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THE differences between the methods and conditions of travelling by railroad in America and in England produce a marked impression upon the traveller from either country who compares the two systems. They are differences of which no obvious explanation readily presents itself, and their causes have to be sought with some labor in the social, economical, and mechanical considerations which have attended the development of each system.

The American railroad car consists of one compartment of the entire length of the vehicle. The English railway carriage consists of several compartments of the width of the vehicle. This is the radical difference, as far as the traveller is concerned, between the two, and out of it grow on either side various advantages and disadvantages, conceded and debated.

The first impression which an American who is experienced in railroad travelling in his own country derives from the exterior aspect of an English train is unfavorable. The cars, as he must necessarily call them, seem to be small; they lack, apparently, the weight and solidity of the American passenger-coach; the compartments are narrow, the ceilings low, the ventilation apparently doubtful. They stand upon two, three, or more pairs of gaunt high wheels, to the axles of which their springs are directly geared. He misses the little independent vehicle, the truck, or bogie, with its four or six small, compact, solid-looking, wide-flanged wheels, which sustains each end of the American car—that rolling gear which looks so strong, so adapted to inequality of rail or curve, so resourceful against disaster, and so complete in its equipment. The cars are smaller—there is no doubt of it. They are narrower and they are shorter; and to the American eye they look even shorter than they really are, because they have no projecting platform at the ends, no overhanging roof or hood but are buckled close up to each other, and their contact controlled by small metal buffers, the springs of which allow a play of from eighteen inches to two feet and a half between car and car. The Miller platform, the Janney coupler, the link and pin—of all the familiar devices of the United States there is not one to be seen. The brakes? None visible. Nor, for the matter of that, a brakesman. This influential and numerous person has no existence in England. There is not even a rudimentary type of him. That you do not find him is the first stern intimation you receive that in English railroading there are no autocrats. The wheels are fitted with brakes, however, and the trained eye notes a rubber hose connection between the carriages, quite different in its application to that known at home, but which nevertheless betokens the air-brake. He takes account of the distinctions of class, and reflects upon his country’s veiled progress in that regard in the matter of parlor cars and limited express-trains. Then he finds that there is no baggage-master to waft the volatile Saratoga to its doom, as his own newspapers would express it. There is perhaps a luggage van or two, or there are in the carriages themselves luggage compartments, according to the way in which the train is made up, the length of journey it is to take, or the custom of the particular line under observation. His final contemplation is perhaps devoted to the engine, and if he has ever given any of his attention to the American locomotive, it fills him with a deep concern. He recalls the imposing splendor of the latter, its comfortable and lofty cab of oiled and polished wood, its gay brass bell, the soul-stirring whistle, the noble head-light and the cow-destroying pilot, the great cinder-consuming smoke-stack (unless it be a hard-coal burner, in which case that feature shrinks to moderate proportions), the powerful drivers and compact cylinders, the eccentric connecting rods, and all its parts radiant with the glitter of polished steel or burnished brass, or decked with appropriate vermilion or emerald green. In all of these matters the English locomotive compares with it much as a lawn-mower does with a New York fire-engine. It is a humble, awkward green or monochromatic machine. It has neither polish nor decoration about it. There is no cab. The engineer and his fireman—that is to say, the engine-driver and his stoker, as they are styled in England—perform their duties with only such shelter as is afforded by a board screen in front of them, pierced by two round apertures filled with stout glass, technically known as "spectacles." The smoke-stack is short and thick; there is an unsightly green bump on the back of the boiler; the cylinders are under the front of the latter instead of on each side before the drivers; the wheels are all large, and the body of the engine is perched high up above them, and looks top-heavy and dangerous. The whole thing is rigid and stiff looking, and to the observer who has had to do with the external aspects of locomotives it is unprepossessing and unlovely. The practical American engineer whistles thoughtfully as he surveys it, and wonders to himself how long it would be before he would ditch his train if he had to run on a new Western railroad with such an engine: Where would he be on a sharp curve, or how would such running-gear adapt itself to an unevenly ballasted track? The low centre of gravity of the American locomotive, the weight distributed well down between the wheels, the play of the small broad flanges under the pilot truck, and the external gearing of the driving-wheels, all give the American engine an appearance of stability which impresses not merely the layman, but also the expert.

