The Trials and Travails of Victorian
Train Travel
by Bob Brooke
On the warm morning of August 27, 1831, a
throng of people flocked to Lydius Street in Albany. They had come to
see the new railroad train. The odd-looking engine, the "De Witt
Clinton," stood in front of a tender containing water and fuel,
followed by three passenger cars, made from the bodies of stagecoaches
fastened on special railroad wheels and several flat cars to hold
luggage. All along the 17 miles to Schenectady farmers and their
families gathered to see this new spectacle.
Local
hotels had sold tickets to ride the train. As passengers climbed into
the carriages and took their seats, a conductor, standing on a platform
outside each coach, collected the tickets, then climbed to a seat on the
tender and blew a horn. The engine gave a great jerk, and the crowd
cheered.
According to an eyewitness account published in the Albany
Argus on August 27, 1831, "The engine performed the entire
route in less than one hour, including stoppages, and on a part of the
road its speed was at the rate of thirty miles an hour." The train
made the return journey from Schenectady to Albany in 38 minutes, much
to the delight of its promoter.
The relative speed and ability to travel regardless
of the weather made rail travel attractive to travelers and businesses.
But unlike its European counterparts, American railroads developed a
passenger car with one compartment, containing an aisle down the middle.
This ran on two trucks containing four wheels each, making it easier to
navigate sharp curves.
Though riding the early rails was a step above the
canal boat and stagecoach, rail travel left a lot to be desired. The
floor of the car lay low and flat, and passengers sat jammed into narrow
seats with stiff backs, so they felt every bump. Winter travel was
especially difficult.
A
stove at each end provided heat to those nearest to it, but those seated
in the middle of the car nearly froze. And with little ventilation, all
nearly suffocated from carbonic oxide. Tallow candles furnished a
"dim religious light," and emitted a putrid odor. Dust
suffocated parched passengers in dry weather since the windows had no
screens. And since there were no adequate spark arresters on the engine,
passengers at the end of their journey looked as if they had spent the
day in a blacksmith shop.
With hard springs, the movement of cars over poorly
laid track jolted passengers and rattled windows, making conversation a
luxury. Early trains might as well not have had brakes, for those they
did have were clumsy and of little use.
Passengers
also hadn’t heard of baggage checks and coupon-tickets. Long trips had
to be made over lines composed of a number of short independent
railways. And at the terminus of each, passengers had to transfer,
purchase another ticket, personally pick out their baggage—often on an
uncovered platform in inclement weather—then take their chances
finding a seat in the connecting train.
Travel by rail wasn’t without its dangers. Railroad
builders cut the ends of the flat-bar rails diagonally, so that when
they laid them down, they would lap and form a smoother joint.
Occasionally, the spikes came loose, and the end of the rail with its
sharp point rose high enough for the wheel to run under it, rip it
loose, and send the pointed end through the floor of the car. Passengers
called this a "snake's head," and the unlucky person sitting
over it was likely to be impaled against the roof.
The means of warning passengers against standing on
train platforms were often ingenious. On a New Jersey railroad, a
picture, painted on the car door, featured a new grave, with a tombstone
that read, "Sacred to the memory of the man who had stood on a
platform."
The
introduction of a bell-cord running through the train enabled passengers
to communicate promptly with the engineer, signaling him in case of
danger. It’s a wonder that no one tampered with it, but everyone saw
it as a safety feature.
Steamboats afforded the greatest competition to the
early railroads. They had made great progress offering passengers
luxurious comforts—berths to sleep in, meals served in spacious
cabins, and entertainment on board. To compete, the railroads had to
make riding their trains more comfortable.
Early trains carried passengers for relatively short
distances, so sleeping arrangements weren’t necessary. But as the
distances became longer, a means of providing a place to sleep on board
became a prime concern. The Cumberland Valley Railroad of Pennsylvania,
running between Harrisburg and Chambersburg–a distance of 54 miles–first
attempted to furnish passengers with an onboard place to sleep. During
the winter, east-bound passengers arrived exhausted at Chambersburg late
at night by stagecoach, after a fatiguing trip over the mountains. Since
many wished to continue their journey to Harrisburg so they could catch
the morning train for Philadelphia, it became imperative to furnish
onboard sleeping accommodations. The railroad’s owners divided a
passenger car into four sections using transverse partitions. Each
section contained three berths– lower, middle, and upper. The car ran
from the winter of 1836-37 to 1848 when they abandoned it.
