The Trainmasters Read online

  She raised the book for him to see. “David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Oh, yes! It’s a delicious book. I’ve laughed and cried again and again.”

  “Should I read it, then?” he said.

  “You should, Father. But I don’t know that you will. I can’t remember the last novel that you read.”

  “Nor can I,” he said with a chuckle, slipping out of his jacket and vest. “There, that’s better,” he said with a deep, tired sigh. “God, I think I’d almost rather wear a suit of armor than evening clothes.”

  “So how did the meeting go?” Kitty asked, marking her place and laying the book down on the table next to her reading chair.

  He paused a moment before he started to talk. A part of him did not want to talk business with her. It was the part that wished her to remain forever innocent and maidenly. But there was another part of Edgar Thomson, a part that welcomed Kitty’s drive and energy and love of railroading.

  That part won out now, and he started to tell her everything.

  “The evening was tense, I should say. And indecisive. Will Patterson, as usual, was smooth and expansive, but now and again I wondered about him. He seemed to be unusually strained.”

  “He does have to come up with five million dollars or so, after all,” she said, “and rather soon.”

  “Yes,” he said, “but that kind of challenge never seemed to disturb his equanimity in the past.”

  “Well, there’s always a first time,” she said, dismissing whatever problems William Patterson might now be facing.

  “He’s a fool. And he doesn’t much interest me. I only hope that the board has sense enough to remove him when they meet on Wednesday.”

  “That’s very possible,” Thomson agreed. “The sentiment is certainly inclining that way. But in his favor,” he added, “Drew and Vanderbilt seemed to like him.”

  “He was all smiles, I take it—flattery and compliments —the way he always is.” “Exactly.”

  “The man has the character of a pillow. He takes the form of whatever is sitting on him.”

  He laughed. “You would think,” he said, “that men as worldly as Daniel Drew and Cornelius Vanderbilt would see through a man like Patterson.”

  “They haven’t known him as long as we have.”

  “Alas, no.”

  “And you?” she said. “How did you fare?”

  “Me?” he smiled. “I was quiet, as is my way. Perhaps too quiet. But I watched, and waited. Perhaps I made sense now and again when I did talk.”

  “Someday I’ll convince you that you don’t have to be modest.”

  He smiled again, like a boy, a little bit embarrassed.

  Kitty knew that when her father had something to say, he made devastating sense. He was not flashy or dramatic the way Will Patterson was. But she was well aware that if anyone had made a genuine, powerful, and lasting impression on Astor, Vanderbilt, and Drew, it was her father.

  “You look very tired,” Kitty said, rising from her chair and approaching him.

  “I’m exhausted. Totally depleted. I’m an engineer, not a financier. And I’m not comfortable discussing large sums of money… And those financiers! My God, Kitty, but talking to those three is like submitting to vampires. They drain your blood.”

  “Tell me about them,” she said.

  “About the financiers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, Kitty,” he said. “Not tonight, please.”

  “Please, Father. Do tell me about them,” she said. “I want to know if they will buy the new stock that Will Patterson has had issued.”

  “All right,” he said, relenting. Actually, he wanted to tell her. But he was also truly exhausted by the day’s events. “It’s very hard to say what will happen about the stock. When Will finally came out and proposed that to them, they gave him the look vampires give when they are asked for blood.”

  “Does that mean no?”

  “I couldn’t tell. It may simply mean that they loathe parting with money. It may mean that they want to talk it over among themselves or with their advisers. It could also mean that they want to think of all the possible consequences of the railroad’s current situation.”

  “One of which is that the Pennsylvania is vulnerable.”

  “Exactly,” he sighed.

  “And advantage could be taken of that vulnerability.”

  “I’m sure the thought passed through the minds of both Vanderbilt and Drew. They both have used the weaknesses of others to enrich themselves in the past.”

  She knew of some of the past exploits and escapades of Cornelius Vanderbilt and Daniel Drew—in passenger shipping and more recently in connection with the project to build the Nicaragua Canal. Drew was famous for treachery, and the “Commodore,” as Vanderbilt was called, was famous merely for his ruthlessness. Kitty was disgusted by treachery and deception, but she admired ambitious ruthlessness.

  “And now will you let me go to bed?” Thomson said.

  “Not yet,” she said, smiling coquettishly, like the manipulative little girl she sometimes affected to be. “First tell me about Vanderbilt.”

  He lifted his arms above his head in defeat.

  ‘Tell me,” she repeated.

  “Vanderbilt is the best of the three, I’d guess. Very tall, very good looking, very powerfully built. He looks younger than his years.”

  “What is his age?”

  “Fifty-four or fifty-five, I think,” Thomson said. “He swears like a sailor, and he has the morals of a pirate. I kept expecting him to haul down the colors and haul up the Jolly Roger. And yet, I think if I had to trust any of those three, it would be him.”

  “And the others?”

  “Astor is fat and ponderous and taciturn. He likes to affect the look of a man who is strong, silent, and wise. But he seems merely stupid to me. Of the three, he seemed the least interested in the railroad… the least interested in anything beyond himself.”

