A Book of Railway Journeys

by Ludovic Kennedy

  The cars are like shabby omnibuses, but larger: holding thirty, forty, fifty, people. The seats, instead of stretching from end to end, are placed crosswise. Each seat holds two persons. There is a long row of them on each side of the caravan, a narrow passage up the middle, and a door at both ends. In the centre of the carriage there is usually a stove, fed with charcoal or anthracite coal; which is for the most part red-hot. It is insufferably close; and you see the hot air fluttering between yourself and any other object you may happen to look at, like the ghost of smoke.

  In the ladies’ car, there are a great many gentlemen who have ladies with them. There are also a great many ladies who have nobody with them: for any lady may travel alone, from one end of the United States to the other, and be certain of the most courteous and considerate treatment everywhere. The conductor or check-taker, or guard, or whatever he may be, wears no uniform. He walks up and down the car, and in and out of it, as his fancy dictates; leans against the door with his hands in his pockets and stares at you, if you chance to be a stranger; or enters into conversation with the passengers about him. A great many newspapers are pulled out, and a few of them are read. Everybody talks to you, or to anybody else who hits his fancy. If you are an Englishman, he expects that that railroad is pretty much like an English railroad. If you say “No,” he says “Yes?” (interrogatively), and asks in what respect they differ. You enumerate the heads of difference, one by one, and he says “Yes?” (still interrogatively) to each. Then he guesses that you don’t travel faster in England; and on your replying that you do, says, “Yes?” again (still interrogatively), and it is quite evident, don’t believe it. After a long pause he remarks partly to you, and partly to the knob on the top of his stick, that “Yankees are reckoned to be considerable of a go-ahead people too”; upon which you say “Yes,” and then he says “Yes” again (affirmatively this time); and upon your looking out of the window, tells you that behind that hill, and some three miles from the next station, there is a clever town in a smart lo-ca-tion, where he expects you have concluded to stop. Your answer in the negative naturally leads to more questions in reference to your intended route (always pronounced rout); and wherever you are going you invariably learn that you can’t get there without immense difficulty and danger, and that all the great sights are somewhere else.

  Arrival of the first train of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad at Jamestown from New York

  If a lady takes a fancy to any male passenger’s seat, the gentleman who accompanies her gives him notice of the fact, and he immediately vacates it with great politeness. Politics are much discussed, so are banks, so is cotton. Quiet people avoid the question of the Presidency, for there will be a new election in three years and a half, and party feeling runs very high: the great constitutional feature of this institution being, that directly the acrimony of the last election is over, the acrimony of the next one begins; which is an unspeakable comfort to all strong politicians and true lovers of their country; that is to say, to ninety-nine men and boys out of every ninety-nine and a quarter.

  Except where a branch road joins the main one, there is seldom more than one track of rails; so that the road is very narrow, and the view, where there is a deep cutting, by no means extensive. When there is not, the character of the scenery is always the same. Mile after mile of stunted trees: some hewn down by the axe, some blown down by the wind, some half fallen and resting on their neighbours, many more logs half hidden in the swamp, others mouldered away to spongy chips. The very soil of the earth is made up of minute fragments such as these; each pool of stagnant water has its crust of vegetable rottenness; on every side there are the boughs, and trunks, and stumps of trees, in every possible stage of decay, decomposition, and neglect. Now you emerge for a few brief minutes on an open country, glittering with some bright lake or pool, broad as many an English river, but so small here that it scarcely has a name; now catch hasty glimpses of a distant town, with its clean white houses and their cool piazzas, its prim New England church and schoolhouse; when whir-r-r-r! almost before you have seen them, comes the same dark screen: the stunted trees, the stumps, the logs, the stagnant water—all so like the last that you seem to have been transported back again by magic.