So much for appearances. The practical man finds a wonderful strength and economy in the build of this unbeautiful English engine. It is rigid, it is true, but it is adapted to a perfectly ballasted track, and if you stand beside the driver when he is doing his fifty-five or sixty miles an hour, you will at once perceive that its stability is beyond question, and that in point of steadiness and minimum of strain on the structural parts it has wonderful qualities and immense advantages. There is not a bit of waste material about it; it attains a rate of speed in the first hundred yards that shows its traction to be extraordinary, and it makes steam readily and easily.

The complete American cab does not exist in England, but there are upon some lines modifications of it which afford protection to the engineer and his assistant. So also on some lines there is evinced a disposition toward decorating the engines. On one railway they are painted of a gorgeous yellow and brown, on another they are freely touched up with vermilion, and on another the drivers are covered in with a casing of brass, which is kept in a condition of awful brilliancy. They have no bells, and need none, owing to the different conditions under which the track is guarded, and their whistles are sharp and sibillant, instead of sonorous and deep, like the howling device in use in America. Comparatively few have tenders of the dimensions attached to the American engine. The reason is that their journeys are short, and the facilities for coaling such that a small coal-box suffices. In a large proportion of engines, therefore, the water-tank is superimposed or folded over the boiler, or placed on each side of it, and made to receive at close quarters the exhaust steam from the cylinders, so that the water is already at a high temperature when it enters the boiler. English engines differ greatly in pattern, and no one type has yet been decided upon as possessing a maximum of merit in the several requirements of a good locomotive.

The American cab is not admired, and its introduction has not been encouraged. When tried upon English locomotives the verdict was that the inconvenience from heat more than counterbalanced the advantages of the shelter afforded, while the men were prevented from getting to the different parts of the engine with celerity.

This is not easy for the American engine-builder to understand, because his engines are so constructed, and their cabs so adapted to them, that the temperature of the cab is under control—cool in summer and warm in winter—and no inconvenience is experienced in having ready access to every part of the machine. The fact is that the engine-driver and his assistant do not need against English weather the protection which is essential in America. The men who on some of our winter days or nights should attempt to run an English engine on one of our Northern or Northwestern roads would perish, while in the summer-time the tropical excesses of our sun would be a source of undoubted danger.

No bell is used in England. The English track is so secured against trespass of man or animal that the bell, admitting that it is of any real value for warning off the one or the other, is not needed. In America the use of the bell is in some places regulated by law, and it is thought to be a most potent and indispensable attachment of the locomotive. To the thoughtful observer, in these days of scientific railroading, it partakes of the nature of a survival—an instance in which utility has faded into mere ceremonial.

The cow-catcher is not known, but there is a rudimentary suggestion of it in a stout steel tooth which is affixed perpendicularly in front of the wheels, and which is designed to throw any obstacle outward from the track.

The head-light of the American engine is represented on the English locomotive by a small lantern, the lens of which projects a beam of light strong enough to indicate the presence or movement of the train. No attempt is made to illuminate the track ahead of the engine, which appears to be a large part of the function of the American head-light, and which would probably show the engineer a house or a church, if either should stray on the track, in time to admit of his stopping his train, or an even less object in equally good season, if he were running slowly enough. If he were travelling at sixty miles an hour, it might possibly serve to mitigate things a little, and reduce for the engineer the unexpectedness of any incident that came to pass. In the rude railroading of the primitive South and West, to say nothing of places quite near New York, it is invaluable; but on roads like the Pennsylvania and others the English lantern would do just as well, except in respect of decoration.

A critical scrutiny of the carriages shows that they are built with great care. The material is excellent, the wheels are more highly finished than the American, the brasses of the boxes are of a wholly different pattern, the gearing, altogether more simple, and very strong in proportion to the weight to be carried. All these matters are revealed by study and careful observation; some of them seem superfluous, some the reverse of simple, but all reveal the intention of securing a high degree of efficiency—the greatest degree of safety combined with the highest rate of speed.

