Perhaps no other one improvement in railway service has added as much to the comfort and convenience of the travelling public as has this, which enables the passengers on any first-class train to eat their meals at leisure, when they want them, and to procure well-cooked and appetizing food, temptingly served amid pleasant surroundings. It is not so many years since the passenger was dependent for his food either on such supplies as he had brought with him, or upon hasty lunches in dirty depot dining-rooms, where the cold and unpleasant food was bolted in fear and trembling lest the train puffing outside pull away. Not that the proprietors of the dining-rooms themselves were wholly to blame for this condition, for they never knew how many customers they were going to have, trains were often late, fifteen or twenty minutes was the utmost time allowed for a meal by the management of any road, and not more than half of that was available for actual eating, while to keep free from soot and smoke and cinders a dining-room in a depot building was a task beyond human ingenuity.
After the meal, Mr. Schofield led the way to the rear of the diner, where, from the platform, they could watch the track spinning backwards from under them.
“Notice the absence of dust,” he said, and, indeed, as the train swept onward, there was practically no dust behind it. “We’ve accomplished that by washing the gravel before we use it as ballast, instead of dumping it in just as it comes from the gravel-pit, as we used to do. It only costs about half a cent a yard to wash it, and it makes it as clean as crushed stone.”
“It certainly makes it a lot cleaner back here,” remarked the man in charge of the dining-car. “We can keep the back door open now. The only time we have to shut it,” he added, suiting the action to the word, “is when we pass the stock-yards. Nobody can enjoy a meal with that scent blowing in upon them.”
The stock-yards consisted of long rows of flimsy frame buildings, lining either side of the tracks for perhaps half a mile just outside of Cincinnati. Here the thousands and thousands of steers, hogs, and sheep shipped in from the west were loaded and unloaded. Narrow runways led from the pens up to the level of the freight-car doors, and up and down these, incoming or outgoing stock was constantly ascending or descending, urged by prods in the hands of the stock-yard men. It was not a pleasant sight, and our two friends contemplated it silently as the train sped past.