Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 June 1883 — The National Exposition [ARTICLE]

The National Exposition

Of Bailway Appliances, at Chicago, to be continued till June 23, in the great Exposition Building, including a large space under temporary cover, and occupying eleven acres of ground, is the grandest railway exhibition ever held in the world. Here are locomotives, cars, running-gear, interior furnishings, freight-car appliances, track goods, wood and ifoft working machinery, metals, oils, paints, varnishes, station and office appurtenances, pumps, waterstation and street-railway appliances and a long lipt of miscellaneous goods used in the railway service. Here may be seen the first locomotives buj.Jt in this country and in England, and the latest and best, showing the results of the inventive genius and experience of fifty years in railway locomotion. The leading manufacturers of the country here show their best work, inviting examination, comparison and criticism. A striking feature of the Exposition is the large display of massive machinery working with the greatest precision and the least possible friction. Here are single exhibits large and attractive enough to make the sight-seer feel amply repaid for the cost of his visit. But multiplied indefinitely, and varied in a thousand forms over an immense space, the whole ooifstitutes a colloss&l exhibition of railway appliances, from the largest engine and locomotive to the railroad watch and conductor’s punch. An opportunity to see such a magnificent railway exhibition as this may not occur again in this century. It would be a great mistake to regard this exhibit as interesting mainly to railroad men. It has an interest of vast significance to the people, the products of whose labor turn the wheels of the locomotive. The value of their farms, their mills, their mines, their faetories and their labor depend on the problem, how to make the best and cheapest railway service, which this Exposition is the first great public co-operative attempt to solve. And that the people, in whose true interests this Exposition is held, may see this magnificent display, the railroad companies have largely reduced their rates to all who visit it.