The Greatest Highway in the World

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Transcriber's note:

The footnote to the first entry says that in the train schedules, times from noon to midnight are shown in "dark-face type." In this plain-text edition that cannot be done, so the letters "p" and "a" have been appended to each time to indicate AM and PM hours.

Minor typographical errors have been corrected: employes to employees on p. 1, 129, and 130; nagivation to navigation on p. 48; conferation to confederation on p. 46. Inconsistent hyphenation in the original has been retained.

Owing to the method used to scan this work, in a few cases the first or last letters of a line were lost and had to be found from other sources or inferred from context. Where an inference is not certain, the presumed missing letters are in parentheses with a question mark, for example "p(art?)". In each of the numbers in the table on page 130 ("Passengers carried annually," etc.) the final digit cannot be determined and has been replaced with 0.

THE GREATEST HIGHWAY IN THE WORLD

Historical, Industrial and Descriptive Information of the Towns, Cities and Country passed through between New York and Chicago via The New York Central Lines

Illustrated

Based on the Encyclopaedia Britannica

FOREWORD

In furtherance of giving the utmost service to the public, the New York Central Lines asked the editors of the Encyclopædia Britannica to prepare this booklet descriptive of and vivifying the historical development of what has been termed "The Greatest Highway in the World."

It is presented to you in the hope that it may prove a pleasant companion on a journey over our Lines. The information will afford a new appreciation of the historical significance and industrial importance of the cities, towns and country which the New York Central Lines serve.

The New York Central Lines enter twelve states and serve territory containing 51,530,784 inhabitants or 50.3 per cent of the nation's population. This rich and busy territory produces 64 per cent of the country's manufactured products and mines a similar proportion of its coal.

This system does approximately 10 per cent of the railroad transportation business of the United States, although its main-track mileage is only 6 per cent. In other words the business it handles exceeds that of the average railroad, mile for mile, by nearly 100 per cent. The New York Central carries 52 per cent of all through passengers between New York and Chicago, the remaining 48 per cent being divided among five other lines. The freight traffic of the New York Central Lines in 1920 was greater than that carried by all the railroads of France and England combined.

The scenes that stretch before the eyes of passengers on these Lines are rich with historic interest. Few persons know that the second settlement in the United States was at Albany and that it antedated Plymouth by several years. Probably fewer persons know that the first United States flag was carried in battle at Fort Stanwix, now the city of Rome, N.Y. We hope that the reader will discover in the following pages more than one historic shrine which he will wish to visit.