The effect of personal experience on the traveller, and his estimate of the relative merits of the English railway system and that of his own country, are matters to be determined in a great measure by his personal tastes and habits. The American will reconcile himself far more readily, certainly if he travel first-class, to the peculiarities of English railways than the Englishman will adapt himself to the distinguishing characteristics of American railroad travel under any circumstances.

When it is a question of decoration as applied to engines or cars, or of the architecture of important terminal buildings, no comparison can be instituted between America and England. The decoration of the American coach, parlor or palace car, and private saloon car has been overdone in the past to the point of offensive vulgarity; but the new cars which are rapidly superseding the old patterns on our roads, East and West, are as tasteful as the refinement and cultivation of our best decorators and designers can make them. Nothing could be more forbidding or uncomfortable than the nickel-plated horrors and distracting mirrors of some of the parlor cars that the public has been accustomed to on the best American roads. The lavish and absurd upholstery, the ridiculous hangings of all sorts of stuffs, the niches with porcelain pots of artificial roses and geraniums in outrageous bloom and full of dust and cinders, and the gorgeous chairs, affording no sort of repose and no support for the head—all these are fast vanishing—all except the chairs. No railroad genius has yet consented to the introduction or the devising of a really comfortable chair—a seat presenting as many advantages for a protracted day journey as those in the English first-class carriage. Some approach is being made toward such a consummation by the Pennsylvania Railroad, but it has not yet been accomplished.

The American’s earliest experiences in England with his baggage provoke him. He wants to "check" it, and he can not do it. At, home, if he is going from New York to Boston, for instance, he buys a ticket at one of the numerous ticket offices which are scattered over the city, states what train he is going on, and is informed of the hour at which the baggage-wagon will call for his effects. When it does call, the messenger in charge of it gives him a little brass plate on which is a number, and the words "New York" and "Boston," and attaches to his trunk, by means of a little leather strap, a duplicate of it. If the traveller drives directly to the depot, he buys his ticket, presents his baggage at the baggage counter, and receives his brass check for it, the exhibition of his ticket being a warrant for the transfer of the trunks or parcels he has to the point to which he is going. If he is leaving a hotel, the porter who carries his trunks from his rooms will hand him the checks before he leaves the house. In any case he has no further concern with his traps until the end of his journey. Half an hour before he reaches Boston, an express agent—"parcels delivery clerk" they would call him in England—comes through the train, and, if the traveller wishes, takes the address at which he desires to have his things delivered, and taking his check, gives him a receipt on a small printed form. Within an hour or so everything is at the hotel or residence. If the traveller’s personal comfort requires that his effects should accompany him at once from the train, he gives his checks, when he alights in the station, to his hackman, or to the badged and labelled employee of the hotel he means to visit.

All of this is of course thoroughly familiar to Americans; but English people know nothing of it, and have almost nothing in their system of travel which resembles it. To Americans the baggage check is one of the greatest comforts of travel, and when they go abroad they miss it painfully.

At Liverpool, after you have had everything formally overhauled in the custom-house room on the landing-stage in search of liquors, tobacco, or dynamite, or foreign-printed editions of British authors, and you find yourself free to go on land with your baggage—which has now become your " luggage"—a sense of exasperating helplessness overpowers you. A polite official. (polite, but not as full of responsibility as one would like to have him appear under the circumstances) asks you if you desire to have your luggage sent to the London and Northwestern. " No; want it checked to London." "Checked, sir? Beg pardon, sir; but you’ve got to taike it to the staition, sir. Shall I send it, sir? Check? Receipt? Wy, it’s hall Tight, sir. It’ll be hup in no time!"

