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The Union Station at Washington

This keeper of the city gate represents the survival of the fittest, the very cream of his profession. The chances are that he began his railroading off in some lonely way station on a branch line, developed qualities that brought him to the quick and favorable attention of his chiefs, then advanced steadily along the rapid lines of promotion that railroading holds for some men. He is one of three men, who, for certain hours, hold the keeping of the complicated city gate within their own well-drilled minds. The tower is the mind, the brain centre, the ganglion, of that city gate; but the tower is only wondrously mechanical, after all; the mind of the careful towerman is the mind that controls all the mechanism.

To the average traveller, the city gate is a thing that impresses itself upon his mind by its exterior and interior beauty, or its convenience of arrangement. He notes the broad concourses, the ample entrances and exits, the compelling magnificence of the public rooms, the great sweep of the train-shed roof, but beyond that train-shed roof is a tangle of tracks and signals about which he does not worry his busy head. Those tracks and signals represent more truly the station than the mere architectural magnificence of its outer shell. They are a tangle and a maze, apparently, but a tangle and maze that must represent skill and ease in their tremendous operation. They are neither tangle nor maze to the shirt-sleeved men in the tower. They must know each track, each switch-point, each signal as intimately and familiarly as they know the fingers of their hands.

Every mechanical device is employed to simplify the tangle for the comfort of the busy minds that must constantly employ themselves in solving it. In the big watch-tower—the “control” of the terminal—there is a map that is more than map. It depicts in miniature all the tracks and switches and signals that lie without and roundabout the tower; but this map shows switches and signals changing as the switches and signals of the train-yard change. It brings the distant corners of the terminal in closer touch with the towermen. In fog or blinding storm, this track model is invaluable—a veritable compass set within the brain of the terminal.This illuminated map sets upon the best piece of mechanism that has yet been devised for the operation of the terminal yard. It is a long boxed affair, not entirely unlike the box of the old-fashioned square piano, but in this case (the terminal we are watching being of unusual capacity) more than thirty feet in length. This box is the very brains of the terminal. It represents the acme of mechanical condensation. Reduced to its earliest and simplest equivalent—the separate hand operation of a gigantic cluster of switches in a great terminal yard—it would cover a vast area and result in the employment of an army of switchmen. Carelessness on the part of any one member of this army might cause a serious accident. The margin of safety would be very low in such a case.

The first schemes of automatic switch systems eliminated the necessity of employing an army of switchmen. A cluster of levers, in a tower of commanding location, was connected by steel rods with the switches and the signals which protected them. A man in the tower operated this group of levers. In this way, the control of the yard was simplified, and responsibility was placed upon a better paid and better trained man than the average hand switchman. The margin of safety was considerably broadened.

Then came an amendment to that first system. Some genius of a mechanic built an interlocking switch machine, a thing of cogs and clutches, by which a collision in a railroad yard became almost a physical impossibility. In these mechanical interlocking devices the tower levers are so controlled, one by another, that signals cannot be given for trains to proceed until all switches in the route governed are first properly set and locked; and conversely, so that the switches of a route governed by signal cannot be moved during the display of a signal giving the right of way over them. By installation of the interlocking, some of the responsibility is taken by mechanical device from human brain and the margin of safety broadened still further.

This “piano box” represents still further condensation of the switch and signal control and interlocking devices. The men who designed this particular city gate designed it to accommodate more than a thousand outgoing and incoming passenger trains each twenty-four hours; they had found that the condensations given by earlier systems were not sufficient for their purpose. After bringing several switches, designed to act in concert, upon a single lever, they found that they would have a row of 360 levers. Set closely together these would require a tower about 160 feet long. It is roughly figured that it is not desirable to assign more than twenty of these heavy levers to a single towerman and that meant eighteen men, working at a shift. Moreover, the throwing of a heavy switch half a mile distant from the tower is not a slight manual exercise.

Then the “piano box”—electro-pneumatic—was installed; 150 feet of levers was reduced to 30 feet of small handles hardly larger than faucet handles and quite as easily turned. The control of a great terminal was brought down to three towermen, acting under the direction of their chief, the shirt-sleeved keeper of the city gate.

“We’ve got to keep them hustling,” he tells you. “There’s the morning express in from New York. She’s heavy this morning. That train over there, coming across the swing-bridge, is the millionaire’s special. She’s all club-cars, comes in every mornin’ from the seaside. Her wheels’ll stop on the same nick as the express. Watch them both, carefully.”

