Passenger agent

“ Every endeavour, consistent with safety, must be made to expedite the departure of the Goods Trains from the Roadside Stations; and no delay should be permitted unless obstruction to Passenger Trains may be reasonably apprehended.
16. In deciding in difficult cases whether to despatch a Luggage Train or not, the opinions of the Engineman and Breaksman, who must be best acquainted with the state of the Engine and Load, should be obtained, and great weight should be attached to these recommendations, but the decision on the course to be pursued will still rest with the Station Agent. ”

“ It is dangerous to depend even upon men in uniform for information beyond certain narrow limits. Do not expect a local ticket agent, nor yet a railroad conductor, brakeman, or Pullman car porter to know what every passenger may need to know in order to reach his destination. ”

“ A detachment of the officers of the customs was in attendance, and energetic passengers were engaged in attempts to drag them toward their luggage or to drag heavy pieces toward them. These functionaries were good-natured and taciturn, except when occasionally they remarked to a passenger whose open trunk stared up at them, imploring, that they were afraid the voyage had been "rather glassy." They had a friendly, leisurely, speculative way of performing their office, and if they perceived a victim's name written on the portmanteau they addressed him by it, in a tone of old acquaintance. ”

“ Of course they pay the second fare without a murmur, and if any other passenger does not follow their example they express great astonishment that any one could be so mean as to attempt to swindle a poor 'bus conductor. ”

“ Sitting there in the third-class carriage, he became happy again. The presence of his fellow-passengers was not so hampering as in England. In England, everybody seems held tight and gripped, nothing is left free. Every passenger seems like a parcel holding his string as fast as he can about him, lest one corner of the wrapper should come undone and reveal what is inside. And every other passenger is forced, by the public will, to hold himself as tight-bound also. ”

“ Vestibuled express trains are now in general use, on which sleepers, parlor cars, a dining car, a smoking saloon, library, bath-room, barber shop, and writing-room are provided. The checking of baggage is regarded in this country as one of the most indispensable features of railway travel, as by this system through checks over any number of connecting railways may be issued, so that baggage is transferred from the passenger's residence to any specified address in the country without devolving any responsibility upon the owner. ”

“ It is singular that their manifold responsibilities are so little appreciated by passengers. For instance, a passenger might protest against a captain putting to sea in wicked weather, not realizing that he must, to satisfy the owner of the ship, who is obligated by the terms of his mail contract. ”

“ I mingled with the crowd of passengers, porters, and officious individuals in blue coats and brass buttons, who seemed to spring up like mushrooms from the deck of a moored steamer to obtrude their unnecessary services upon the independent passenger. I have often noticed with a certain interest the spontaneous evolution of these fellows. They are not there when you arrive ”

“ In all cases except where passengers shall be ejected for refusal to produce proper ticket or pass, or to pay the proper fare, the conductor, before so doing, must tender such passenger such proportion of the fare he has paid as the distance he then is from the place to which he has paid his fare bears to the whole distance for which he has paid his fare. ”

“ Our passengers were our prisoners. That made the situation somewhat unusual and added a bit of spice. I've served as an officer aboard a dozen or more liners, and have seen all kinds and strata of society aboard, including dull, delightful, ill-natured, jovial—both the quick and the dead. Yes, I have had some splendid passenger lists on voyages where every hour was gay and bubbling with fun. But no group of passengers on a liner ever enjoyed such happy comradeship as did we aboard our buccaneering craft. ”

“ When he goes into the passenger business he absurdly clings to his old habit, and keeps one leg of his passenger always dangling over the great deeps of the lower world while that passenger's heart is in the highlands, so to speak. ”

“ That no passenger shall exercise any control whatever over his own luggage; and that no director, chairman, station-master, policeman, guard, porter, engine-driver, or stoker in any of the companies' employ, shall be responsible for anything whatever. ”

“ A railway company must provide reasonable facilities for forwarding passengers’ luggage; where luggage is taken into the carriage with a passenger, the company is responsible for it only in so far as loss or damage is due to the passenger’s interference with the company’s exclusive control of it. ”

“ We do not wish to put you to the indignity of a search, but shall rely upon your honour. But as soon as you tell us you have given up everything we shall search one passenger of each class. If upon either we find a single coin or a single valuable, we shall shoot one passenger in each compartment. Ladies and gentlemen, do not hurry yourselves. Our time is yours.’
You can imagine that, under these circumstances, there is very little kept back. ”

“ There are no restrictions as to behaviour in these omnibuses. A passenger may smoke, spit and swear, inside or out, to his heart’s content. Moreover, he may take in with him dogs, ferrets, rats, birdcages and beer. The conductor smokes a clay pipe and talks, with the air of an authority, of sporting matters. Several passengers offer him drinks from their private bottles. He accepts [Pg 176] them all, and yet never forgets to collect the fares inside before going on top. ”

“ It’s the Chief’s. Each of us has his job in this show. The chauffeur’s is to bring me alongside the aeroplane and hand me over to the pilot . . .”
As he spoke they saw a hooded and muffled figure detach itself from the knot of mechanics gathered about the plane. It proved to be the pilot, a swarthy young man, to judge by as much as his helmet disclosed of his features, short and stocky, in leather flying-kit. He came up with the chauffeur to the car.
270
“You’re my passenger, I think,” he said to Desmond. “We’re all ready for you!” ”

