It is early in the morning and late in the afternoon that there is the greatest activity in the yards of the New York Central Railroad. Between seven and nine in the morning so many trains come in that frequently the switching necessary to give them clear ways in and out has meant the moving of 1400 levers in the tower-house. Hardly an engine, as it passes Forty-ninth Street, dragging its train on its way in, but darts away from the cars to a siding, leaving the train to roll in by itself, controlled by the trainmen at the brakes. You are not conscious of this if you are on the incoming cars. But as you get out and walk along the platform you note that yours is an engineless train. It saves time, this swerving of the engine off to right or left, and it is immediately ready to drag another load out. But the alertness of these tower-house men is here called into keenest play, for but a second elapses between the arrival of the engine and its train at the self-same switch, and each must have a separate path.
Although you can plainly see all this rush and bustle on a winter morning just as the sun is creeping over the top of the Grand Central palace, can note so clearly, as you stand on the bridge, which switches are turned for a particular train, and can count exactly the thirty-two tracks from the round-house alongside Lexington Avenue to the "annex sheds" on Madison Avenue, it is far more interesting to visit the yard late in the afternoon, just after dusk. Then you can stand on one of the bridges and see a brilliant panorama—the moving flash-lights of the engines, the quickly shifting red and white signal-lamps, the brilliantly lighted outgoing trains, standing out in relief against the dark narrow bulk of an "unmade" train on a distant siding, and, a short distance away, veiled every now and then by puffs of smoke from an impatient engine, the dazzling arc-burners of the station.
Shut your eyes, then open them, and again almost shut them, and give yourself up to the scene. It is fairy-land, all these moving lights, this brilliant panorama. Close your eyes still more till you can just peep out at the motion around you. It is no longer the iron-threaded yard of the Grand Central station. You are in the midst of some wild, strange region. Great dragons snorting flame and smoke move uneasily about. Black serpents with eyes of flashing fire and long dark bodies trail their way through the flat country past you, and disappear in that cavern of a tunnel above. On all sides are weird noises. But in the midst of it all you half dreamily see, not many feet away from you, the men at the levers in the tower-house, playing their mechanical music so well on the great key-board that every iron monster is charmed, and keeps safely and quietly his own pathway.