XLIV.

RAPID TRANSIT IN NEW YORK.

THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY SCHEMES.—ELEVATED RAILWAY LINES.—THE WEST SIDE RAILWAY.—TRAVELLING ON LAMP POSTS.—ADVANTAGES OF A SECOND STORY ROAD.—ADVENTURES WITH THIEVES.—PERILS OF THE MODERN STREET CAR.—ARTISTIC PACKING OF PASSENGERS.—THE PNEUMATIC RAILWAY.—VANDERBILT’S SCHEME.—AN UNCOMFORTABLE JOURNEY.—SHOT FROM A GUN.

SECTION OF THE BROADWAY UNDERGROUND RAILWAY.

For several years the people of New York city have been agitated on the subject of rapid transit from one end of Manhattan Island to the other. In one respect, New York is unlike any other city on the globe. Nearly all its business is conducted at one end of the island on which it stands, while nearly all the residences are at the other end. Consequently, a large part of the population must be transported in the morning from the upper part of Manhattan Island to the lower end, and transported back again in the afternoon and evening. All the lines of street railway and the stages are densely crowded at these times. There is not a street car or an omnibus that is not packed to its fullest capacity, in the morning, with people going down town, and packed in a similar way, about sunset, with people going up town.

Travel at these times in the direction indicated is accompanied with many annoyances. On some of the lines of street railway, the passengers are stowed away very much like sardines in a can, or like negroes in the hold of a slave ship. Comfort is not at all considered. Every man is anxious to reach his destination as speedily as possible, and if the seats are all taken, he is willing to stand. Very often passengers are wedged so closely that the movement of one affects nearly all the rest, and a person near the middle of the carfinds it hard work to get out. Straps are suspended from horizontal bars running fore and aft the car; and the standing passengers suspend themselves from these straps.

AN INGENIOUS DEVICE.

An ingenious individual has devised a plan whereby the space above the heads of the standing passengers may be utilized. He proposes some additional straps, on which a few passengers can be suspended horizontally, very much as dried fish in a museum are hung up against the wall. The position would be uncomfortable, but comfort is a secondary or tertiary consideration altogether.

The ordinary street car is designed to seat thirty-two passengers, but very often as many as a hundred passengers are crowded on a single vehicle. The front and rear platforms are occupied down to the very edge of the steps. It is uncomfortable enough when the passengers are sober and well-behaved; but when, as often happens, half of them are drunk, and fifty per cent. of the drunken ones are quarrelsome, the position becomes serious. A man who travels late at night on a main line of street railway will have his love for sport fully gratified. He may expect a broken rib every week or two, and, as the noble and manly art prevails among the drunken gentlemen, he can be accommodated with a fight whenever he wishes it, and very often when he doesn’t.

The modern science of pocket-picking is very much in fashion in New York, and a goodly portion of the inhabitants seem to be engaged in an effort to make an honest living by robbing the rest. On a densely crowded car, one can frequently see gangs of pickpockets, varying from two to half a dozen persons, and unless he is very attentive, they will go through him without his knowing it. They are skilful operators, and the rules of the profession forbid the practice of the science until the artist is able to pick away a man’s eye-winkers without his feeling it. I always look with pleasure on a man who boasts that no pickpocket can robhim. His confidence begets carelessness, and the result is, that he is generally robbed more than any other man.

SKILL OF PICKPOCKETS.

With a long experience on street railways, it has been mypleasure to suffer the depredations of pickpockets several times; and I will do them the credit to say that their robberies were almost always committed when I was on the lookout for them, and was quite confident they could do me no harm. They never took my watch or pocket-book, but on two occasions they have taken a letter case out of the inside pocket of my coat, and once invaded my trousers, and carried off a card case which had no cards in it. They have gone through my overcoat, and relieved it of kerchiefs, and gloves, and such trifles, and I was in blissful ignorance of their operations until some time afterwards, when I happened to put a hand in my pocket, and found that my property had gone.

