Railroad

“ About five in the evening we arrived at the railway station, without entering the town of Aix-la-Chapelle, which looked agreeably placed in a valley encircled by hills. The works for the railroad are in full progress, and the mounds are on a vast scale. They spoil rather the beauty of a landscape; yet a railroad gives such promise of change and novelty to the traveller—transporting us at once from the known to the unknown—that, in spite of all that can be said against them, I delight to see or hear of them. ”

“ Think what you have to endure on the ordinary railroad—and what other kind is there—smoke, dust, cinders, noise, the hurrying of masses of people, the ringing of bells, the tooting of whistles, the brashness and discourtesy of employes, cattle trains, coal trains, fruit trains, milk trains in endless procession—and then they tell you that these are necessary in order to give you the service you get. ”

“ Nothing, perhaps, is so typical of the ingenuity, skill and colossal power of our modern civilization as the railroad train—a solitary man holding the lever which controls this tremendous mass of wood and metal, with its freight of goods and passengers rushing past us at the rate of a mile a minute. ”

“ It enters into the construction of rails, locomotives, box cars, passenger coaches, telegraph wires, block signal devices, and all the countless other things that, in this age of steel and wheels, go into that great expression of the triumph of mind over matter—the modern railroad. ”

“ But the men of this period are not dreamers. Even in the sacredest haunts of Nature, they plot business, and talk railroad! We certainly thought railroad, as our eyes wandered over this beautiful, but isolated valley, and our imagination became busy with the future. ”

“ It has taken our ugly era to thrust in the railroad at the foot of the slope, among the masking trees; the railroad that is part, exactly, of the pomp and circumstance, the quickened pace, the heightened fever, the narrowed margin expressed within the very frame of the present picture, as I say, and all in the perfect good faith of collateral piety. ”

“ The tiniest, prettiest little railroad you could imagine."
"A toy railroad?" queried Bert.
"Not at all; a veritable railroad running all around the store, filled with freight, passengers, and—money."
"Oh, aunty, 'upon your word and honor,' honest, now, was it a real true railroad with cars on it?" cried Harry. ”

“ YOUNG TRAIN DISPATCHER
CHAPTER I THE NEW POSITION
Stretching from the Atlantic seaboard on the east to the Mississippi River on the west, lies the great P. & O. Railroad, comprising, all told, some four thousand miles of track. Look at it on the map and you will see how it twists and turns and sends off numberless little branches; for a railroad is like a river and always seeks the easiest path—the path, that is, where the grades are least and the passes in the mountains lowest. ”

“ Across the stage they build the transcontinental railroad, forming sculptural and beautiful groups as they bend over the joints of the rails and swing their sledges. When the task is completed, the headlights of engines shine along the lines. ”

“ In that the big superintendent had sounded one of the biggest principles of railroad operation.
The line must be kept open. That slender trail of [Pg 257] two rails, stretching straight across the open land and writhing and twisting through the high hills, is a living organism. The railroad is no mere inanimate organization, like a store, for instance. It is a right-hand of the nation’s life; it is life. The railroad is like a great living thing, its many arms reaching long distances back into the land. ”

“ The railroad was more than a means of transportation to Gopher Prairie. It was a new god; a monster of steel limbs, oak ribs, flesh of gravel, and a stupendous hunger for freight; a deity created by man that he might keep himself respectful to Property, as elsewhere he had elevated and served as tribal gods the mines, cotton-mills, motor-factories, colleges, army. ”

“ Cost of a Single-track Road—Financing—Securing a Charter—Survey-work and its Dangers—Grades—Construction—Track-laying.
The railroad has its beginning in the inspiration and in the imagination of men. Perchance a great tract of country, rich in possibilities, stands undeveloped for lack of transportation facilities. The living arm of the railroad will bring to it both strength and growth. It will bring to it the materials, the men, and the machinery needed for its development. ”

“ The typical railroad man "runs on the road;" he is not the one whose urbane presence adorns the much-heralded offices of the railroad companies on Broadway, where the gold letters on the front window are each considerably larger than the elbow-room allowed the clerks inside; nor, indeed, is he, generally speaking, the one with whom the public or the public's drayman comes in contact when visiting a large city station to ship or receive freight. ”

“ We know, as well as we know the sense of any phrase in the English language which has a historical meaning and application, what is meant when a railroad is spoken of in a law as a 'public highway.' We know that it refers to the immovable structure stretching across the country, graded and railed for the use of the locomotive and its train of cars. ”

“ Here is a really great phase of railroad energy. We find our way to a gaunt freight-house, to whose door no truck has ever backed, and which is hemmed in by many rows of sidings and of sheds. In this building one of the busiest functions of the whole transportation business goes forth by day and by night. ”

“ A railroad’s employees may be outstretched a thousand miles or more. Remember again that the railroad itself is in truth a narrow ribbon, ofttimes no wider than the right-of-way of a single track, far-reaching and tremendously attenuated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The thirty- and forty-storied buildings in our big cities, the underground railways, the tubes under the rivers, the tremendous suspension bridges, the automobile carriages and business trucks,—not to mention the railroad trains that are to run on one rail at a speed of a hundred miles an hour. ”

