Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1884 — Vanderbilt and His Locomotives. [ARTICLE]

Vanderbilt and His Locomotives.

But to my story. When the new President, William H., first took hold of affairs, he ran up and down the road very frequently to get the hang of the tiling. He always hankered for fast pulls. The engine named after himself was usually assigned to his special trains. She would make the distance from Albany to Syracuse in three hours or a few minutes better. But once or twice it so happened that some other locomotive fell to the task, and then it was shown that the William H. Vanderbilt was not so much of a runner any way. Better time was made by No. 110 and by the Major Priest. So the first thing the engineers knew was an order to have all the engines repainted. I guess I knew of the determination of the President sooner than any one, for he was a pretty mad man one day when I took his special; we made the distance in time that laid his machine in the shade. So one by one the name h of Erastus Corning, Conrad Shuemaker, H. Chittenden, J. Tillinghast, and the rest were obliterated, the locomotives coming out of the shops paintfd that peculiar brown called • Black Crook.” At last even the name of William H. Vanderbilt was deubed off by the painters. It was the last to go. At the same time the brass work was also painted over—a godsend to the firemen who had to scour it, but a blow at the pride of the engineers. I don’t believe the enthusiasm exists now among railroad men which used to bind ns together in the old days. The duplex has not been the only innovation. In those days you would never catch one conductor playing the spy on another. Railroading, to my thinking, has lost its respectability. —Old Engineer, in Albany Journal. Statistics are being collected in France for the purpose of making an estimate as to whether the population will be increased over that of the present at the close of the century. Thus far the figures tend to show there will be a decrease. There are not more than two children in a family on an average. The r&ie of increase in the population has been constantly declining since the beginning of the niheteenth century.