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There is not much loafing at either of those points along about supper-time. Switching crews show feverish activity in snatching the cars from the floats, and yardmasters bend themselves nervously toward forming the long trains that are to go rumbling toward the west throughout the night.

Stand in the switch-tower at Waverley, and you will begin to cultivate a wholesome respect for the freight traffic that comes out from a great city at nightfall. A through train from Greenville is billed to Pittsburgh, and only hesitates long enough at Waverley to take the switch-points at that busy junction with care. Three minutes behind it is a through Chicago train from Harsemus Cove, and it goes stolidly through the gateway yard without pausing. You wonder why they keep an expert yardmaster and half a dozen switching crews at Waverley. Within five minutes you wonder no longer. They are beginning to get the unassorted cars from the terminals, cars that are bound for more than a score of States. The work of sorting begins. The night yardmaster is a general, and he has an army of lesser officers in the field. You can trace them through the night, as, lanterns in hand, they are running along the trains (these are pulling in from the waterfront every five minutes now), cutting out cars, adding cars, vamping and revamping the freight traffic of the night.

This track receives through freight for Philadelphia, the next for Pittsburgh, the third for Cincinnati, the fourth for Washington and the points diverging therefrom. So it goes. When the assorting process has been in progress for more than an hour at one end of the classification tracks, there are long trains of cars upon them ready to run solid to some large city or important distributing point. After that it is a simple enough matter to bring engines and cabooses and start the trains through.

Then the sorting of the cars is begun again and continues until the freight receiving points and the freight interchange points in the metropolitan district have been swept clean for the night.

The transfer-house repeats the assorting process, only upon a smaller scale, for it handles package freight--"less than carload." It is a long structure, stretching its way down the yard and served by 8 to 10 long sidings and unloading sheds. It takes the "LCL" stuff coming by night from the connecting railroads and from the metropolitan freight-houses, and a little after midnight its workers begin the sorting of this great mass of matter, from 200 to 500 carloads a day.

Here is a really great phase of railroad energy. We find our way to a gaunt freight-house, to whose door no truck has ever backed, and which is hemmed in by many rows of sidings and of sheds. In this building one of the busiest functions of the whole transportation business goes forth by day and by night.

You ship a box--sixty pounds to one hundred pounds--from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., to Berlin, Wis. Here comes another box from Watertown, N. Y., to Norfolk, Va. A third is bound from Easthampton, Mass., to Chillicothe, O.; a fourth from Terre Haute, Ind., to Plainfield, N. J., and so on, _ad infinitum_. You can readily see how in such cases the railroads have a problem in freight that closely approximates that of the Government mail service. Ten thousand currents and cross-currents of merchandise rising here and there and everywhere, and crossing and recrossing on their way to destination, make a puzzle that does not cease when the rate-sheet experts have finished their difficult work.

If all the freight might be expressed in even multiples of cars the problem would not be quite so appalling. But your box is a hundred pounds weight, or less, perhaps--"LCL" anyway. From its destination it goes with other boxes in a car to the nearest transfer point. At the transfer house the car in which it is placed is drilled quickly into an infreight track, seals are broken, doors opened, and re-assorting begins. The transfer-house is roomy and systematic. If it were anything less it would resemble chaos.

But the chief freight points of that particular system and its connecting points have regular stands, upon which nightly are placed cars bound for these points. Each city (in the case of a large city each freight-house), each transfer point, has a number, and its through car stands opposite that number. When the infreight arrives and is unloaded piece by piece, a checker, who is nothing less than an animated guide-book, gives each its proper number, and it is promptly trucked off to the waiting car. It is mail-sorting on a Titanic scale.

Nor is this an absolute order. Certain towns demand an occasional through car from time to time, and a car must be assigned number and place at the transfer-house against such emergencies. Sometimes there is more than enough freight to fill the car allotted to any given point, and then one of the switching crews must drill that out and find another empty to replace it. Beyond that, the yardmaster's superiors are all the time demanding that he show judgment in picking the cars to be filled.

When a freight car gets off the system to which it belongs it collects forfeits from the other lines over which it passes, if they do not expedite its passage; this the railroaders know as "_per diem_." The great trick in operating is to keep _per diem_ down; and so the "foreign" cars, so called, must be promptly returned to their home roads.

"We load out of the transfer-house a through car over the Northwestern from Chicago every day," the man who has this yard in charge explains.

