So not only have our railroads begun to build great stations; they are to-day building really beautiful stations. An age in which the American demands the exquisite and the monumental in his architecture, palatial homes, palatial shops, palatial hotels, demands that the railroad station be something more than the mere expression of a commercial utility. Stone, the sturdy and durable building material of all the ages, has become the expression of these buildings from without. Within, they are gay with rare marbles and mural paintings. There is nothing too fine for the railroad passenger terminal of to-day in the United States. When the master fancy of the architect, Richardson, designed the splendid stations at Worcester and Springfield, as well as a host of smaller attractive stations along the line of the Boston & Albany Railroad, the beginnings were made. More recently this rising American desire for beauty and good taste has shown itself in such elaborate and artistic structures as the stations at Albany and Scranton. The last step has come in the designing of the palatial terminals in Chicago, in Washington, and in New York City. It would take a bold prophet to anticipate what the next step might be. CHAPTER VII THE FREIGHT TERMINALS AND THE YARDS CONVENIENCE OF HAVING FREIGHT STATIONS AT SEVERAL POINTS IN A CITY--THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD'S SCHEME AT NEW YORK AS AN EXAMPLE--COAL HANDLED APART FROM OTHER FREIGHT--ASSORTING THE CARS--THE TRANSFER HOUSE--CHARGES FOR THE USE OF CARS NOT PROMPTLY RETURNED TO THEIR HOME ROADS--THE HARD WORK OF THE YARDMASTER. All the folk who come and go upon the railroad know the passenger stations. Few of them know the freight terminals. Yet it is from this last source that the railroad will derive the greater part of its revenue. The freight terminals of a large city will be a group of plants, designed for varying purposes. The railroad handles its passenger business from a single structure, if possible. It is comparatively simple to gather all its passengers, even from a broad territory, within a great city, and so to concentrate this part of its traffic in a single well-located terminal. With the freight it is entirely a different question. The problem of trucking is one of the great problems of each of our large cities, and, in order to eliminate this as far as possible, the railroad, under the stimulus of competition, will establish freight stations at each point where any considerable volume of traffic is likely to originate. These stations will consist of a freight-house, for handling package-freight (your traffic expert calls this "LCL," meaning "less than carload"), and wagon yards for carload lots. Perhaps there will be two freight-houses, one for inbound, the other for outbound traffic. The wagon yards will have to be ample for the accommodation of a host of trucks and drays as well as for the long rows of freight-cars.