  The train calls at stations in the woods, where the wild impossibility of anybody having the smallest reason to get out, is only to be equalled by the apparently desperate hopelessness of there being anybody to get in. It rushes across the turnpike road, where there is no gate, no policeman, no signal, nothing but a rough wooden arch, on which is painted “WHEN THE BELL RINGS, LOOK OUT FOR THE LOCOMOTIVE.” On it whirls headlong, dives through the woods again, emerges in the light, clatters over frail arches, rumbles upon the heavy ground, shoots beneath a wooden bridge which intercepts the light for a second like a wink, suddenly awakens all the slumbering echoes in the main street of a large town, and dashes on haphazard, pell-mell, neck-or-nothing, down the middle of the road. There—with mechanics working at their trades, and people leaning from their doors and windows, and boys flying kites and playing marbles, and men smoking, and women talking, and children crawling, and pigs burrowing, and unaccustomed horses plunging and rearing, close to the very rails—there—on, on, on—tears the mad dragon of an engine with its train of cars; scattering in all directions a shower of burning sparks from its wood fire; screeching, hissing, yelling, panting; until at last the thirsty monster stops beneath a covered way to drink, the people cluster round, and you have time to breathe again.

  The Lackawanna Valley by George Innes

  The journey from New York to Philadelphia is made by railroad, and two ferries; and usually occupies between five and six hours. It was a fine evening when we were passengers in the train: and watching a bright sunset from a little window near the door by which we sat, my attention was attracted to a remarkable appearance issuing from the windows of the gentlemen’s car immediately in front of us, which I supposed for some time was occasioned by a number of industrious persons inside, ripping open featherbeds, and giving the feathers to the wind. At length it occurred to me that they were only spitting, which was indeed the case; though how any number of passengers which it was possible for that car to contain, could have maintained such a playful and incessant shower of expectoration, I am still at a loss to understand: notwithstanding the experience in all salivatory phenomena which I afterwards acquired.

  I made acquaintance, on this journey, with a mild and modest young quaker, who opened the discourse by informing me in a grave whisper, that his grandfather was the inventor of cold-drawn castor oil. I mention the circumstance here, thinking it probable that this is the first occasion on which the valuable medicine in question was ever used as a conversational aperient.

  CHARLES DICKENS,

  American Notes (1842)

  THE LACKAWANNA RAILROAD

  The Lackawanna Railroad where does it go?

  It goes from Jersey City to Buffalo.

  Some of the trains stop at Maysville but they are few

  Most of them go right through

  Except the 8.22

  Going west but the 10.12 bound for Jersey City

  That is the train we like the best

  As it takes you to Jersey City

  Where you can take a ferry or tube for New York City.

  The Lackawanna runs many freights

  Sometimes they run late

  But that does not make so much difference with a freight

  Except the people who have to wait for their freight

  Maysville people patronise the Interurban aspecialty the farmers

  So the Interurban cuts into the business of the Lackawanna,

  But if you are going to New York City or Buffalo

  The Lackawanna is the way to go.

  Will say in conclusion that we consider it an honor

  That the City of Maysville is on the Lackawanna.

  STEPHEN GALE

  How they started

  1. Thomas Edison
>
  While I was a newsboy on the Grand Trunk I had a chance to learn that money can be made out of a little careful thought, and, being poor, I already knew that money is a valuable thing. Boys who don’t know that are under a disadvantage greater than deafness. That was a long time ago. The Civil War was on and the Battle of Pittsburgh Landing, sometimes called the Battle of Shiloh, was in progress—and I was already very deaf. In my isolation (insulation would be a better term) I had time to think things out. I decided that if I could send ahead to out-lying stations a hint of the big war news which I, there in Detroit, had learned was coming, I could do a better than normal business when I reached them.

  I therefore ran to the office of the Detroit Free Press and asked Mr. Seitz, the man in charge, if he would trust me for a thousand newspapers. He regarded me as if perhaps I might be crazy, but referred me to Mr. Story. Mr. Story carefully considered me. I was poorly dressed. He hesitated, but finally told Mr. Seitz to let me have the papers.

  I got them to the station and into the baggage car as best I could and then attended to my scheme. All along the line I had made friends of the station-agents, who also were the telegraphers, by giving them candy and other things which a train-boy dealt in in those days. They were a good-natured lot of men, too, and had been kind to me. I wired ahead to them, through the courtesy of the Detroit agent, who also was my friend, asking them to post notices that when the train arrived I would have newspapers with details of the great battle.

