The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1879-10-02
A Railroad in the Air.

The city of New York is long and mar
row. There is a deep river on either
side, where ships come from all parts of
the world close up to the edge of the
town. Now, where the ships are the
merchants want to be, and where the
merchants are great many other peO-
pie of business want to be; and so it
happens that very great number of
people want to do business in very
small space. The land is thickly cover
ed with stores and offices and manufac-
tories. When the city was small this
was all right, and folks lived near their
stores and counting-roOms quite COM
fortably. But more and more people
came 10 live in New York and the place
became very crowded. The rivers kept
them in on each side, and to get room
they made new streets farther and far
ther to the north, up the island. Then
people said they must have cars to take
them up and down town from their
homes to the stores. They laid tracks
on the streets and used horses to
move the ears. This was all very good
for a few years; but, more and
more people came there to live They
found the horse-cars too slow and they
began to build tall tenement-hOuses and
to put dozens of poor families under
one roof. Then the people said:
'This will not do, we must have rail
roads with good engines to take us far
up town toward the country"
OF course these railroads could not
be laid in the streets, for locomotives
can not run fast through crowds of
wagons and people. And so they at
first thought they might make under
ground railroads like those in London,
or they might tear down a long row of
houses and make a lane through the
town where the tracks could be laid.
Either plan would cost a great deal of
money; so, after many trials and
a great deal of talking, they decided to
build high iron platforms through the
broad streets and on top to place the
tracks for n railroad.
A locomotive is a curious animal. He
likes a good level road with no bad hills
to climb. If you try TO make him climb
a steep hill he may stop short and refuse
to stir wheel. The land to the west of
Central Park is exceedingly hilly, and
the railroad must be made to please
these iron horses. So it happens that
where the ground is low the iron sup
ports of the railroad are very high.
Some of the posts that support the rail-
road are 81 feet high, and as they are all
hollow until filed with cement, some
curious work could be seen here while
the building was going On-men on high
platforms pouring the stuff into the hol-
low posts.
This matter of running a steam rail-
road through city, in such a way as
not to interfere with the traffic, was a
difficult and puzzling business. In Lon
don, as l have said, the city railroads
are placed in tunnels under the streets
and houses. In Paris, there is a rail
road in an open "cutting - or deep
rayine, with bridges over it at ali the
streets that cross it. In many English
cities the railroads run over brick arches
at the level of the hOuse-tOps. All of
these methods answer a good purpose,
but they are very costly. In New York
an entirely different plan has been tried
by these elevated railroads laid on iron
bridges through the streets.
These roads work admirably. There
is a great traffic in the streets where they
are built. There are horse-cars and
crowds of trucks and wagons going up
and down all the time. The hOrse-rail-
roads are decidedly in the way of all
other vehicles, and the cars often cause
blOckades that delay the business peO-
pie very much. Before the elevated rail-
road was built, the hOrse-railroad
was a serious cause of trouble in streets
already crowded with carts and wagons.
But now if we stand on the sidewalk,
and can look in both directions under
the iron bridges, we see that the various
vehicles and hOrse-cars pass along pre-
cisely as if there were no railroad there
While we are examining these things,
two trains pass, one on each side of the
street-in fact, one of them runs di-
rectiy over our heads. We might tell
our friends when we reach home that we
were run over by railroad train and
that it didn't hurt bit.
We walk on downtown and come
to a narrower street, and here the rail
road tracks come close together,
and though the street is shaded by the
iron bridge overhead, it is clear and Un-
ObstIucted. Here is a station with steps
going up to the house overhead, and
we hear a train stop overhead and hear
street and open and close the gates for
the passengers. There is no loud ring
ing of bells or blowing of whistles, not
even puff from the smOke-stack, or
rush of steam from the vacuum-brake.
The bridge resounds somewhat, as you
can easily imagine, when such great
mass of iron is shaken by the rapid mo
ton of the heavy locomotives and trains
but the noise is not of much consequence.
It's far less than the roar and rattle of the
teams in the street below. Certainly the
horses do not seem to mind it. There
is one, gravely eating his oats with evi-
dent satisfaction and peace of mind,
though a rail-train rushes over his head
every two minutes. Charles Barnard,
IN 50. Nicholas for October.