THE MODEL RAILWAY

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, February 26, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 9

THE MODEL RAILWAY.

There is no link in the chain of railway across the American continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, that has played so directly an important part in that great continental railroad, as the link of five hundred miles composing the CHICAGO & NORTH-WESTERN RAILWAY, from the inter-continental metropolis—Chicago—to the Missouri river at Omaha.

In starting westward from Chicago, it was the pioneer to connect with the Union Pacific Railroad; it virtually made that road practicable, and was substantially the father of it. It thus earned its well deserved title, “The Old Pioneer.” That it in a measure exhausted itself financially in its rapid and forced construction across the then unsettled but rich prairies of Illinois and Iowa, accounts for the fact that it was for some time, as its later-day and would-be rivals smilingly put it, “a streak of rust.” Yet its history, on a review, shows it to have ever been, as to time and to absence of accidents, a “Cunard line” for safety, speed and regularity at terminal arrivals. This may be accounted for from its having less gradients and curvature than its new competitors to Council Bluffs, at the same time being the shorter or inside line. It started its trains last from termini and arrived first. It has ever been the most accommodating for the through passenger. This much for its past history.

The last two or three years, in its roadway, its rail, its equipment, has witnessed the most wonderful change of any road in the east or west. It is now the First-Class Railroad; second to none, the equal, we think the superior, of any, which justly entitles it to the appellation, The Model Railroad. Gravel ballast, white oak ties, steel rails, stone culverts, iron bridges, first-class engines, coaches that are airy and elegant for comfort, having Miller couplings and Westinghouse steam brakes, and attached to each train is one or more of those marvels of splendor, the Pullman Palace Hotel cars, in which the traveler eats and sleeps in more luxurious apartments than old world potentates ever dreamed of. The matchless track, the scientific equipment, has won for this road, for its ease and comfort that meed of praise, the triumph of art in railway travel. Its praises should be ever sung in the far Orient, and especially those near lands that owe so much to the continental railroad—Colorado, Nevada and California, and the distant occident—that all may know of its well deserving of the public's patronage. Quite in place will it be here to say, that that much traveled, observant and skillful officer of the United States Army, Major-General Irvin McDowell, in passing over it the other day, on his way to San Francisco, was pleased to say of it: “It is the finest road I ever traveled on, either in Europe or America.”

The road has additional praises to those of its excellence of construction, natural location, and perfect equipment, the esprit du corps of its employees lends a charm in their care, attention and gentlemanly deportment, which adds the cap sheaf, grace, to its material perfection.

For the year past it was a road without a terminal detention. Its greatly increasing through travel and immense way business will soon require a double track.—Republican, Dec. 7th, 1878.