Sentence Examples:
The town's era of prosperity was long before the days of railroads in that portion of the continent, and such feats of engineering as have been accomplished since in the way of "hog-backs," loops and tunnels were not dreamed of as among the possibilities of mountain travel.
Purifying bad water proved about as difficult an undertaking as reforming the average bad man is recognized to be; and few railroad men can now be found who believe a purifying process can be successfully performed on the large quantity of water needed for locomotive boiler feeding.
A study of the physical features of California with their economic consequences, particularly the determination of the routes of railroads, the choice and construction of harbors, quartz and placer gold mining, the development of water power and long-distance electric transmission, lumbering, irrigation, agriculture, horticulture, etc.
These deadly conditions prevailed on the Vanderbilt railroads even more than on any others; it was notorious that the Vanderbilt system was not only managed in semi-antiquated ways so far as the operation was concerned, but also that its trainmen were terribly underpaid and overworked.
Carr, who had been attending a conference of railroad officials at one of the hotels, came in unexpectedly, and found his chief clerk engaged in the profitable pastime of reading decisions of the highest courts in the land without the slightest notion of what they were about.
Before the negotiations were finally concluded, bands of paroled men from Lee's army, and stragglers were able to stop trains on the railroad on which Johnston's army was dependent for supplies, and it would have been intolerable to leave the country at the mercy of that class.
The specifications expressly reserved copper wire, the intramural railway, the railroad tracks in the buildings, all machinery, etc., whereas the contract executed on November 30 seems to include all the items referred to and many other pieces of property not mentioned in the specifications.
Five acres of artificial lawn and flower-beds of the cemetery and railroad-station school of horticulture surrounded it, and from the highroad it was protected by a stone wall so low that to the passerby, of the beauties of Harbor Castle nothing was left to the imagination.
Many years ago, before railroads were thought of, a company of Connecticut farmers, who had heard marvelous stories of the richness of the land in the West, sold their farms, packed up their goods, bade adieu to their friends, and with their families started for Ohio.
Give us back this birthright, or take your railroads, and so on, and your civilization, and sink them deep in the depths of hell, for the starving have no use for them, and we'll take the savage state that knows no hunger except in the time of famine.
This may be that irritating kind of wisdom which comes after the event, but I cannot help regarding the policy of rewarding railroad enterprises with unconditional grants of vast areas of agricultural land as one of the many evidences of the urban domination over rural affairs.
The rates fixed by the Potter Law for many commodities were certainly unreasonably low, although the assertion of a railroad official that the enforcement of the law would cut off twenty-five per cent of the gross earnings of the companies was a decided exaggeration.
Prophecies were freely made that it would ruin half of the roads and seriously cripple and sadly interfere with the usefulness of the other half, that it would derange the business of the country, greatly depreciate all railroad securities and put an end to railroad construction.
Gentlemen, I detest railroads; nothing is more distasteful to me than to hear the echo of our hills reverberating with the noise of hissing railroad engines, running through the heart of our hunting country, and destroying that noble sport to which I have been accustomed from my childhood.
Nothing could stay their flight, and the city was overrun with the terrified fugitives, who swarmed into the railroad trains, fled to the open fields beyond, spreading the most frightful rumors, while many did not believe themselves safe until at home in the North.
On this particular morning he was about to leave for a flying round of the camps on the railroad extension; but he reluctantly countermanded the order for the locomotive when he saw Elsa picking the way for her guests among the obstructions in the stone yard.
The facilities for building railroads at the present time more than counterbalance the additional cost of iron, and no good reason can be shown why the actual cost of roads at this time should exceed that of the more substantially constructed roads built thirty or forty years ago.
A few years ago it would have given the standard steam railroads an excellent weapon against the constant encroachments of paralleling electric roads through their good passenger traffic districts; even to-day it offers a possible solution of the difficult problem of the very small branch side-lines.
The ground was cleared on either side of the railroad for a kilometer, while on both sides a perfect network of barbed wire, fastened by staples to the top of wood stakes, rendered it difficult for either infantry or cavalry to cross from one side to the other.
Facing on the square were two general stores, the railroad station and buildings, two restaurants, a dozen saloons where gambling either was the main attraction or an ambitious side-line, McCall's place and a barber shop with a dingy, bullet-peppered red-and-white pole set close to the door.