  “And Drew?”

  “Not much to look at. Gloomy. Always seemed to be in a shadow. A bit coarse, but then so is Vanderbilt. And yet Vanderbilt is a man. About Mr. Drew, I have my doubts.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Though, as I said, he is a bit gloomy and he has his coarse side, Daniel Drew is energetic and shrewd, and he has great drive. He has the look of a man who is used to people buying without question what he offers to sell. And he also has the look of a man who wins most of the battles he fights. At the same time, he professes to be deeply religious. He wears his Christianity like a suit of armor; he quotes the Bible like a parson, and he is as friendly and concerned for your well-being as an undertaker.”

  She laughed. “You don’t like him?”

  “I’d rather do business with rats and snakes and scorpions. And yet,” he said, “he did seem to understand our needs, and he appeared to want to work with us.”

  “Even though he is a director and major shareholder in the Erie?” she asked. The Erie Railroad ran from the Hudson River through southern New York to the shores of Lake Erie, from where it connected with several western routes. When the Pennsylvania was completed, it would doubtless prove to be serious competition to that line.

  “He is primarily an investor, I think, and secondarily a partisan of one enterprise over another.”

  “I see,” she said. “And so, in summary, Mr. Astor seems disinterested in us. Mr. Vanderbilt is a cipher. And Mr. Drew seems for us, but he is not to be trusted. Is that it?”

  “Very close.”

  And then he moved toward the door, for exhaustion had finally taken him by the throat.”

  “No, wait,” she pleaded.

  “Kitty. I must sleep.”

  She looked at him and saw that this time he meant it.

  “Then you will talk to me some more tomorrow?”

  “Not tomorrow, Kitty. Let me have my Sunday in peace.”

  “Oh, all right. Then I will talk to
you on Monday.”

  “Not on Monday either, Kitty.”

  “Then when?”

  “Later.”

  “I remind you, my dear father—yet again—that I am a graduate of Oberlin College, that I am your daughter, and that I know as much about the workings and the finances of a railroad as any man….”

  Thomson only half heard her, because as she spoke he walked toward the stairway that led up to the bedrooms.

  But then a new thought struck him, a thought that had been gnawing at him since the dedication ceremony. And so he turned back into the parlor.

  “I’d like to say a few words to you,” he said when he was once again in the room. His voice had become stem, and there was an angry edge to it.

  “I thought you were going to bed.”

  “What happened this afternoon at the dedication?” he asked.

  “At the dedication?”

  “What caused your embarrassing display?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, having difficulty focusing on the direction of his thought.

  “At the christening of the Tiger,” he said, “when you rejected the arrangements that had been carefully planned and set up and took the champagne down to the locomotive.” “Oh, that,” she giggled.

  “You’re laughing? I thought what you did was shameful.”

  “Really, Father, don’t be so stuffy. I had a lovely vision when I was on the platform. I decided I wanted to christen the Tiger by myself, instead of using that silly rope business.”

  “But christening the Tiger by yourself was uncalled for,” he said lamely.

  “Perhaps, Father. But I did enjoy doing it.”

  “Please, Kitty, in the future, try not to be so impulsive.”

  With that she laughed again. “Oh, do go to bed, Father. You’re being nothing but an old grouch.”

  He turned toward the stairs once again. “Perhaps,” he said before leaving, “but did you ever consider, my dear, that you really are much too impulsive?”

  She laughed again. “Really, Father,” she said. “Go to bed!”

  Three

  “You are ready?” Goddard asked, his English thickly accented with the vowels and consonants of his native French tongue.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” John Carlysle said. And then he turned to his two younger sons, Alex and David. “Boys?” he inquired.

  “Ready, Father,” Alex said. David simply grinned ecstatically.

  “Hold the side of the basket, please,” Goddard said. And then he placed David’s hands on the wicker railing.

  John Carlysle tilted his head back and looked directly above him. There, not ten feet away, was an enormous silk and india-rubber envelope—a hydrogen-filled balloon. He and his boys were standing with Goddard in a basket that was suspended from the balloon by a web of silken ropes. Soon they would ascend.

  “I am now releasing the lines,” Goddard said, with a carnival showman’s dramatic tones and inflections.

  He slipped various knots, and the balloon, untethered to the earth save for one long line, jerked up into the sky.

  “OOOhhh!” David screamed, more in pleasure than in consternation.

  John laughed at him and at himself, for it felt as if his own insides had turned violently when the balloon rose.

  Almost instantly, the balloon slowed to a more leisurely and comfortable pace, and John was able to pay attention to his surroundings rather than his own internal weather. What he saw when he looked out was the ground moving away from him. Or at least that is what it felt like. On the ground was Goddard’s complicated apparatus for producing and storing hydrogen gas. And a little farther away John saw the wagons where he stored his balloon and equipment.

  Beyond that were the pastoral hills and meadows of Fair-mount Park, Philadelphia’s largest open public space. The park stretched along the Schuylkill River in the northwest part of the city. The river was now clearly visible to the four aeronauts. Since it was early spring, the trees were all a haze of green from new buds. And along many of the park’s pathways were splashes of rainbow colors that emanated from beds of blooming crocuses and tulips. It was Sunday afternoon, and the park was full of people pushing strollers and reclining in lawn chairs, and of children playing games.