  When I got to the first station on the run I found that the device had worked beyond my expectations. The platform literally was crowded with men and women anxious to buy newspapers. After one look at that crowd I raised the price from five cents to ten and sold as many papers as the crowd could absorb. At Mount Clemons, the next station, I raised the price from ten cents to fifteen. The advertising worked as well at all the other stations. By the time the train reached Port Huron I had advanced the price of the Detroit Free Press for that day to thirty-five cents per copy and everybody took one.

  Out of this one idea I made enough money to give me a chance to learn telegraphy. This was something I long had wished to do, for thus early I had found that my deafness did not prevent me from hearing the clicking of a telegraph instrument when I was as near to it as an operator always must be. From the start I found that deafness was an advantage to a telegrapher. While I could hear unerringly the loud ticking of the instrument, I could not hear other and perhaps distracting sounds. I could not even hear the instrument of the man next to me in a big office. I became rather well-known as a fast operator, especially at receiving.

  THOMAS ALVA EDISON,

  Diary and Sundry Observations

  2. George Pullman

  One cold night in 1853, George Mortimer Pullman, twenty-two-year-old woodworker, living in Albion, New York, was traveling in a sleeping car between Buffalo and Westfield, a distance of some fifty-eight miles. It was an uncomfortable experience. The car had neither sheets, blankets, nor pillows. Lying in his clothes and shoes, and trying to sleep on the rough mattress, the young Pullman—who, according to one observer, grew up “conveying the impression that the world rested on his shoulders”—was thinking to himself how such a car might be improved.

  It was one of the earliest sleeping cars. Stanley Buder, a Pullman historian, describes them as “ordinary coaches with a few crude extras added. Three wooden shelves were permanently fixed to the sides in a tier arrangement so that the sleeper could not be used for day travel. Lacking privacy and adequate bedding, the passenger would climb fully dressed onto a shelf... Everyone knew that the problem was to build a sleeping car that could be used comfortably day and night. What was lacking, however, was the know-how.”

  George Mortimer Pullman provided that know-how. His first chance at doing so came in 1858, when he went to Bloomington, Illinois, and converted two old passenger coaches into sleeping cars, for the Chicago and Alton Railroad. Though they were not much of an improvement upon the existing sleepers, he converted several more, and persuaded a few railroads to use them. When passenger travel fell off, during the Civil War, Pullman left for the gold fields of Colorado, where he ran a trading post from 1862 to 1863, and saved his money. With his savings, he returned to Chicago toward the end of the war, determined to build “the biggest and best car ever.”

  George Pullman explaining his compressed paper wheels

  (from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper of 1877)

  This turned out to be the Pioneer. It was built at a cost of $20,000, five times more than any previous sleeping car had cost. Many who had seen it under construction had laughed it away as “Pullman’s Folly.” But when Pullman unveiled the Pioneer, it was hailed as “the wonder of the age.” “Never before,” writes Joseph Husband, one of Pullman’s biographers, “had such a car been seen; never had the wildest flights of fancy imagined such magnificence.” The floor was covered with a rich red carpet, the seats upholstered with brocaded fabrics, the doorframes made of polished woods, the berths paneled with ornamented wood, and the entire car lit with silver-trimmed oil lamps and hung with gilt-edged mirrors. Arthur Dubin, of Chicago, a collector of Pullman memorabilia, says, “There was a sense of order about this man which must have been in his personal life. He was a very religious man. He built seminaries and left money to churches. George Pullman was a lover of beautiful things. That’s an interesting facet to a man considered by so many to be ruthless.”

  For a time, the Pioneer seemed to be the wonder of the age in more ways than one. Because it was too large to fit between any of the existing station platforms, the railroad companies displayed little interest in it, and people started wondering what on earth Pullman was going to do with his sleeper. It was the assassination of President Lincoln that provided an answer, and opened up a future for the Pioneer. When the body of the slain President arrived in Chicago, on its way to Springfield, Illinois, state officials looked around for the most splendid conveyance to bear Lincoln on the final leg of his journey. And, of course, there was nothing more splendid in Chicago at the time than the Pioneer. Platforms along the way were hurriedly widened. The dead President was placed aboard the Pioneer, and the magnificent sleeper received everywhere an outpouring of publicity and acclaim that exceeded even George Pullman’s most optimistic dreams.