In
1858, George M. Pullman made a trip to Chicago, Illinois, from Buffalo,
New York, aboard the Lake Shore Railroad. A new sleeping car, attached
to this train, was making its first trip. Pullman stepped in to take a
look at it and decided to spend the night in one of its berths. After
being continuously tossed about, he sought refuge on a seat in the end
of the car. He thought about his experience and figured that in a
country of great distances like the United States, railroads should
offer passengers cars easily convertible into comfortable and convenient
day or night coaches, supplied with appointments similar to those aboard
steamboats.
After experimenting for a time, Pullman altered some
regular passenger cars on the Chicago & Alton Railroad in 1859 and
converted them into sleeping cars. One night, after they had made a few
trips on the line between Chicago and St. Louis, a tall man entered one
of the cars while Pullman was aboard, and after asking some questions
about his invention, said he’d like to try it for himself and climbed
in an upper berth. The man was Abraham Lincoln.
In 1864, Pullman perfected his plans for a car which
he felt was a marked and radical improvement from previous sleeping
cars. He built it in a shed in the yard of the Chicago & Alton
Railroad at a cost of $18,000—four times the cost of a sleeping car at
that time–and named it the "Pioneer."
The
Pioneer had improved trucks and a raised deck, and Pullman built it a
foot wider and two and a half feet higher than any car then in service.
He thought this necessary to introduce a hinged upper berth, which, when
fastened up, formed a recess behind it for stowing the necessary bedding
in daytime. Before that the mattresses had been piled in one end of the
car and had to be dragged through the aisle when needed. Pullman
realized the dimensions of the railroad bridges and station platforms
wouldn’t allow the car to pass over the line, but he believed that an
attractive car, constructed upon correct principles, would find its way
into service against all obstacles. And so it did.
Soon after Pullman finished, in the spring of 1865,
the body of President Lincoln arrived at Chicago. Pullman received a
request to use the "Pioneer" for the funeral train which was
to take it to Springfield. To enable the car to pass over the line,
workers reduced the station platforms and other obstructions in size,
thus enabling the car to be put into regular service.
After
receiving much notoriety and success with his new car, Pullman formed
the Pullman Car Company in 1867and devoted it to producing a system of
cars by which passengers could be carried in luxurious comfort, both day
or night, over great distances without changing trains.
With the tremendous success of the sleeping car,
railroads next introduced parlor or drawing-room cars for day runs,
which added greatly to the luxury of travel, enabling passengers to
secure seats in advance, and enjoy many comforts which weren’t found
in ordinary cars. Eventually, these became known as "palace"
cars and railroads included them as an essential part of their
equipment. The Wagner Car Company of New York was one of the first to
furnish them.
After introducing sleeping and luxurious parlor cars,
the railroads naturally turned to fulfilling the demand for serving
meals on their trains. Why should a train stop at a station for meals
any more than a steamboat should tie up to a wharf for the same purpose?
So the Pullman Car Company introduced the hotel car–essentially a
sleeping-car with a kitchen and pantries in one end and portable tables
which could be placed between the seats of each section and upon which
meals could be conveniently served. Pullman named his first hotel car
the "President," and put it into service on the Great Western
Railway of Canada in 1867.
But that still wasn’t enough to supply the wants of
the growing number of railway passengers. So the dining car came next. A
complete restaurant, with a large kitchen and pantries at one end and
the main body of the car fitted up as a dining room, it offered a place
in which all the passengers in the train could take their meals
comfortably. Pullman named his first dining car the "Delmonico,"
which began service in 1868 on the Chicago & Alton Railroad.
With
over 30,000 miles of track laid after the Civil War, the comforts and
conveniences of travel by rail on the main lines seemed to have reached
their peak. The heavy "T" rails had replaced the various forms
previously used. Their improved fastenings, the reductions in curvature,
and the greater care exercised in laying them had made travel extremely
smooth, while the improvements in rolling stock had reduced the jerking,
jolting, and oscillation of the cars. The road beds had also been
properly ditched, drained, and ballasted with broken stone or gravel,
the dust overcome, the sparks arrested, so cleanliness had at last been
made possible on a railway train.
And that left one major problem to be solved—heating
the cars. This came about through the invention of a method for
circulating hot water from the boiler of the locomotive through pipes
running near the floor of the cars. Not only did passengers now have
warm feet, but the loss of life from train fires originating from stoves
had been halted. However, heating a detached car was still a problem
until the discovery of electricity.
