“His train would be automatically shunted off upon a side track, where it would run up against elastic buffers of rubber, filled with air. The main track would not be clear until the train passed the station ahead. Until then the switch leading to the side track would be open.”
“And how would that switch be again opened, after being closed?”
“Automatically, by the passage of the train over the rails ahead of it.”
“That is a very ingenious and original idea, Mr. Morning.”
“Ingenious and simple, but it is not my own. A similar contrivance was in use on the Italian roads twenty years ago, although the idea was suggested to me by an Arizona rancher, who was averse to having cattle straying in his alfalfa fields, through which several public roads ran. In order to avoid the cost of fencing the roads, he put up automatic gates. The weight of the horses and vehicle upon a platform a few yards from the gate, on either side, operated upon a lever, and swung open the gate, which was released automatically by the passage of the wagon, and so swung shut.”
“You seem, by these arrangements, to have secured the safety of passengers and train hands, but how about the speed? Will the traveling public be content with twenty miles an hour between Kansas City and San Francisco?”
“I do not know. If they shall not be, still the speed would be satisfactory to the freighters. My own belief is that the greater safety and lower rates of passage that will prevail on this road will attract to it a large share of the passenger traffic. Those who are in haste can travel over one of the other lines.”
“Your object seems to be to give to the public cheaper railroad service.”
“It is partly that and partly to give the railroad employes better pay and greater regularity and permanency of employment. I will try to divide the benefits equitably.”
“Will not those who run trains upon your road defeat your object by combinations among themselves, to put up the price of freight and passage, and put down the wages of railroad hands?”