  JERVIS ANDERSON,

  A. Philip Randolph: A

  Biographical Portrait

  Adventures of a hobo

  Brum informed me of a freight train that was to leave the yards at midnight, on which we could beat our way to a small town on the borders of the hop country. Not knowing what to do with ourselves until that time arrived, we continued to drink until we were not in a fit condition for this hazardous undertaking—except we were fortunate to get an empty car, so as to lie down and sleep upon the journey. At last we made our way towards the yards, where we saw the men making up the train. We kept out of sight until that was done and then in the darkness Brum inspected one side of the train and I the other, in quest of an empty car. In vain we sought for that comfort. There was nothing to do but to ride the bumpers or the top of the car, exposed to the cold night air. We jumped the bumpers, the engine whistled twice, toot! toot! and we felt ourselves slowly moving out of the yards. Brum was on one car and I was on the next facing him. Never shall I forget the horrors of that ride. He had taken fast hold on the handle bar of his car, and I had done likewise with mine. We had been riding some fifteen minutes, and the train was going at its full speed when, to my horror, I saw Brum lurch forward, and then quickly pull himself straight and erect. Several times he did this, and I shouted to him. It was no use, for the man was drunk and fighting against the over-powering effects, and it was a mystery to me how he kept his hold. At last he became motionless for so long that I knew the next time he lurched forward his weight of body must break his hold, and he would fall under the wheels and be cut to pieces. I worked myself carefully towards him and woke him. Although I had great difficulty in waking him,
he swore that he was not asleep. I had scarcely done this when a lantern was shown from the top of the car, and a brakesman’s voice hailed us. “Hallo, where are you two going?” “To the hop fields,” I answered. “Well,” he sneered, “I guess you won’t get to them on this train, so jump off, at once. Jump! d’ye hear?” he cried, using a great oath, as he saw we were little inclined to obey. Brum was now wide awake. “If you don’t jump at once,” shouted this irate brakes-man, “you will be thrown off.” “To jump,” said Brum quietly, “will be sure death, and to be thrown off will mean no more.” “Wait until I come back,” cried the brakesman, “and we will see whether you ride this train or not,” on which he left us, making his way towards the caboose. “Now,” said Brum, “when he returns we must be on the top of the car, for he will probably bring with him a coupling pin to strike us off the bumpers, making us fall under the wheels.” We quickly clambered on top and in a few minutes could see a light approaching us, moving along the top of the cars. We were now lying flat, so that he might not see us until he stood on the same car. He was very near to us, when we sprang to our feet, and unexpectedly gripped him, one on each side, and before he could recover from his first astonishment. In all my life I have never seen so much fear on a human face. He must have seen our half drunken condition and at once gave up all hopes of mercy from such men, for he stood helpless, not knowing what to do. If he struggled it would mean the fall and death of the three, and did he remain helpless in our hands, it might mean being thrown from that height from a car going at the rate of thirty miles an hour. “Now,” said Brum to him, “what is it to be? Shall we ride this train without interference, or shall we have a wrestling bout up here, when the first fall must be our last? Speak!” “Boys,” said he, affecting a short laugh, “you have the drop on me; you can ride.” We watched him making his way back to the caboose, which he entered, but every moment I expected to see him reappear assisted by others. It might have been that there was some friction among them, and that they would not ask assistance from one another. For instance, an engineer has to take orders from the conductor, but the former is as well paid, if not better, than the latter, and the most responsibility is on his shoulders, and this often makes ill blood between them. At any rate, American tramps know well that neither the engineer nor the fireman, his faithful attendant, will inform the conductor or brakesman of their presence on a train. Perhaps the man was ashamed of his ill-success, and did not care to own his defeat to the conductor and his fellow brakes-men; but whatever was the matter, we rode that train to its destination and without any more interference.