George Edward Wright, ‘The Chicago Limited Express’, A Visit to the States, 2 vols. (London: G.E. Wright, 1887–88), pp. 362–372

In a country as extensive as the United States, where the distances are so great and the chief cities so widely separated, the railway systems are naturally expanded to a degree hardly realized in other parts of the world. The traveller often spends a week in a railway train, and it has become a common method of making an agreeable tour for a party to charter a special railway coach or train, and live in it for days and weeks together while journeying about the country. The chief American railways leading out of New York make elaborate arrangements for long-distance travelling, and George M. Pullman is noted throughout the States, as well as in Europe, for his inventions, which secure comfort and luxury on these long American railway journeys. As the Englishman of wealth and leisure may have his yacht, so the American who is similarly blessed has his “special private car,” in which he enjoys the pleasant pastime of “yachting on wheels,” for he has 150,000 miles of American and Canadian railways at command, with an endless variety of scenery and attractions. These, however, are private arrangements. For the use of the general public in long-distance travelling the “Chicago Limited Express” of the Pennsylvania Railroad is regarded as the most completely-appointed passenger train that is run upon any American railway. It passes daily each way between New York and Chicago, a distance of nearly 1,000 miles, the journey being accomplished in 25 hours. The train leaves New York at 9 o’clock in the morning, and arrives at Chicago at 9 the next morning, the local time there being one hour later than New York. The service is “limited” in the sense that the train is confined to four Pullman sleeping coaches, a dining coach, where an elegant restaurant furnishes excellent meals à la carte for 4s., and a “composite car,” the latter having a compartment for luggage and the mail bags which are carried between the terminal cities, also sleeping apartments for the train-men, and a smoking and reading room for the passengers, furnished with easy chairs, a library, writing and card tables, bath room and barber shop, the latter being an indispensable adjunct 165 to American life. The passenger may thus relieve the monotony of the journey by getting his hair cut or indulging in that vigorous hair-cleansing process known as the shampoo for 2s. or a shave for 1s., or a bath at the rate of 40 miles an hour for 3s. He also has at hand an excellent selection of current literature and all the daily newspapers of the chief American cities in the library.

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