Train car

“ Surely there's nothing to equal motoring as a means of seeing the country. Not only are the constant change of landscape and constant succession of new scenes which the railway traveler may enjoy, to be had in an automobile but more—very much more.
The motorist gains a great deal that the railroad passenger inevitably misses. For the man on the train the musical clang of the dinner bell as one passes near some farmhouse, for instance, is lost—swallowed up in the noise and rush of the locomotive. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every few miles, to the accompaniment of shrieking brake shoes, the train would slow to a stop, and rumble onto a siding at some little flat town, to allow a faster train to hurl past in a rush of smoke, and dust, and deafening roar, and whistle screams. Then the wheezy engine would nose out onto the main track, back into another siding, pick up a box car or two, spot an empty at the grain spout of a sagging red-brown elevator, and couple onto the train again with a jolt that threatened to bounce the cars from the rails, and caused the imprisoned horses to stamp and snort nervously. ”

“ It was after two when a nearing train slowed down as it reached the station—slowed down and came to a standstill to a tumult of pushing and shouting. It was a train of more than ordinary dimensions—a couple of engines to an interminable line of third-class carriages and vans—but long as it was, it was none too long for the needs of the would-be passengers. Vans and carriages alike were already well stocked with humanity; but the other humanity on the platform, rendered desperate by its waiting, hurled itself at the doors and pressed and fought a way in. ”

“ The original passenger cars, however frail and light they may have been, were at least, when shackled together in a train, continuous in their bearings on each other,—that is, their sills and floor timbers were all on a level and in line, so that, if the cars were suddenly pressed together, they met in such a way as to resist the pressure to the extent of their resisting power, and the floor of one did not quietly slide under or over that of another. ”

“ But in the early fifties these very inconveniences fired the imagination of a young traveler who had bought a ticket on a night train between Buffalo and Westfield, and in his alert mind was inspired, as he tossed sleepless in his bunk, the first vision of a car that would revolutionize the railroad travel of the world and of a system that would present to the traveling public a mighty organization whose first purpose would be to contribute safety, convenience, luxury and a uniform and universal service from coast to coast. ”

“ This dingy little building was one link in that great chain of offices which enables every road in the country to keep track of the cars it is using, to know where « 13 » they are, what progress they are making, and what service they are performing.
Every one who has seen a freight-train has noticed that it is almost always composed of cars belonging to many different roads, and must have wondered how these cars were kept accounted for. Every road would prefer to use only its own cars, and to keep them on its own system, but this is impossible. ”

“ The train is meant where the women are sorted out for one car, and what is left is just turned into another. It is a vicious fashion, and fosters the art of lying. There goes a young man at the heels of a lady whom he never saw before, or spoke to in his life, and he is carrying a spick-and-span new bandbox. My word for it, it is as empty as a church contribution-box on Saturday afternoon. He bought that box for precisely that emergency. The lady ascends the platform. So does the bandbox. The brakeman opens the door, and the young man slips in unquestioned, and secures a comfortable seat. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Another locomotive whistled, and another train came through at top speed, and another, and another, train after train, train after train, till toward the last the trains were composed of passenger coaches, box-cars, flat-cars, dead engines, cabooses, mail-cars, wrecking appliances, and all the riff-raff of worn-out and abandoned rolling-stock that collects in the yards of great railways. When the yards at Council Bluffs had been completely cleaned, the private car and engine went east, and the tracks died for keeps. ”

“ When oil burners and automatic stokers have revolutionized the fireman's duties, when train orders are unknown, when the position or color of a signal is the only instruction, we may transfer the command of the train to one of the men in the engine. When we so protect our trains by block signals or other devices that to send back a flag is an absurdity, our trainmen will become starters, and perhaps collectors, with duties not dissimilar to those of guards on elevated roads. When the much-needed motor car for suburban and branch service is perfected, other changes will come. ”

“ He inspected the engines, counted the wheels, considered the possibility of getting a ride on the pilot of the second engine, dodged around through the crowd, ran against people, had his toes trodden on, saw everybody who went away, stared at all who came, capered up and down the car-steps, put pins on the rail to be flattened by the wheels, stood with one foot inside the track until the train started, and, after it was all over, rode away triumphantly, hanging to the steps of the hotel omnibus. ”

