Railroad train

“ 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. ”

“ That man has ever been able to create and build the locomotive, a giant creature of some 200 tons, perhaps, built together with infinite care of some 5,000 to 7,000 parts, and these parts acting with the delicacy of the hair-spring of a watch, almost passes ordinary belief. The wonder becomes even greater when it is realized that this monster creature, set upon two slender rails, is capable of pulling a 4,000 ton train, through every stress of weather and over considerable grades. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To follow further the rapid development of the railroad in America would require many volumes. As the canal building fever had seized the fancy of the American public in preceding years, so a similar enthusiasm was instantly kindled in the new railroad, and railroad travel became immediately the most popular diversion. In a relatively few years a web of track carried the smoking locomotive and its rumbling train of cars throughout the country. Crude, and lacking almost every convenience of the passenger coach of the present day, the early railway carriage served fully its new-born function. ”

“ The conductor catches a car step, the “preference” starts forward with all the rattling shakes and bumps peculiar to a long freight train. In a minute or two the red tail-lights are grinning at us from half a mile down the track. Another big freight goes scurrying by us—more market stuff, more meat, more fish for the hungry town, a town which houses 4,000 folk within a single congested tenement square. A third train follows; all refrigerator cars it is too. They come in quick succession, these market trains, to the metropolis. The railroad is doing its part. ”

“ If you look back at the picture on page 19, you will see how one railroad solved the problem. The rails are laid so that they spiral upward, making a loop. When a very long train travels along the loop, it’s like a huge snake coiled around over its own tail!
Unless it’s absolutely necessary, the builders try not to make curves. Trains run faster along rails that are straight as well as flat. Every bend means that the engineer has to slow down a little. ”

“ A railroad yard is a noisy place. Usually the engineer can’t possibly talk with a switchman down the track, no matter how loud he shouts. So railroaders have{33} worked out a whole sign language in which they can talk to each other from a distance. The pictures tell what some of these special signals mean.
After a new freight train has been made up at the classification yard, a car inspector puts a blue flag on the engine and another on the caboose. Then he checks up carefully on the whole train to make sure everything is in good working order. ”

“ Then (p. 054) comes the main body of the army, placing the ties, laying the track, spiking down the rails, perfecting the alignment, ballasting and dressing up and completing the road for immediate use. Along the line of the completed road are construction trains pushing 'to the front' with supplies. The advance limit of the rails is occupied by a train of long box-cars with bunks built within them, in which the men sleep at night and take their meals. Close behind this train come train loads of ties, rails, spikes, etc., which are thrown off to the side. ”

“ On main-line divisions, where traffic runs exceeding heavy, a locomotive stands, steam-up, with the four cars of the wrecking-train. Even on side-line divisions the call for the wreckers will bring the fastest and best engine out of the roundhouse, no matter what her train assignment may be. Things on the railroad stand aside for the wrecker. Limiteds may paw their nervous heels upon sidings while she goes skimming up the line—all time-table rights are hers from the moment that she goes into service. ”

“ Hugh sledges sent the spikes home,—the car rolled on and the operation was repeated; while every few minutes the long heavy train behind sent out a puff of smoke from its locomotive and caught up with its load of material the advancing work. ”

“ That the automatic electric signal system is complicated, and in many of its [176] parts of most delicate construction, is undeniable. So also is the locomotive. In point of fact the whole railroad organization from beginning to end—from machine-shop to train-movement—is at once so vast and complicated, so delicate in that action which goes on with such velocity and power, that it is small cause for wonder that in the beginning all plain, sensible, practical men scouted it as the fanciful creation of visionaries. ”

“ THE TUNNEL OF TRÜBAU.
Amblers have not more prejudices and superstitions than railroad travellers. All the preferences for the winning places, the lucky pack, the shuffling cut, &c., have their representatives among the prevailing notions of those who “fly by steam.”
“I always sit with my back to the engine,” cries one.
“I always travel as far from the engine as possible,” exclaims another.
“I never trust myself behind the luggage train,” adds a third. ”

“ When the engine emerges from the paint-shop it is gorgeous and refulgent—brilliantly new. Unless it is going to foreign lands, when it must be partly dismantled and crated, it will ride its own wheels to the road which has purchased it. A string of new locomotives may be sprinkled through a freight train—never coupled together—in charge of an inspector from the locomotive company, who will bunk in one of the cabs and never leave his charges until they have been receipted for. ”

“ The famous pioneer train of August 9, 1831, over the Mohawk Valley road was literally made up in this way, the bodies of stage coaches having been placed on trucks, which "were coupled together with chains or chain-links, leaving from two to three feet slack, and when the locomotive started it took up the slack by jerks, with sufficient force to jerk the passengers, who sat on seats across the tops of the coaches, out from under their hats, and in stopping they came together with such force as to send them flying from their seats." ”

“ The railroad track must be true; there is not room for even the variation of a fraction of an inch in the gauge of the two rails.
In fastening the two long lines of rails, the profession of track-laying rises to almost supreme heights. The men who fasten the rail with angle iron and a single roughly-adjusted bolt in each rail-end are head-strappers and past masters in their art. After them in due season come the back-strappers, finishing that fine work of solidly bolting the rail against the vast strain of a thousand-ton train being shot over it at lightning speed. ”

