Now how has this been done? How has the typical locomotive of the Twentieth Century been so improved as to keep the train that it hauls up in the top notch of American passenger carriers? The answer is easy: by the constant application of every proved device for the improvement of that machine. The New York Central, which operates this train, does not often stand convicted of a lack of mechanical progress. Come to figures, once again: A certain well-known railroad, which is thoroughly sold on the idea of the improved locomotive, in the last twenty-five years has steadily increased its average tonnage per train by from 400 to 1700 tons over the old-time figures. Its maximum is now close to 3200 revenue tons. In this same quarter of a century this railroad shows 233 per cent. increase in the weight of the train and 66 per cent. increase in the average speed. To-day it thinks nothing of hauling a 5000-ton train at a steady rate, uphill and down dale, of twenty-five miles an hour.
Our steam locomotive is a laggard? Only when you do not give it a fair opportunity to show its real worth.
If all our other railroads were as progressive in this as the two that I have just instanced, there would be no reason for this detailed attention to the problem. Unfortunately they are not.
A moment ago I said that two things had held back the development of our steam locomotive--tradition and cost. Have I not now settled the question of cost, as far at least as it may be settled in these pages, by showing the great economies to be effected in the use of an efficient engine--economies, roughly speaking, averaging 25 per cent. in the operation of the locomotive? Now come to the problem of tradition.
The extreme easterly forty-five miles of the main New York-Boston line of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford railroad was, up to thirty-four years ago, a separate railroad, the Boston and Providence, extending between those two cities. From the old Park Station in Boston down to the station in Providence and back again--ninety miles--was a day's work for one of its locomotives. On some of its suburban runs the engines did even less. They were pampered bits of mechanism.
Last year I rode from New York to Cherbourg in the giant steamer _Olympic_ and spent many hours in what is the finest engine-room upon all the seven seas. The tireless engines, the racing shafts, never ceased their impetuous speed for six days and for six nights. If necessary, and if the fuel had been available, they might just as easily run on for twenty-six days and twenty-six nights or even longer. It all comes to proper lubrication and attention, and nothing else.