Full of misgivings and the distrust, which afflicts strangers, unable to get your comforting bit of stamped brass or the assurance implied in a receipt, you go off to the Northwestern, hotel and terminus combined, have breakfast or luncheon, and find that your luggage does arrive—out, of sheer force of integrity, you feel it to be—and that you have to pay probably five;shillings for it—about twice as much as you ought to pay by rights, and about one-half what you would have to pay for a like service in an American city. One would think that this would prove re-assuring, but it does not. On the contrary, it marks the stage in your experience where you find that the entire care and responsibility for the transportation of your properties rest upon yourself. A porter approaches: "For London, sir? First-class, sir? Yes, sir?" You go with the porter, who bundles the things on a truck, and deposits them in the luggage van, or in the luggage compartment of the carriage in which you secure seats or a compartment for London. A shilling compensates the porter, whose extreme deference affects different people in different ways, accordingly as it impresses them as the agreeable politeness and thoughtfulness of an English servant, or as the vile servility of a British menial, or arouses the suspicion that their "tip" has been unnecessarily heavy. Americans abroad differ greatly in opinion about these matters of detail.

"Clearly," the American thinks, "these people don’t know how to travel. The idea of having to look after one’s baggage all the while! It is ridiculous."

Four and a half hours later, at Euston Square, the immense terminus of the London and Northwestern Railway in London, he has to identify his effects on the platform, where they are deposited immediately after the train stops. Each traveller picks out his own. If he is not promptly there to do it, there is nothing to prevent any one who chooses to do so from claiming it and taking it off. This negative abuse is at such enmity with his notions of public comfort and protection that it fills him with indignation, and with a supreme contempt for the primitive system of English travel.

"Why do they not adopt our American method? Where is Hoole, the baggage-check man of Chicago? Why does not that apostle of public welfare come here and introduce the system? Look at the ambition of these people to be luxurious, the craving of them after every appliance and apparatus of comfort! And yet they have no baggage checks!"

Probably there is nothing that so much impresses the American on the English railroads as the apparently defective baggage system. For all that, there is another side to the question, and a brief experience of English life and habits serves to show that the baggage-check system if established in England would be established for the benefit of travelling Americans alone.

The English people do not want it. The Englishman is wedded to his luggage and his cab. When he arrives at his station he waits invariably to take his luggage along with him to his house or his hotel. He will not be divorced from it for a moment. No brass check will ever be a legal tender for a trunk in his eyes. The assurance that it is in the same train with him, that where he goes it goes, that when he arrives it arrives, and that it is there on the top of his cab, or in the cab with him, is to him the essential thing in all his journeying. He has no "express" such as we know in America. Express companies are not a possible adjunct of railway corporations in England. He has his cab, his " four-wheeler, " built especially to carry his heavy luggage on top of it—a vehicle that the American hackman would look down on with lordly contempt, but a powerful engine of economy, industry, and public convenience. His luggage would go through the roof of a New York hack, crush it like a paper bandbox, but on the roof of an English cab his traps, including his bathtub, are railed in and secured, and, are in his apartments as soon as he is there himself.

"But," you say to the English railway manager, "you have been in America, and you have studied the system there, and you can not but be favorably impressed with it?"

"Undoubtedly I was," he replies. "I was struck with its completeness and the extent of its organization and details. Your style of vehicle enables you to carry out such a system with perfect ease. It forms a kind of natural offshoot of the railway system in America; but it appears to flourish only in your country. It is not and would not be appreciated here. You complain that at the English terminus any one can claim your luggage and disappear with it. No doubt, if you are slow and they are sharp, such may be the case, and the company may have to pay the penalty; but the English traveller prefers the freedom of the present practice, and would, I fancy, wish the check system at a warmer place than the United States when any delay arose in dealing with his luggage at the stations owing to the adoption of the check system. The English traveller’s idea of luggage ‘checkng’ is to have his portmanteau safely stowed under his carriage seat, and his smaller articles placed in the rack over his head. I do not see any insuperable difficulty in adopting the check system in this country, but none of the partial attempts that have been made in that direction have proved successful or popular."

