Here, then, is a golden opportunity for the Boston and Albany—by the substitution of electric power for steam and the roofing of its yards—to develop those tremendously valuable vacant acres back of Copley Square; and the man who goes to Boston ten years hence probably will not see a smoky gash cut diagonally through the heart of one of the handsomest cities in America in order to permit a busy railroad to deliver its passenger and freight at a convenient downtown point. It is hard to estimate the financial benefits which eventually will result to the Boston and Albany of cellarless city squares over its Boylston Street yards. The benefit to Boston, like the benefit to New York through the development of the Grand Central and Pennsylvania terminals, is hardly to be expressed in dollars and cents.
In Chicago the question of terminal electrification has taken a less definite form than in Boston, although the Chicagoans are making fearful outcry against the filth that is poured out over their city from thousands of soft-coal locomotives. The Illinois Central has been ranked as the chief offender because of its commanding location—blocking as it does the lovely lake front for so many miles. Chicago has ambitious plans for that lake front. You may see them, hanging upon the walls of her Art Institute. These plans, of necessity, embrace the transformation not only of the terminal but of the railroad tracks within her heart from steam to electric operation.
Perhaps Chicago’s plans are more definite than those of the railroads that serve her. It is significant that the great North Western Terminal, still very new, was builded with a slotted train-shed roof in order to release the smoke and foul gases from the many steam locomotives which are constantly using it. It is equally significant that the new Union Station, which is being built to accommodate four others of her largest railroads is also being equipped with a slotted train-shed roof, and for the same reason. On the other hand, it is gratifying to notice that the tentative plans for the new Illinois Central terminal contemplate the erection of a double-decked station, very similar in type to the new Grand Central—a station which, from the very nature of its design, must, of necessity, use electric traction. Doubly gratifying this is to Chicagoans: for as we have already said, the Illinois Central, which, through its occupation of the lake front by its maze of steam-operated tracks, has so long hampered the really artistic development of Chicago’s greatest natural asset—the edge of its lovely lake. For some years past the Illinois Central has been particularly slow to make the best uses of its great suburban zone south of Chicago; slow to realize its even larger opportunities of a development even greater than that of today. This has come home with peculiar force to the many, many thousands of commuters who use its suburban trains each day. Now they know why the road has been so loath to retire its antique cars and locomotives in this service. The filing of the primary plans for its new terminal on the lake front at Twelfth Street and Michigan Avenue shows that the road is at last planning to do the big thing in a really big way. And it is not fair to suppose that it has overlooked a single economic possibility of the electric development of its immensely valuable terminal. The result of this development upon the other railroads with their steam-operated terminals in the heart of Chicago, will be awaited with interest.[8]
Philadelphia stands next to New York among eastern cities in the electric development of its terminals, although it is interesting to note here and now that for twenty years past the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad has handled both freight and passenger trains with electric power through its double terminal and long tunnel in the heart of that city and has handled them both economically and efficiently. The wonder only is that its chief competitors should have retained steam power so long as a motive power in their long tunnels underneath Baltimore. Yet it is one of these competitors which is making the real progress in the Philadelphia situation. The Pennsylvania Railroad, which owns and operates Broad Street Station, probably one of the best-located passenger terminals in any of the very large cities of America, has already begun to use electricity to bring a large number of its suburban trains in and out of that station. After much patient experimentation it has evolved a comparatively inexpensive method of carrying the current to the overhead trolleys of these suburban trains. And the system has already proved itself so economical and so successful as to render its extension to other portions of the system a question of only a comparatively short time.
Electricity should spell opportunity to steam railroads. Yet until recently it seemingly has failed to do this very thing. It has looked as if the steam railroaders of a past generation were not thoroughly awakened to the opportunities it offered; were not willing, at any rate, to strive to find a way toward taking advantage of it. To understand this better let us go back for a moment and consider the one-time but short-lived rivalry between the trolley and the steam locomotive. As soon as the electric railroads—which were, for the most part, developments of the old-fashioned horse-car lines in city streets—began to reach out into the country from the sharp confines of the towns the smarter of the steam railroad men began to show interest in the new motive power. It would have been far better for some of them if they had taken a sharper interest at the beginning; if at that time they had begun to consider earnestly the practical adaptation of electricity to the service of the long-established steam railroad.
In many cases the short suburban railroads, just outside of the larger cities, which had been operated by small dummy locomotives, were the first to be electrified; in some of these cases they became extensions of city trolley lines. People no longer were obliged to come into town upon a poky little dummy train of uncertain schedule and decidedly uncertain habits and then transfer at the edge of the crowded portion of the city to horse cars. They could come flying from the outer country to the heart of the town in half an hour—and, as you know, the business of building and booming suburbs was born. After these suburban lines had been developed the steam railroad men of some of the so-called standard lines, began to study the situation. As far back as 1895 the Nantasket branch of the present New Haven system was made into an electric line. A little steam road, which wandered off into the hills of Columbia County from Hudson, New York, and led a precarious existence, extended its rails a few miles and became the third-rail electric line from Hudson to Albany and a powerful competitor for passenger traffic with a large trunk-line railroad. The New Haven system found the electric third rail a good agent between Hartford and New Britain and the overhead trolley a good substitute for the locomotive on a small branch that ran for a few miles north from its main line at Stamford, Connecticut.
The problems of electric traction for regular railroads were complicated, however, and the big steam roads avoided them until they were forced upon their attention. The interurban roads spread their rails—rather too rapidly in many cases—making themselves frequently the opportunities for such precarious financing as once distinguished the history of steam roads, and also frequently making havoc with thickly settled branch lines and main stems of the steam railroads. In a good many cases the steam roads have had to dig deep into their pockets and buy at good stiff prices interurban roads—a situation that they might have anticipated with just a little forethought.
Such a condition was reached in a populous state along the Atlantic seaboard just a few years ago. A big steam road, plethoric in wealth and importance, had a branch line about 100 miles in length, which tapped a dozen towns, each ranging from 10,000 to 30,000 in population. The branch line carried no through business, nor was its local freight traffic of importance, but it was able to operate profitably eleven local passenger trains in each direction daily. These trains were well filled, as a rule, and the branch returned at least its equitable share toward the dividend account of the entire property. As long as it did that no one at headquarters paid any particular attention to it.