The American Railway: Its Construction, Development, Management, and AppliancesClarke, Thomas Curtis
History
The American Railway: Its Construction, Development, Management, and Appliances
Clarke, Thomas Curtis
Railroads -- United States
The transportation of immigrants has recently received increased
facilities for its accommodation upon the principal through lines.
Until late years economically constructed day-cars were alone used,
but in these the immigrants suffered great discomfort in long
journeys. An immigrant sleeper is now used, which is constructed
with sections on each side of the aisle, each section containing
two double berths. The berths are made with slats of hard wood
running longitudinally; there is no upholstery in the car, and
no bedding supplied, and after the car is vacated the hose can be
turned in upon it, and all the wood-work thoroughly cleansed. The
immigrants usually carry with them enough blankets and wraps to
make them tolerably comfortable in their berths; a cooking stove
is provided in one end of the car, on which the occupants can cook
their food, and even the long transcontinental journeys of the
immigrants are now made without hardship.
[Illustration: View of Pullman, Ill.]
The manufacture of railway passenger cars is a large item of
industry in the country. The tendency had been for many years to
confine the building of ordinary passenger coaches to the shops
owned by the railway companies, and they made extensive provision
for such work; but recently they have given large orders for that
class of equipment to outside manufacturers. This has resulted
partly from the large demand for cars, and partly on account of
the excellence of the work supplied by some of the manufacturing
companies. In 1880 the Pullman Company erected the most extensive
car-works in the world at Pullman, fourteen miles south of Chicago;
and, besides its extensive output of Pullman cars and freight
equipment, it has built for railway companies large numbers of
passenger coaches. The employees now number about 5,000, and an
idea of the capacity and resources of the shops may be obtained
from the fact that one hundred freight cars, of the kind known
as flat cars, have been built in eight hours. The business
of car-building has therefore given rise to the first model
manufacturing town in America, and it is an industry evidently
destined to increase as rapidly as any in the country.
The transportation of baggage has always been a most important
item to the traveller, and the amount carried seems to increase in
proportion to the advance in civilization. The original allowance
of fourteen pounds is found to be increased to four hundred when
ladies start for fashionable summer-resorts.
America has been much more liberal than other countries to the
traveller in this particular, as in all others. Here few of the
roads charge for excess of baggage unless the amount be so large
that patience with regard to it ceases to be a virtue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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