Every large city has become, in a sense, a bottle-neck for the important railroads that pierce it. In some cases like Chicago or St. Louis or Kansas City or Indianapolis, the situation has been solved by the creation of belt-line freight railroads partly or entirely encircling the town. At Buffalo, the New York Central lines have built a connecting line to enable through traffic to escape the congestion of city yards and terminals, while at New Haven, the road of the same name has recently spent several million dollars in enlarging its narrow throat in the middle of the town. But nowhere else did the situation approach that at Pittsburgh. Through the Pennsylvania's passenger station there poured not only an abnormally heavy passenger traffic, owing to a heavy suburban service, but every pound of freight bound between the parent company and its two great subsidiaries, the Panhandle and the Fort Wayne. There were further complications right at the station, owing to the proximity of two of the very worst grade-crossings in America, where Penn and Liberty Avenues swept their busy tides of city traffic all day long over the Fort Wayne's main line tracks. It was a problem that called for the best in engineering skill--and received it. The Pennsylvania dug deep into its pocket-book and solved the problem magnificently. It began by going back to the vicinity of its great Pitcairn freight-yards at the east of the city, and from them building two connecting laterals (the one to the south and across the Monongahela River to connect with the Panhandle tracks, the other to the north--known as the Brilliant cut-off) across the Alleghany and connecting with the tracks of the West Penn Railroad, which in turn connected with those of the Fort Wayne in the one-time city of Allegheny. That sounds simple, but it was in reality a fearfully expensive undertaking. The mile of Brilliant cut-off, "heavy work" every inch of it, cost $5,500,000, and is to-day the most expensive mile of railroad track in the world. But the gripping hand was off the traffic throat of Pittsburgh and commercial Pittsburgh breathed more easily once again. The Union Station and its approach tracks were restored to passenger uses; and in the course of things the Pennsylvania tore down the old station, built a new one, and wiped out the two wicked city crossings, as with the stroke of an Aladdin's hand. So much for Pittsburgh. Now consider the great new freight line leading to the east from there. Not all of that railroad has yet been built, but the greater part of it is already completed, and every part of the old road that was under tension because of freight congestion has already been relieved.