Toy train

“ If every holiday recollection of my youth, every escape from town to country, be associated with the railway, I must feel towards it otherwise than did my father, upon whose middle age it came as a monstrous iron innovation. The locomotive is one of the wonders of modern childhood. Children crowd upon a bridge to see the train pass beneath. Little boys strut along the streets puffing and whistling in imitation of the engine. All that romance, silly as it looks, becomes sacred in afterlife. Besides, when it is not underground in a foul London tunnel, a train is a beautiful thing. ”

“ It is often thought that a toy railway is beyond a boy's ingenuity to construct, whereas, in reality, it is one of the simplest toys he can make. This applies to the tracks, stations, and cars of every description, all of which can be made with a few strips of wood, some spools, nails, cardboard, and a bottle of glue, for materials. ”

“ When these objects are named, the players run up to the starter when their names are given, each one putting his hands on the shoulder of the one before him, the first one having put his hands upon the starter in the same way. When all are in line, the train starts, after the signal, which is a bell. The starter may imitate the noises a locomotive makes as it starts out on its journey. He leads up hill and down dale, and the line must remain unbroken. The one who breaks the line pays a forfeit or is out of the game. The line being mended, continues its journey. ”

“ We had to climb a road leading skyward, like an interminable staircase, by the funicular railway. It was incredible that the locomotive, standing on his hind legs so to speak, should creep up the mountain; I thought no one but a goat could surmount it. The funicular contains two cars, roofed but open from the sides, the seats are tilted back, which enables the passengers to sit level while going up the steep incline. Whether going up or down, the engine is always at the lower end of the train. The passengers sit backwards going up, and face forward going down. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To most travellers time is more valuable than money, and so everything about a train is planned to facilitate rapid travelling. Almost every part of a locomotive is controlled from the cab, which prevents unnecessary stopping to correct defects; from his seat the engineer can let the condensed water out of the cylinders; he can start a jet of steam in the stack and create a draft through the fire-box; by the pressure of a lever he is able to pour sand on a slippery track, or by the manipulation of another lever a snow-scraper is let down from the cowcatcher. ”

“ To secure perfect safety in ascending and descending such a tremendous grade, the track is composed of three rails bolted to a trestle of heavy timbers, the centre rail being an immense wrought-iron ladder, with rounds four inches apart, into which the cogs of the locomotive drive-wheel fit, and thus drag the train up the steep as well as control it, with aid of air-brakes, in making the descent. One and a half hours are consumed in making the round trip, and the fare is six dollars, but the view from the summit is so magnificent that it fully justifies the expense. ”

“ For thousands of years he has had the spirit of the locomotive working through, troops of runners or of dim men groping defiantly with camels through deserts, or sweeping on on horses through the plains, and now with his banners of steam at last he has great public trains of cars carrying cities.
For hundreds of years man has had the spirit of the motor-car—of having his own private locomotive or his own special train drive up to his door—the spirit of making every road his railway. For a great many years he has had the spirit of the wireless telegraph and of using the sky. ”

“ The engine, while under the control of its master, moves along regularly and with the beauty of a dream; its wheels revolve, glancing in the sun; its exhausted steam coughs as regularly as the strong man's heart beats, and trails back over the train, wreathing itself into the most fantastic convolutions; now sweeping away towards the sky in a grand, white pillar, anon twining and twisting among the gnarled limbs of the trees beside the track, and the train moves on so fast that the scared bird in vain tries to get out of its way by flying ahead of it. ”

“ You look forward, and see lights down the track. Drawing in like a turtle, you tell the conductor. "What is it, Joe?" and the brakeman replies "Nothin'." The conductor puts his watch to his ear. Has it stopped? With rattle and roar the engineer keeps launching the train into the midnight. A shrill shriek of the locomotive whistles you up, and you are on your feet like a cat. The brakeman runs up his little iron ladder, the speed slackens, the train comes to a dead halt. It is Genesee, and one grateful passenger leaves that frantic caboose, to set foot in it, as he fervently prays, "nevermore." ”

“ Looking far across the valley we try to make out the distant mountains, but only dim phantoms of gigantic size are seen, gliding stealthily away in the darkness.
We make interest with the conductor and engineer of the train for a special purpose. We are in search of a new sensation, to wit, such as may be derived from a night-ride on the engine, where one can see all the engineer sees, which is indeed little enough. The headlight of the locomotive throws its rays dimly on the darkness for a few rods in advance of the train. ”

“ Then, as the sand-box is brought into requisition, the wheels distinctly bite the rail, and, in the words of the race-track, "They're off." For a few seconds progress is very slow, indeed. Then the good work of the trusted locomotive becomes apparent, and before we are well out of the yards quite a good speed is being obtained. The fireman is busy ringing the bell, and the engineer, from time to time, adds to the warning noise by one of those indescribable toots made only by a steam engine.
Now we are outside the city limits, and the train is making excellent time. ”

“ 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. ”

“ More than forty different kinds of locomotive work for the railroads. Some of them haul freight, and some are passenger train engines. Some are steam locomotives, some are not.
Steam locomotives all need water to make the steam that makes the wheels turn. But they don’t all get it in the same way. One kind never has to stop and wait for its tender to be filled. Instead it has a scoop that dips down as the engine passes over a long track-pan of water set between the rails. With no time lost, the scoop sucks up water into the tank. ”