“Isn’t it quite a trick handling those trains simultaneously?”

“Not much,” a smile fixed itself upon the chief towerman’s features, as he fingered his greasy timetable. “Here’s four trains pulling out here simultaneously at 5:40. On top of that we get a Forest Hills local in at 5:39, a Hudson Upper local at 5:40, an Ogontz at 5:42, a Readville at 5:43, all incoming, and pull out two more at 5:43. Ten trains in just four minutes isn’t bad, and we haven’t begun to feel the capacity of this terminal yet.

“That isn’t all of it. We get the whole thing criss-crossed on us sometimes; and perhaps they’ll put on an extra getting out of here at 5:40, and that’ll bother us a little, for we have regular tracks assigned for all our scheduled trains. If they don’t run in the extras on us, or we don’t get a breakdown anywhere, it’s pretty plain sailing. Ring off your 10:10, Jimmy.”

Jimmy, the assistant at the far end of the tower, touched one of the little handles, a blade on a signal bridge opposite the end of the train-shed dropped, a big locomotive caught the rails instantly and cautiously led a long train of heavy cars out through the intricacy of tracks and switches until it was past the tower, over the “throat” of the yard, and, striking on the main line, was gaining speed once more.

“It’s as easy for him as unbroken rail off in the country,” said the chief towerman to me, as he waved salutation at the engineer passing below him.

Then he fell into a detailed and wondrous explanation of the intricacies of the “piano-box” mechanism. On the lower floor of the tower were air condensers, and through the medium of electricity and compressed air heavy switches and signals a half-mile off are worked almost by finger touch. Each switch is guarded by at least one signal, possibly two—home and distant—and these blades show an open or a closed path to the engineer. They are so arranged that normally they stand at danger and in case of breakdown they return by gravity to danger. At night the blades, which in various positions show safety and danger and caution, are replaced by lights—red for danger, yellow for caution, green for safety—according to the present standard rules.

This physiology of the passenger terminal has dwelt so far upon its brain and its nerve structure; the anatomy is hardly less interesting. Almost every great passenger terminal in America is built upon the head-house plan. In this scheme trains arrive and depart upon a series of parallel tracks terminating within some sort of train-shed. It is the ideal scheme from the standpoint of the passenger, for no stairs or bridges or subways are necessary to reach any track. The tracks are generally laid in pairs, and between each pair a broad platform is built, which is in reality a long-armed extension of a common distributing platform or concourse extending across the head of the tracks. Sometimes these extension platforms are laid on both sides of a single track for greater facility in handling baggage and for the quick unloading of heavy trains.

But in case any number of trains are to be operated through the terminal, the head-house scheme becomes impracticable and an abomination to the operating department. It makes necessary all manner of backing and turning trains and a tremendous amount of energy and time is spent in so doing. So we find the head-house stations—the real terminals of America—for the most part along the seaboard or at the termination of really important railroad routes. They are an expensive luxury at any other point.

At the outer end of the train-shed, its tracks begin to converge. They are in rough similarity to the sticks of an open fan and at the handle they are reduced to anywhere from two to eight main tracks, the connections with the through tracks that serve the station. The point of convergence is known to the towerman and all the other workers as the “throat” of the yard. It is by far the most important point of the terminal, and is the usual location of the control tower, with its authority over several hundred switches and signals.

Upon the number of main tracks in this “throat” depends the capacity of the terminal, quite as much as the number of tracks in the train-shed or the size of any other of its facilities. If there are as many as eight tracks in this “throat”—an unusual number—the signals and switches will probably be arranged so that in the morning five tracks may be used for the rush of incoming business, and three tracks for outgoing business, while in the late afternoon conditions are exactly reversed, five tracks being used for hurrying the suburbanites homeward, three for the lesser business incoming to the terminal. With four tracks in the “throat”—a usual number—three may be used in the direction of the volume of greatest business. Each of these tracks is like a separate entrance to the terminal, and when five are open from the train-shed simultaneously, as in this first case, five outgoing trains may be started simultaneously from as many tracks.