"It's up to me to have a Northwestern empty for that when I can. When I can't, I do the best I can." He scratches his head. "Perhaps I'll use a Canadian Pacific, and so get her started along toward home. If not, something from the Sault; just as I am going to start that New Haven car over toward Connecticut to-night. If I were to send that New Haven car out beyond Washington there'd be trouble, and I've got to dig out something empty from the Boston & Maine to take that stuff over to Lowell. Mos'

generally, though, when we've got a turn of Western stuff, I've got my 'empty' tracks stuffed full o' them New England cars."

We mention something about the transfer-house being a mighty good thing.

"It's a necessary evil," says our guide, correcting us.

He starts to explain. "See here. The X----, over in its Jersey City transfer-house, got near a carload of that fancy porcelain brick through from Haverstraw las' week, and that young whelp of a college boy that's hangin' round there learnin' the railroad business gets it into his noodle that it's somethin' awful, awful for that stuff to be goin' through to Middle Ohio in a Maine Central box, an 'LCL' at that. So out he dumps it into a system car right here an' now, and saves his road about one dollar and fifty cents _per diem_. Of course they pay about one hundred and thirty-five dollars for damages to that brick in the transferrin'. But the boy's all right in the transfer-house. If he was out on the engine he might blow up the biler."

Here is another great railroad yard--this almost filling a mighty crevice between God's eternal hills. This is within the mountain country, and the gossip that you get around the roundhouse is all of grades. You hear how Smith and the 2,999 pulled seven Pullmans around the Saddleback without a pusher; how some of the big preference freights take four engines to mount the summit; the tales of daring are tales of pushers and of trains breaking apart on the fearful mountain stretches.

Randall is yardmaster here, and Randall is the opposite of the layman's picture of a yardmaster--a slovenly, worn, profane sort of fellow. Randall does not swear; he rarely even gets excited; his system of administration is so perfectly devised that even in a stress he rarely has to turn to work with his own hands. With him railroading is a fine, practical science. He will tell you of the methods at Collinwood, at Altoona, at Buffalo, at Chicago--wherein they differ. He is cool, calculating, clever, a capital railroader in addition to all these.

[Illustration: SOMETHING OVER A MILLION DOLLARS' WORTH OF PASSENGER CARS ARE CONSTANTLY STORED IN THIS YARD]

[Illustration: A SCENE IN THE GREAT FREIGHT-YARDS THAT SURROUND CHICAGO]

[Illustration: THE INTRICACY OF TRACKS AND THE "THROAT" OF A MODERN TERMINAL YARD: SOUTH STATION, BOSTON, AND ITS APPROACHES]

You speak of his yard as being overwhelmingly big. He answers in his deliberate way:

"We've more than 200 miles of track in this yard; something more than 2,000 switches operate it."

Then he takes you down from his office, elevated in an abandoned switch-tower, and looking down upon his domain. He explains with great care that, his yard being a main-line division point and not a point with many intersecting branches or "foreign roads," its transfer-house is inconsequential. The same process that goes forward with the package-freight in the transfer-houses, Randall carries on in this yard with cars. These operations are separated for east-bound and west-bound freight and each is given an entirely separate yard, easily reached from the group of roundhouses that hold the freight motive power of that part of the system. Randall's, being an unusually large yard, further divides these activities into separate yards for loaded and empty cars on the west-bound side. No east-bound "empties" are handled over his road.

We follow him to the nearest operating point, the west-bound classification yard for loaded cars. In the old days this was a broad flat reach of about 20 parallel tracks, terminating at each end in approaches of lead of "ladder" track. Upon each set of 3 or 4 tracks a switch-engine is busy in the eternal classification process. In these more modern days you may see the "hump" or gravity-yard, although you will still find skilled railroaders who are prejudiced against its use. In the hump-yard half of the work of the switch-engines is done by gravity. This new type of railroad facility has an artificial hill, just above the termination of the parallel tracks where they cluster together, and upon this hump one switch-engine with a trained crew does the work of six engines and crews in the old type of yard.

A preference freight rolls into the receiving yard for the west-bound classification. Its engine uncouples and steams off for a well-earned rest in the smoky roundhouse. A switch-engine uncouples the caboose that has been tacked on behind over the division, and it is shunted off to the near-by caboose track, where its crew will have close oversight of it--perhaps sleep in it--until it is ready to accompany some east-bound freight a few hours hence.