Quite often I have seen the pickpockets “working” a car, and have admired the effectual and artistic manner in which they perform their duty. A few days before writing this description, I travelled with five of these individuals on my way down town, and saw them go from one end of the car to the other,—the vehicle was very much crowded,—and after taking what watches and pocket-books they could find, they left from the rear platform. The cry of robbers was raised a little too late, and when the first announcement was made that valuables had disappeared, they were off the car and three or four blocks away. Two pocket-books and four watches were the result of that evening’s enterprise—a very fair compensation for five minutes’ work.

The omnibuses are somewhat better in character than the street cars, though they do not afford accommodations for standing, especially if the passenger happens to be in the vicinity of six feet high. Many persons do stand in them, however, and revenge themselves for their discomfort by treading on the toes of the sitters at every lurch of the carriage. Intoxicated people do not ride in the omnibuses as much as in the street cars, partly for the reason that the majority of drunkards live on the railway rather than on the omnibus routes, and partly for the reason that it is not so easy to enter an omnibus as to enter a street car. The car has a conductor, whose duty it is to assist passengers on boardand collect their fares, to kick off the disorderly ones, and keep everybody on good behavior. Between the pickpockets and passengers, the conductors generally occupy a neutral position, very much like the woman in the celebrated contest between her husband and a bear. The omnibus has no conductor, and as no one is responsible for the conduct of the passengers, they generally behave much better than on board a street car. If a man misbehaves himself in the former vehicle, his fellow-passengers eject him; but in the latter conveyance, the passengers do not wish to take upon themselves the conductor’s duty, and as he is generally unwilling to perform it, it is not performed at all.

Time is an important consideration on these lines of travel. There are so many stoppages for landing and receiving passengers, so many blockades arising from vehicles in the street, and from other causes, that the journey from end to end of Manhattan Island is not a rapid one. From the City Hall to Harlem, the ordinary time required is an hour and a half, and proportionally for other distances. The omnibus is even slower than the street car, as it has not the advantage of rails on which to move, and makes frequent stoppages to wait for its passengers. The consumption of time in city travel, added to the annoyances, makes it very desirable that a more perfect system should be devised.

SCHEMES OF RAPID TRANSIT.

Consequently the question of rapid transit has been very much debated, and several schemes have been proposed. I shall not attempt to give all the systems proposed for public consideration, as they would occupy much more space than I have at my disposal. Some inventors propose an underground railway, and some propose a railway elevated sufficiently high to offer no obstacle to the passage of vehicles. There has been a great deal of talk on the rapid transit question, but up to this time comparatively little has been done. A single track has been placed in the air on iron posts something like lamp posts, and carried from the Battery through Greenwich Street, and connecting streets and avenues, as far as Thirtieth Street. It is very doubtful if it ever gets anyfarther, or if anything more than a single track is built. The enterprise thus far has not met the expectations of its projectors. It has swallowed up a great deal of money, and secured very little travel. It carries passengers at a fair speed, but it has had two or three accidents that have rendered the public distrustful of its accomplishments.

HOW TO STUDY PRIVATE LIFE.

It possesses one advantage—that of enabling strangers to study the private life of the people on second story floors along its route; and for this reason I presume distinguished foreigners, who come to New York, are generally invited to make a journey over this railway. By no other means now known can so good a knowledge of the domestic habits of New York be obtained. A gentleman who made a journey in one of the cars of this road soon after its opening, stated that he counted ninety-seven families at breakfast, of whom thirty-three were eating fish, twenty-seven were eating beefsteaks or mutton-chops, while the balance were sticking to bread and vegetables in various forms, or were breakfasting on nothing at all. He saw thirteen family quarrels in various stages of progress, and observed one lady, apparently of foreign origin, discussing home affairs with a broom-handle. He obtained an intimate knowledge of wearing apparel for both sexes, and saw a great many things he had never seen before, and hardly expected to see on so short a journey.

TUNNELING BROADWAY FOR THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY.