In this connection, a comparative table of the capacity of several of the largest American passenger terminals may not be without interest:

But the approach and train-shed tracks are only a part of the yards that are necessary at every large passenger terminal. Certain provisions are necessary for mail and express service (freight of every sort is handled as far as possible in separate yards and terminals), and extensive provision for the storage and care of cars and motive power. In the last case, it becomes advisable to have the roundhouse, or roundhouses, for locomotive storage within short striking distance of the terminal station. These are vast structures, their very form requiring large tracts of land. The American plan of radiating engine-storage tracks from a common centre, occupied by a turntable, has never prevailed in England. Some few attempts have been made in this country to build parallel storage tracks, with the transfer table for an operating arm, but almost every attempt of this sort has been induced by a necessity for unusual economy in land-space. We shall need the turntables as long as we continue to use steam as a motive power, and the early method of grouping storage tracks and radii from the table has never lost its favor with operating officers.

A full-size roundhouse, with a diameter approximating 300 feet, has as its necessary accessories, facilities for coaling the locomotives—several at a time—as well as supplying them with water, sand, and other necessities. Possibly the terminal will be big enough to demand shop facilities for trifling repairs and maintenance of both cars and motive power. A big passenger terminal is a much bigger thing than that gaudy waiting-room in which you sit, whilst your train is being made ready to take you out from the city.

Great as the room assigned to locomotives, greater must be yard-room for car-storage, in rough proportions, as the length of the locomotive to the average train length. It takes something approaching a genius to lay out the car-yards, particularly in the case of passenger terminals, which are almost invariably in the heart of great cities where land values are fabulously high. These yards, in order to earn the appreciation of the men who must operate them, must be easy of access and be of sufficient size to meet the heavy demands that are to be put upon them. To appreciate them, let us consider them in daily use.

The heavy express which has discharged its baggage and passengers in the train-shed is hauled out to the yards by one of the sturdy little switch-engines that are eternally poking their way about the yards. The engine that has pulled it in from the road backs itself down to the roundhouse, without another thought of the train. Its responsibility ended as soon as the run ended in the train-shed. The engineer simply has to see that his locomotive is carefully put away in the roundhouse; and, on some roads, that his fireman cleans its upper parts before the next run out upon the line. The roundhouse crew is then supposed to take care of the rest of the engine.

In the meantime, the stout little switching-engine has hauled the cars out to the yards, separating the Pullman equipment and placing day-coaches, baggage cars, and the like in a position by themselves. An effort is made to keep the equipment for the heavy through trains reserved, allowance being made for occasional changes for repair and maintenance. In the case of the local and suburban trains, their varying traffic requires varying lengths; and it is possible that two or three of the train-shed tracks contain a supply of extra coaches in order that emergencies of sudden and unexpected traffic may be met.

The yards must afford full facilities for storing and cleaning cars. This last is a thorough operation, compressed air being used in many cases and to great advantage. Within, seats are thoroughly dusted, floors swept, woodwork wiped, while the railroad’s pride in the outer appearance of its equipment is shown by the scrupulous care with which a small army of cleaners, ladders in hand, wash down the varnished sides of the coaches. In addition, both coaches and Pullmans must be stocked with linen and ice-water, lighting tanks filled and trucks inspected while in storage yards. Most elaborate provisions are made for the stocking of dining and buffet cars.

Through equipment will rest in the yards from six to twenty-four hours, as an average. The local and suburban trains have a programme of their own, slightly different. The engine that is to make the run will get its train in the first place from the storage yard. It is only a big express run, where the locomotive is privileged to back into the station, to find its train made ready there for it by some fag of a switch-engine. The engine that hauls the local backs its own train into the station, makes its run out upon the line, 15, 25, 50 miles, whatever the case may be, and brings the train back into the station. It kicks the cars out, just beyond the cover of the train-shed and while it is hurrying to the turntable the cars are being hastily swept and dusted. An hour will be allowed the engineer to turn his engine and get his coal and water supply, and then he will start out again on his local run. This performance will be repeated one or more times, before the coaches are sent to the yard for thorough cleaning and stocking, and the locomotive housed for a little rest in the programme.

This is not the universal programme, but it is typical. It seems simple; but with the multiplicity of local trains in service, the demands of the regular through traffic, and the special demands that come unexpectedly day after day, that car storage yard has got to be arranged for an economy of operation, as well as with the economy of space in view. Each storage track must be of convenient access and the chances are that a separate tower and interlocking may be set aside for the quick, convenient, and safe operation of the storage yard. In any event, it must be so built as to be worked without interference of any sort on the main line tracks of the terminal.

