The Central of
Georgia Railway, running between Atlanta and Savannah, instead of
operating Pullmans, has its own sleeping cars. This is the only railroad
I know of in the country on which the tenant of a lower berth, below an
unoccupied upper, may have the upper closed without paying for it. One
likes the Central of Georgia for this humane dispensation. The
locomotives of the Western & Atlantic carry as a distinguishing mark a
red band at the top of the smokestack. The Southern Railway assigns
engineers to individual engines, instead of "pooling power," as is the
practice, I believe, on many railroads. Because of this, engineers on
the Southern regard the locomotives to which they are regularly
assigned, as their personal property, and exercise their individual
taste in embellishing them. Brass bands, brass flagstaffs, brass eagles
over the headlight, and similar adornments are therefore often seen on
the engines of this road, giving the most elaborate of them a carnival
appearance, by contrast with the somber black to which most of us are
accustomed, and hinting that not all the individuality has been
unionized out of locomotive engineers--an impression heightened by the
Southern Railway's further pleasant custom of painting the names of its
older and more expert engineers upon the cabs of their locomotives.
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