Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1921-09-16
AS ONE WOMAN SEES IT
Horrors Of Railroad Travel Compared
to Travel by AutomobIle--How
Invention Opens Another Door
Whenever One Shuts
Rx SARAH ID. L0MRIE

/ AST autumn i Travelled for ten days,
IL with stop overs for a consecutive night
and day or two at some pleasant inn or
clubhouse. This autumn I have done the
same, only this time l stayed with friends
who were proonging their holidays in some
agreeable cottage or summer camp. The
cost of ench trip was about the same, but
between the restfulness of the one and the
other there was no comparison. On the
first trip the journey was accomplished by
a motor; on the last 1t was done by trains
Even by paying the extra fare for an entire
section. and by heavy feeling of porters for
the transportation of ones baggage by hand
so as to avoid the delay of checking; even
though one beguiled the long waits between
connections by taking q room and n bath at
some near by hotel in order to get back self
respect after the horrors of the train dress
ing room; even though one hailed taxis to
avoid the uncertainty of unknown street car
routes, and even though ones destination
was some pleasant. we'll appointed room in
a friends house, the fact remains that the
complication of travelling by railroad over a
wide area of country is growingly tiresome
and vexatious. due not to the travelling
public, not to the railroad employees of the
subordinate sort, but to the stupidity and
petty graspinsness of the railroad manage
ment.
A T time when private motors are in
"A competition with the older and more
organized way of travelling, the railroad
officials who make the policy of the road
seem to have gone out Of their way to throw
the advantage of prior possession into the
discard and to make their companies mode
of transporting the public as inconvenient
and as expensive as possible.
The restrictions about selling tickets. the
ban of return tickets, the long waits at the
ticket windows, the impossibility of buying
sleeping car reservations or in most cases
chair car seats, without an accompanying
railroad ticket; the arbitrary restrictions
about the Office where such accommodations
are to be procured with any certainty In
regions where summer travel Is heaviest, the
congested baggage conditions where trunks
have to be transported between stations
through cities, the lack of team play between
railroads of different management, the dirt
and crowd in the inadequate stations, the
slap dash unsavoriness of the expensive
meals in both stations and trains. the rough
and tiresome handling Of sleeping cars at
functions, when they are shuntcd like coal
cars from one branch line to another the
curious custom of making up the beds in
sleeping car before Its passengers board the
train, so that whether it is early or late the
travellers have no place to sit as the train
moves out of the station, the overcrowded
state of the day cars, gorging and disgorging
their local clientele, so that on long days
journey through Messenger is driven to
at least try for chair in order to
escape the fatigue of constant coming and
going in the less expensive and better aired
one.
MIE BOAST so much in this country about
w our modern comforts. but we offer in
our ordinary day coaches neither the comfort
nor the independent privacy of second
lass railroad carriage in Europe. And for
the complications Of an extended tour
or the Middle West, except In the offices Of
the great cities-Philadelphia New York,
Boston--nothing any longer approaching
round trip ticket with the accompanying
reservations is possible to procure.
For the return trip one is at the mercy
of little local agencies with authority over
but small radius of the complicated series
of connections. Even then. in his small seat
of authority, he has an apologize air of
having disposed of all his wares. Ten days
before the date of my departure from Bar
Harbor there was only an upper berth on
the night train to Boston available, and
that was when the tide of travel had not
turned south with any concerted motion.
MOST day trains from Boston for New
Wl York State country resorts or for the
White or the Green or the Adirondack
Mountains would logically leave Boston
around 8 4. NJ, and one would suppose that
from center like Mount Desert or Portland
or the Rangeleys trains going south to Bos-
ton, WlLu SuullutT travel uS lslI IulSOU
detre, would calculate on that popularity
of an early morning departure and arrange
their schedules accordingly But trains
from Maine arrive an hour too late for any
morning train anywhere out of Boston, so
that in order to go from North East Harbor,
let us say, to Lake Placid, y. Y, it was
twelve hours shorter to go all the way to
New York and then UP again via Albany to
the Lake Champlain rOute-shorter in time
and less expensive and involving fewer
changes of stations.
w and the trouble about learning what are
the available connections and accommoda
tions and the trouble of procuring them all
eliminated, one has in the motor still other
advantages not to be ignored. The ease of
the departure and the arrival, the simplif-
cation of the question of baggage, the ex
change Of inns for sleeping cars and wayside
teahOuses for station restaurants, not to
speak Of train dining cars the intimate and
yet protected participation III the life of the
countryside through which one journeys, the
amusement one can pick up from local color
ing in the event of delays incident to re-
pairs. the pleased sense Of adventure, with
nothing cut and dried, not even ones exact
destination for the night; the difference of
tho point of view of a town or village seen
from the tracks Of railroad and seen In the
mark suburbs Of the blue Book Route" !;
and most Of all, the difference physically
between breathing the fresh air under open
skies and the heavy, tobacco human scented
air of a railroad car.
1t is quite true that when a motor does
| let YOU down twenty miles from anywhere
YOU are in fix that makes the stale horrors
| of n sleeping car seem momentarily prefer
| able; but in the retrospect. even though I've
| known the blank despair engendered by
broken axles, cut rims, clay rutted detours,
| rain sodden dirt highways and a short cir
| cuited electric system, there Is no comparison
| in either the pleasure, the health or the
stored memories between the one experience
and the other.
TIME cost of running a big FIVE passenger
| l car Is, I am told, about twelve cents a
mile, including the wear and tear, gas
| and oil
This divided among four persons, two of
whom can take turns driving the car, brings