So much for the terminal, in reference to its operation; now let us consider it for a moment from the standpoint of the passenger. The first point to be considered by the engineers who design it is the point that we have just considered—safety and convenience in operation. A terminal might be, and sometimes is, an architectural triumph and a thing of monumental beauty, but a curse and an extravagance as an operating proposition. The architects, the mural painters, the furniture designers and the like are called in last. It is their province to make the setting for the thing the engineers have already created.

So in considering the terminal station as a building, we must still give ear to the engineer. He must plan for the future, anticipate the number of persons who are to pass through this city’s gate fifty years hence, and plan his concourse, so many square inches for each one of those future users of the terminal. Exits and entrances to the trains must be built in order that incoming and outgoing streams of persons shall not conflict. All these points require careful study. It is possible to design a baggage-room so bad as to make the station all but a failure; a stuffy ticket-office that is almost an impossibility to use under pressure conditions. The good engineer thinks two or three thousand times before he begins the design of a passenger terminal.

The concourse, or head platform, that joins all the different track platforms is the main feature of the terminal building. Upon it some persons congregate preparatory to going through the gates to their trains, and other persons congregate awaiting the arrival of trains—a matter which is carefully bulletined for their convenience. Arriving and departing passengers, with a percentage of idlers, must be accommodated upon it. It must be capacious. Exits to the street should be provided, without the necessity of passing through the station building, and the carriage stand should be close at hand.

The waiting-room will be the monumental and artistic expression of the terminal. It may or may not be a portion of the entrance to the concourse and train-shed, but it is essential that it be conveniently located, that smoking-rooms, women’s waiting-rooms, parcel-check, telephone, telegraph, news-stand, and restaurant facilities be close at hand. It is hardly less desirable that the ticket-offices adjoin the waiting-room yet the architect who so places his ticket-offices that the belated traveller has unnecessary delay in purchasing his tickets, will bring down unnumbered curses upon his defenceless head.

The modern station will make provision for numerous railroad offices—be a complete modern office-building in fact, although not emblazoning that in its architectural design—and will have lunch-stand and restaurant facilities, with their necessary addenda of store-rooms, refrigerators and kitchens, as complete as those of the largest hotels.

The baggage accommodations deserve a paragraph by themselves. Americans, due to the liberal baggage provisions of our railroads, travel each year with increased impedimenta. Each year the task of the baggage-handlers multiplies. Making room for trunks has come to be an important terminal provision. In the large terminals, this traffic is divided, an in-baggage room receiving from incoming trains and distributing to various forms of city baggage delivery and an out-baggage room receiving and checking baggage for outgoing trains. The in-baggage room is always much the largest, because of the delays that almost invariably hold trunks for a time—short or long—upon their arrival at a terminal.

It is desirable that baggage be handled with as little inconvenience as possible to passengers; and for this reason almost all terminals have subways extending from the “in” and “out” rooms beneath all train-shed platforms and connected with each of these by elevators, large enough to receive a full-sized baggage-truck. In this way annoyance and delay to passengers is minimized. In the case of heavy through trains, where baggage runs unusually heavy, the baggage-cars are frequently detached and switched in upon special tracks that run alongside the baggage rooms.

The passenger terminal must also provide mail and express facilities among these structures, but these, as has already been intimated, are generally apart and quite separate from the passenger facilities. A power plant is another necessity. The buildings must be heated, cars warmed in freezing weather long before the locomotives are attached, ice-machines operated for the station restaurant, power supplied to elevators, dynamos, and lesser mechanisms about the terminal. This is a feature that is not radically different from that of other large commercial structures.The capacity of a modern railroad is measured by the capacity of its terminals rather than by that of its main line tracks. The railroads were not quick to realize nor to appreciate this fact at the first. It was finally forced upon their attention, and in that way became one of the fundamental principles of American railroad construction and operation.

The terminal became recognized as one of the most efficient possible solutions of the congestion problem, a little more than a quarter of a century ago. It was then that the double-tracking and four-tracking devices were found to measure all out of cost with the relief that was to be derived from them. It was then that the engineers were told to meet the situation with a relief that should be measurably low in cost.