Americans who spend a vacation in Europe not uncommonly form the opinion that the compartment carriages must eventually give place to cars of the American pattern. A merely casual survey, such as the travel of the tourist affords, of the manners and habits of even a people as nearly allied to Americans as the English does not convey any adequate idea of the degree in which the distinctions of class govern matters of the kind. A railway carriage is a modification of the private carriage, the post-chaise, the stage-coach, and the carrier’s wagon. Those vehicles have been merely adapted to steam traction and railway schedules, and the conventions which characterized their use before Stephenson’s time remain unchanged in their new condition.

The Englishman who travels in the United States inverts the impressions of the casual visitor to Great Britain, and there is much reason to believe that his inferences have a much sounder foundation. He notices in American railroad travel the rapid growth of the class distinction, and the eagerness with which its conventional advantages are availed of by a constantly growing proportion of the public. It appears to him that the differences of the conditions of travel in the two countries are really very slight, and that the distinctions of a first, second, and third class exist already in America in no slight degree, and will, before the lapse of many years, be quite as emphatic and characteristic in America as they are in England. It is not easy to argue successfully with an Englishman when he makes this statement. He supports his view by pointing to the differences in our cars. He asks you what is the practical difference between one of the Mann boudoir cars—an execrable designation to apply to a vehicle—and an English first-class carriage. There is not any difference, except that the one is entered at the sides and the other at the ends. The seclusion of the passenger, or of the groups of passengers, is precisely the same, and is the end that is sought to be obtained.

"Your designations in these matters," our phlegmatic observer says, "are a little turgid and extravagant, and not a little elusive. Your palace cars are only another form of first or second class carriages. There is nothing palatial about them, any more than there is about what we call a gin palace in London—a term which is of a semi-humorous or satirical origin. Why not admit the class distinction as openly as you adopt it in practice? If I want to go from New York to Boston, there are three classes open to me. The ordinary car, well equipped, well ventilated, and comfortable, that I call your third-class, your original carrier’s wagon or stage-coach, in which I am exposed to the danger of having to sit for some hours side by side with a common workman or person of very inferior social condition an individual whose close companionship is as repugnant to me as I assert that it is repugnant to your cultivated and wealthy classes—that is your third-class, disguise the fact as you may. Your second-class is the open saloon of your ‘parlor’ or ‘chair’ car. There I secure, by an extra payment, one of some twenty arm-chairs which are disposed on each side, and I make my journey without the danger of any disagreeable intrusion or propinquity. Your first-class is easily attained in the exclusive seclusion which is afforded by one of the compartments in these parlor, palace, or chair cars—compartments which have room for two, four, or more persons, and in which I can travel under the very same conditions as those which I enjoy on an English railway. I detect two differences. In England I am conspicuously labelled as a first-class passenger, whereas here I have the advantages of one without formal or ceremonial emphasis. In England I secure my exclusive compartment by a gratuity to the conductor or guard; here I effect it by paying the extra fares which the compartment I select would earn if all the seats in it were occupied. The latter is the more expensive expedient of the two, but it commends itself to my sense of right. I have a very much higher respect for your American conductor than I have for our English guard, although I am painfully aware that there is no ratio of reciprocity in the sentiment to be detected. It would be impossible for me to offer your official the equivalent of our half-crown; in fact, I have learned that the consequence of an attempt to do so would possibly be most disagreeable, if not calamitous. With our guard, on the other hand, the ‘tip’ is almost an essential formality, and is inseparable from the attainment of the higher comforts of travel."

These observations imply an awkward social contention which can be safely relegated to the region of daily discussion. The fact remains for the immediate purposes of this paper that distinctions of class constitute a ruling factor in English railway travel, and that they are part and parcel of the British constitution.

Smoking obtains largely in the third-class carriages, but on some lines carriages or parts of carriages in each class are set apart for smokers, and designated as smoking-carriages. You can always smoke in a first-class carriage if you have, as American travellers put it, "made yourself solid with the conductor." In America smoking is out of the question except in the car which is known as the smoker, and in the smoking compartment of the parlor palace arrangement. The former does a good deal to discourage smoking on trains. It is almost invariably an indifferent car, poor in all its appointments, filthy, and ill smelling. So foul is its atmosphere, especially in winter, that all cigars smoked in it taste and smell alike, and all badly. Then a large proportion of the people who are hardened enough to travel in the smoker are victims of the distressing habit of chewing, and it is unnecessary to describe how effectively they contribute to the general abomination. The English third-class carriage is a counterpart in many respects of the American smoker.

