INTERIOR OF A PULLMAN CAR.
Besides these models there were relics—old tools, old lanterns, and ticket-punches; and systems of signaling were also illustrated. But it is impossible to recall or put down even the leading attractions of this clever little museum.
While Mr. Douglass and Harry were looking at these cases, and at the photographs showing views along the road, Philip wandered away to the other side of the room, and found diagrams, charts, and pieces of mechanism for showing the statistics of the Pennsylvania road.
Gilded blocks as large and larger than a boy’s head, showed the amounts of silver paid to employees every hour. An obelisk built from tiny stones represented the amount of ballast in this great railroad as compared with the pyramid of Cheops which was constructed on the same scale just alongside. The pyramid was nowhere in comparison. A little globe with a railroad-track going around the equator and lapping enough to tie in a bow-knot showed the length of this railroad system. Two bits of rail whereon were silver dollars laid edge to edge, were meant to show the cost of the road—a sum large enough to cover all its rails with a row of silver dollars. Another globe had models of little locomotives running around it, to show the number of miles covered by trains—enough to encircle our globe every two hours. Tiny coal-carts, drawn by clockwork up from a pretended mine, taught that two and one-half tons of coal were burned every fifteen seconds.
Altogether Philip thought the Pennsylvania had “done herself proud”—except in the models of railroad-men in uniform. No one, however deeply impressed with the rest of the exhibit, would care to ride on a road run by such men as the dummies were. Philip would not have been surprised at a strike on the whole system if the men could have seen those great paste-board gawks that stood in their clothes.
For the last few days they had been really studying the exhibits instead of wandering around with an idea of being amused. As the next day was to be their last at the Fair, Mr. Douglass made no objection to their going once more to the Plaisance, where there was more fun than instruction; and with this prospect in view, they forgave the tutor for the useful knowledge they had been so steadily acquiring.
MODEL OF THE BRITISH BATTLE-SHIP “VICTORIA.”
Sunk in collision with the “Camperdown.”
IN THE LAPLAND VILLAGE.