Train platform

“ The city gate is indeed a busy place. Its concourse or head platform echoes all day long with the unending tread of shuffling feet; beyond the fence, with its bulletins and ticket-examiners, is the vault of the train-shed, a [Pg 82] thing of great shadows, even in midday. Its echoes are also unending. There seems to be no end of pushing and shoving and hauling among the engines; there must be an infinite stock of trains somewhere without. The human stream flows all the while. ”

“ In approaching a station where a passenger train is due or past due, and where the view is not clear, trains must be under perfect control, so that they may be stopped, if necessary, before reaching station. Trains on the double track must not, under any circumstances, pull into a station at which a passenger train in the opposite direction is standing or into which it is pulling to receive or discharge passengers, until such train has started up and the rear coach thereof has passed the end of the station platform nearest the approaching train, excepting where tracks are divided by fences. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then, after a run of 61⁄2 miles from Shepherd’s Bush in twenty-four minutes, the Central “early workmen” pulled up at the Bank terminus at a platform resembling the others all along the line.
Mrs. Rosamond went up in a big lift, not to the surface as she expected, but found herself landed in a broad asphalted, bewildering subway lined with white bricks. ”

“ You men who are running stations should see that your platform lamps are not only kept clean and properly filled, but that after dark they are burning so that passengers won't get hurt falling off platforms in the dark, and that the platforms are kept clear of freight as per Rule 17; that baggage and express trucks are placed where patrons won't fall over them, and, if there is a fast train coming, especially a mail or newspaper train, notify the passengers and get them inside the depot, the only safe place at such times. ”

“ An ingenious example of the{27} elevated principle is to be seen at the Victoria Station, Manchester, where a railway on a very reduced scale conveys passengers’ luggage from one platform to another, and idlers are never tired of watching it. The track, a double one, is suspended from the roof and runs between platforms five and six. The motive power is electricity, and the motor is placed between the wheels and the track, and it lifts and lowers a basket which holds about 15 cwt. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Arranged vertically, they need climb only up or down. Because the distance from rail level to car floor level is practically eliminated in the Boyes car, this climb will be but seven or eight feet instead of twelve as with present train service. The upper track will be for local service. Passengers will walk from their house along a continuous platform or hallway to the local stations, which will be located about 100 yards apart. The object of having definite stations or stopping places is simply one of gaining speed by having the people in50 groups. ”

“ Block-Telegraph Signalling.—However complete the outdoor signals and interlocking at any station, they can only control the movement of trains within their range, and something more is requisite to ensure the safe working of the traffic over the long lengths of line between stations. For some years a time-interval was allowed for the working of trains following one another on the UP and DOWN lines of a double line railway, no train being allowed to leave a station sooner than a fixed number of minutes after a previous train had started in the same direction. ”

“ The to-and-fro movement of a dense traffic on a four-track railway requires a large amount of switching, especially when each movement is complicated by junctions of two or more lines. Practically every problem of trunk line train movement, including two, three, and four-track operation, had to be provided for in the switching plants of the subway. Further, the problem was complicated by the restricted clearances and vision attendant upon tunnel construction. ”

“ Where there are only two lines of rails to serve for the UP and DOWN service of a heavy passenger and goods traffic, it is imperative to restrict those lines as much as possible to the actual transit of trains, and not to block them by unnecessary occupation for shunting purposes. A goods train running a long distance collects waggons from many roadside stations, and at some of them several waggons will be taken on, to be forwarded to various and widely distant destinations. ”

“ These trains must work upon the track away from stations, often with a large force of men, and delays to their operations cause expense as well as hindrance to work. At the same time they must not be permitted to interfere with the passage of regular trains, nor of others more than can be avoided. The solving of this problem has been attempted in various ways. Some allow the "work train" to occupy the track by right, except that it must keep out of the way of regular trains. Some permit it to work under flag "until freight trains come in sight." ”

“ Three hundred yards before the station is reached the flame-throated iron monster, uncoupled from its burden of cars, darts forward on a siding like a spirited horse unharnessed from its load, while the train glides forward with its own momentum, slowly and more slowly as the brakes are applied, until it comes to a stop under the depot shed. Hardly have the passengers poured forth when another train rolls in, and then another, the pathway in each instance cleared by those keen men at the levers in this tower-house of the yards of the Grand Central station in New York city. ”

