“This train is made up in just the same fashion every night,” he explains. “These two Hygienic cars are always the fifth and sixth. If they were the eighth and ninth some nifty evening—if some smart Aleck of a yardmaster up the line would take to shuffling up these cars as you shuffle a deck of cards—we would have a near riot here, and I couldn’t get these platforms cleared of the milkmen for that market-truck train that backs in here from the south every night at 11:55.
Inside the West Albany shops of the New York Central:
picking up a locomotive with the travelling crane
A locomotive upon the testing-table at the Altoona shops of the Pennsylvania
“The roundhouse is a sprawling thing”
Denizens of the roundhouse
“So they keep closely to the formation of our trains, and that of itself is no terminal problem. Away up the line 90 miles—150,—250,—everywhere that we have a big junction yard, the yard boss has his positive instructions about these milk trains. By the time this fellow has cleared out of P—— J——, 90 miles up the road and our nearest road yard outside of the metropolitan district, it’s always in just the shape you see it to-night. After that there’s nothing to be done here except cut off the road engine at our terminal yard and pick out a switcher to back her into position at this shed. It’s nice work, and night after night that engineer of the switcher does not vary four inches in the locations of these car-doors.”