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such as those that ordinarily prevail west of the Missouri River, that is, where traffic is light and trains infrequent, these Union Pacific gasoline cars have proved their worth. A local steam train with a locomotive, two cars, expenses for labor, repairs, cleaning, and so on, costs 24 cents a mile to operate. Electric service with one motor-car and a trailer costs 18 cents a mile, provided the traffic be dense enough to keep the line busy seven days a week. It must be recalled, however, that electrical service requires an elaborate trolley or third-rail equipment. A gasoline motor-car with a trailer, offering baggage, mail, and express, as well as passenger service, costs 15 cents a mile. This is the cost whether the cars run siz days or seven, depending wholly on the amount of service to which they are put. Who is to say that with a showing like this the self-propelled motor-car has not far wider possibilities than

Courtesy of The Railroad Gazette UNION PACIFIC MOTOR CAR No. 8-AIR-TIGHT, GASOLINE DRIVEN

have yet been taken advantage of. These Union Pacific cars have traveled from Omaha, Neb., to Portland, Ore., and back again, from Omaha to New York and to Los Angeles, Cal. The Strang gasoline electric car "Ogerita" ran from Philadelphia to Kansas City, maintaining a speed over much of the route of 45 miles an hour, and it bucked snowdrifts with considerable success last winter on the Santa Fé lines in Kansas. It ran eighteen thousand miles without requiring repairs. The cars are easily capable of traveling more than a mile a minute. Will not the millionaires in the near future have each his private gasoline car to travel where he will?

A typical car of advanced design is No. 8 on the Union Pacific. It seats 75 people. The windows are made like the portholes of a vessel, with round panes that keep out water, dust, and even air. A ventilation system takes in

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THE GRAND CENTRAL STATION YARD, NEW YORK, BEFORE THE REMODELING

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fresh air at the front of the car and lets out the vitiated air at the rear. The entrance steps are let into the sides of the car. The car when under way is as snug and neat as a racing motor-boat. It is two feet lower than an ordinary car, pointed in front and rounded at the back, offering thus a minimum wind resistance. It starts gently, makes little noise, and can run as fast as 70 miles an hour. The experience of the Union Pacific with all its cars has been that they do not require many repairs. With baggage and smoking compartments and comfortable seats for passengers, motor-cars have already come to be regarded as offering one of the luxuries of travel. Most of the cars now in use are more like ordinary coaches than the Union Pacific's Number 8, resembling the familiar combination of baggage and smoking

THE INTERURBAN CAR OF THE FUTURE

car. Traveling in motor-cars is smoother and pleasanter than in regular electric cars, and cleaner than riding in steam trains.

The course that the three innovations outlined the electric locomotive, the suburban electric car, and the railway motor-car-indicate as the direction of railroad progress, seems to be this: The motor-cars will increase traffic on branch lines until the volume is great enough. to justify the installation of electric cars. The electric cars will be the typical form of transportation machines within wide zones about great cities. The branch-line cars will be practically interchangeable with interurban cars on trolley lines-this is, indeed, one of the improvements provided for in the electrification scheme of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, which now owns the main inter

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THE GRAND CENTRAL STATION AND YARDS, NEW YORK, AS THEY WILL BE

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A RAILROAD ELECTRIC MOTOR CAR

All roads entering New York City will run cars like these and other railroads elsewhere must follow

urban trolley lines of Connecticut and a number of important lines in Massachusetts. The public demand will require that the intervening links of track between the rural districts equipped with trolley lines and the zones in which frequent trains run about the cities be connected. With the electrical locomotive operating within these city zones for both freight trains and through passenger trains, and with the main lines already provided with electrical passenger equipment, who does not perceive that in all the thickly settled portions of the country, the steam locomotive will go to the scrap-heap? Cost is an important element in transportation changes, but it is not the only element. With increasing Government control of railroads, it is even a possibility that smoky steam locomotives will be legislated out of existence, if they are not put out by the railroads themselves, except on the huge semi

THE INTERIOR OF THE CAR

The absence of smoke and cinders will make the improvement still greater and the steel construction adds security

desert spaces of the Far West. Meanwhile neither steam railroads nor interurban or city trolley lines have been backward in making notable improvements. Superheaters on locomotives, insuring a great saving in coal consumption, the compulsory use of automatic couplers, electric and other automatic signal devices all are making the railroads an increasingly efficient transportation machine.

With all these improvements introduced to make our railroad travel more convenient, cleaner, pleasanter, and safer, and with the interurban trolley lines extending their scope and approaching closer and closer to railroad operation-running long distance through cars at high speeds, employing in some places sleeping cars and in many places a frequent rural freight service for farmers-the transportation of the near future promises a revolutionary advance over present methods.

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TRAIN SHED OF THE INTERURBAN UNION STATION AT INDIANAPOLIS, IND.

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I

THE MAN IN THE MAKING

HIS EARLY LIFE AND START

BY

S

1863

C. M. KEYS

OME twenty years ago, Mr. J. P. Morgan planned a readjustment of the finances of the Erie Railroad. The great banker had undertaken the task of clearing up the difficulties left over from the time of Jay Gould, Daniel Drew, and Jim Fisk. He had made a plan which he thought should be acceptable. Nothing remained but to get the assent of the stockholders. Everything was going along nicely.

Suddenly the well-oiled machinery came to a stop, as though some one had dropped a stone between two cog-wheels. A comparatively unknown broker had called together some of his friends who happened to be deep in the Erie morass, and had persuaded them to stand with him in demanding better terms from Mr. Morgan. His insight into the situation was so clear, his exposition of it so plain, that he was able to hold his men together and make their position so strong that they forced concessions from the Morgan firm.

The name of the broker was Edward H.

1906

Harriman. When the Morgan people asked him whom he represented he replied, brusquely: "Myself!"

This episode, it will be noted, happened twenty years ago. It has happened many times since, in different forms. When this same Harriman appeared on the Illinois Central board of directors in 1883, he was asked the same question and he answered it in the same way. When he bought into the Union Pacific Railroad in 1897, he would not answer it at all, so Wall Street decided that he was a "Vanderbilt man." A little later came the supposition that he was, and is, a "Standard Oil man." There is no conclusive proof that he at the present time represents anyone but Edward H. Harriman.

WHO AND WHAT IS HARRIMAN ?

Who, then, is this E. H. Harriman? Wall Street has been asking this question, savagely at times, for the past ten years. The United States has begun to ask it, curiously, in the past

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