The result of their work has been to put America foremost with her railroad terminals. The engineers have worked against great odds in many cases. The railroads in the beginning took little or no forethought for their terminals. They neglected rare opportunities to buy land for these facilities in the beginning, when the cities were small and the land cheap. They have paid in millions of dollars for this neglect. In some cases, the early railroads had little money to expend upon this city real estate; but in few cases did any of their managers have the gift of prophecy that made them foresee the great cities of to-day or the great tides of traffic they would be called upon to move.

Nor has this phase of the situation improved within recent years. A great railroad rebuilt its passenger terminal in an important city ten years ago and blindly imagined that the increase in facilities would carry it a quarter of a century at the least. To-day it is carrying off the remnants of that station improvement to the scrap-heap and trying to see far enough into the future to build a station that shall last it fifty years at least.

There is not an engineer employed by that railroad who will assert himself as possessed of the absolute belief that the new station will be adequate for the traffic of a half century hence, if indeed the great spreading palace of steel and marble be in existence at all at that time. All that they will tell you is to point to the fact that another one of America’s greatest passenger carriers has doubled its traffic within the past ten years.

“How can we gamble with an unknown future of such dimensions?” they ask you in return.

When the Park Square Station of the Boston & Providence Railroad in Boston and the Grand Central Station in New York were built, in the early seventies, they were the first railroad passenger terminals of size that the country had seen. It was thought that they would stand a hundred years as monuments to the genius of the men who designed them. To-day they are both gone, each supplanted by a station that both together might be packed within.

Do you wonder then that railroad operator and engineer alike stand appalled at the tremendous terminal problem that our great cities, growing awesome overnight, are constantly presenting to them?

In the beginning, there were no passenger or freight terminals, nor, indeed, a traffic that demanded them. The passenger cars were apt to be hauled by horses from some downtown depot through the centre of the street to an “outer depot” at the edge of the town where the locomotive replaced the horses. When the cars became heavier, the trains longer and more frequent, the railroads were gradually forced in most cities to remove their rails from the streets and the use of horses was generally abandoned. Still, passengers crossing Baltimore, for some years after the war on their way from the North to Washington, noticed that the trains were broken into cars and drawn one by one by horses across the city, through crowded streets, from one outer railroad station to the other. A venerable white horse was the switching-engine in the Rochester depot until the beginning of the eighties.

When the passenger traffic on the railroads had become a business of extent—about the middle of the past century—the construction of sizable railroad stations began. The Fitchburg Railroad built its stone fortress at Boston, which still stands and was for many years regarded as a marvel of its sort. Down in Baltimore, the Susquehanna Railroad—afterwards the Northern Central—built Calvert Station, and stanch old Calvert is still a busy passenger gateway of the Monumental City. A few years later the Baltimore & Ohio built Camden Station there and Camden Station was regarded as something rather unusually fine for a number of years.

In the sixties, the railroad terminals grew in size, and the old custom of having separate stations at the far sides of important towns was disappearing, as the American began to see and to demand the advantages of through traffic. So Cleveland built at the close of the war a stone Union Station, of such size that Cleveland folks bragged of it for many years. The stone Union Station at Cleveland is still in use, but the folk of that town do not brag of it nowadays. Cleveland has grown a good deal since they built the Union Station there.

The first real passenger terminals of importance in the country were the Park Square in Boston, and the Grand Central in New York, to which reference has already been made. These presented architectural pretensions such as the railroads of the country had not before offered to the cities they served. They also served as models for bigger things that were to follow. In Boston, the Lowell Road planned and built a large new station, and the era of the passenger terminal was begun.

When the Pennsylvania Railroad built Broad Street Station, at Philadelphia, it built a terminal a little finer than anything accomplished up to that time. Even to-day, with the dignity of years creeping upon it, Broad Street is still one of the foremost American stations. The policy of its owners has been to keep it abreast of the demands of the day, and only recently it has been greatly enlarged again, its protecting, interlocking, and signal system being made second to none in the world. To the traveller, the ivory-white waiting-room, where Philadelphians delight to congregate, is an unending source of admiration; engineers find interest in the intricate system of tunnels and bridges by which a number of trunk-line divisions are brought into the station without crossing at level. Broad Street Station shows a yearly increase in its passenger traffic of about five per cent. It has a daily movement of more than 600 loaded trains in and out, in addition to a heavy switching movement. But because of the steady increase of its traffic the Pennsylvania has already planned to relieve it by building a new main for express trains out at West Philadelphia. When that is done Broad Street will be used exclusively for suburban traffic. A short distance away stands the Market Street Station, of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, a terminal rivalling Broad Street in beauty, and only slightly inferior in capacity. Philadelphia possesses two distinguished city gateways.

