The Modern Railroad

by Edward Hungerford

The classic portal of the Pennsylvania’s new station in New York

The beautiful concourse of the new Pennsylvania Station, in New York

“The waiting-room is the monumental and artistic expression of the
station,”—the waiting-room of the Union Depot at Troy, New York

The Pennsylvania terminal also departs radically from the other great terminals in its track arrangements. The twenty-one parallel station tracks, with their platforms, are placed in a basement forty feet below street level. In fact, the great building is divided into three levels. At the street level are the broad entrances, the chief of these forming itself into a broad arcade, lined with shops that cater particularly to the demands of the traveller. On this floor are also the railroad’s commodious restaurant and lunch-room.

On the intermediate plane, or level, the real business of the passenger prefatory to his journey is transacted. The concourse, the great general waiting-room, with its subsidiary rooms for men and women, the ticket offices, and the telegraph offices are there gathered. From the roomy concourse, covered in steel and glass after the fashion of the famous train-sheds in Frankfort and Dresden, Germany, individual stairs and elevators lead to each of the track platforms. A sub-concourse, hung directly underneath the main structure, is reserved for exit purposes only, and serves to separate the streams of incoming and outgoing passengers. The north side of the station is separated and reserved for the use of the Long Island passengers, chiefly commuters.

The theory of operation of the station is simplicity itself. A Pennsylvania through train from the West, after discharging its passengers and baggage, will not be backed out of the train-house, but will continue on through the station, under more tunnels and another river, to the storage yards just outside of Long Island City. Similarly, trains made ready for a long trip at the yards will proceed empty under the East River tunnels to the big station, where they will receive their outbound load. This is the theory of the station, an operating theory which makes it in part like a giant way-station and saves much terminal congestion. The Long Island trains and a few short-line Pennsylvania express trains will be turned in the station. These are the exception.

Of interest fully equal to that of the new Pennsylvania Station, is the construction of a new Grand Central Station upon the site of and during the use of the old. The Grand Central Station, used by both the New York Central and the New York, New Haven, & Hartford Railroads, has been for many years New York’s great gateway to the east as well as the north and west. It has developed a great suburban and a great through traffic since the construction of the first station—away back in 1871. Temporary relief was gained in the early eighties by the construction of an annex to the east of the original station. Still further improvement was gained ten years ago by tearing out a series of ill-arranged public rooms and substituting for them the single beautiful waiting-room that has proved so great a delight to travellers. Now that waiting-room is about to be demolished in the face of plans for the newer and greater Grand Central.

The building of the new station has offered tremendous problems to the engineers, for it has demanded a complete reconstruction within extremely limited area, while not placing hindrances in the way of the constant operation of one of the world’s greatest terminals. Coincident with the rebuilding of the new station has come the substitution of electricity for steam on the terminal lines of its two tenants, the New York, New Haven, & Hartford, and the New York Central & Hudson River Railroads. In order to work the three-mile tunnel through Park Avenue and the sole entrance for trains to the station at greatest capacity, it was found necessary to extend the yards of the new station far north of those of the old. This work, alone, has necessitated the acquisition of whole city blocks of tremendously valuable real estate and the excavation of several million cubic yards of rock and earth.