The Railroad Problem

ent of a certain good-sized railroad which radiates from that town in every direction saw a newspaper clipping in relation to the convention and

," it

or flock who did not possess some lamb who commanded a touring car of some sort. And it was a part of the lamb's duty, nay, his privilege, to drive the rector to the convention. They ca

count on folk coming to it by automobile up to a 150-mile radius, ofttimes from much greater distances. It is not argued that the trip is less expensive; the cont

arly as clear to the chief as to the man who had created the aforesaid increased business. Multiply these lodge meetings, these conventions, these convocations; add to them high-school excursions and picnics and fraternity field-days almost without number; picture to yourself, if you will, the highways leading to these high spots of American life crowded with private and pub

a railroader to ignore the value of its passenger traffic. Because of this last his road has builded huge hotels and connecting steamboats. In past years its passenger revenues have even rivaled the tremendous

ne," he says. "If each of these carried three passengers twenty-five miles a day for a

ur, he begins to realize this.[10] More than 50,000 visiting automobiles were registered in Massachusetts this last summer. There were last year in the United States, 2,445,664 automobiles. With a carrying capacity averaging five persons to a car-12,000,000 persons all told-they can seat three times as many persons as all our railroad cars in the country combined. Not all of these folk would travel by train if there were no

of an important steam road at Portland-which in turn controls both city and interurban lines e

ectric interurban properties. Throughout California, Oregon, and Washington this class of railroad has suffered most severely from motor competition, and with the decreased cost and increased effectiveness of the automobile I expect such losses to increase rather than to diminish. In all these states there have been large expenditures for improved highroads during the past five years; many times under the guise of providing easy and inexpensiv

central stations in the larger cities, providing waiting, smoking, and reading rooms in charge of a joint employee, who usually acts as starter and information clerk and is liberally supplied with large printed schedules advertising automobile service to various points. From these stations the routes radiate in almost every direction; one may ride from San Francisco to

cy toward larger cars, where the volume of travel warrants; several companies operating large busses, seating from twenty to twenty-five persons each. A

joy the bulk of the business, perhaps from their ability to pick up or discharge passengers anywhere along the route-in town or in country, perhaps from their frequency

the gasoline buggy has helped itself to long-haul traffic as well; as between Los Angeles and Bakersfield, where the distance by motor car over the wonderful new Tejon Pass highroad-to which the Southern Pacific, as ch

e big towns but they sometimes stretch for many miles through the fastnesses of the forest-you may drive for twenty miles through the Adirondacks on as perfect a bit of pavement as any city park may boast and yet not pass more than one or two human habitations in all that distance. All of which is glorious for the motorist and his friends, to say nothing of the hotel keepers and the garage owners on the route. But how about the New York Central Railroad,

ernight. The auditing departments of concerns that have from 50 to 500 salesmen out in the field are beginning to acquaint the

goodly quantity of samples and the valises that held their personal effects. They had figured that upon many of the local lines of railroad, operating but two or three trains a day in each direction at the most, they could not under the most favorable conditions "make" more than four towns a day.

ers-had declined nearly twenty-nine per cent since the high-water mark three years before. Investigation on its part showed that the drummers all through its territory were beginning to get automobiles. The houses that employed them were encouragi

s the opinion of a good many shrewd railroaders-as well as our own-that the big roads have not always given proper attention to the full development of this phase of their traffic. Some of the big roads-some

it is in the long haul. We have our branch lines and of course we shall have to continue to operate them, as best we can. But th

y has been to cut down service upon the branches. Such cuts generally come in the recurrent seasons of railroad retrenchment. But the trains cut off are rarely restored. For one thing, the branch-line railroad does not often run in a g

the single branch-line railroad that has served them, have found themselves in turn shrinking and hardening. The popular-priced automobile may yet prove the salvation of these towns. The tavern at the crossroads has been repainted and is serving "chicken and waffle" dinn

he effect of the jitney upon the traction road. In this last case the opposition quickly reached a high and dangerous volume and then subsided. The reasons why the jitney, after being hailed with high acclaim all the way across the land, has disappeared from the streets of more than half our American cities and towns, are not to be told here. It is sufficient here and now to say

nry is a coffee-colored Negro of unusually prepossessing dress and manner. He owns a seven-passen

stating that it would leave for Baltimore, forty-six miles distant, at five o'clock and that the one-way fare for the journey would be $1.5

suh. Ah've been kno

not arrive at a station, some ten "squares"-one never says "blocks" in Baltimore-from my hotel, until 7:30. Mileage and fare were practically the same as Henry Sewall's, but the train made numerous intermediate stops. And Henry announced, with

tion, that we were to pass across the Stone Jug bridge and through the fascinating towns of Newmarket and Ellicott City was too much to be forsworn. And we had a glorious ride-t

riably filled-he manages to carry eight passengers besides himself. With a maximum earning capacity of twenty-four dollars a day and an average of only a very little less, Henry

from a popular-priced hotel in the heart of the city and the hours of their arrival and departure are as carefully advertised and as carefully followed as those of a steam railroad. When they are all starting out in the morning, the scene is as bri

