Moving westward over designated routes from Chicago, the canary-colored coaches were pulled by locomotives with yellow bellied boilers, wheels painted scarlet and ponderous smokestacks—hummers in the old days—but antiques in 1918. They bore such names as Antelope, Reindeer, Thistle, &c., as well as of prominent people.
BOIL THEM WHEN THEY’RE TOUGH
Picking her way daintily through the grime of the locomotive works, a young woman visitor viewed the huge operations with visible awe. Turning to a young man from the office who was shewing her through and pointing, she asked, “What is that big thing over there?”
“That’s a locomotive boiler”, said the guide.
She puckered her brows.
“And what do they boil locomotives for?” she enquired.
“To make the locomotive tender”, said the young man from the office, with amazing effrontery.
Young’s Magazine
What a shock it would be to My Lady’s complacency if, on her journey now, she should find it necessary to raise a sunshade in the coach to protect her raiment from the rain and snow sifting through the chinks and rifts in the car. This age is not without some blessings, as Ben Fletcher might have exclaimed. We are reminded here of a characteristic of Mr. Fletcher, who was advance agent for “D.G.H. & M.” He had been working up business for an excursion to Nebraska, which did not “pan out,” one solitary passenger offering his patronage. The selling agent wired him for instructions and received reply couched thusly: “By the great horned toad Reginald, chain him to the seat!”
The “St. P.M. & M.,” at birth “St. Paul & Pacific,” later converted by astute minds into the “Great Northern Railway,” was the railroad which gave that big quartette, Messrs. Angus, Smith, Hill and Stephens, a gilt-edged monopoly of Manitoba emigration and, incidentally, the patronage of dame fortune. Men and chattels had only shank’s mare as an alternative to this line northward from St. Paul as far as Fisher’s Landing, a Red River port. Here, transfer was made to the Kittson Line of steamboats plying to Fort Garry now Winnipeg, and owned by Norman Kittson, a colleague of J. J. Hill in some early business ventures. In winter the trip was made by stage travelling part way over thick ice. Mr. Kittson was one of several successors to Anson Northrup, the pioneer navigator of the Upper Mississippi River who launched his first craft there in 1835.