With the introduction of the dining car came the
concept of the continuous train. This necessitated that passengers had
to walk from one car to another across platforms to get to the parlor or
dining cars while the train was in motion, an act that they had been
cautioned against. The railroads realized they had to come up with a
solution to the problem if the continuous train concept were to be
successful, particularly for limited express trains.
Crude attempts had been made as early as 1852 when
inventors took out patents for devices using diaphragms of canvas to
connect adjoining cars and form a passageway between them. Used mainly
for ventilation on the Naugatuck Railroad, in Connecticut in 1857, they
didn’t work well and the railroad soon abandoned them.
Once again Pullman devised a system not only for
constructing continuous trains but also for providing sufficient
flexibility in the connecting passageways to allow for the motion of the
train around curves. His efforts in 1886 resulted in what’s now known
as the "vestibuled " train.
Patented in 1887, this invention succeeded not only
in supplying the means of constructing a perfectly enclosed vestibule of
handsome architectural appearance between the cars but also accomplished
the introduction of a safety device in case of collision.
The elastic diaphragms, attached to the ends of the
cars, had steel frames. Powerful springs pressed their faces firmly
against each other, creating a friction which held them in position,
thus preventing the oscillation of the cars and furnishing a buffer
extending from the platform to the roof. This prevented one platform
"riding" another, producing telescoping in case of collision.
The first vestibuled trains went into service on the
Pennsylvania Railroad in June 1886, and other railroad companies soon
followed. The new vestibuled limited trains contained several sleeping
cars, a dining car, and a smoking car, complete with a library, desks
and writing materials, a bathroom and a barber shop. With free
circulation of air throughout the train, the cars opening into each
other, the electric light, the many other increased comforts and
conveniences, trains became a safe and luxurious way to travel.
But baggage presented a problem early on. Originally,
railways allowed passengers to pick out their baggage at their
destination, resulting in a lack of accountability which led to much
confusion, frequent losses, and heavy claims against the railroads. The
solution lay in the introduction of a system known as
"checking." A clerk attached a metal disk, bearing a number
and the destination of the bag, to each article and gave a duplicate to
the owner, which acted as a receipt. Passengers then presented these
receipts to clerks at their destinations to claim their bags.
Railways
soon united in arranging for through checks which when attached to
baggage would insure its being sent safely to distant points over lines
composed of many connecting rail lines. The check system led to the
introduction of another marked convenience in the handling of baggage–the
baggage express or transfer company. One of its agents checked trunks at
the passenger's own house and hauled them to the train. Another agent
would take up the checks aboard the train as it neared its destination
and see to it that the baggage was delivered to the correct address.
Coupon tickets covering trips over several different
railways saved passengers from purchasing separate tickets from several
railroads over which they had to pass. Their introduction necessitated
an agreement among the principal railroads and the adoption of an
extensive system of accountability for the purpose of making settlements
of the amounts represented by the coupons.
With all these conveniences and the growth of the
rail lines, passengers often found themselves in unfamiliar territory.
Conspicuous clock faces stood in the stations with their hands set to
the hour at which the next train was to depart, sign boards displayed
the stations at which departing trains would stop using horizontal
slats, and employees called out necessary information and directed
passengers to the proper entrances, exits, and trains. Larger passenger
stations included a "Bureau of Information," in which a
railroad employee answers questions about rail routes. All these
innovations are still in use today by both the railroads and the
airlines.
By the turn of the century and the end of the
Victorian Era, rail travel was the prime means of short and long
distance travel in the United States and the days of the De Witt Clinton
but a distant memory.
Illustrations
An early engraving
showing a Victorian baggage room showing passengers picking through the
luggage. (Catskill Archives)
Passengers took
their meals in dining cars like this one aboard the Chicago, Burlington,
& Quincy R.R. in the mid-1880s.(Library of Congress)
Early passenger cars
like this one used on the Western Railroad of Massachusetts were crude
and uncomfortable.
(Catskill Archives)
The steel and canvas
diaphragm on the end of a Pullman vestibuled car made passenger movement
between cars safer. (Pullman Car Co.)
Pullman’s
“Pioneer” sleeper was as innovative as it was comfortable.(Pullman
Car Co.)
The engine “De
Witt Clinton” pulls one of the first passenger trains on the Mohawk
and Hudson Railroad. (Library of Congress)
Pullman’s parlor
car was also known as a “palace car” because of its luxurious
furnishings.(Pullman Car Co.)
This Pullman sleeper
on a vestibuled train allowed passengers traveling long distances to
move freely about the train.(Pullman Car Co.)
Railroad parlor cars
like this one provided luxury as well as comfort.
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