But the first big station terminals—in our American sense that a thing big must be bigger than anything else of the same kind in the world—were those erected at Boston and at St. Louis. The first of these handles a traffic far exceeding that of any other terminal ever built; the second has a train-shed that is gigantic and overwhelming; and so each of the cities can, in a measure of truth, claim for itself the largest railroad station ever built. Each has enough of novelty and interest to make it worthy of attention.

The Boston terminal—South Station—was preceded by a giant structure erected along the bank of the Charles River to receive a multitude of through and suburban railroad lines entering from the north. This terminal—North Station—embraced the structure of the Boston & Lowell Railroad and superseded those of the Boston & Maine and Fitchburg railroads. The merging of these and other interests into the present Boston & Maine made the North Station a possibility. It is not a structure of particular distinction, from either an architectural or an engineering standpoint, but it has proved itself a mighty convenience to a travelling public, using a multiplicity of busy lines.

The convenience of it made the South Station a possibility. Boston, like Philadelphia, spreads out well beyond its actual boundaries and measures itself as a vast community, including many near-by cities and villages. With the consolidation of a number of railroads in Southern New England into the New York, New Haven & Hartford system, and the popularity of the North Station so close at hand, the South Station came as a matter of course. It replaced the stations of the New York & New England—whose site forms part of its site—the Old Colony, the Boston & Albany, and the Park Square Station. To accommodate the vast traffic of all these railroads, a great terminal was designed and built, a thing whose bigness is hardly realized by the passenger coming and going through it and who knows it only as a thing of some thousands of shuffling feet, giant shadows, and long distances.

In addition to the 28 sub-tracks in the train-shed, South Station is, in effect, a through station for electric suburban traffic. This service has not yet been installed, but the tracks are ready for use upon short notice, when the facilities of the main train-shed shall become overtaxed. This through station has been ingeniously devised underneath the train-shed and waiting-rooms of the terminal. It is served by two tracks leading from the main entrance tracks to the station—guarded by separate interlocking and tower controls, and consists of two extensive loops. For suburban service, with no baggage to be handled, these loops will some day afford a great accommodation. Three or four electric trains may be stood upon each. The time and necessity of reversing the trains is entirely obviated, and upon the two tracks of this sub-station a short-haul traffic can be handled almost equal in numbers to that of the train-shed overhead.

What such a statement means can be better realized by a recourse to bold statistics. South Station handled 31,831,390 passengers in 1909, who travelled two and fro in some 800 trains daily. It has handled more than 900 trains in a single day. Its baggage men take care of more than 2,500,000 trunks in a twelvemonth. The statistics of a city gate like South Station are, in themselves, sizable.

St. Louis has one passenger station to serve as city gate for the traffic that comes and goes at that important railroad centre. That gate is the chief through passenger traffic point of the world. From its train-shed one may take through trains to every corner of the United States and a few distant corners of Mexico and Canada. St. Louis, like most Western cities has no volume of suburban traffic as New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, but it is a consequential point for through passengers. The better to serve the needs of the 22 different railroad systems entering that city, the Union Station was built a dozen years ago. It was thought to be big enough to last St. Louis many years. Before the World’s Fair of 1904 opened in that city the Union Station was already judged inadequate, and an elaborate plan was consummated for its enlargement.

When the Union Station was originally planned, St. Louis demanded a gate that would be worthy of her size and dignity. No type of through station would do, the head-house terminal was demanded and built, even though in actual practice it necessitated backing each arriving train into the shed. A station of giant size with the largest train-shed in the world was built and hailed with a glad acclaim by the Western town.

