But the trolley, as we have seen, has not proved a competitor of the steam railroad. It has become in almost every instance a feeder and as such is a valuable economic factor in the transportation situation. There have been no more sleeping cars placed on trolley routes, but a little time ago I found a Canadian Pacific box car on the shores of Keuka Lake, more than ten miles distant from the nearest steam railroad. A trolley road had placed it there, on a farmer’s private siding. And he was packing it full of grapes—grapes to go overseas from some big Canadian port upon the Atlantic.
Such possibilities of the trolley line to the steam railroad point to similar feeding possibilities of the automobile—but of these very much more in their proper time and places. Let us still continue to study the possibilities of the branch line.
The other day I chanced to travel upon a certain small brisk railroad that runs across a middle western state. In my lap was a time card of that line and I was idly following it as we went upon our way. Halfway down the long column of town-names, I saw a change. In other days a passenger for the enterprising county shiretown of Caliph had been compelled to alight at the small junction point known as East Caliph and there take a very small and very dirty little train for three miles, which finally left him at a clump of willows by a brookside—a full dozen hot and dusty blocks from the courthouse square which marks the geographical and commercial center of Caliph.
That branch-line train has disappeared. In its place a line on a time card reads “automobile service to Caliph,” and at the junction I saw a seven-passenger touring car with the initials of the railroad upon its tonneau doors. The motor bus takes you to the door of Caliph’s chief hotel, which faces that same courthouse square. The branch is unused, except for occasional switching. There is no expense of keeping it up to the requirements of passenger traffic, nor of maintaining a passenger station. The hotel serves as this last and at far less expense. And the cost of running the automobile over three miles of excellent highway is far cheaper than that of running a railroad train. The chauffeur is an entirely competent conductor and ticket-taker. And between passenger runs he can be used to carry the express and baggage on a motor truck. His own opportunities for development are fairly generous.
Recently the automobile has been placed upon the railroad rails—with astonishing results as to both efficiency and economy. I saw one of these, not long ago, working on a small railroad running from the Columbia River up to the base of Mount Hood. The superintendent of that railroad—he likewise was its agent, conductor, dispatcher, engineering expert, and chief traffic solicitor—had purchased a large “rubberneck” automobile, had substituted railroad flange wheels for the rubber-tired highway wheels, and was not only saving money for his property but also giving much pleasure to his patrons. A ride in a dirty, antiquated, second-hand coach behind a smoky, cindery locomotive is hardly to be compared with one in a clean, swift automobile, riding in the smooth ease of steel rails. So successful had the experiment proven that he was having a closed automobile made for winter service upon his railroad—with a tiny compartment for the baggage, the mail, and the express.
A series of interesting experiments conducted by the army along the Mexican border recently showed another way in which the motor truck could well be made an active ally and agent of the railroad. Special T-rail wheel flanges were designed to fit outside of the heavy rubber tires that carry the cars over highways. It is the work of a very few minutes to slip these steel flanges on or off the wheels. Which means that the motor truck may follow the lines of the railroad as far as it leads, giving many more miles of performance for each gallon of gasoline consumed; and then, when the rails end in the sand and sagebrush, may strike off for itself across the country in any direction.
THE MOTOR-CAR UPON THE STEEL HIGHWAY
How much better this than the smoky, dirty cars of yester-year!