers object to the numerous knots. Country blacksmiths who repair and make wagons as a side line, find it suitable for wagon beds. It is much used as fuel where it is convenient. ”

“ The vehicle, however, in which the letters and packets are forwarded, in consequence of the wretched roads in the interior, and with the view of expediting the transmission of mail matter, is simply a light, open, eminently uncomfortable, two-wheel waggon, in which but one passenger can be taken each trip. Day and night, up hill and down dale, it continues its journey, changing driver and223 horses every two hours, only the unfortunate passenger being condemned to remain glued to the jolting uncomfortable car, until he has attained the end of his journey. ”

“ In every railroad yard where trains are made up, there is a gang of men whose sole business it is to go from car to car, dope-bucket in hand, and make sure that all journal-boxes are properly filled. For hot-boxes are a prolific source of trouble. So are burst air-hose. Air-brakes, operated by compressed air, are very generally in use now on freight-cars as well as passenger-coaches. ”