There seemed at this time to be an epidemic of strikes running through the country, not only among the railroad men, but among all classes of laborers, and this helped to precipitate and bring about strikes at all the places about which this report will treat.
The soul sickens at the contemplation of this incalculable sum diverted from purposes of usefulness and beneficence, from railroads, colleges, hospitals, schools, and churches, under whose genial influences the country would blossom as a rose, and desecrated to the wicked purposes of unjust war.
Another avowed object is to get the division supply people closer to the train sheet, to give propinquity a chance to develop love, and to counteract that we-are-so-different feeling which comes on many railroads, not only in the spring, but under all signs of the zodiac.
As the nitrates are part of the capital of the country which will some day come to an end, it would seem prudent to expend what they produce upon permanent improvements which will add to the nation's permanent wealth, such, for instance, as railroads and harbors.
This opens up an entirely new field in railroad economy, for with ordinary foundry appliances accumulations of old steel rails can be worked over and cast into all sorts of shapes and patterns to better advantage than selling them at a nominal price to outside buyers.
Science and invention, machinery and improved methods, have effected great changes in the railroad art, but the American nation, which travels more than any other, still recognizes the fact that faithful and efficient men are an essential factor in the prosecution of that art.
Owing to its small size and remote location we expected the usual hardships which accrue from a country hotel and its numerous incongruities; imagine our surprise therefore, when arriving at this little town, which is a stranger as yet to railroads, to find a cozy hostelry awaiting us.
The fact that the prosecutor was noisy in asserting his rights can make no difference in the result, for we may, from experience, judicially notice the fact that the inter-urban railroad train presents no suitable accommodation for one inclined to indulge in either introspection or somnolence.
Turpentine and cotton-seed oil are worth three or four times more than kerosene, and it costs no more, no less, to haul one than the other; but the railroads would carry the cotton-seed oil and turpentine for one-third or one-fourth the rate they charged for kerosene.
A small force of the Union cavalry was dismounted on the road, and the outbuildings of a farm-house were occupied by a reserve force; while the regiment was deployed, mounted, in the fields to the right and left of the ruins of the old railroad bridge.
These investigations all have shown that the railroads first crushed out the small operators by a conspiracy of rates, blockades and reprisals, and then by a juggling process of stocks and bonds, bought in the mines with the expenditure of scarcely any actual money.
Roughly speaking, all railroads, telegraphs and telephones, all banks, the mines and large factories, the large oil fields with pipe-lines and refineries, the large packing and canning plants, the large warehouses and stores, and what office buildings are necessary for these enterprises.
Now begins the classic ground of the once famous highway to New Mexico; nearly every stream, hill, and wooded dell has its story of adventure in those days when the railroad was regarded as an impossibility, and the region beyond the Missouri as a veritable desert.
The dishonest manipulation of the issues and sales of railroad stocks is a practice that was not confined solely to the twenty-five years after the Civil War, but the numerous examples of it which occurred during that period aggravated the exasperation which has already been mentioned.
The railroad companies suffer more from this piecemeal and conflicting regulation than do corporations engaged in manufacturing operations, not only because they discharge a peculiarly public function, but because their business, particularly in its rate-making aspect, suffers severely from any division by arbitrary geographical lines.
Man after man emerged from the sheltered railroad, which ran like a covered way across the enemy's front, into the open and the driving hail of bullets, ran the gauntlet and dropped down the embankment on the further side of the bridge into safety again.
With the same restless energy of the Northern American, its leading men have looked far into the future, and shaped their course for later times; railroads are stretching out in every direction to pierce the solitude of the yet uninhabited prairies and pine forests of the North.
The chief object in view was to secure as soon as possible all the ethnological and archaeological data obtainable before it should be lost to science by the influx of civilized population which is being rapidly thrown into this region by the extension of railroads into and through it.
Some have referred this to the reflection of the verdure; but it is equally green there against the railroad sandbank, and in the spring, before the leaves are expanded, and it may be simply the result of the prevailing blue mixed with the yellow of the sand.
Sherman's destruction of military supplies and railroads did undoubtedly render impossible any great prolongation of the war, if that would otherwise have been possible; but it did not materially hasten the actual collapse of the rebellion, which was due to Grant's capture of Lee's army.
