Terminal station

“ As the train lazily rolls into the terminal station, pouches and sacks are ready for delivery and the clerks make ready to leave the car.
The instant the train stops, a portion of the mail, large or small as the case may be, is delivered into a wagon for rapid transfer to a railway post-office train about to start from another station. If the incoming train is late, it may be necessary to exact the utmost speed to reach the outgoing train, and in many cases it is always necessary to effect it rapidly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The layout embraces every feature and facility involved in the construction of a first-class terminal, including a depot building planned and constructed after the most modern lines, and containing every feature for the convenience, comfort, and pleasure of the traveling public; the most complete and up-to-date facilities for conducting the business of a large railroad station; a main power plant for furnishing power of every kind required for the successful operation of the station and yards ”

“ Railways have found it advantageous to spend enormous sums of money upon terminal facilities. Depots and warehouses, garages and repair shops will be necessary if truck lines are to prove efficient [202] and successful. It would be quite feasible and profitable for all the truck lines leading from a city to have a union or common terminal station. Portland, Oregon, has such a station owned by a corporation composed of bus lines that operate from there to every city of any importance within a radius of 100 miles. ”

“ The duty of a carrier to accept goods tendered at its station does not extend to the acceptance of cars offered to it at an arbitrary point near its terminus by a competing road for the purpose of reaching and using its terminal station. ”

“ For instance, such a simple matter as putting the offices of a terminal station at the ends of the platforms is still ignored at many termini; the name of a station is often hard to find, and is never once put up in most termini; the price of a ticket is often not to be discovered; the right types of carriages are only now being tried, after persevering in a wrong form for two generations. ”

“ It is rarely possible in the field to work rapidly with less than five men at a trans- mitting and three at a terminal station. " Central " stations are manned according to the number of stations with which they communicate. ”

“ Next, he perfected the organization of a separate Terminal Company, which was to create the terminal facilities, including a large passenger station, a bridge over the Willamette, machine-shops, freight-houses, round-houses, docks, etc., required for the three railroad systems, the Oregon & Transcontinental Company, Oregon Railway & Navigation, and Northern Pacific, which would terminate at Portland. The estimated outlay of the Terminal Company was nearly $3,000,000, which was provided for by the issue of bonds to be guaranteed by the three railroad companies. ”

“ Plate LII, Fig. 2.— TW 100. P.T. & T.R.R. Co. Terminal Station West. Showing excavation of completion of South abutment 9th Ave. and method of Supporting Elevated Railway Column 488. July 21, 09.
Plate LII, Fig. 3.— TW 31. P.T. & T.R.R. Co. Terminal Station West. View showing excavation 9th and 10th Avenues South of 32nd St. looking West from Sta. 184. Aug. 17, 07.
Plate LII, Fig. 4.— TW 101. P.T. & T.R.R. Co. Terminal Station West. Inside of concrete form for lower-face wall, showing drains, tie rods, diaphragms and methods employed for tying in the form in addition to braces outside. ”

“ And the crowds do not get about in the same way—no slow, leisurely ride in the horse-car to a Depot in the wilds of Frankford, or at Ninth and Green, on the way to the suburbs, but a leap on a trolley, or a rush through thronged streets to the Terminal at Twelfth and Market, to the Station at Broad and Market. ”

“ Traffic into the Grand Central Station is limited by the number of tracks in the tunnels. The minimum three-minute headway between trains operated by steam fixed the maximum traffic at forty trains per hour each way. The capacity of the terminal with this limitation of service was taxed to its utmost and some relief for the increasing traffic was imperative. Owing to the improved conditions of electric operation, trains may be run on a two-minute headway or less, thus increasing the station capacity by more than fifty per cent. ”

“ The freight depot was shut down immediately, probably in May, and negotiations were begun with the Bushwick RR Co. and the Broadway RR Go. to run their horse cars directly into covered platforms at the Bushwick depot to enable South Side passengers to continue their journey conveniently as was done at Grand Central Depot in New York. The railroad contemplated the enlargement of the Bushwick terminal, never too well equipped, by building a large new covered passenger station, additional freight houses, and administrative offices. ”

“ There is a large station for freight in each of the terminal cities, and at reasonably regular intervals along the road there are wayside stations with stables of good size, and with quarters for the station-keeper and attendants. ”

“ The buildings must be heated, cars warmed in freezing weather long before the locomotives are attached, ice-machines operated for the station restaurant, power supplied to elevators, dynamos, and lesser mechanisms about the terminal. ”

“ Burnham to design the Union Station as he did. Construction work was begun in August, 1902, the terminal opened October 27, 1907, and was completed in April, 1908.
Some of the elements entering into the design of the terminal were unique. In most cities the probable future growth and nature of the traffic plays an important part in the planning of a passenger terminal. Washington has very little suburban traffic; and as it will never become a commercial center, the question of providing for future growth was of minor importance. ”

