Fast Time to Atlantic City.
Coming to short runs and special summer trains, undoubtedly the fastest are from Camden to Atlantic City. Here some very fast time has been made over an ideal country for fast time by both the Reading and the Pennsylvania. The best Reading time is 56½ miles in 50 minutes, or 66 miles an hour, while the best Pennsylvania time is 59 miles at the rate of 64 miles an hour.
These constitute all the very fast regular trains in the United States. The fastest run in New England outside the Boston-New York run is from Boston to Portland at the rate of 44 miles an hour, and the showing is still poorer in the West and South. Chicago, in many respects the greatest railroad center in the world, has no fast trains outside the New York Central and Pennsylvania trains referred to.
Throughout the West, though the best trains are very luxurious, the runs are all short, averaging about 30 miles between stations and the speed nowhere averages 40 miles an hour.
Next to speed may be considered the frequency of trains, their appointments, etc. In this respect a still more pronounced difference appears in different countries with almost equal population.
More trains leave the great South Terminal in Boston in one day than are moved in one direction on all the roads of Spain and Portugal in two weeks. From one terminal in London more trains leave daily than move in ten days to supply the whole population of Russia.