The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-08-10
NEW GRAND CENTRAL.

DulIQlDgS Tn LnlS CllS' Fl SSlSu III loilI it remains to this day the only trunk line passenger terminal station in New York. Owned by the New York and Harlem railroad company, it is leased to the New York Central and Hudson River, and a portion of it is sub-leased, together with certain trackage rights, to the New York, New Haven and Hartford at a daily rental of about one thousand dollars, varying accord ing to the number of cars using the station. This rental is paid directly from daily earnings by the New Haven company, and does not figure in the final expense accounts of that corpora ton, being deducted from the receipts before any other claims receive atten- tion, so that no possible circumstances can preclude the prompt payment of the rent. The "trackage rights" re- ferred to is the privilege of using the Harlem tracks to a point north of Woodlawn, twelve miles distant.
 At the Grand Central station there arrive and depart each week day 316 regular passenger trains, POS on the Hudson River and Harlem divisions of the Central, and no on the New Haven.
 A summary of the departing trains and their destinations will give an idea of how much long distance travel starts from this station. There are:
 To Tuckahoe White Plains and Ken sco, 36 trains, average run 20 miles; Croton Falls and Lake Mahopac, 5 trains, distance about 50 miles; Paw ling, 63 miles, trains; Chatham, 127 miles, or beyond, trains. To local points on the Hudson, such as Croton, 25 miles, 30 trains; to Poughkeepsie, 73 miles, trains; Albany, 143 miles, and the north, 9 trains; Albany and the west, il additional, nearly all of the lat ter continuing to Buffalo, 440 miles, and to Chicago, nearly a thousand miles by the majority of routes The 25 local trains on the New Haven have an av- craze run of 30 miles. Seventeen run to New Haven "A miles, and 13 to Bos- ton, say 225 miles, there being three rcuts of different length to that city.
 In addition to the scheduled passen- ger trains there are a dozen mail and express trains, as well as the Harlem mllk train, which do not appear on the public time tables; then there are also occasional specials run over the Gen. tral; excursions, officers trains, etc, and special funeral trains to Woodlawn and kensico cemeteries on the Harlem road. The New Haven road rarely runs a special train or special cars of any sort, the management being ex- tremely conservative and discounte- nancing any disturbance of their usual arrangements.
 Besides the regular and special trains there is another class of traftic-the empty cars going to Mott Haven, five miles north, to be cleaned, and return ing afterward from the yard at that point These are generally the through trains of the Central and New Haven reads, and two of them are often drawn out together, making 16 or 20 single or double trains each way daily on this account A similar movement some what greater in extent, is that of loco- motives of the Central or Harlem going | to the Mott Haven round house on the | site of the Grand Central palace, but 1 the ground lease expired, and conse- | quently Mott Haven became the most | available site for the new shelter. On | the other hand, the New Haven com | pany, with Yankee shrewdness built upon it's own land and so it now re- | tains possession of round house just outside the station. Altogether, it is a quiet day when the train and engine movements in and out do not exceed 800
 | Of the three waiting rooms but one has direct general access to the outgo- | ing tracks, and that is the New Haven; | the Central has direct access to one l track, but for the others the passen- gers have to take an improvised foot | bridge, while the Harlem passengers have to go around the horn'' to get tc their trains.The fact is the station was built at a time when architecture was less science than it is to-day, show ol "bluff' counted for much in the Jin | Fisk era, and the noble arch of the Grand Central trainshed, unsurpassed to this day, was supposed to offset the
 defects of the practical arrangements
 The main feature of the proposed i'm. | provements in the waiting rooms is tt consolidate them all in one at the soutl end of the building, enlarging the New | Haven room for the purpose by taking in certain area of the trainshed. is the practice now, and a costly one for the roads, to run more numerou:
 and shorter passenger trains than for
 merly, and consequently a hundred fee
 of tho trainshed could easily be spared
 One feature of railway life which il
 conspicuously lacking at the Grant
 Central is midnight activity No pas
 senger train arrives or departs betweel t2:35 and a. m., and for more thai four hours the waiting rooms are de 1 serted This is in marked contras
 with many other railway stations
 whose greatest activity is the smal
 hours of the morning. It is the genera
 practice to start through trains iron terminals at convenient hours in tn evening, and let them strike intermedi ate towns as they may; hence at Alba
 ny, Utica, Syracuse and Rochester l New Haven, New London and Provi
 dence, and Harrisburg, Altoona o Pittsburg, the through night trains ol | the Central New Haven and Pennsyl
 vania stop at uncanny hours, and is al J ways a surprise to the inexperience traveller to see how many passenger
 they take and leave.
 CONSOLIDATED FREIGHT LINES
 LINES.
 I New York, Aug. 9-At q meeting q