“ At large terminal stations it is frequently found more convenient for the working of the traffic to have two or more sets of waiting-rooms, etc., separating the local and long-journey passengers, and placing the rooms alongside the corresponding platforms.
Lavatories and conveniences at large stations should be provided on a liberal scale, and fitted up in the most substantial and efficient manner. Not only should they be thoroughly well ventilated, but they should have abundance of light. Nothing tends so much to ensure order and cleanliness in these places as plenty of light. ”

“ The number of employees engaged in track work by American railways averages about 150 per 100 miles of line.
Buildings. Railway operations require the use of buildings in vast numbers. Of these passenger stations and freight depots are among the most important because of their number and cost. Passenger stations vary in size and character from small combination depots used at local stations of minor importance to large terminal stations of masonry and steel, and often of almost monumental magnificence. ”

“ At the large terminal stations platform after platform has been added to accommodate the increased number of trains which arrive in the busy parts of the morning or depart in the evening. Every facility has to be provided to permit of the expeditious ingress and egress of the large crowds forming the respective trains—ample platforms, over-line foot-bridges, subways, convenient booking-offices, waiting-rooms, and left-luggage rooms. ”

“ At terminal stations, especially at such as are used by short-distance trains which arrive at and start from the same platform, a third track is often laid between a pair of platform tracks, so that the engine of a train which has arrived at the platform can pass out and place itself at the other end of the train, which remains undisturbed. ”

“ In large city terminal stations, where additions to the space are out of the question, interlocking is necessary for economy of time and labour, as, indeed, it is in a less degree at smaller stations also; as a measure of safety, however, it is desirable at even the smallest, and the wise manager extends its use as fast as he is financially able. ”

“ Every railroad that has any sort of ambition to be considered a trunk-line will count upon having one or two or even more terminals upon navigable streams, and at these it will protect itself by having [Pg 407] its own wharves and landing-stages—even grain elevators, if it is putting out its hungry fingers for the great traffic in food-stuffs that sweeps out over the land and water transportation routes of America. Such a terminal means a railroad fleet—ferries, scows, lighters, a little company of stout and busy tugs. ”

“ A big passenger terminal is a much bigger thing than that gaudy waiting-room in which you sit, whilst your train is being made ready to take you out from the city.
Great as the room assigned to locomotives, greater must be yard-room for car-storage, in rough proportions, as the length of the locomotive to the average train length. It takes something approaching a genius to lay out the car-yards, particularly in the case of passenger terminals, which are almost invariably in the heart of great cities where land values are fabulously high. ”

“ The freight terminals of a large city will be a group of plants, designed for varying purposes. The railroad handles its passenger business from a single structure, if possible. It is comparatively simple to gather all its passengers, even from a broad territory, within a great city, and so to concentrate this part of its traffic in a single well-located terminal. ”

“ This involved plans not only adequate for the present traffic but elastic enough for a development keeping pace with a rapidly growing traffic for many years. Plans for freight terminals had to be worked out in harmony with modern manufacturing and commercial tendencies, while at the same time allowing full provision for great growth of passenger transportation. And, further, due regard has been given to what might be desired in the way of future development of property for public-park and other civic purposes—something too often neglected in railroad terminal location and construction. ”

“ Our worst troubles have come not from insufficient rolling stock or lack of efficiency in handling it, but from congested terminals. Water routes give little assistance: first, because the largest streams of traffic in the United States are not in a direction where either natural or artificial waterways can be used; second, because a waterway less than twenty feet deep cannot compete as a carrier. The waterway, too, may and often does increase rather than lessen the pressure on terminal facilities. ”

“ You are sitting in the office of a big railroad president, talking straight to that big-shouldered soul himself. Outside is the shadowy roof of the train-shed of a terminal, which is filled with long lines of cars that come and go, of platforms that are black with humans one instant and quite deserted the next. ”

“ Frequently several railways entering a town unite and use conjointly a so-called ‘union depot.’ It follows, therefore, that terminal passenger stations are located in large cities and towns, or at ferry terminals or at important junction points of several railways. ”

“ Competition makes two elaborate passenger terminals in Seattle do the work of one; keeps three stations alive and eating up overhead and operation in Los Angeles; runs to its nth degree of extravagance in the small city of Tucson, Arizona, where a magnificent edifice in a park—at first glance you would be sure to call it the town’s Carnegie Library—serves as a competing passenger terminal for a railroad which runs but two passenger-trains a day in and out of it. ”

“ With sub-stations so established, the principle of standardized interchangeable motor-truck bodies and chasses working to so definite an end, there remains little or no use for downtown freight terminals in a city like Cincinnati, save perhaps an occasional team-track yard for heavy car-load shipments. In the flats at the edge of the town the railroads can, and in my opinion eventually will, establish new and generous-sized freight-houses and other terminal appurtenances. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The island-platform arrangement possesses many advantages for the exchange of passenger traffic. All the platforms are connected and on one level, and passengers, together with their luggage, can be quickly transferred from one train to another. One set of waiting-rooms, refreshment-rooms, etc., are sufficient, and are available for the passengers of all the four trains. A smaller number of station men are required for the work, as the staff can be more concentrated and better utilized than when there are separate platforms on opposite sides of the line. ”