So he gets out, like the traffic people from the freight end of the railroad, and he keeps in constant touch with his territory, with the towns along the line and the agents who are working under him. If he is instrumental in locating a big convention at some point where his line will receive the lion’s share of the business, that is a good trick and worth while. A lively convention will do a lot toward bracing up a weak passenger sheet in some dull month.
One railroad reaching out of New York into the mountains at the northeastern corner of that State and losing itself at some obscure town, a railroad without valuable connections and ramifications, has made its passenger business a little gold-mine by scientific nurturing. It sent its passenger representatives up into the country towns, and they sought to improve conditions of every sort there. They started agitation for better roads from the railroad into the uplands where city folk were prone to wander; they helped the boarding-house landlord and the country hotel-keeper to bring their facilities up to attractive standards. In some cases they induced capital to come in and build new hotels. In every case they offered free space in the railroad’s summer resort literature. Under a single general passenger agent pursuing such a campaign unflaggingly the passenger receipts of that small railroad increased 125 per cent in eight years!
The famous Thomas Viaduct, on the Baltimore & Ohio at Relay, Md.,
built by B. H. Latrobe in 1835, and still in use
The historic Starucca Viaduct upon the Erie
The cylinders of the Delaware & Hudson Mallet
The interior of this gasoline-motor-car on the Union Pacific presents
a most unusual effect, yet a maximum of view of the outer world