Blue flags (blue lights at night) are fastened at each end of the dismantled cars, and the inspectors have a quarter of an hour to make sure if the equipment is in good order. If the car is found with broken running-gear it is marked, and soon after drilled out from its fellows, sent to the transfer-house to have its contents removed, to the shops for repairs, or the "cripple" track for junk, if its case is well-nigh hopeless.

With the "O. K." of the car inspectors finally pronounced, the train that was comes up to the hump, and the expert crew that operates there makes short work of sorting out the cars--this track for "stuff" southwest of Pittsburgh, this next for Cleveland and Chicago, the third for transcontinental; and so it goes. Two lines of cars are drilled at the same time, for just ahead of the switch-engine is an open-platform car, known as the "pole-car," and by means of heavy timbers the "pole-man"

guides two rows of heavy cars down the slight grades to their resting-places.

The cars do not rest long upon the classification-yard tracks. From the far end of each of these they are being gathered in solid trains, one for Pittsburgh, another for Cleveland and Chicago, the third transcontinental, and so on. Engines of the next division are being hitched to them, pet "hacks" brought from the caboose tracks, and the long strings of loaded box-cars are off toward the West in incredibly short time.

Of course there are some trains that never go upon the "classification" at Randall's yard. There are solid coal trains bound in and out of New York, of Philadelphia, and of Boston, that pass him empty and filled, and only change engines and cabooses at his command. There are through freights, bound from one seaboard to the other, from the Far East to the Far West, that do likewise. But the majority of the freight movement has the sorting out within his domain, his four humps are busy day and night with an ordinary run of traffic, and you shudder to think what must be the condition when business begins to run at high tide.

"We get it a-humming every once in a while," he finally confesses. "We had one day, a little time ago, when we received 121 east-bound trains in twenty-four hours, more than 3,200 cars all told. That meant, on an average, a train every 11-1/2 minutes. That same day we got 78 west-bound freights, with more than 3,600 cars. That meant nearly 7,000 cars handled on the in-freight in twenty-four hours, or a train coming in to me every 7-1/2 minutes during day and night. They don't do much better than that on some of the subway and elevated railroads in the big cities; and I haven't said a word about the trains and cars we despatched--just about as much again, of course."

Through yards such as these there are incoming streams of merchandise, equal at least to the outgoing, passing through classification yards in carload lots and the great transfer-houses in "LCL." These streams must be kept separate and from clogging one another or themselves. Cars must carry loads whenever they are moved--"empties" are the bogy-men of the superintendents of transportation--and cars from "foreign" systems must be quickly returned to their home roads. The yardmaster at a busy freight point has his own worries. His puzzle is unending. To it he must bend the bigness of a big mind, he must be prepared to handle the unequal volumes of traffic that pass through his domain with an equal skill: in dull times he must seek to keep his plant working under conditions of rare economy; when the freight rises to flood tide, he must fight in harness to prevent the freight from congesting. The word "failure" has been stricken out of his vocabulary by his superiors.

It takes a high grade of railroader to serve as yardmaster.

CHAPTER VIII

THE LOCOMOTIVES AND THE CARS

HONOR REQUIRED IN THE BUILDING OF A LOCOMOTIVE--SOME OF THE EARLY LOCOMOTIVES--SOME NOTABLE LOCOMOTIVE-BUILDERS--INCREASE OF THE SIZE OF ENGINES--STEPHENSON'S AIR-BRAKE--THE WORKSHOPS--THE VARIOUS PARTS OF THE ENGINE--CARS OF THE OLD-TIME--IMPROVEMENTS BY WINANS AND OTHERS--STEEL CARS FOR FREIGHT.

From out of the fiery womb of steel comes the locomotive. We have already told of the honor that is forged in the building of the bridge; honor of no less degree has gone into the forging of the most vital and most human thing upon the railroad, outside of man himself. 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 tell in detail of the locomotive in one chapter is short allowance to a subject that fairly demands for itself a whole book, a technical mind for the telling, and at least a fairly technical mind for the understanding; a subject that in its history goes hand in hand with that of the railroad itself. Yet the limitations of this book forbid a more lengthy description.

We have already told of a very few of the earliest and most famous American locomotives; the _Stourbridge Lion_, which Horatio Allen brought to the Delaware & Hudson Company; the _Best Friend_, which was built in New York City, and which went to Charleston, South Carolina, to be the first American locomotive to run in the United States, the _De Witt Clinton_, which awoke the echoes of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys in a single day; and the _Tom Thumb_, built by Peter Cooper, which induced the directors of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad to change their motive power from horses to steam, and so opened a great new development for their property.