When the station was found inadequate, the engineers found their plans for enlarging it would have to be adapted to a very confined area, proscribed by immovable railroad properties to the south, highway viaducts to the east and west, and a granite head-house, costing several million dollars, to the north. Within that confined area, they were to correct the evils of insufficient capacity—a train-shed with a single 4-track throat and some standing tracks of but 3 cars’ length, inadequate baggage arrangements, and lesser evils. Within two years, they had substituted, without increasing the area of the Union Station property, a 10-car capacity for each of the 32 tracks of the train-shed, a double throat with 6 tracks, increased concourses and distributing platforms for passengers, and a complete subway system for the handling of baggage. The prosecution of that work, while the station was in constant and busy use, ranks as one of the marvels of latter-day practical engineering.

From the standpoint of the architect, no other station has yet been built in the United States that can compare with the new Union Station at Washington. For years, the overcrowded railroad stations at that city have been but wretched gateways to the national capitol. Now the city that is fast becoming the Mecca of all Americans has an entrance worthy of her dignity, and in keeping with the increasing magnificence of her architectural works.

The Washington Station is in full accord with the wonderful architectural development of that city, and has a setting in the creation of a great facing plaza, in which 100,000 troops may be gathered in review. Some day the plaza is to be surrounded by a group of public buildings but even in that day the white marble station, exceeding in size all other Washington buildings save the Capitol itself, will remain the dominating feature of that facing plaza. It has been created in simple classic outline, a vaulted train-shed being purposely omitted, in order that the station should not overshadow the proportions of the near-by Capitol.

Similarly, the vaulted train-shed has been omitted in the splendid new white granite terminal which the Chicago and Northwestern Railway has just completed on the West Side of Chicago. That new terminal is a real addition to a town which has long boasted two model stations—one in La Salle Street and the other upon the Lake Front. The Northwestern terminal is one of the fine architectural features of Chicago—a structure of classic design, the dominating feature of which is a colonnaded portico, monumental in type and towering to a height of 120 feet above the main street entrance.

This new terminal has a possible capacity of a quarter of a million passengers each day. It has some novel features for the comfort of passengers. A great many travellers cross Chicago in the course of twenty-four hours; in many cases this is the single break in a weary and dirty journey. For these, the new terminal not only provides the customary lounging rooms and barber shops, but also private baths. There is a series of rooms where invalids, women with children, or other persons seeking privacy, may go directly by private elevator where they may rest while waiting for connecting trains. For women there are tea-rooms and hospital rooms, with trained nurses in attendance. That is almost the last note in comfort for the traveller. There are, in addition to all these, private rooms where the suburbanite may change into his evening clothes and proceed in his various social duties, changing back again before he catches his late train out into the country.

New York City is still in the process of rebuilding and readjusting her gateways. Two magnificent terminals in her metropolitan district have already been finished; the third is still under construction. The first of these terminals is a real water-gate, built for the Lackawanna Railroad and situated in Hoboken, just across the Hudson River from the corporate New York. It is a handsome architectural creation in steel and concrete. Its tall clock-tower dominates the river front by night and day and those who come and go through its portals find themselves in a succession of white and vaulted hallways and concourses that suggest a library or museum more than the mere commercial structure of a railroad corporation.

An interesting feature of the Hoboken Station is the abandonment of the high train-shed such as has come to be a distinguishing feature of some of the world’s great terminals. Engine smoke and gases work havoc with the structural steel work of such sheds, and the engineers of the Hoboken Station fashioned a low-lying roof, slotted to receive the locomotive stacks. The result is a clean train-house, yet admirably protected from the stress of weather. It is a novel note in terminal engineering.

The Pennsylvania Station, opened in November, 1910, has already become one of the notable landmarks of New York. Beneath it disappeared the biggest hole ever excavated at one time in the metropolitan city; for the great station is not so famed either for its architectural beauty or for the completeness of its details (although it is in the foreguard of the world’s great terminals in both of these regards), as for the stupendous engineering project that was found necessary to connect it with the trunk-line railroads that it serves. To the west, this takes form in two parallel tunnels underneath the city, the Hudson River, and the Jersey Heights; to the east a still heavier traffic, composed of empty trains in Pennsylvania service and a great army of Long Island commuters, is carried under the very heart of Manhattan Island and under the East River in four parallel tunnels. Trains run for six miles under the greatest city of the continent, with its flanking rivers and environs, without ever seeing more than a momentary flash of daylight. The terminal has no train-shed or other of the familiar external appearances of the usual railroad station in a large city.

A model American railroad station—the Union Station of the New York Central,
Boston & Albany, Delaware & Hudson, and West Shore railroads at Albany