Track (railway)

“ Don't ever approach a railway crossing without looking out for the engine while the bell rings, and listening to see if the train is coming; for there is good sense as well as good law in the suggestion of Chief Baron Pollock, that a railway track per se is a warning of danger to those about to go upon it, and cautions them to see if a train is coming. ”

“ Already the little railway has shot ahead at an amazing rate; though whether track laid in such a hurry is really going to make for speed in the long run is a question on which the trainmen, sipping their pink lemonade at the canteen counter, have their own opinions. For no train, it seems, can make the run at present without leaving the track at least once during the journey. ”

“ Also, for the security of the workmen employed in maintaining the track as on an ordinary railway—the system of “packing” the sleepers and inspecting the various parts being common to all railways—a clear space of three feet is left between the passing trains, and strong posts, ten feet apart, are fixed along the centre of the space for the labourers to hold on by when an express rushes by. ”

“ At least twice a day track-walkers from the section-gangs pass over the entire line of road. To simplify reports and instructions, frequently every bridge or opening in the track is numbered, and the number displayed upon it; and every curve is also posted with its degree of curvature and the proper elevation to be given to the outer rail.
The work of the section-men is all done under regular system. In the spring construction-trains deliver and distribute ties and rails on each section, upon requisitions from supervisors. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When I dropped off the train at Track’s End I saw by the moonlight that the railroad property consisted of a small coal-shed, a turntable, a roundhouse with two locomotive stalls, a water-tank and windmill, and a rather long and narrow passenger and freight depot. The town lay a little apart, and I could not make out its size. There were a hundred or more men waiting for the train, and one of them took the two mail-sacks in a wheelbarrow and went away toward the lights of the houses. ”

“ Outside are factories, and railroad yards, and everywhere tall black chimneys, vomiting their heavy, muddy smoke. But always the train glides on like some swift, smooth river. Now the track is elevated, now depressed. You run over bridges or under them, crossing streets and other railroads. At last you dive into a tunnel and presently emerging, coast slowly along be [ 515] side an endless concrete platform raised to the level of the car floor. ”

“ As we gaze there is another surprise in store. Like a tiny plaything, a train emerges from a bend in the cliffs and with little infantile puffs of smoke crawls along the rails which one now sees running along the narrow river bank. Clinging close to every twist and turn the train proceeds. There is scarcely sufficient space between the rugged walls and the surging river for the single track. At one point the width of the ledge is but 10 yards and the track has been built out over the water. The river dashes madly through; the engine sways from side to side as it drags its heavy load onward. ”

“ The sleepers are transverse, three feet apart, to which the outer or ordinary rails are fixed by bolts or nails. The line is fenced off from the portion of the roadway to be used for ordinary horse traffic, (the greater portion of which will disappear on the opening of the railway) by means of substantial posts and rails. The railway, in passing from one side of the roadway to the other, crosses it thirty-three times, one more than half the number of these crossings (seventeen) are on the roadway, where it is practically on the level. ”

“ But the laying of the track—the line having been finished at sub-grade with a top width of from 14 to 20 feet for each standard gauge track to be laid—the line begins to assume the appearance of a real railroad. Upon the first stretches of completed track, locomotives and cars employed in construction service begin to operate. As the track grows, their field of operation increases. Then comes the day when the track sections begin to be joined; the railroad is beginning to be a real pathway of steel. ”

“ To see what CTC does, you’ll first have to imagine a stretch of railroad way out in the country, thirty miles from any station. There’s just one main track, with sidings where trains running in opposite directions can pass each other. Each engineer has his train orders, so he knows whether he’s supposed to go onto the siding or continue straight through. But unexpected things can always happen. If a train is late, it may not get to the siding on time. ”

“ The term mountain railway is applied to lines whose grades are too steep to be operated by locomotives, depending upon adhesion only for their drawing power, and which, therefore, necessitate the use of some special system of securing greater traction power. ”

“ A single track railroad may be rendered more safe and efficient, by a proper use of the telegraph, than a double track railroad without its aid,—as the double track can only obviate collisions which occur between trains moving in opposite directions, whilst the telegraph may be used effectually in preventing them, either from trains moving in an opposite, or the same direction ”

“ We act as the owners of a railway would act if they allowed luggage trains, express trains, and horse-drawn trams to run upon one pair of rails. The radiating causeways, as I conceive them, would be entirely free from this difficulty. Neither the traffic of cross streets, nor foot passengers, nor slow-going carts and vehicles would be permitted to interfere with the equable running of fast cars. ”

“ The velocity with which all these little parcels are booked, weigh-billed, placed into hand-trucks, wheeled off to their respective vans, packed, locked up, and then despatched down the little branch-rail to the main line, on which is the train ready to convey them, is very surprising. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Between the two interior main tracks are two shifting tracks, so that between the platforms there will be two passenger tracks on which trains will stop to change motive power and transfer passengers, and two shifting tracks for rapid despatching of the empty engines and motors, each of the four tracks being 15 ft. ”