“ We wait patiently upon a long siding until everything else has been moved—through fast expresses heavily laden with opulent-looking Pullmans, jerky little suburban trains, long draughts of empty coaches, being drawn by consequential switch-engines in and out of the train-shed of the passenger station. Finally a certain semaphore blade drops, we cross over to the important main line and begin pulling on a sharp curve, across the river, clear of the station with its confusion, through and past the city to a busy division yard. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Exits and entrances to the trains must be built in order that incoming and outgoing streams of persons shall not conflict. All these points require careful study. It is possible to design a baggage-room so bad as to make the station all but a failure; a stuffy ticket-office that is almost an impossibility to use under pressure conditions. The good engineer thinks two or three thousand times before he begins the design of a passenger terminal.
The concourse, or head platform, that joins all the different track platforms is the main feature of the terminal building. ”

“ Desert verbena in dense masses swarmed up and over the embankment, while golden poppies, more aloof, filled the ditches and nearby arroyos. Rand wished that he could pick some of the flowers. The verbena would be very becoming to Anna.
They slowed down and a brakeman came hurrying through the car. He raised the platform section concealing the steps, dropped to the ground, lantern in hand, and ran on ahead, The train stopped entirely, right in the middle of a huge bed of verbena. Rand stepped down onto the track and hastily began picking. ”

“ In any event, however, the general introduction of the interlocking apparatus into the American railroad system may be regarded as a mere question of the value of land and concentration of traffic. So long as every road terminating in our larger cities [198] indulges, at whatever unnecessary cost to its stockholders, in independent station buildings far removed from business centres, the train movement can most economically be conducted as it now is. ”

“ All the passengers are requested to walk. In single file we march over the bridge, and then await the train. It comes across, lightened of its load, slowly and safely. It is quite likely that in America the engineer would have put on all steam, and dashed across in a second, or, if not, he would have gone down a hundred feet, into a frightful chasm, and the verdict, if any were sought, would have been, “nobody to blame.” Fret as we do about the railroad management in Europe, it is safer and surer than ours. ”

“ Under the old plan he was constantly on guard lest he make a mistake and throw an engine or car off the track. Under the new, his calculations are chiefly about saving time and facilitating the work of the trainmen. Questions of danger rarely come up, being provided against by the perfection of the machinery. By long familiarity with the ground and the ways of [421] handling the trains, the switch-tender in an "interlocking tower" is enabled to safely conduct a score of trains through a labyrinth of switches in the time that the novice would take to make the first move for a single train. ”

“ It should be understood that, while a few of the larger railroads are double-tracked, the great bulk of the railroad business of this country is done over single-track roads. On these roads, points of meeting or passing must be at sidings, upon which one train can run while the other passes on the main « 219 » track. Such sidings are usually at stations, and the problem of making the trains meet there is a very delicate one.
In order to accomplish this with the least delay, the trains are divided into classes. The east-bound passengers always have the right of way, and expect a clear track. ”

“ Sharp on the minute an unseen hand—at least I never saw it—slams the doors and coyly—you might almost say secretively—the train moves out of the terminal. It moves smoothly and practically without jarring sounds. There is no shrieking of steel against steel. It is as though the rails were made of rubber and the wheel-flanges were faced with noise-proof felt. No conductor comes to punch your ticket, no brakeman to bellow the stops, no train butcher bleating the gabbled invoice of his gumdrops, bananas and other best-sellers. ”

“ Perhaps no single invention in the history of the development of railway transportation has contributed more toward safety and despatch in that field than the track circuit. By this invention, simple in itself, the foundation was obtained for the development of practically every one of the intricate systems of railway block signaling in use today wherein the train is, under all conditions, continuously active in maintaining its own protection. ”

“ And in the approaches to some of our great depots, where trains and tracks are multiplied and confused with cross-overs and switching service, all switches are set and all movements controlled by signals from a single central tower. Sometimes, by very expensive and complicated apparatus, it is made mechanically impossible to open a track for the movement of a train without previously locking all openings by which another train might interfere. The illustrations on pages 169, 171, and above will serve to give some general idea of these appliances. [17]
Central Switch and Signal Tower. ”