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The biggest locomotive in the world: built by the Santa Fe Railroad at its Topeka shops

For the general manager is really king of the entire situation. Just now his reign is threatened from a new quarter, and you find him receiving the opposition with both distrust and anger. This is the fine figure of a fine man. He has come up the ladder, rung by rung—station assistant, telegraph operator, despatcher, train-master, assistant superintendent, superintendent, general superintendent, general manager; he knows railroading, stick and wheel. His own railroad he knows as he might know the fingers of his hand.

When we come into his office, the last of a committee of well-dressed citizens is slipping out of his door; they are citizens from a prosperous town in an adjoining State, and he may tell us of their errand.

“K—— is a good town,” he will say, “and gives us a good and growing traffic. We’ve a lot of nasty grade-crossings there, for the two of our big lines that right-angle into there seem to get over about every street in the place at level. They want us to elevate or depress our tracks through there, and it should be done. This road wants it as much as K—— wants it; for it’s one of the worst bottle-necks on our main line, and Lord only knows how many thousands of dollars it’s cost us in delayed traffic.”

This king of the railroad points to a sheaf of blueprints upon his desk.

“That tells the story,” he says simply, “and the end of the chapter is a bill for nine millions of dollars to get rid of those crossings. According to law, K—— will have to stand about half of the cost of the work, and K——, like most progressive American towns, has been running pretty close to her debt limit. She is staggered at the thought of having to dig out three or four millions of perfectly good dollars, and so her mayor has made the naive suggestion that we advance the money and let them pay back their share in the shape of refunded taxes and annual payments.

“We advance that money—and the big boss has to slip over to France and try to sell our securities for mere necessities. The truth of the matter is that we haven’t the money to advance. We’re grubbing to get enough cash to buy locomotives and cars to keep pace with our business, not running a loan business for upstart towns that have run through their capital.”

In comes a second delegation, this one another group of commuters. They have been asking for an additional train in on the Valley branch. The general manager has said that the road cannot afford it, for the train would have to be operated at a loss. He proves his statement.

“But,” urges the spokesman of the party, “you will make traffic by it, and eventually the train will pay.”