Railroad station

“ The railroad stations in Germany are very much finer than our own. The interiors of the buildings are neat, with comfortable furnishings, fine restaurants, and dress-coated waiters quick and ready to serve. The station-houses are surrounded with well-cared-for grounds, containing flowers, fountains often, gravelled walks, and comfortable seats, so that waiting for trains never becomes tedious. ”

“ 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. ”

“ XXI. Another of the strange and evil tendencies of the present day is to the decoration of the railroad station. Now, if there be any place in the world in which people are deprived of that portion of temper and discretion which are necessary to the contemplation of beauty, it is there. It is the very temple of discomfort, and the only charity that the builder can extend to us is to show us, plainly as may be, how soonest to escape from it. The whole system of railroad travelling is addressed to people who, being in a hurry, are therefore, for the time being, miserable. ”

“ One enters the community at the railroad station or by a main road. It is, of course, impossible to prevent the property adjoining a railroad from being the least attractive, because it is the most undesirable for residence purposes; but it is entirely practicable to have a neat railroad station with well-kept surroundings. ”

“ A new railroad station has been built on the heights above the city and the old ramshackle wooden structure which is an eyesore to the city will be torn down to make way for the opening of a new street. ”

“ Every one meets at the railroad station. They are all as smart looking as can be, there is no sign of "rough" clothes anywhere, though nothing in the least like a jewel case or parasol is to be seen. At the end of somewhere between eight and eighteen hours, they arrive at a shed which sits at the edge of the single track and is labelled Dustville Junction, and hurrying down the narrow platform is their host. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No one would travel in that manner who could help it—who had time to go leisurely over hills and between hedges, instead of through tunnels and between banks: at least those who would, have no sense of beauty so acute as that we need consult it at the station. The railroad is in all its relations a matter of earnest business, to be got through as soon as possible. ”

“ To-day it is carrying off the remnants of that station improvement to the scrap-heap and trying to see far enough into the future to build a station that shall last it fifty years at least.
There is not an engineer employed by that railroad [Pg 95] who will assert himself as possessed of the absolute belief that the new station will be adequate for the traffic of a half century hence, if indeed the great spreading palace of steel and marble be in existence at all at that time. ”

“ Some of our more progressive railroad companies have perceived that it is good business to make their stations and grounds attractive and most of them will be willing to meet the local people halfway in an effort to improve their appearance. In far too many cases the grounds of the railroad station and the adjoining properties are the most neglected spot in the village and give an unfavorable impression of the community. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In approaching a station where a passenger train is due or past due, and where the view is not clear, trains must be under perfect control, so that they may be stopped, if necessary, before reaching station. Trains on the double track must not, under any circumstances, pull into a station at which a passenger train in the opposite direction is standing or into which it is pulling to receive or discharge passengers, until such train has started up and the rear coach thereof has passed the end of the station platform nearest the approaching train, excepting where tracks are divided by fences. ”

“ Upon approaching a station located at or in the vicinity of a railroad crossing, when it is necessary for a train to stop at such crossing, before reaching the crossing brakemen must give warning of the fact by calling out distinctly in each car, "The next stop is for railway crossing, not a station." Junction points, railroad crossings where a stop is made, and terminals will be announced, passengers notified when to change cars, and attention directed to their parcels and other belongings. ”

“ “I hate your city. It has standardized all the beauty out of life. It is one big railroad station—with all the people taking tickets for the best cemeteries,” Dr. ”

“ 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 railway station is placed out of sight from the town, and, whilst it is excellently adapted to its proper purpose, it is made to harmonise and almost to sympathise in its careful architecture with the city to which it conducts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Newton even dreamt of making the trolley, too, in the Main Street, but that would be a very troublesome job; and as for the railway station, it was easy enough to build a shed and a platform, but what is a railway station without a train? ”

“ The remarkable safety with which railway traffic is on the whole conducted, is due to constant watchfulness and highly-applied skill. The men who work the railways are for the most part the picked men of the country, and every railway station may be regarded as a practical school of industry, attention, and punctuality. ”

“ The sudden change from the dreary lifelessness of the veldt to the exciting crush and bustle of the station platform crowd is almost bewildering, because it is so different from what is expected in interior Africa. The station, a magnificent structure of stone and iron, presents more animated scenes whenever trains arrive than the Grand Central in New York or the Victoria in London, because every passenger is invariably met at the train by all his friends and as many of their friends as the station platform will accommodate. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ And the large white granite station, with iron and glass roof, more resembles an aviary than a railway terminus, the sparrows assembling there in multitudes on the tie-rods, and chattering in almost deafening fashion. In those very considerable intervals between the coming and going of trains one may stand on the platform and not be able to hold a conversation, owing to the sparrows. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the train does start, it glides away silently without any warning bell, and it is easy for an inadvertent traveller to be left behind. Even in large and important stations there is often no clear demarcation between the platforms and the permanent way. The whole floor of the station is on one level, and the rails are flush with the spot from which you climb into the car. ”

“ The only finished building near which this road passes is the railway station, a neat wooden erection, possessing all the requirements of a small wayside station, and lacking only one essential feature—a railway, for the railway, like the great future of Remyo, is late in arriving, and so the road and the railway station are left sitting sadly expectant in the jungle, [Pg 89] waiting patiently for the arrival of that future which alone is needed to render them famous. ”

“ Usually the tracks enter the station in pairs with a platform between each pair of tracks. These tracks and platforms are commonly roofed over in terminal stations. Train-shed roofs are sometimes made up of large steel arches spanning the tracks without intermediate supports, and sometimes they consist of two or more spans of steel roof trusses carried by side walls and intermediate columns.
Except at combination depots and flag stations special buildings are provided for handling the freight traffic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Her own quick wits, aided by those of a gallant fellow passenger, give the two officers an unlooked-for and exciting "run for their money." One hardly realizes till now the dramatic possibilities of a railway train, and what an opportunity for excitement may be afforded by a joint railway station for two or more roads. ”

“ The distance apart of the electric train-staff stations will depend greatly upon the number of the trains, and for a frequent train-service it may be necessary to have the instruments at every station, whether large or small. ”

“ Crowds of them, old and young, are always assembled at the station on the arrival of every train—attracted thither by apparently the same reason that causes their brethren of the North in the cotton belt to flock to the depot when they hear the whistle of the locomotive—childlike curiosity and a desire to get the latest news at the earliest possible moment. ”