[Illustration: "EVEN IN WINTER THERE IS A HOMELY, HOMEY AIR ABOUT THE COMMUTER'S STATION"] [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE GREAT FOUR-TRACK OPEN CUT WHICH THE ERIE HAS BUILT FOR THE COMMUTER'S COMFORT AT JERSEY CITY] [Illustration: A MODEL WAY-STATION ON THE LINES OF THE BOSTON & ALBANY RAILROAD] [Illustration: THE YARDMASTER'S OFFICE--IN AN ABANDONED SWITCH-TOWER] "It seems incredible," said a railroad officer just the other day "but this suburban problem is all but overwhelming for us. It does not increase our revenues at so wonderful a pace, but it does increase in volume from 20 to 25 per cent a year; and think how that keeps us hustling, making facilities for it. There is not a railroad entering New York to-day that could not dismiss its passenger terminal problems to-morrow, if it were not for the Commuter. There is not a railroad coming into New York that could not handle all its through business in a train-house of from four to five tracks. Instead of that, what do we see? The Erie with five through trains requiring a terminal of sixteen tracks; the Lackawanna, with the same number of through trains, a new terminal of even greater size, the overwhelming passenger terminal problem being repeated at every corner of New York, just because of the tremendous annual increase in the suburban passenger business." The great reconstruction of the Grand Central terminal facilities in the heart of New York, and the erection of a new station there, as described in detail in an earlier chapter, is directly due to the Commuter. When the new station with its double tier of tracks is finished, there will be thirty-two platform tracks in the double train-house, an amount far in excess of that needed for even the great volume of through business that goes and comes over the lines of the New York Central and the New York, New Haven, & Hartford, the two systems that use it. And the new station, involving a tremendous expenditure of money, of brains, and of energy, is not all. The New Haven has electrified its four-track main line all the way out to Stamford, Conn., in order that it may in some measure cope with this increasing flow of suburban traffic over its already crowded main-line tracks. It has wrestled with the unanticipated problems of electrification because it has been facing a situation that left it no time to experiment elsewhere and approach its main-line problem with deliberation. More and more folk were settling in the suburban towns in its territory each month, and deliberation was quite out of their calculations. The Commuter is rarely deliberate.