“ But our attention is suddenly claimed by something of infinitely more importance than a passenger’s luggage: for that low unearthly whine within the small signal-office behind the line of cabs and carriages requires immediate explanation.
The variety of unforeseen accidents that might occur by the unwelcome arrival of an unexpected or even of an expected passenger-train at the great terminus of the London and North-Western Railway are so obvious that it has been deemed necessary to take the following precautions. ”

“ On some lines they use tickets showing the amount each passenger pays, but a conductor sometimes forgets to hand you a ticket. An Inspector will occasionally mount a ’bus to see that all the passengers are supplied with tickets, and then the conductor with a treacherous memory has reason to be sorry. ”

“ But on all railroads there are rules governing the passengers as well as the employees, the same as there are in all lines of business. A passenger may not, for instance, smoke in the body of the Pullman car, but must retire to the drawing room or his stateroom. ”

“ Do the terms of the Cummins Amendment apply to the transportation of baggage?
This must apparently be answered in the affirmative. Transportation of baggage is a part of the contract for transportation of the passenger. The carriers have always limited their liability for loss of or damage to baggage. The baggage check is the carrier's receipt for the baggage. The conditions attached to the carrier's liability are stated in the fare schedules and on passage tickets of contract form. ”

“ The conductor of a passenger-train occupies much the same position. He is responsible for his train and his passengers; never must he seem worried, or admit that there is any danger; he must front death with a smile on his lips, and when the crash comes, his first duty is to the men and women entrusted to his charge. And what a glorious commentary it is on human nature that so few, brought face to face with that duty, seek to evade it!
Back in the dispatchers’ office, the situation grew worse and worse. The dispatcher in charge of the east end had lost a freight-train. ”

“ Among the duties resting upon him is the important one of providing cars or vehicles adequate, that is, sufficiently secure as to strength and other requisites, for the safe conveyance of passengers. That duty the law enforces with great strictness. For the slightest negligence or fault in this regard, from which injury results to the passenger, the carrier is liable in damages. ”

“ A rail passenger carrier shall use reasonable efforts, with respect to its unreserved trains, and passengers not holding reservations on its other trains, to ascertain the names of passengers aboard a train involved in an accident. ”

“ The well-fed, well-defended passenger, with muffled neck and arms thrust to the elbow in the pockets of his dreadnought, rubbed shoulders with the half-paralyzed and shivering wretch that shuffled amid the hurrying throng, often apparently without other object than that of joining in the stream of fellow-creatures, whom he could resemble in no other way. Carriage after carriage rolled past, the children of affluence for their tenants, interchanging careless comments, or looking with languid and heedless gaze upon the squalid, the impoverished, the abandoned, the degraded, that, alas! ”

“ They might begin by shipping off some of the old-time whiskey-guzzling drivers who are too high and mighty to do anything but handle the ribbons, and are above speaking to a passenger unless he's a favorite or one of their set. ”

“ The first-class passenger, except when thrown against his opposite companion, or when some luggage falls upon him, is generally saved from severe contusion by the well-stuffed or padded linings of the carriages; whilst the second-class and third-class passenger is generally thrown with violence against the hard wood-work. ”

“ It is undoubtedly competent for carriers of passengers, by specific regulations, distinctly brought to the knowledge of the passenger, which are reasonable in their character and not inconsistent with any statute or their duties to the public, to protect themselves against liability, as insurers, for baggage exceeding a fixed amount in value, except upon additional compensation, proportioned to the risk. ”

“ Close to each departure-gate there is stationed a person whose duty it is to write down in a book the number of each cabman carrying away a passenger, as well as the place to which he is conveying him, which two facts each driver is required to exclaim as he trots by; and thus any traveller desirous to complain of a cabman, or who may have left any property in a carriage from Euston Station, has only to state on what day and by what train he arrived, also whither he was conveyed, and from these data the driver’s name can at any lapse of time be readily ascertained. ”

“ In order to extend to the public every courtesy consistent with lawful requirements and good business principles, the Pullman Company endeavors to provide prompt and careful attention to all requests for refund of fares where service paid for is not furnished, whether through the acts of its agents or employees or the passenger, or due to interruption of traffic. ”

“ The Captain kept the lead line going almost constantly—an operation which compels the close attention of even the most indolent and unobservant passenger, there being a hint of danger, or risk, or want of knowledge suggested thereby; and a sort of summing up in thought what we shall do if an accident should happen, seems to follow instinctively. ”

“ One passenger may have dropped his ticket, and then comes a search among the hat-boxes and carpet-bags beneath the seats; another may have underpaid his fare, or overridden the power of his ticket, and then occurs the fuss of paying up the difference; a third may be sleeping weariedly in the further corner of the carriage, and then comes the process of waking him, followed, perhaps, by a search for the ticket in an incalculable number of pockets. ”

“ And where the conductor, though against the rules, allowed a passenger to travel in a freight car, charging him a first-class fare, the company were held to have incurred the same liability for his safety as if he had been in a regular passenger train. [516] Ditto where the conductor of a coal [Pg 194] train invited a man to take a ride and charged him naught. ”

“ PASSENGER— The term ``passenger ́ ́ includes— `` (A) an employee of a rail passenger carrier aboard a train; `` (B) any other person aboard the train without regard to whether the person paid for the transportation, occupied a seat, or held a reservation for the rail transportation; and `` (C) any other person injured or killed in a rail passenger accident, as determined appropriate by the Board. ”

“ I am directed to state that His Excellency the Governor-General in Council considers it desirable in the interest of the travelling public to rule that in future no person shall be allowed to take any dog into a passenger carriage, except with the consent of the Station Master at starting station and also with the concurrence of the fellow passengers. ”