As a general rule, the servants, as they are called, of an English railroad company contribute very much more to the comfort of the travelling public than do the individuals who in America discharge analogous duties. There is no question that they impress travelling Americans in that way—a fact which can be safely attributed to the American practice of invariably "going first-class." It is equally beyond dispute that they have three classes of manners, one for each class of passengers, and one of the earliest observations that one makes at a railway station in the outskirts of London, where the passengers’ tickets are collected prior to arrival at the terminus, is of the sensible gradation of civility and consideration in the guard’s address. At the first-class carriage window he deferentially says, " Tickets, please, gentlemen!" at the second he utters a lively, " Tickets, please!" and at the third he growls, hoarsely and abruptly, " Tickets!"

This is a fair example of class distinction upon an English railway, but it must not be inferred from it that the second-class has any very marked disadvantages for travellers as compared with the first. Sensible and well-conditioned Englishmen will tell you that "only Americans and English snobs travel first-class," and there is no question of the preferment of the second-class by a very weighty portion of the travelling public. On some lines, so far as upholstery goes, there is little difference to be observed between the two, and these roads have found their account in improving the second-class to that degree. The third-class, as already intimated, is bad upon all lines, and the crowding is at times intolerable. Managers say that better accommodations would be thrown away upon the people who travel third-class, and that it is all they can do now to make the carriages durable or indestructible enough for their use. What curious reflections this statement should cause in the minds of those who are familiar with the New York elevated railroads and their neat and handsomely decorated cars, than which none are more crowded on any railroad, nor any that are used by a more heterogeneous public! When will it be that in England there will be but one class, and nobody be any the worse for it than in New York?

The ventilation in the English carriages is accomplished by means of the windows, and is in many respects preferable to the wholesale and impartial ventilation of the American car. In the latter, if all the passengers were of one mind in respect to their preference of Fahrenheit, it could be arranged comfortably enough; but that is impossible, and in winter the golden mean of the management is sought in heating the car to the highest possible point. The consequence is that travel is rendered uncomfortable and unhealthy, while in summer the distribution of discomfort is more arbitrary. In the English carriages the window in the door slides down into the door, so that the air can be admitted above the heads of the passengers—an excellent device, and one which it is surprising that we do not find imitated in some of our new first-class coaches.

The gratuity system is obnoxious at first to most Americans abroad, but they soon get used to it, and take a hand merrily in despoiling the railway company—particularly after they have had a lesson in Continental railroad travel. A passenger who pays the guard or contrôleur of a train half a crown or a crown, or five or twenty francs, for the privilege of enjoying a whole compartment to himself on his journey is certainly defrauding some one, and when he reflects that in doing it he is defrauding the railway company, it greatly mitigates his repugnance to the objectionable principle involved in gratuities generally. A sensible traveller, determined to be comfortable, is always ready to pay reasonably for what he wants. In America he pays for his parlor-car privileges or his sleeping-berth; the money goes to the company, and there is an end of it. In England he suborns a guard, who is neither more nor less than a licensed defaulter to his employer’s interests, and for five shillings or less he occupies the space intended for six or eight people. The money ought to go to the railroad company, whose property is used. The profit of the management would be greater, and the highly caparisoned guard with his fine uniform and gold-lace could be paid better wages and raised a peg or two in the world, and taught to cure the itch in his palm. For all that, as already stated, the civility and consideration of these servants count for a great deal in the securing of the traveller’s comfort, and it would be a great thing if we could import their manners without their practices.