Soon after this Elevated Railway was begun, some enterprising gentlemen undertook the construction of a railway under Broadway, on the pneumatic plan. They leased a cellar at the corner of Broadway and Warren Street, dug a tunnel under the sidewalk, and thence directly under Broadway for a distance of two hundred and fifty feet. It had been claimed that an underground railway could not be made beneath Broadway without interfering greatly with the traffic of that busy thoroughfare. The projectors of this line, known as the Beach Pneumatic Railway, contended that they could do their work without interference with travel, and they not only did it in that way, but they kept the entire public ignorant of their operations until they wereready to throw open the completed portion of their line for inspection. They were at work three or four months before any outsider obtained the least hint of what was going on, and for the last few months of their work, the public dwelt almost entirely in conjectures. It leaked out that something was being done there, but what it was, nobody could exactly tell.

OPENING AN UNDERGROUND RAILWAY.

Finally, a certain day was fixed for the opening, and a great many persons were invited to be present. They found a comfortable station and waiting-room under the sidewalk of Warren Street. They found a passenger car on the track, and a well-lighted tunnel, through which they could walk, and listen to the rumbling of carriages overhead. The tunnel was as dry and comfortable as brick-work and whitewash could make it. Telegraph wires extended from end to end, so that communication could be had at any moment with the engineer; and although the distance was short, the car, in moving along the track, attained considerable speed. They found powerful machinery, capable of forcing thousands of cubic feet of air per minute, and propelling the cars at a rapid rate. The machinery was moved by steam power, and the cars were propelled by the force of the air pressing against them. Whether the tube was five yards in length or five miles, as long as it remained tight the car could be driven by the power of the stationary machinery.

INTERIOR OF PNEUMATIC PASSENGER CAR.

PORTAL OF THE BROADWAY TUNNEL.

Unfortunately for the rapid prosecution of the enterprise, the Pneumatic Railway was not, for the purpose of carrying passengers, a chartered institution; and up to the time of writing, it has never progressed farther than a single section, between Warren and Murray Streets. Its projectors have full faith in its ultimate success, and certainly the result of their enterprise, so far, has been satisfactory. They claim to be able to drill their tunnels for any distance, under any part of the city, without interfering with business; and they even propose to push their way under the East River, and thus extend their route to Brooklyn. They propose to have stopping-places every half mile, where passengers can be taken up andleft, and they promise to run their cars from one end of New York to the other inside of half an hour. They promise that there shall be comfortable weather at all seasons of the year, and are very certain that their route will never be blocked with snow. They assert that collisions are impossible, because their mode of propulsion is such that two cars cannot approach or go from each other on the same track at the same time. One of the great troubles of operating a line of railway by steam is the impossibility of making two trains pass each other on a single track. Many a railway engine-driver has attempted it, but on every occasion he has come to grief, and has generally brought some of his passengers to an unhappy end. On an atmospheric railway the attempt to make such a meeting and passage is, from the nature of things, impossible; consequently accidents from this cause can never occur.

AN ELEVATED RAILWAY.

Another atmospheric railway proposed for New York is to be elevated in the air. An iron arch is to be thrown over the streets or avenues, sufficiently high to permit the passage of vehicles beneath it, and sufficiently strong to sustain a great weight. On the top of this archway two large tubes are to be placed, each tube nine or ten feet in diameter, and having a railway track inside, where car-wheels can run. The pneumatic system is to be applied to the propulsion of these cars, very much as it is used to propel the cars on the underground line already described. It would possess most of the advantages of the underground system, and there is no good reason to predict the failure of a line constructed in this way.

Another elevated railway has an iron arch, similar to the one just mentioned; but the roadway is open, and the cars are propelled by steam. Its advocates are sanguine of success, and its opponents say that it would frighten all the horses that come anywhere in sight of it when its trains are in motion. But if the horses choose to get frightened, that is their affair; and the probability is, that they would soon become accustomed to the strange noise, and behave themselves properly. Horses can be accustomed to anything. All that is wanted is proper training.

Somebody has proposed a three-tier railway, having one line or track under ground, another at the surface, and another elevated high in the air. His scheme is a magnificent one, and has a good many advocates; but the probability is, that some of the rival enterprises will be completed before this is adopted, mainly for the reason that the cost of their construction is much less.