“ It is in the daily journey on the suburban train, that daily tax of time, that speed is in itself so eminently desirable, and it is just here that the conditions of railway travel most hopelessly fail. It must always be remembered that the railway train, as against the motor, has the advantage that its wholesale traction reduces the prime cost by demanding only one engine for a great number of coaches. ”

“ When you get out of your carriage at the junction station, you see on the other side of the platform a dumpy little toy train—a train at the wrong end of a telescope with its wheels cut from beneath it. Engines and trucks and carriages seem to be crawling like snakes on their bellies. ”

“ A passenger train with the long line of little light coaches is put over the rails very rapidly in Europe if they wish. Many regular trains make fifty and sixty miles an hour. The ordinary trains which stop frequently and carry the third-class cars principally, are slow. A freight car, called a “goods van,” is about the size of a dray. ”

“ When the train begins to move he throws his board across the rods, and then leaps under the car. His life now depends on the nails keeping in their place, the board not breaking, and keeping awake. But sometimes, unfortunately for the tramp, the brakesmen see a train out; which means that they will stand one on each side of the train, at the head of the engine, and inspect each side of the train as it passes them. ”

“ In one a train is the unit and in the other a car. As the context shows, a train in the sense intended consists of an engine and cars which have been assembled and coupled together for a run or trip along the road. When a train is thus made up and is proceeding on its journey it is within the operation of the air-brake provision. But it is otherwise with the various movements in railroad yards whereby cars are assembled and coupled into outgoing trains, and whereby incoming trains which have completed their run are broken up. ”

“ The progress in the construction of cars has been fully as great as in that of locomotives. If the old stage-coach bodies on wheels are compared with a vestibule train of to-day the difference will be very striking. Most of us who are no longer young can recall the days when sleeping-cars were unknown, when a journey from an Eastern city to Chicago meant forty-eight hours or more of sitting erect in a car with thirty or more passengers, and an atmosphere which was fetid. ”

“ In like manner, a five-car local train may be reduced to three cars, still leaving a motor car at each end by uncoupling two cars from either end, since in the normal five-car local train the first, third, and fifth cars will be motor cars. ”

“ It was impossible, he argued, that a first-class train, consisting of two day coaches, a Pullman sleeper, a smoking-car, and observation-car, a baggage and a mail car drawn by the finest engine on the system, should melt into thin air. ”

“ 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." ”

“ A 30-car train would have three engines pulling it. And the three engines would not all be at the front end of the train. That would have a tendency to pull the cars off the rails on sharp curves. So, the engines were placed at regular intervals between the cars. Even with all safety precautions we constantly heard of derailments and the loss of freight cars down the mountain sides. The trains had no time schedules; they got there when they could.
I signed on for that lumber mill job at an employment agency in Denver and rode a bus to the mill. ”

“ The seats of the cars are inclined like the boiler of the locomotive, and so long as the cars are on a level the seats tilt at an angle which renders it almost impossible to use them. But when the start is made the frightful tilt places the body in an upright position, and, with the engine in the rear, the train starts up the hill with an easy, gliding motion, passing up the ascent, somewhat steeper than the roof of a house, without the slightest apparent effort. ”

“ Have you not seen cars pulled to pieces in big trains, have you not seen freight delayed in a manner to suggest to an innocent bystander that the road was perhaps running its last train and giving its cars their last load?
The inevitable tendency of the big train is to hold back and combine in large lots cars destined to the same point and to the same consignee. When a whole train can be unloaded at the ship's side at tidewater, or at a large consuming plant, the system is ideal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An ordinary goods train is made up of several kinds of trucks, some empty, some loaded, many of them unequally loaded, all of them subject to heavy work and rough handling, and more likely to give trouble than the higher class vehicle, the passenger carriage. The breaking down or derailment of one or two goods trucks on a line of rails close alongside the fast passenger rails, would in all probability so foul and obstruct the passenger line as to cause a very serious accident to an express train which could not be stopped in time. ”

“ The engine has got over the slippery point on the rails,—slippery either from the ordinary foulness of the atmosphere, or more probably, from some of the oil which has fallen from the engine to the rails. She is now getting to her speed; the guards, who have not jumped from the platform until after the train is in motion, shut themselves within their vans, they see that their breaks are all right and begin arranging their parcels; the sisyphi of the sorting post fall to again at their always-beginning and never-ending labours; such passengers as can sleep, sleep, such as can’t [237] don’t. ”