Of course there are some trains that never go upon the “classification” at Randall’s yard. There are solid coal trains bound in and out of New York, of Philadelphia, and of Boston, that pass him empty and filled, and only change engines and cabooses at his command. There are through freights, bound from one seaboard to the other, from the Far East to the Far West, that do likewise. But the majority of the freight movement has the sorting out within his domain, his four humps are busy day and night with an ordinary run of traffic, and you shudder to think what must be the condition when business begins to run at high tide.
“We get it a-humming every once in a while,” he finally confesses. “We had one day, a little time ago, when we received 121 east-bound trains in twenty-four hours, more than 3,200 cars all told. That meant, on an average, a train every 11½ minutes. That same day we got 78 west-bound freights, with more than 3,600 cars. That meant nearly 7,000 cars handled on the in-freight in twenty-four hours, or a train coming in to me every 7½ minutes during day and night. They don’t do much better than that on some of the subway and elevated railroads in the big cities; and I haven’t said a word about the trains and cars we despatched—just about as much again, of course.”
Through yards such as these there are incoming streams of merchandise, equal at least to the outgoing, passing through classification yards in carload lots and the great transfer-houses in “LCL.” These streams must be kept separate and from clogging one another or themselves. Cars must carry loads whenever they are moved—“empties” are the bogy-men of the superintendents of transportation—and cars from “foreign” systems must be quickly returned to their home roads. The yardmaster at a busy freight point has his own worries. His puzzle is unending. To it he must bend the bigness of a big mind, he must be prepared to handle the unequal volumes of traffic that pass through his domain with an equal skill: in dull times he must seek to keep his plant working under conditions of rare economy; when the freight rises to flood tide, he must fight in harness to prevent the freight from congesting. The word “failure” has been stricken out of his vocabulary by his superiors.
It takes a high grade of railroader to serve as yardmaster.
CHAPTER VIII
THE LOCOMOTIVES AND THE CARS
Honor Required in the Building of a Locomotive—Some of the Early Locomotives—Some Notable Locomotive-builders—Increase of the Size of Engines—Stephenson’s Air-brake—The Workshops—The Various Parts of the Engine—Cars of the Old-time—Improvements by Winans and Others—Steel Cars for Freight.
From out of the fiery womb of steel comes the locomotive. We have already told of the honor that is forged in the building of the bridge; honor of no less degree has gone into the forging of the most vital and most human thing upon the railroad, outside of man himself. That man has ever been able to create and build the locomotive, a giant creature of some 200 tons, perhaps, built together with infinite care of some 5,000 to 7,000 parts, and these parts acting with the delicacy of the hair-spring of a watch, almost passes ordinary belief. The wonder becomes even greater when it is realized that this monster creature, set upon two slender rails, is capable of pulling a 4,000 ton train, through every stress of weather and over considerable grades.