“ While no one railroad can completely duplicate another line, two or more may compete at particular points. ”

“ 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. ”

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

“ The way led along upon what had once been the embankment of a railroad. ”

“ In the United States three new methods of transportation made their appearance at almost the same time—the steamboat, the canal boat, and the rail car. ”

“ In the decade before the Civil War various north and south lines of railway were projected and some of these were assisted by grants of land from the Federal Government. ”

“ The Giraffe took the horse’s head and led him along on the most level parts of the road towards the railway station, and two or three chaps went along to help get the sick man into the train. ”

“ The railroad originally was as completely dissociated from steam propulsion as was the ship. ”

“ The history of the Erie Railroad ever since 1901 has been a record of progress. ”

“ The siren soared again, closer at hand, and then, with no anticipatory roar and clamor, a dark and sinuous body curved into view against the shadows far down the high-banked track, and with no sound but the rush of the cleft wind and the clocklike tick of the rails, moved toward the bridge—it was an electric train. Above the engine two vivid blurs of blue light formed incessantly a radiant crackling bar between them, which, like a spluttering flame in a lamp beside a corpse, lit for an instant the successive rows of trees and caused Gloria to draw back instinctively to the far side of the road. ”

“ Horses and mules, and even sail cars, made more rapid progress than did the earliest locomotive. ”

“ Very soon the train came puffing up into the station; then two or three minutes, and the doors were slammed to, the guard whistled, and the train glided away, leaving behind it only clouds of white smoke and some very heavy hearts. ”

“ It was a sombre snowy afternoon, and the gas-lamps were lit in the big reverberating station. As he paced the platform, waiting for the Washington express, he remembered that there were people who thought there would one day be a tunnel under the Hudson through which the trains of the Pennsylvania railway would run straight into New York. ”

“ As I look at it, a millionth part of a railway is worth fully as much as an acre of waste land on the banks of the Ohio. ”

“ We have affairs in different places; and hence railways were invented. Railways separated us infallibly from our friends; and so telegraphs were made that we might communicate speedily at great distances. ”

“ Her long lustrous hair following her glorious head in a golden wake, like the track sown in heaven by a falling star, seems to quench my most burning phrases with its splendors. If all the bees of Hybla nestled upon my lips, they would still sing but hoarsely the wondrous harmonies of outline that enclosed her form. ”

“ The signal for the train's departure was a very bright red; that is about as passionate a statement as I can get into that scene. ”

“ By the Louisiana statute the validity of which is here involved, all railway companies (other than street railroad companies) carrying passengers in that State are required to have separate but equal accommodations for white and colored persons
by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations. ”

“ Stations were built at intervals averaging fifteen miles apart. A rider's route covered three stations, with an exchange of horses at each, so that he was expected at the beginning to cover close to forty-five miles—a good ride when one must average fifteen miles an hour. ”

“ Some where the myrtle weeps
⁠On Roman graves.
And pale young faces gleam
⁠With solemn eyes;
Like a remember'd dream
⁠The dead arise:
In the red track of war
⁠The restless sweep;
In sunlit graves afar
⁠The loved ones sleep. ”

“ The city turned its dreariest aspect toward the railway on blackened walls, irregular and ill-paved streets, gloomy warehouses, and over all a gray, smoke-laden atmosphere which gave it mystery and often beauty. ”

“ It was their stiffness that preserved them intact from all human sympathy, from interesting at all the strangers seated round about them, among whom M. de Stermaria kept up the glacial, preoccupied, distant, rude, punctilious and distrustful air that we assume in a railway refreshment-room, among fellow-passengers whom we have never seen before and will never see again, and with whom we can conceive of no other relations than to defend from their onslaught our "portion" of cold chicken and our corner seat in the train. ”

“ We laid the track on a smooth stretch of ground about one hundred feet north of the new building. ”

“ Many of the railroad evils were inherent in the situation; they were explained by the fact that both managers and public were dealing with a new agency whose laws they did not completely understand. ”

“ That old bell, presage of a train, had just sounded through Oxford station; and the undergraduates who were waiting there, gay figures in tweed or flannel, moved to the margin of the platform and gazed idly up the line. ”

“ The close relationship between railroad expansion and the general development and prosperity of the country is nowhere brought more distinctly into relief than in connection with the construction of the Pacific railroads. ”

“ When the scheme for the construction of a railroad from Baltimore to the waters of the Ohio River first began to take form, the United States had barely emerged from the Revolutionary period. ”

“ Yet, in 1850 nearly all the railroads in the United States lay east of the Mississippi River, and all of them, even when they were physically mere extensions of one another, were separately owned and separately managed. ”

“ The Erie railroad kills 23 to 46; the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each; and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to that appalling figure of 987,631 corpses, die naturally in their beds!
You will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds.
The railroads are good enough for me. ”