As there was no other exit than the one by which he came, the other being inaccessible by reason of the railroad track, he calmly watched him twice make the circuit of the arena, ready to ride towards him when he showed symptoms of slackening his speed.
He has, perhaps, possessed faculties which might have allowed him to shine ably and yet honorably in the state or national congress, whose votes his friends and rivals, to ensure the passage of their unscrupulous railroad-bills, have bought so often and with such bloodless depravity.
Objects, such as headquarters, railroad tracks, cross roads, that we had located through our strong glasses before the drive, and upon which we had given the distance to the gunners, had been shattered by direct hits, speaking wonders for the marksmanship of the American gunners.
Both broke into flames, and the former was almost wholly destroyed, tying up traffic on the line, the object of all attacks upon railroad stations, except at such times as troops were concentrated there or trains were standing on the tracks ready to load or unload soldiers.
The public schools, the newspapers, the books, the political parties, the trade unions, the religious propagandists with their manifold agencies of universal education, the railroads with their inducements to our unparalleled mobility of population, are all dependent upon our common language for their high efficiency.
That waterfall is picturesque even now, spite of the cottages, boarding houses, hotels, railroad station, and tanneries, that have taken the place of green woods, richly clothed hills, and a valley so fragrant with wild flowers, that it was happiness to breathe its very air.
These are the men who, at the inception of the land grant system of building railroads, inaugurated the theory which has since been practiced, that all lands thus granted were to be treated as donations to the men who controlled the roads receiving the grants.
The friction wheels underneath the drivers are controlled by powerful water brakes, and by the regulation of these brakes, strains or handicaps can be placed upon the engine exactly similar to those of the grades it may have to reach over a heavy mountainous stretch of railroad.
That old style drawbridge, with, of course, many improvements, has been adopted in these modern times to use in permitting navigable rivers and channels to be crossed by railroads and other kinds of transportation, without preventing the passage of vessels up and down the rivers.
His drivers were Samuel Kelly and William Jones, and they hauled goods from Hagerstown, Maryland (then the terminus of the railroad), to Terre Haute, Indiana, and to Springfield, Illinois, involving a trip of four months duration, and the compensation was six dollars per hundred pounds.
Beings approaching the legendary fauns and satyrs, clad in the skins of wild animals, are sometimes discovered by the solitary horseman in the wild mountain fastnesses; they gaze at him as an apparition from a strange world, never having seen a village or heard a railroad whistle.
By that time Watt's steam-engine had come into general use, and he suggested that small stationary engines should be fixed along his proposed railroad, and made, by means of circulating chains, to draw the carriages along with a great diminution of horse labor and expense.
The mine farther from a smelter naturally has to pay a higher rate of freight than a mine nearer to it, receiving, therefore, a lesser net price for its product, but the railroads are obliged to so adjust rates that practically every mine can reach a market.
It was natural, therefore, that the most striking results from their accession to power should appear on the financial rather than on the operating end, and that their ability to manipulate stocks and bonds should prove more unquestionable than their ability to handle railroad affairs.
The game had been a desperate one, and well played, and nervy and cool as he was, the desperado was forced to seat himself on a pile of railroad ties, until he could regain possession of himself, for he trembled in every limb, and shook as with a chill.
He describes how corporations are at the mercy of state bosses who manipulate the legislature, and therefore have it in their power to raise their taxes, or in the case of gas or railroad companies to lower their charges or to cause annoying and harassing investigations of their affairs.
If his activities and those of his like had much to do with the sudden stiffening and increase of the border constabulary of the Texas Rangers, his shrewd notion of tremendous effects on Texas of any valid railroad market also had weight in certain widespread Texas circles.
This is due in a large measure to the fact that it is a division terminal, and at all division terminals train crews must reckon with that element in our leisure class which declines to pay railroad fare and elects to travel on brake-beams rather than in Pullman sleepers.
Within sight of the interlocking tower where I worked there was a freight yard of considerable dimensions; the main lines of the railroad ran through this yard, and cross-over switches connecting one side with the other were protected by what are called yard protection signals.
Regarding the safety of railroad-travelling, though the papers teem with awful calamities from collisions and other causes, yet so great is the number of persons who use the new mode of transport, that travelling by railroad is really about one hundred times safer than by stage.
