Page:EB1922 - Volume 32.djvu/257

Rh

sengers. The use of electricity eliminates the noxious gases and reduces the noise of the locomotive. An electrified yard can be depressed and completely covered over. This permits the reclamation of streets and valuable areas hitherto obstructed by tracks, with the result that what was formerly a railway yard filled with steam and smoke can be utilized for public and pri- vate buildings of the finest character.

In Europe, the completion of the passenger station at Leipzig (1915) was practically the only terminal improvement that was not interrupted by the World War, although the Gare St. Lazare in Paris was somewhat enlarged, and in London, Waterloo station was partly reconstructed and a number of tracks equipped for electric operation. The Leipzig station was under construc- tion from 1907 to 1915, and cost 6,500,000, of w"hich, following the German practice, 2,900,000 was borne by Saxony, 2,550,- ooo by Prussia, 810,000 by the city of Leipzig and 240,000 by the imperial Post Office Department. The main building has a frontage of 984 ft. and occupies an area of 172,000 sq. feet. The train shed has a high roof of steel and glass, built in the form of six arches; it is 785 ft. long, with an area of 710,500 sq. ft., and covers 26 tracks. The station serves as a junction for the passenger traffic of Magdeburg, Thuringia and Dresden, and the larger part of the traffic between Prussia and Saxony

[passes through it. At the close of the decade the Leipzig station was the largest, though not the busiest, station in Europe. It was smaller than the Grand Central and Pennsylvania stations in New York, and was in 1920 handling considerably less than half as much traffic as the Gare St. Lazare, the busiest station in the world. It was said in 1916 that the number of persons passing through the St. Lazare in a single month equalled the total number of soldiers fighting on all fronts. Plans were then undertaken to electrify the suburban traffic, which is very heavy, and to depress the sub- urban tracks to a level beneath the steam trains. Even without these increased facilities, the station furnished accommodations for 200,000 to 250,000 passengers a day, a record, however, Very nearly equalled in London by Liverpool St. station. Both the Gare St. Lazare and Liverpool St. station handled on busy days twice as much traffic as the South station in Boston, the busiest American station.

TABLE I. Largest Railway Stations.

Station

Ac.

No. of Tracks

Trains per day

Passengers per day

Grand Central, N.Y.

80

6?

600

110,000

Pennsylvania, N.Y.

28

21

500

75,000

Leipzig

20

26

400

St. Lazare, Paris

12

31

1,700

200,000

Liverpool St., London

IO

2D

1,500

175,000

Waterloo, London

9

18

I, IOO

100,000

South, Boston

IO

28

1,000

125,000

Kansas City.

18

18

400

65,000

Northwestern, Chicapo

8

16

450

70,000

Outside of Europe and North America two important stations were erected, one in Argentina and one in Japan. The Retiro station of the Central Argentine railway at Buenos Aires, said to be the finest station in South America, was opened in the latter part of 1915. The terminal, including buildings, train sheds and approaches, occupies 744,000 sq. ft., and in point of size and design compares with any of the newer stations else- where. Much of its equipment was supplied by English con- tractors. The Central Railway station in Tokyo, completed in 1915, was erected at the verysmall cost of 270,000, although it is built on a scale which in the West would cost 10 or 20 times as much. The explanation lies in the extremely low price paid for Japanese labour, lod. ($.20) a day (of 10 to 12 hours) for common labourers, and 5 a month for carpenters and masons. Estimated in days' labour, the cost was 730,000 labourer-days. The main building is of brick and granite, 1,104 ft- l n g> 66 to 132 ft. wide and 54 ft. high, with a dome (152 ft.) at either end. The terminal took the place of three stations which formerly served the three main-line Government railways.

In the United States and Canada a constantly increasing railway traffic made necessary the construction of a large num-

ber of new stations. Terminals that had been erected with the expectation that they would serve their purpose for 50 years or longer became inadequate in less than half that time. The result was that the newer stations were built on what would otherwise be considered too extravagant a scale. The designers were looking to the future.

One distinctively American contribution to the advance of terminal architecture was the invention of an improved roof to take the place of the great arched train shed, once considered the most necessary adjunct of a railway station. Cold in winter and hot in summer, these sheds were expensive to build and expensive to maintain. Even at the height of their popularity there were some designers who preferred the umbrella or butter- fly types of shed, consisting of a series of low arches which, viewed in cross section, suggest the names by which they are known. After 1905 the Bush type of shed began to supersede all others, especially where steam was still tolerated in the termi- nal area. This shed was the invention of Lincoln Bush, who made the first installation at the Hoboken terminal of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railway, of which he was chief engineer. The Bush shed is similar to the butterfly and umbrella sheds; it differs principally in that it affords a continu- ous roof except for an overhead slot above the centre of each track for the escape of steam and gases from locomotives. A shed of this pattern affords protection from the weather, is free from smoke and dirt, and costs about one-half as much as the large arched shed. Within ten years after its invention the Bush shed had been adopted in n American and Canadian terminals, notably the Michigan Central station at Detroit, the Northwestern at Chicago, the Grand Trunk at Ottawa and the Canadian Pacific at Montreal. In England there was developed a somewhat different type known as the " ridge and furrow," of which the Snow Hill station of the Great Western railway at Birmingham, reconstructed in 1914, furnishes an example. The Snow Hill train shed consists of a series of transverse girders (275 ft. long with four supporting columns) spanning the entire width of the station. The best results, however, can be attained only where the smoke and dirt of steam operation are elimi- nated altogether. The problem of the train shed was most completely solved in the Grand Central terminal, New York, where electricity was adopted as a motive power. Here the " sheds " closely resemble the stations on a subway or under- ground railway.

Less successful in this respect, though of first-rate impor- tance among the new stations of the period, was the Pennsyl- vania station in New York. Being of the so-called through- station type, this station is essentially a monumental bridge over the tracks, which traverse Manhattan Island in tunnels under the city. The main building was designed after the Roman Doric style of architecture and occupies two complete blocks (8 ac.), on Seventh Avenue from 3ist to 33rd Streets. The gen- eral waiting-room is 277 ft. by 103 ft., with a height of 150 feet. The train yard or shed (340 ft. by 210 ft.) is an " undisguised example of modern engineering in glass and iron," and suggests somewhat the old-fashioned train shed. The station was built primarily to provide the Pennsylvania railway with a termi- nus in New York (before 1910 the terminus was in Jersey City), and the construction of the river tunnels, which were necessary to make a connexion with Manhattan Island, was an engineering feat of considerable magnitude. The improve- ment extends from Manhattan Transfer, i m. east of Newark (about 75 m. from the terminal), to a connexion with the Long Island railroad at Woodside, L.I., which also used the Penn- sylvania station as a terminus. At Manhattan Transfer in- coming Pennsylvania trains change to electric operation and are hauled by electric locomotive, operating with a direct cur- rent of 600 volts from a third rail. At the New Jersey shore they descend into one of the two approach tunnels and pro- ceed under the Hudson river and New York to the Pennsyl- vania station. As soon as empty they leave the station to the east, still travelling underground in one of four tunnels which pass under eastern Manhattan and the East river to Long