“ Shove the doll’s house and blackboard out of the way. Hurry and put the old red candy lantern out of sight. We don’t want any danger signals here. The Twentieth Century Limited—the Fast Special of the play room—is coming.
The construction of the Twentieth Century Limited follows close upon the making of whittling tools. A little train it is, just an engine, coal car, baggage car, and one passenger coach, but of course there may be any number of additional cars coupled on, provided the train proves popular and the nursery traffic is heavy. ”

“ Nothing except a new impossibility; nothing except that a human being had invented an electrical locomotive so powerful that it was pulling that train fifty-five miles an hour while the brakes on the car were set—twelve brakes all grinding twenty miles on those twelve wheels; and the locomotive paid no more attention to the brakes of that heavy Pullman than it would to a feather or to a small boy, all the way from New York to Stamford, hanging on behind. ”

“ In a large, underground space, half-filled with smoke and steam, a train stood on the track, the engine fretting and snorting like a steed impatient to be off, and the bell ringing out a hasty summons, curiously typifying the sharp call to leap on to some favorable train of circumstances, and be borne away to fortune or to ruin, which life often gives us, at certain fateful moments of its rapid career. Roath sprang to the rear platform, and, on the instant, the train moved. ”

“ People still love trains. The men who work on the huge powerful engines would rather work there than almost anywhere else. That’s how Sam feels about it.
When Sam reports for work, his big steam locomotive is all ready. Men have oiled it and checked it. The fire is roaring in the firebox. In the old days, a fireman spent most of his time shoveling coal. The faster the train went, the more steam it needed and the faster the fireman had to work with his banjo. ”

“ This new locomotive has, at its rear, a drum wound round with a chain, and is provided with self-acting grips, which descend at the proper moment, and biting the sides of the rails, after the manner of a vice, so fix the locomotive to the spot that it becomes a stationary engine. Some of the wagons are fitted with similar grips, to prevent the train from running back during the ascent. When preparing to mount a hill, the free end of the chain is made fast to the foremost wagon; the locomotive moves on the whole length of the chain and fixes itself ”

“ Additional curved blocks corresponding to the unit block in width and thickness are a great boon to engineers, for what is a railroad without curves!
Transportation toys can be perfectly satisfactory when not made strictly to scale. Indeed, the exigencies of the situation generally demand that realists be satisfied with rather wide departures from the general rule. Train service, however, should accommodate at least one passenger to a car. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then the frogs, a V-shaped device by which the wheels are guided from one line of rails to another, when they form angles with each other; the car wheel made with a flange or flanges to fit the rail, and the railway gates, ingenious contrivances that guard railway crossings and are operated automatically by the passing trains, but more commonly by watchmen. The car may be lighted with electricity, and as the train dashes along at the rate of 30 to 80 miles an hour, it may be stopped in less than a minute by the touch of the engineer on an air brake. ”

“ My train was trundling over the plains—a true train of the past, half freight, half passenger, cars of an obsolete build, big smoke-stack on the archaic engine, stops for meals, inveterate news-boy with bad candy, bad novels, bad bananas—a dear old horrible train, when magic was suddenly wrought. ”

“ The real full-size car, which he is now constructing, may be pulled with other cars by any kind of locomotive using electricity or petrol or steam, or each of the wheels may be a driving wheel. He would prefer to generate electropower on his train, and to drive every wheel with an electric motor. His wheels are so independent of one another that they can take very quick curves and vertical inequalities of the rail. The rail is fastened to sleepers lying on ground that may have sidelong slope. ”

“ I have come to the conclusion that the railway train exercises a sinister influence upon the human race. Persons who are tolerable—or even welcome—in ordinary daily life, become peculiarly obnoxious so soon as they enter the compartment of a train. No fairy prince ever stepped into a railway train—assuming he favoured that means of locomotion—without being transformed straightway into a Beast, and even Beauty herself could not be distinguished from her disagreeable sisters—in a train. ”

“ Each one of our wagons was drawn by six yoke, or twelve oxen, and contained from five to six thousand pounds of freight, and there was but one wagon to each team. The time had not yet come when, what was afterward adopted, trail wagons were in use. This means two or three wagons lashed together and drawn by one team. Twenty-five of our wagons and teams formed what was called a train, and these trains were scattered along the road at intervals of anywhere from two to three miles, and sometimes eight to ten miles, and even greater distances, so as to keep out of the way of each other. ”

“ It is a paradise of things that squeak and wind up; rattling railroad trains which swing around tin curves and under painted tunnels with a rapidity sufficient to suffocate the helpless toy passengers within; toys for poor little good children and rich little spoiled ones, dolls whose deportment is faultless and whose vocabulary is limited to “papa” and “maman” and those who can not say a word, but whose clothes, from the tiny hat to their walking-boots, with an accompanying trousseau containing a summer and winter automobile coat, goggles and all, might have been fashioned by a Worth. ”

“ The young girls are radiant with colour — white, red, pink, and blue — and the children come dressed in brand-new garments — all stiff from the warehouse — and equipped with spade and bucket and bags full of thin paper, cut the size of pennies, to throw out of the carriage windows as the train flies along. ”

“ They came, of course, at their master's call, The witches, the broomsticks, the cats, and all; He led the hags to a railway train The horses were trying to drag in vain. “Now, then,” says he, “you've had your fun, And here are the cars you've got to run. “The driver may just unhitch his team, We don't want horses, we don't want steam; You may keep your old black cats to hug, But the loaded train you've got to lug.” Since then on many a car you'll see A broomstick plain as plain can be; On every stick there's a witch astride, The string you see to her leg is tied. ”