“ Sometimes when I contemplate the vastness of the possibilities of rail transport in these United States I am staggered with their enormity. We sometimes say that we now have developed a complete railroad system in this country. ”

“ Does anybody mean to say that decent people, passengers who would use their own carriages, and are accustomed to their own comforts, would consent to be hurried along through the air upon a railroad, from which, had a lazy schoolboy left a marble, or a wicked one a stone, they would be pitched off their perilous track, into the valley beneath ”

“ The extension of the railway system is one of the wonders of our time. The few score miles of railroad planted in 1825 have put forth offshoots and branches, till now a mighty net-work of some ten thousand miles in all, is spread over the three kingdoms, with many fresh shoots in bud. ”

“ One railroad reaching out of New York into the mountains at the northeastern corner of that State and losing itself at some obscure town, a railroad without valuable connections and ramifications, has made its passenger business a little gold-mine by scientific nurturing. ”

“ In building a great railroad, after the plan is conceived and arranged, the first thing necessary to the accomplishment of the purpose is to make it known--to preach it. In doing this the name the railroad is to have when complete is used in making known the enterprise. ”

“ For its time it was the most audacious essay in railway building the world had known, for be it known it was begun barely twenty years after the first railroad had been built in the United States and before either railroad engineers or railroad labor had a recognized place in industry. ”

“ The railroad is still new to them, and they have not satiated their curiosity. They bring friends from a distance to see it, and are observed describing to these visitors how the drawbridge swings, and how the cars are switched from one track to another. ”

“ A railroad in its physical aspect consists of the track that things run upon and the things that run upon the track. The track, in the broad sense in which we are now considering it, consists of far more than two steel rails set upon wooden ties or sleepers which, in turn, are set in a graded roadway. It means bridges, tunnels, switches, signals, terminal and intermediate stations, buildings, passenger and freight-houses, engine-houses, shops, and all the rest of it. ”

“ The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad. ”

“ The Railroad as a Factor in Civilization.—The introduction of railroads, by virtue of motive power, changed the whole philosophy of history in this respect. Even in our own country an example of the value of railroads was shown in the binding effect which they produced between the East and the West prior to the Civil War. ”

“ Over on the railroad opposite, long freight trains, sometimes weighted by cylinder-tanks of petroleum, thirty, forty, fifty cars in a string, panting and rumbling along in full view, but the sound soften'd by distance. ”

“ In considering the railroad business, however, the fact should not be lost sight of that the business of building, managing, and operating railroads is comparatively new. Only within the last thirty years has it assumed the great importance and proportions that it now has. ”

“ A train had just come into the yards and there were switch engines puffing here and there—I was apprehensive that one of their headlights would pick me up. And there were some railroad men walking around the yards with lanterns in their hands. ”

“ At that time—early in the third decade of the nineteenth century—not a single foot of railroad existed anywhere in the world; today, all civilized nations are a network of railroads and railroad systems. ”

“ In the first place the railroads are public highways, and as such must be supervised by the community. When in ordinary conversation in this country we speak of a “road,” from Chicago{443} to St. Paul for instance, it is always understood that a railroad is meant. ”

“ Said right of way is granted to said railroad to the extent of two hundred feet in width on each side of said railroad, where it may pass over the public lands, including, all necessary grounds for stations, buildings, workshops, and depots, machine shops, switches, side tracks, turn-tables, and water stations. ”

“ Not only numerically and financially, but also as regards the intelligence and education of its units, the railroad service to-day stands in the foremost position among the great industrial institutions of the country. ”

“ The engineer considers the line of country peculiarly favourable for constructing a railroad, both in its levels and the materials that are found on or near the line: he is decidedly of opinion that a railroad can be made at less expense on this than on any other line of country in England of the same distance. ”

“ To make a railroad round the world available to all mankind is equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet. ”

“ To have a railroad, there must have been first the discoverers, who found out the properties of wood and iron, fire and water, and their latent power to carry men over the earth; next the organizers, who put these elements together, surveyed the route, planned the structure, set men to grade the hill, to till the valley, and pave the road with iron bars ”

“ As you all perhaps know, there has{91} been a great change in the plans and methods of railroad construction during the last decade or two. In the old days railroads were built for the most part by the people of means along the proposed route, and they were for the most part short lines. People did not set out in the earlier days to build long lines of railways. ”

“ 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 children of this day can hardly imagine what rude and simple affairs the earliest railroads were. Instead of the long smooth steel rails which now carry the great trains, with their luxurious cars, in their never-ceasing flight, day in and day out the whole year round, flat bands of iron, spiked to wooden rails, formed the path of the small carriages drawn by a locomotive of the size and shape of a threshing-machine engine. ”

“ We might for illustration take certain enthusiastic promoters, who, with a vision of what transportation facilities might produce from some region with vast undeveloped resources, conceive the idea of the construction of a railroad. ”