The circle would have been broken, if, for instance, the granting of illegal rebates had been effectively prohibited; but as a matter of fact they could not be effectively prohibited by the public authorities, to whom either the railroads or the large shippers were technically responsible.
At this moment, when all minds are occupied in endeavoring to discover the most economical means of transportation; when, to put these means into practice, we are leveling roads, improving rivers, perfecting steamboats, establishing railroads, and attempting various systems of traction, atmospheric, hydraulic, pneumatic, electric, etc.
The small farmers, allies in 1804 of Thomas Jefferson and his up-country democracy, became ancillary to the industrial towns where they found markets for their products; and the new river and canal and railroad towns were but the recent creations of the new order.
Books were put away, gymnasium apparatus stored and one sunlit morning two slender, manly looking young fellows, their faces reflecting perfect health and happiness, were at the railroad station waiting for the train which should bear them to the winter quarters of the show.
As for myself, before enlisting in the army I had never been more than fifty miles from home, had not traveled any on a steamboat, and my few short railroad trips did not amount, in the aggregate, to more than about seventy-five miles, back and forth.
American railroads now present the acme of comfort, convenience, and even luxury in travel, yet the European artist has difficulty in adjusting himself to journeys of thousands of miles crowded in a short winter season when he has been accustomed to little trips of a few hundred kilometers.
The seasons are, however, so short, and the difficulties of permanent settlement so many, that while in my estimation the railroad would be a benefit for a time to a few individuals, it would not be a profitable permanent enterprise far to the northward of its present terminus.
They should have the same opportunity to examine a proposed schedule before its promulgation and protest against any feature of it which they may regard prejudicial to their interests, and their statements should receive the same consideration as is accorded to those of representatives of the railroad companies.
True, the overland trade was at once transferred to the railroad, but the enormous equipment of stage and express companies previously employed in westward overland trade was now devoted to joining the railway lines with the vast regions to the north and the south.
And then they walked out into the roughly paved road leading through the town to higher land behind, and onward, along a road to which they turned their backs, and which wavered, past the railroad station, up an incline in the direction of the distant sea.
We have created more great cities, more luxurious habits, more free whiskey, more useless railroads, more brokers' boards, more wild-cat banks, more swindling mining companies, more political jobs, more precocious boys and more fast girls, more bankrupt men and more nervous women than any country known in history.
Soon we saw another and another; they became more and more common as we went along until presently they were rushing everywhere, careering in their maudlin course across the prairie, and piled high against the fences along the railroad's right of way, like great concealing snowdrifts.
The war had resulted in a wonderful development of the physical wealth of the North and West, and the railroad was opened at a most opportune moment to connect the East and West, and make possible the development of all the wonderful resources of the nation.
While the statute respects and protects the occupancy and rights of the claimant, the secretary, to aid the railroad companies, interpolates the word, "valid," and holds that if the claim is invalid, the railroad companies can drive off the claimant and take his land.
It always makes me think of that melancholy old horse one sees, pawing rotatory wood, at the way stations, on the railroad tracks; and because the sight makes every bone in me ache, my particular window-seat in the car is always sure to command a view of him.
There are good stretches of railroad in every part of the country that today are failing to render not alone the proper income returns to their owners but, what is worse, service to their communities, because of this great canker, this lack of immediate executive control and understanding.
This new type of railroad facility has an artificial hill, just above the termination of the parallel tracks where they cluster together, and upon this hump one switch-engine with a trained crew does the work of six engines and crews in the old type of yard.
For a great portion of the way the railroad followed the old caravan trail, and all along this trail were scattered trains of camels and donkeys, loaded with all kinds of goods, such as silk, cotton, grain, machinery, poplar trees, fuel, and other things.
The second way by which capital may co-operate is by providing transportation facilities to connect a new country with the markets, and especially with those so necessary to its prosperity; for example, by organizing steamboat companies, building important roads, and, above all, constructing railroads.
Our lines of communication can be switched from one side of the world to the other instantly, whereas a country whose approaches are by railroads may find its communications embarrassed for a generation if new frontiers render the old lines inapplicable to the new political conditions.