A frequent subject of discussion is the speed of English trains as compared with that of American trains, and "The Wild Irishman" and "The Flying Scotchman," well-known expresses which are sought by all travellers, are constantly quoted for performances which put American railroads to shame. The truth of the matter is that we have trains in America which are as fast as the fastest trains in England, and that they have trains in England which are as slow as the slowest trains in America. We have few roads which in respect of general equipment for fast running are able to compete with the English roads, and the average speed between termini in England of one thousand trains would be very much higher than the mean speed between termini of one thousand trains in America. The reason is found in the differences of tracks and operating conditions. The following salient advantages are presented in England: a better road-bed generally; a track absolutely isolated, and with all road crossings, footpaths, and intersecting lines above or below grade; a better system of signals, enabling an express to run through a city and over a hundred sets of points without reduction of speed; shorter stops at stations, because the carriages open sideways, and can be emptied in one-third, or less, of the time required to debark the passengers in an American train. There is no such thing as running a train through the streets of a city on an unguarded equality with foot-passengers and vehicles. The roadway is either elevated upon a stone viaduct, or depressed between high walls, or concealed in a tunnel. In America such a condition of things is impossible, because of the extent of the country, the impracticability of fencing and protecting a track of such great mileage, or of elevating it or depressing it in all the towns it encountered. Of course the English road-bed is the ideal one for fast and safe railroading, but it is, at least for the present, out of the question for America. To an Englishman the spectacle of an American train running through the middle of the street is preposterous in the last degree, and it is undoubtedly wrong in both theory and practice.*

*An English writer has been at the pains to make the following comparisons of American and English schedules of fast trains. It appeared recently in the Pall Mall Gazette, and it is interesting as far as it goes, and serves to show that a good case can be made out on both sides of the question. "From New York to Albany there are 10 trains daily—I only give them one way in each case—all called express, with an average time of 4 hours 47½ minutes, and a journey speed of 29.67 miles per hour. The track follows the course of the Hudson nearly the whole way, and is almost a dead level. Compare this with the ‘Great Northern,’ London to Sheffield, an infinitely harder course: 9 trains in 3 hours 39½ minutes—162 miles, and an average journey speed of 44.33 miles per hour-the fastest does the journey in 3 hours 23 minutes, and last summer did it in 3 hours 12 minutes—a journey speed of over 50 miles an hour. Next, New York to Boston may fairly be compared with the accommodation between London and Manchester. Mr. Foxwell gives 20 expresses from London to Manchester, all trains with third-class carriages, with an average journey speed of nearly 41 miles. The fastest last year, the Great Northern expresses, 203 miles in 4 hours 15 minutes, or a journey speed of 471 miles. The two lines running directly between New York and Boston give only 8 trains daily, marked express, distance 233 miles, and a very much easier course than the Great Northern, average time 7 hours 16 minutes, giving a journey speed of only 32.67 miles. The fastest, a train limited to Pullman cars, would not be called an express at all in England, its speed being 38.75 miles. New York to Pittsburgh may be compared with London to Glasgow. The former route has 5 trains daily, marked express (one of them the Chicago limited); distance, 444 miles; average time, 14 hours 49 minutes; speed, just under 30 miles an hour. Fastest, 12 hours; journey speed, 37 miles. London to Glasgow, 13 expresses-distance, 401 to 440 miles, average speed of all, 38.75 miles, and all but one have third-class carriages. Fastest, which may be called a limited train, east coast express, 440 miles in 10 hours 20 minutes—a journey speed of 42.5 miles. A word as to the two Chicago specials run as limited trains, and by which a large extra fare is charged. I asked a ‘railroad’ agent in the States what their speed was, and he replied, ‘Fifty miles an hour right through.’ Mr. Bigelow says they run from New York to Chicago in 24 hours, both of them really taking 26½ hours. One is run by the Pennsylvania Company, and has a distance of 912 miles to travel; the other by the New York Central, and about 977 miles, giving speeds of 34.4 and 36.8 miles per hour. These trains are only for those who can afford to pay a high fare, and for accommodation to the general public compare badly with the third-class trains to Glasgow; the American, with a daily distance of nearly 1900 miles, at a speed of 35.5 miles; the English trains running upward of 5000 miles, at an average speed of nearly 39 miles. As might be expected, the fastest travelling in America is between the two largest towns, New York and Philadelphia; taking all trains both ways that make the journey at over 40 miles an hour, I find there are 14 by the Pennsylvania, with an average speed of 42.9 miles, and 6 by the Bound Brook route, with an average of 421 miles. Between Liverpool and Manchester, much smaller towns, there are 52 trains daily at a greater speed—32 by the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln Company, 4 averaging 511/3 miles, and 28, 452/3 miles, and 20 by the London and Northwestern at a speed of 45 miles. For the above comparisons every train in America that has a speed of over 40 miles an hour for any part of its course has been used; but although the result is so very much in favor of the speed of English trains, not one-half of the latter have been brought into requisition. The fact is, the Americans do not know how slow their trains are, and it is quite time the idea that their I lightning expresses’ and ’thunder-bolt trains’ eclipse everything else in the world was exploded. Compared with the best trains in America, the English ones exceed them in speed quite 25 per cent, and if one goes for instances to anywhere more than 600 miles from New York, the comparison becomes absurd."