Several years ago an underground railway company was chartered, and set about the construction of a line. A little work had been done, and only a little. The route was surveyed and laid out, and the managers of the company set about raising the needed capital. Somehow the desired money was not forthcoming, and up to this time the railway has existed more on paper and in the minds of its advocates than in the locality where it was to be constructed.

THE VIADUCT RAILWAY.

A year or so after this line was chartered, another scheme was proposed for making a railway on brick arches, to be known as the Viaduct Railway. It was in the hands of men then in power in New York, and soon after the organization of the company it was announced that a large amount of stock had been taken. The route was surveyed, and maps were published, showing the proposed line of travel. There were many real estate speculations growing out of it, and the supposition is, that the managers of the Viaduct Railway pocketed handsome amounts of money out of these speculations; but somehow the public did not grasp with any confidence the enterprise, which was in the hands of the magnates of the Tammany Ring, and the Viaduct Railroad, at the time I write, exists only on paper.

After this failure to meet the much felt want, the genius of Vanderbilt was brought into action. The commodore, as he was called, was able, by the influence he could bring to bear on the legislature, to secure a charter for an underground railway from City Hall to the upper end of the island. He went at it in a business-like way, and promised that in a few years one could ride under ground from the City Hall to Harlem in twenty minutes.

If Vanderbilt had lived to the age of Methuselah, and continued in vigorous health, he would doubtless have done something for rapid transit whenever he found that it would carry business to his railway. But his grand scheme of several years ago amounted to nothing, and shrewd people suspected that he was satisfied with the existing surface roads.

SPHERICAL TRANSPORTATION.

Among the schemes that have been proposed for rapid travel and transportation of freight, there is one which purposes to make use of tubes, either under ground or on the surface, in which spheres or globes shall be placed, and propelled by means of a rapid current of air. The inventor claims that a sphere will move through a tube with very little friction, and can be driven with great rapidity. He would make a tube several feet in diameter, and have his spheres so arranged that they could be opened and filled with freight, then closed, properly fastened, placed in the tube, and started. I believe that he proposes to propel them one or two hundred miles an hour, at comparatively slight expense. For certain kinds of freight this mode of transportation and propulsion might be well enough, but there are things for which it would not answer. Imagine, for example, one of the spheres filled with fresh strawberries in Virginia for transportation to New York. The strawberries would be constantly rolled against each other, so that by the time they reached New York they would be in a condition of jelly.

As a passenger route this line would have great disadvantages. Imagine a man enclosed in a sphere, either doubled or laid out horizontally, to make a journey from New York to Washington. He would be standing alternately on his head and on his feet about one hundred times a minute, and if he went through alive it would be a wonder, and he would be likely to be very much confused; especially if he were not packed tightly in his travelling-box, he would have a rough time of it. Every square inch of his body would be covered with bruises, and, besides, he would have a hard time to breathe, as the supply of air would be exceedingly limited.

THE BOMB FERRY—TRAVEL IN THE 30TH CENTURY.

THE PUBLIC HIGHWAY—TRAVEL IN THE 30TH CENTURY.

I believe the inventor proposes that all parcels going by his route should be tightly packed; consequently, it would be necessary to wrap the passengers and secure them somewhat after the style of an Egyptian mummy, and stow them in their places by means of an hydraulic press. None of this mode of travel for me, if you please.

PROPULSION BY GUNPOWDER.

I have heard of a scheme of locomotion in which the inventor proposed to load his passengers into a large cannon, having a bore of three or four yards, and then shoot them to their destination. The journey could be made fast enough, but such a mode of travel is liable to accidents, both on starting and stopping. If one could get off and be well under way without being singed by the powder, he would run a great risk of being somewhat injured when reaching his stopping-place. “It was not the falling,” said a hod-carrier one day, speaking of a tumble of twenty or thirty feet,—“it was not the falling that hurt me, darling, but the stopping so quick at the end.”

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