“ All the passengers are requested to walk. In single file we march over the bridge, and then await the train. It comes across, lightened of its load, slowly and safely. It is quite likely that in America the engineer would have put on all steam, and dashed across in a second, or, if not, he would have gone down a hundred feet, into a frightful chasm, and the verdict, if any were sought, would have been, “nobody to blame.” Fret as we do about the railroad management in Europe, it is safer and surer than ours. ”

“ When we got tired of packing we quit picking, and thanking the good people for the treat, we board the car again and are soon spinning up the line among the apricot and cherry orchards, the trees loaded with fruit.{111}
Arriving at our destination, we bid our friend, the conductor, goodbye, and in a few minutes we reach the much-inquired-for “narrow-gauge railroad station,” where we wait half an hour for the train. We find the track composed of three rails; and as though to demonstrate to us the use of the third rail, a freight train comes along made up of both narrow and broad-gauge cars. ”

“ The modern method of the large central with its immense sphere of influence, necessitates that the railroad be thoroughly equipped and efficiently managed. The old practice of carrying the cane from field to factory in an ox cart has passed into disuse along with the small mill, and has been superseded by the present railroad, with standard gauge roadbeds, heavy rails, steel cars, powerful locomotives, and schedule running, the whole being under the direction of a practical railroad man, as train despatcher. ”

“ The one he had just left and the one proceeding in the same direction shut him in where there was no flagman or switches. The train bearing down upon him was on a rounding bend of rails, the locomotive not in view, and there was no possible chance of signalling the engineer. ”

“ The four and even six tracks to each of them are hardly enough for the great volume of high-class freight and passenger traffic that press upon their rails. There are some side-lines, with but two or three trains a day—side-lines that reach the main-line only through other branches. But there are no hoejacks, nor peanut branches, nor jerkwaters upon that system. Hereafter there are to be none upon this. The man who is hauling a train on the most remote corner of this railroad is doing its work quite as much as the biggest trainmaster here at the terminal. ”

“ TRAVEL The railroad track is miles away, And the day is loud with voices speaking, Yet there isn't a train goes by all day But I hear its whistle shrieking. All night there isn't a train goes by, Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming But I see its cinders red on the sky, And hear its engine steaming. My heart is warm with the friends I make, And better friends I'll not be knowing, Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take, No matter where it's going. ”

“ All regular freight trains, extras, and work extras will pass into and through all stations and will approach all isolated side tracks, and also all water tanks and coal sheds with train under full control, expecting to find trains at such points. ”

“ The first train finished its journey in safety. Not so the second and the third. The Helmshere station is at the top of a steep incline. This the second train, drawn by two locomotives, surmounted, and then stopped for the delivery of passengers. While these were leaving the carriages, a snap as of fractured iron was heard, and the guards, looking back, saw the whole rear portion of the train, consisting of seventeen carriages and a brake-van, detached from the rest of it and quietly slipping down the incline. ”

“ The breaking of rails has been the cause of much attention on the part of railroad and steel engineering experts ever since the tendency toward the construction of heavy locomotives and greater train loads became evident. ”

“ It was small matter for surprise, therefore, that when in 1875 they experimented scientifically in England, it was ascertained that a train of a locomotive and thirteen cars moving at a speed of forty-five miles an hour could not be brought to a stand in less than one minute, or before it had traversed a distance of half a mile. ”

“ A new engine was out upon an experimental trip, and in rounding a curve it ran into the rear of a passenger train, which, having encountered a disabled freight train, had coupled on to it and was then backing down with it to a siding in order to get by. ”

“ A road doing a large passenger business must accommodate the public as far as possible as regards the time of departure and arrival, and the connections with other roads. A freight road must regard more the character of the road. Some classes of freight (ice, beef, etc.) do not admit of delay. As we increase the number of trains, the ratio of time employed in actual work to the whole train under steam is decreased, as there must be much time lost on sidings in waiting for trains to pass. Liability to accidents is also incurred. ”

“ It kicks the cars out, just beyond the cover of the train-shed and while it is hurrying to the turntable the cars are being hastily swept and dusted. An hour will be allowed the engineer to turn his engine and get his coal and water supply, and then he will start out again on his local run. This performance will be repeated one or more times, before the coaches are sent to the yard for thorough cleaning and stocking, and the locomotive housed for a little rest in the programme. ”

“ The heavy express which has discharged its baggage and passengers in the train-shed is hauled out to the yards by one of the sturdy little switch-engines that are eternally poking their way about the yards. The engine that has pulled it in from the road backs itself down to the roundhouse, without another thought of the train. Its responsibility ended as soon as the run ended in the train-shed. [Pg 90] The engineer simply has to see that his locomotive is carefully put away in the roundhouse; and, on some roads, that his fireman cleans its upper parts before the next run out upon the line. ”

“ In any event, however, the general introduction of the interlocking apparatus into the American railroad system may be regarded as a mere question of the value of land and concentration of traffic. So long as every road terminating in our larger cities [198] indulges, at whatever unnecessary cost to its stockholders, in independent station buildings far removed from business centres, the train movement can most economically be conducted as it now is. ”