It can readily be seen that the conditions lend themselves to high mean speed in England, but we have trains on one or two lines from New York, but notably on the Pennsylvania, which are as fast as the crack expresses on the London and Northwestern or the Midland. It is impossible in the present rapid growth and development of the American railroad system that it should equal in its detail the perfected methods of our neighbor’s. What we can say is that there are many features of our railroading that we may well feel proud of. Our casualty list is creditably small, and we carry our passengers, high and low, far more cheaply than they do in England. We treat them humanely in the main, and while we do make our discriminations, none of them can be described as odious or unjust.

In the management of stations the English and American termini are about on a par, but their minor and country stations are incomparably better managed than ours. The bar and refreshment counter is a prominent feature of every station of note, and has been wrought to a degree of importance that is wholly unknown under similar conditions in America. It is a great convenience to travellers, and conduces to much drinking, and to eating that is of a character quite as favorable to dyspepsia as anything known in America.

The country stations look for the most part like comfortable homes of favored and stalwart station-masters. There is generally some space about them that can be used as a garden, and this, however small, is frequently kept gay with flowers. Two of the great companies offer rewards for the best-kept stations and signal-boxes, and on these lines flowery stations are naturally most common, but on the other lines you may often see attempts to get rid of the inherent hideousness that clings to a railway. The usual garden is a narrow strip between the platform for passengers and the inclosing railing. It is enacted by Parliament that no post, rail, or other obstacle shall come nearer than six feet from the. edge of the platform, and this makes it necessary to inclose quite a wide space. Between the six feet of platform and the fence is the station-master’s garden. The flowers that he grows differ according to the soil of the district. In a rich clay he will have standard rose-trees as the principal feature; in a warm, light soil his strong point may be the chrysanthemums tied back against the palings. But as his object is to have plenty of color all the year round, you will generally find that the main part of the border is filled with fresh plants in each season, such as the gardener uses for his spring and summer beds. In the spring there are double daisies, red and white, that blossom from February till June, blue forget-me-nots (Myosotis dissitiflora) that keep gay almost as long, pansies, wall-flowers, and the yellow alyssum and white iberis—hardy cruciferous plants that grow in big clumps against the edging of tile or ornamental stone, breaking the stiffness of the line, and bringing a mass of flowers in early spring. In May or early June, when all danger of frost is over, he will plant geraniums, calceolarias, lobelias, and such like tender perennials, and his sweet-peas, convolvuli, nemophila, and other annuals will come into blossom. But the gayest time of all is in late summer and early autumn, for then his garden is full of dahlias, nasturtiums trained up the fence, China asters, marigolds (French and African), phloxes, and all the gaudy flowers that come into blossom after the kindly influence of a few warm months. These and many other plants are to be found in most of the gardens; but as all gardening that is done lovingly shows individuality, you will notice as you travel that each station has some particular flower by which you can remember it—the roses at Halton Junction, the dahlias at Milcote. There has been nothing more welcome in American railroad management than the imitation of our English brethren in their treatment of their stations, and nothing is regarded with a more lively or sympathetic interest than the horticultural ambitions and struggles of the station-masters on some of our leading lines.

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