The Coolidge examiner., 1937-07-29
Under New York City.

est telephone numbers in New York
city. In addition to outside lines,
130 branch ticket Offices in Manhat-
tan, Brooklyn and Newark are con-
neRted with the central reservation
bureau by private wires.
In a spacious gallery from Is to
20 clerks sit before series Of aper-
lures like old-time village post-office
boxes, except that these cases are
mounted to move along a track
from clerk to clerk.
In the boxes are piled the reser-
walton cards. the kind the Pullman
conductor always is lingering just
before the train leaves; in each
pigeonhole are marked-up cards for
so days ahead.
Lights Govern Conversation.
Before each clerk is a series Of
ten red lights and ten green lights.
The green lights denote ticket
Office call; the red lights an outside
call direct from passenger.
A green light flashes.
Lower ten. K7. 3 p. m. Chicago.
Today. Ticket 1892. Right"
In very different tone and tempo
is the next response to red light,
an individual who must have expla-
nation Of price, type of accommoda-
ton, daylight time in summer, and
a thank you"
No switchboard operator inter
venes in the 10000 or sometimes
many more calls that come in daily
An automatic selector, worked out
with the New York Telephone COM
pany engineers, routes these calls
from ten lines out of the selector
room to ten positions" at the card
tables" in the reservation bureau.
If one operator is busy, the "se-
lector" shunts the call to another.
lighting the red or green signal to
denote its origin. In an average "a
hours 63 clerks are employed in
shifts to make some 5000 reser-
vations for berths. chairs, compart
ments or drawing rooms.
What They Leave on Trains.
Perhaps the high light of human
interest" in the station is the lost
and found storeroom. There are
stored and ticketed some several
hundred different items.
The articles recently included a
basket OF spectacles, skis, two
cats. bootblack's outfit, books in
six languages, a pair of crutches,
three sets of false teeth, a restive
terrier. dozens of umbrellas, tennis
racquets, more than twoscore wom-
ems coats, piles of gloves, fresh
sirloin steak (sad harbinger of do
mestic recrimination) and $50, 900
worth of bonds about to be returned
by special messenger.
In subterranean corridors, far
below the station tracks, may be
piled hundreds of pigeon crates. AS
many as 5000 crates of homers
have been shipped in a month, as
far as a thousand miles, to be re-
leased by baggagemasters for races
back to home lofts.
Other strange shipments come
through the station for baggage or
express cars-baby alligators, pedi-
greed chicks. honeybees, game,
thousands of crates of mail order
eggs" and bullion cargoes accom-
panied by 25 or 30 armed men.
Saturday nights from rs to 80
trucks race with their loads of Sun
day papers to catch the baggage
cars attached to the paper trains"
One newspapers early Sunday edi-
ton goes to press at $40 p. m. and
is loaded on a train leaving at so.
If the driver gets held up by
single traffic light the stationmaster
must hold the train.
Handling the Mail.
Some $50 carloads of mail are
ldIlO1cO III dlIO Oub VI ILLS StdliOIl GN-
cry day. If the sacks were piled
and hauled along platforms passen-
gers would not have space to board
trains. They are dropped through
trap doors beside mail cars where
conveyer belts carry them to huge
separating tables.
There men assert the bags as
they pour in and pitch them into
chutes for other belts that run be-
meath the street to the city post
office adjoining, or to belts that
connect with outgoing trains.
Around special tracks, to which
passengers are not admitted, where
mail cars await loading, are spy
galleries from which postal inspec-
tors, unseen by the workers, may
watch the operation.
Nearly 10000 sacks of mail a
day, about 1,500 trunks and other
checked baggage, 2,2O0 pieces of
hand baggage checked in parcel
rooms and a thousand more pieces
in parcel lockers, from 10000 20
10000 pieces of parcel post-these
are some of the operations that
must not obtrude upon passenger
comfort.