A little while after Cooper's _Tom Thumb_ had achieved the astounding feat of beating a team of horses in hauling a railroad coach, the directors of the B. & O. offered a prize of $4,000 "for the most approved engine that shall be delivered for trial upon the road on or before June 1, 1831; and $3,500 for the engine which shall be adjudged the next best." It was determined in this prospectus that "the engine, when in operation must not exceed three and one-half tons weight and must, on a level road, be capable of drawing day by day fifteen tons, inclusive of the weight of wagons, fifteen miles an hour."

Three locomotives answered this generous offer. Of them but one, the _York_, oftener called the _Arabian_, built at York, Pa., by Davis & Gartner, and hauled to Baltimore by horses over the turnpikes, was of practical service. Phineas Davis was a watch and clock maker, but he succeeded in devising a locomotive that was the forerunner of the famous _Grasshopper_ upon the Baltimore & Ohio. Better name was never given to a locomotive, the rude and ungainly angles formed by rods and levers giving a distinct resemblance to the long-legged bugs. Yet the Grasshoppers served their purpose. In the late eighties, the _Arabian_ was still in service in the Mount Clare yards at Baltimore. With a single exception, it never had an accident or even left the rails. That exception was just before the completion of the Washington branch, and Davis was a passenger upon the engine. It was going at a fair rate of speed when suddenly it rolled over upon its side in the ditch. No one was hurt, save Davis, who was instantly killed. It seemed a strange caprice of Fate, for although careful examination was immediately made, both of the engine and of the track, no reason could ever be assigned for the accident.

In that same year, 1831, the _John Bull_, which was built by George & Robert Stephenson & Company, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, in England, was received in Philadelphia for the Camden & Amboy Railroad. As long as the locomotive continues to serve the railroad the name of George Stephenson, its inventor, must be indissolubly linked with it. The _John Bull_ was easily the most famous Stephenson engine ever sent to the United States.

It has been shown at all our great expositions, and now occupies a position of honor in the great Smithsonian institution at Washington. Of these early engines, which it was found necessary to bring from England, a volume once issued by the Rogers Locomotive Works, of Paterson, N. J., has said:

"These locomotives ... furnished the types and patterns from which those which were afterwards built here were fashioned. But American designs soon began to depart from their British prototypes, and a process of adaption to the existing conditions of the railroads in this country followed, which afterwards differentiated the American locomotives more and more from those built in Great Britain. A marked feature of difference between American and English locomotives has been the use of a forward truck under the former."

As a matter of fact, the English engines, built for use on long straight stretches of line would never have served on the early roads in this country with their steep and curving routes through the mountains. So, in the latter part of the year 1831, John B. Jervis invented what he called "a new plan of frame, with a bearing-carriage for a locomotive engine" for the use of the Mohawk & Hudson Railroad, in which he introduced the forward truck which is to-day a distinctive feature of American engines.

Its effectiveness was at once recognized, and its almost general adoption immediately followed. Five years later, Henry R. Campbell, of Philadelphia, had patented his system of two driving-wheels and a truck, and the distinctive type of American locomotive was born.

In the development of that peculiarly successful type, great names have been written into the history of American locomotive-building--the names of such men as Rogers and Winans and Hinckley and Mason and Brooks and Matthias Baldwin and William Norris; the last two both of Philadelphia.

Norris, after some interesting smaller engines, built the _George Washington_ in 1835. This engine was not one whit less than a triumph. It ascended the steep plane of the Columbia Railroad in Philadelphia, a grade of 7-1/2 per cent, carrying two passenger cars in which were seated 53 persons. It came to a stop on that grade and started up again by its own efforts. After reaching the summit, the engine was turned around and came down, stopping once in its descent.

That was the only time that a locomotive ever essayed the Columbia plane, and the performance of the _George Washington_ has not been attempted in all these years save in the case of Latrobe's temporary line at Kingwood Tunnel. The English newspapers of that day ridiculed the experiment, pronounced it a Baron Munchausen story, yet in 1839 Norris sent an engine overseas that successfully climbed the then famous Lickey plane, in England. After that he was besieged by foreign orders, sending 16 American locomotives to Great Britain in 1840, and, during the next few years, 170 others to France, Germany, Prussia, Austria, Belgium, Italy, and Saxony.

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