Sewall's opposition. The direct rail route to Frederick from Baltimore is a line exempted from through passenger trains and very largely given over to a vast tonnage of through freight. The officers of the road have from time to time given thought to the possibilities of increasing the local passenger service on that very line. To do so, however, on the generous plans that they had outlined among themselves would have meant eith

heel. These busses, despite the arduous winters of the North Country-Watertown is reputed to have but three seasons: winter and July and August-keep going nearly the entire year round. They are of course patronized all that time. And the railroad which serves almost the entire North Country loses much local passenger t

of looking at it. Every automobile that goes into the sections of New York which we serve means a movement of high-grade freight-the tires, the gasoline, the oils, the innumerable accessories that it constantly demands, mean m

no business-no matter how large

e? Amputation has sometimes proved effective. There is many and many a branch-line railroad, which probably should never have been built in the first place, whose owners have been wise enough to abandon it and to pull up the rails. Old iron h

ping cars between St. Louis and Springfield and St. Louis and Peoria. It was said that the day was coming when a man would ride in a trolley limited all the way from Chicago to New York-a real train, with sleeping cars and dining cars and Negro porte

situation. There have been no more sleeping cars placed on trolley routes, but a little time ago I found a Canadian Pacific box car on the shores of Keuka Lake, more than ten miles distant from t

ing possibilities of the automobile-but of these very much more in their proper ti

g column of town-names, I saw a change. In other days a passenger for the enterprising county shiretown of Caliph had been compelled to alight at the small junction point known as East Caliph and there take a very small and

at same courthouse square. The branch is unused, except for occasional switching. There is no expense of keeping it up to the requirements of passenger traffic, nor of maintaining a passenger station. The hotel serves as this last and at far less expense. And the cost of running the automobile over th

patcher, engineering expert, and chief traffic solicitor-had purchased a large "rubberneck" automobile, had substituted railroad flange wheels for the rubber-tired highway wheels, and was not only saving money for his property but also giving much pleasure to his patrons. A ride in a dirty, antiquated, second-hand coach beh

e designed to fit outside of the heavy rubber tires that carry the cars over highways. It is the work of a very few minutes to slip these steel flanges on or off the wheels. Which means that the motor truck may follow the lines o

R UPON THE S

than the smoky, dirty

ABLE MOTO

and hitched to a flat-car

otor-truck of real

e aided many railroads to increase their branch-line operation without increasing their operating cost-in many cases making actual savings. It is well for the big men who own and operate the steam railroad to remember that no matter how rapid may be the spread of the automobile or how permanent its extensive use, there will always be a large class of travel-hungry folk who must ride upon some form of railroad. There are people who, if financially capable of owning a car, are incapable of running it, and cannot afford a chauffeur. And the difficulties of owning an automobile increase greatly when one comes to live in the larger cities. The local line situation is not nearly as bad as it looks at first glimpse. There is a business for it if the r

ecured in the making of a parlor car. A double row of comfortable wicker or upholstered chairs, a carpet, lavatory facilities, and a good-humored porter will do the trick. And the train and the road upon which such a simple, cleanly car travels at once gains a new prestige. In an age when

that particular form of transportation service of the automobile in still another light. A man who went up into one of the great national parks on the very backbone of the United States this la

her days park visitors took this branch-four-in-hands or carriages from its terminal for the thirty-mile run up through the canyon and into the heart of the park. With the coming of the automobile all this was changed. The motor car quickly supplanted the old-time carriages, even the four-in-hands themselves. In a short time it w

ou say. Perhaps. But

ar on which he rode was a truck-chassis upon which had been builded a cross-seat body, with accommodations for some fifteen or sixteen passengers. It was the only practical way in which a motor vehicle could be built in order to compete with the railroad at its established rates of fare. Yet he did not e

f the loveliest and most rapidly growing playgrounds in all western America-perhaps own and operate a chain of its own hotels as well. It would gain not only prestige by so doing, but tr

h its southern main stem between El Paso and Los Angeles. The success of its radical traffic step on its part may yet lead it to a correlation with its service of many wonderful motor runs over those superb roads of California, a

h opportunities for the Delaware and Hudson, the New York Central, the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore and Ohio, and the Chesapeake and Ohio railroads. To establish such routes only needs a few things-the detailed and detached attention of an alert young traffic man, with his nose well above conventions and