The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-08-09

It Is. this stream, rising and falling with the weat thera conditions, which feeds the summer resorts and has en- abIed New England's famous hotels to eater to the finest trade and made them independent of local truck farms. It has also greatly increased Che number of Boston's commission houses.
 The speed with which this stream flows northward is equaled by the celerity with which ft5is handled in the South Boston yard, the great distrib- uting reservoir into which it pours its tons of produce. There are seven yards and thirteen freight houses mak- ing up the Boston terminal, and in and out of it run 1900 cars day, of which this perishable freight forms only a part.
 As soon as one of the fast express freight trains reaches the yard in the early hours of the morning the cars are marked showing what yard they are intended for, this depending upon the firms to which they are consigned Then the switch engines get busy It takes an average of enty minutes to mark the cars. They have so re- duced the time of switching or classi- fcation, as it Is called, that in thirty minutes every car in a forty car train will have been put in its proper yard and place. On an average it is just one hour from the time the big Pacific locomotive lands its train of fruit in the terminal that the cars are ready to have their seals broken. That is when it is ready to be sold by the mdrketmen, though the sales do not begin till the bell rings at a. m.
 There are few other cities where this kind of freight is landed so close to the market. Ten minutes is all that is required in Boston to transfer it to the market from the car. In this. terminal, where 4,135 freight cars can be kept at one time, there is sufficient space provided so that teams can back up to 2, 100 of these cars.
 About 95 per cent of the produce brought into this yard every day re mains there or ts shipped out by ex- press. The cars destined for Portland and for northern New England begin moving out by noon again, but from Boston a radius of at least twenty-five miles is covered direct. Portland will get it's berries in time for breakfast the next morning.
 About 75 per cent of New England is affected by this fast freight service perfected by the railroad men. The y line of steel-which ties the north to the south. Today the New Englander, even though he lives in Maine, is as certain of fresh strawberries for his table in the spring as he is of his own garden truck in the summer.
 When the great Hell Gate bridge and Connecting Railroad joining the New Haven system with the PennsyIva- mia is completed in New York city this schedule may be shortened even more. This great engineering feat, un- dertaken by the two roads, will obviate the long water transfer around Man hattan Island It is only three miles across New York bay from Greenville. where the Pennsylvania trains roll in from the south, to Bay Ridge, where the cars will again take the rails bound for Boston, and the dangerous and delaying tides of Hell Gate will thus be avoided. While 1t will not mean the saving of another market day, it will mean that more trains can be handled and may result some day in making Portlands market day the s1 ~ame as BoSton'S.
 The railroad is the great harvester It gathers the grain in one corner of our country and distributes it in an other than man may be fed with the staff of life; but, more than that, it sees that his table is supplied with the good things of the ground though he i've amid the snows