Highways and Highway Transportation by George R. Chatburn

B. & Q. R. R. Photographed at Lincoln, Nebr., Sept., 1922. 2. One of the New Gearless _Electric_ Locomotives Built by the General Electric Company for the C. M. & St. Paul R. R.] =The Evolution of the Sleeping Car.=--Mr. Husband has made a very interesting book of the story of the Pullman car and its evolution[116] in which he traces with much detail, step by step, the improvements from 1836, when the first sleeping car was offered to the traveling public, to the most modern parlor car now in use. The discomfort and inconvenience of travelers by rail was so much greater than that by canal that only the greater speed of the former caused it to forge ahead of the latter. As the mileage of the roads increased so also did the comforts of travel. It has already been noted that sparks set fire to the clothing of passengers. Soon box-like cars replaced the open carriages and bogie trucks replaced the rigid wheels, the former giving much more protection and the latter comfort while rounding curves. But yet passengers were herded like cattle on stiff-backed narrow benches in cars with scant head clearance and width. Clean stone ballast for the road bed had not yet been thought of and the dust blew in clouds through the open windows in the summer time, and a stove vitiated the air in the winter. There were no screens or vestibules. It is a far cry from the dim flaring candle to the brilliant white incandescent electric lights. Passenger cars were rapidly improved until by 1844 they had taken on something of the appearance of the present coach. George M. Pullman, a Chicago contractor, having experienced the inconveniences of railway travel and also being acquainted from close association with the Erie Canal and the sleeping arrangements of the canal boats, had visions of similar or better rail comforts. In 1858 he engaged Leonard Seibert, an employee of the Chicago & Alton Railroad, to remodel two coaches into the first Pullman sleeping cars. Mr. Pullman’s invention of upper berth construction whereby it could be closed during the day and serve as a receptacle for bedding was introduced into these cars, before which time sleeping car bunks had been stationary and on one side only. The success of his venture was such that he established a shop for the manufacture of the cars and employed technical skill to plan and make them. He had such organizing ability, however, that before his death he saw the Pullman Company holding a practical monopoly of all the sleeping cars in the country, with through cars scheduled so that change of Pullman was unnecessary from coast to coast, or if a change had to be made it was merely a transfer from one car to a connecting car on another route. A single ticket will carry a passenger from Portland, Maine, to San Francisco, by way of Washington, D.C., New Orleans and Los Angeles with only two changes of cars, namely, at New York and Washington, a total distance of 4,199 miles. It may be interesting to note that some 26,000,000 persons are annually accommodated by the 7500 cars operated by this company. =Street Car Service.=--Now that more than one half the population of the United States live in cities makes the matter of local transportation of at least passing interest. Railroads were at first tram cars and many of them were built through the city streets, it was easy, therefore, to make of them street cars caring for such local traffic as desired to take advantage of them. They became a popular means of local transportation in the decade 1850-60. As the demand became greater the one-horse car gave way to the two-horse with its longer body and greater capacity. These not being sufficient steam locomotives were used in some cities, in others the tracks were elevated above the surface, the first in New York in 1876, or depressed below with steam locomotives operating trains of cars rapidly loaded and unloaded at stopping points about four blocks apart. In 1879 or 1880 in San Francisco where the hills were too steep for horses the cable car was designed, whereby an endless cable operated from a central station ran continuously in a trench or conduit under the track. A grip attached to the car could be made to take hold of this cable and the car was thus drawn along. Notwithstanding they were expensive to install cable cars were rapidly replacing horse-drawn cars when electric traction came in and displaced them. =Electric Traction.=--There are reports of attempts to obtain magnetic traction by the use of batteries, but not until the electric dynamo and motor had become practical working machines was anything like a successful working electrically propelled car developed. The ordinary method is to generate the electricity at a central station, carry it along the track by means of a wire, from which it is taken by a trolley or some form of conductor to a motor on the car completing the circuit through the track and ground. Such a car was practically demonstrated at the Berlin Exposition of 1879, by Werner Siemens, with a line 219 yards long.[117] This was the first practical electric railway. But long before this time in America experiments had been made with electric traction. Dever exhibited a model at Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1835.[118] In 1879, the year of Siemens’ exhibition, another model railway having a “third rail” to carry the current was exhibited at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Edison had a car in operation at Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1882, and the following year a small road carried passengers at an exhibit in Chicago. Miniature roads were exhibited at Philadelphia, Denver, Cleveland, New Orleans, and possibly elsewhere. The first electric railway built and operated for profit in American streets was at Richmond, Virginia, in 1885 on 2¹⁄₂ miles of track. During the same year 2 miles between Baltimore and Hampton were put in operation.[119] By 1890 the number of cities having trolley cars had increased to forty-nine.[120] From that time on the change from horse-drawn cars was very rapid. Trolley lines were even extended throughout the country districts. At one time it looked as though they might replace steam cars for passenger traffic, especially short-haul traffic. There was a complete network of interurban trolley lines in the Eastern and Central Western states by 1910.[121] The trolley is also being used upon hard-surfaced roads without tracks by buses and trucks. Steam railroads running into New York City through the tubes use electric locomotives to draw the trains, thus avoiding the smoke nuisance and the danger therewith connected. The Milwaukee Railroad is using electric locomotives on its mountain division in Montana and Idaho. Electricity is generated by water power; also the trains going down grade are run against a dynamo and storage battery thus acting as a brake as well as renewing the batteries. SELECTED REFERENCES BROWN, WILLIAM H., “History of the First Locomotive in America.” D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1871. BURCH, EDWARD P., “Electric Traction for Railway Trains,” Chap. I (Historical). McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1911. CALLENDER, GUY S., “The Economic History of the United States,”