The Romans had not attained that degree of perfection in the means of intercourse which we possess; not only had they no knowledge of steamboats and railroads, and the telegraph, but they had few highways, and were unacquainted with the use of carriages hung on springs.
They were aware of gardened squares and avenues, bordered by stately dwellings, of dignified civic edifices, and of a vast and splendid railroad station, such as the state builds even in minor European cities, but such as our paternal corporations have not yet given us anywhere in America.
In exchange for their grain, vegetables, fruits, tobacco, and a small amount of manganese and chrome, the Bulgarians made trade-agreement commitments to get important amounts of cables, rods, bars, plate steel, railroad equipment, floating cranes, electrical machines and installations, mining equipment, and miscellaneous machinery.
With the increasing railway mileage of the country, the greater number of men employed, and the use of larger and heavier equipment, the urgency for renewed effort to prevent the loss of life and limb upon the railroads of the country, particularly to employees, is apparent.
It demonstrated that preparation for war is a more potent factor than mere numbers in computing the strength of a nation; and it gave an illustration on a grand scale of the new conditions of war resulting from the use of the telegraph, the railroad and breech-loading firearms.
Young persons readily learn to telegraph, and the lowest compensation paid is something considerable to the youth just leaving home, while the salaries usually paid to railroad operators are not such as to offer fair inducement to men of years and experience to accept or retain these positions.
I do not allege that much can be accomplished in this direction, but I do say that it is incumbent upon railroad managers to search the way and come before the American people with clean hands, and they will be met with hearty response for the square deal.
A little way from the railroad station on the open prairie the camps of these aborigines may often be seen, consisting of a few rude buffalo hides or canvas tents, while a score of rough looking ponies are grazing hard by, tethered to stakes driven into the soil.
These merchants are constantly seeking the best means to get their wares before the public eye; also manufacturers, builders, real estate agents, railroad companies, and in fact all persons doing business on a large scale, are seeking to let men know how and what they do.
It was the practice of these brokers, as soon as they had purchased cotton, to have it delivered at once to the railroad company for shipment, when they would receive from the railroad company's agent a bill of lading, setting forth the number and weight of each bale.
Although industrial establishments, as exemplified by mills, factories and shops, much preceded the construction of railroads, yet the next great group of fortunes to develop after, and along with, those from land were the fortunes plucked from the control and manipulation of railroad systems.
It has also been a school of diverse experience and thorough training for thousands of graduates who gravitated to newer properties and to-day play their part in determining the policy or lubricating the clerical machinery of railroads in all regions enjoying the benefits of modern transportation.
A signal- box, says an English essayist, such as one sees along the railroads, is only called a signal-box, but it is the house of life and death, a place "where men in an agony of vigilance light blood-red and sea-green fires to keep other men from death."
One of the great changes in our economic life to which this railroad policy contributed was the centralization of certain activities, not because centralization was necessary, nor because it contributed to the well-being of the people, but because, among other things, it made double business for the railroads.
Large deposits of magnetic iron ore and brown hematite, together with limestone, had been discovered in advantageous proximity to the coal, making a bright outlook for the Sound region in general in connection with its railroad hopes, its unrivaled timber resources, and its far-reaching geographical relations.
Many people still walk up, but since the railroad was built, even those who feel it to be a matter of conscience to inveigh against any kind of progress which ministers to the pleasures of the masses, are found among those who prefer to ascend by electricity.
The present laws providing for the making of contracts are based upon the presumption that competition among bidders will secure the service at a fair price; but on most of the railroad lines there is no competition in that kind of transportation, and advertising is therefore useless.
Since official sentiment was now hostile to manumission, it was resolved in 1849 that he be bought by the state and ensured a permanent home; and in 1853 a further resolution directed the chief engineer of the state-owned railroad to pay him just wages during good behavior.
Moreover, nearness to the railroad is an important advantage for the sheep-farmer; and I found that the most enterprising and intelligent sheep men in the northern counties send their wool direct by railroad to the Eastern States, instead of shipping it to San Francisco to be sold.
He had just decided, after having passed through the stages of engine-driver, telegraph operator, railroad-signal watchman, automobile manufacturer, and superintendent of the city's waterworks, to build bridges over tropical torrents that always rose in floods to try all his skill in saving his construction work.