  “What do you think of all this?” John asked Alex.

  “I… it’s wonderful]” Alex was gripping the sides of the basket with all his might. “I wouldn’t change where I am for anything!”

  “1 wouldn’t either,” David said, his eyes shining with excitement.

  John laughed again. “I feel exactly the same way,” he said. “This is an absolutely wonderful experience!”

  Goddard, meanwhile, was pointing out various points of interest. “There,” he said, “is the Schuylkill River. And to the north of us in the park, next to the river, is the municipal waterworks. Very modern. Very up to date. This park was built because of the waterworks and the reservoir lake. And there, on the other side of the park, is the railroad to Harrisburg.”

  “Is that the Pennsylvania track?” Alex asked.

  “No, that belongs to the state railroad,” John said. “The Pennsylvania line actually starts in Harrisburg, but its trains use those tracks.”

  “And to the south, one can see the Delaware River,” Goddard continued. “And there,” he pointed, “is the confluence of the Schuylkill and the Delaware. And there is Delaware Bay. Beyond that is the ocean.”

  “I can see the ocean,” David said.

  “You cannot,” Alex said.

  “Just because you can’t see the ocean,” David said. “You can’t see your nose.”

  “Boys!” John warned, but only half heartedly. His eye had followed the train tracks back to the rail yards of the Pennsylvania line. He and the boys had been there hardly more than an hour before. They had had no idea then that an hour later they would be flying.

  Earlier that day, John had asked the hotel to pack a basket lunch for himself, David, and Alex, so that the three of them could take a Sunday afternoon picnic and ramble in Fair-mount Park.

  John had chosen a route to the park that took them north on Broad Street as far as Callowhill Street. This way they passed the huge Baldwin locomotive plant on Broad and Callowhill and the rail yards the Pennsylvania had built next to it. It was no accident that John chose to go that route.

  He had in fact grown familiar with the journey from Sturdivant’s Hotel to the locomotive works and the train yards during the two weeks that he and the boys had spent in Philadelphia. He had come out to the yards three or four times after working hours and quietly walked around, making an informal inspection of the facilities and equipment there.

  Before John had arrived in Philadelphia, Sir Charles Elliot had prepared the line’s executives for his coming. Because of that, John knew he would have a position with the railroad. But he did not know whether the line’s officials would welcome him. They could resent Sir Charles for using his influence, thinking it was interference. Nor in fact did he know what work they would give him.

  John was a careful man. He did not like to leave two such large unknowns out of his control. So he had delayed his initial meeting with Mr. Edgar Thomson, the man who would be his immediate superior, in order to give himself time to learn all he could about the line, about its competition, and about American railroading in general. In this way he hoped to go to the meeting with knowledge that would prove to Thomson that he was not an intruding outsider but a competent railroad man who was as familiar with American as he was with British railroading.

  On the strength of his thousand shares of Pennsylvania stock, he had sought and was granted interviews with a number of high-ranking bankers, businessmen, and government officials who were not connected with the railroad. From these conversations as well as from his own personal observations, he was able to put together an informative assessment of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

  What he concluded verified what Sir Charles had already told him: The Pennsylvania was i
ndeed the best-run railroad in the country. As soon as the main line was completed over the Alleghenies, it would carry a large portion of the passengers and freight between the eastern seaboard and the western interior, and it would earn a substantial profit.

  But the very quality of the line’s operation had caused it to capture more than its share of attention from its rivals. The other railways spreading west to the north and south of it were worried by the overwhelming competition the Pennsylvania system would pose.

  And the other sellers of long distance transport—the teamsters with their great Conestoga wagons, and the canal operators, whose canals had only recently been dug at great expense—were howling ever more loudly. They feared the railroad would render their livelihood dated. The teamsters and the canal operators were a rough lot who were not used to surrendering when their incomes were threatened. They would not take the arrival of the railroad quietly.

  And then there were the various financial wolves and jackals, the predatory capitalists who played such an important part in American business. They had been known to destroy more than one fledgling enterprise in order to gain immediate profits.

  The intelligence that John gleaned from his two weeks of investigations did not indicate which of these forces would attack the railroad, or how the attack might be made. But there was little doubt that something would happen. Young America was a raw and violent land. Many men who called themselves businessmen were not gentlemen but bandits and desperadoes. Rivalries were often settled by direct force and violence rather than overt competition in the marketplace.

  Thus the upcoming period in the railroad’s existence would probably prove to be its most vulnerable time, for, although the line appeared to be as well financed as Sir Charles had indicated, cash was needed nevertheless, and investment capital in this fast growing young nation was limited. What all this information would mean for him in the coming months, John had no idea. But he knew that the officers and managers of the Pennsylvania would have to be ready for a number of eventualities ranging from financial chicanery to sabotage and physical attacks. If John was going to play the kind of part in the completion of the line that both he and Sir Charles had envisioned for him, he would have to be prepared.