When the Commuter Train Was Just a Freight Car

To THE EDITOR: It is simply exasperating to the traveling public the way the passenger trains are being run on the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern extension of the new Northern Pacific from this city to Snoqualmie and North Bend. Beginning with this week the time has been changed to leave Seattle at 4:45 p.m., and returning, leave North Bend at 6:10 a.m. There seems to be no time to reach the latter place; it's 'Get there, Eli,' some time before morning.

The writer had the 'extreme pleasure' of making this trip the forepart of this week and deems it an imposition on the traveling public. It is not only the unseasonable hours, but the passenger coaches from Woodinville Junction are booked on to the rear end of a freight train, the regular passenger train having been dispensed with to 'save' expenses, and the freight train is made to do all the duties of handling coal cars, logging trucks and the lives of many passengers. Just at this season of the year a great many men, women and children are going to the hop fields. The day I went up quite a lot of people were put off at Fall City station at 10 o'clock at night, where there is only a station house and it is three miles from any habitation. We did not reach North Bend until 10:40 p.m. Now, returning at 6:10 a.m. gives one no opportunity to do any business, so that three days are consumed. No accommodation is made for the mail messenger; he is turned loose in a box car that does the duty of hauling all small freight, baggage, dressed beef, milk cans, live Indians, and, with the festive express agent, it makes a happy family indeed. On this day there were seventy-odd passengers or thereabouts, counting the children and babies.

This road does a large freight business, running two freight trains, and, granting the passenger traffic is small, the public is entitled to safe transportation and reasonable hours to travel. It is decidedly dangerous to run passenger coaches with freight cars; forty-five empty coal cars were drawn ahead of us the day I refer to. Whoever is responsible for this change either does not know his business or is very indifferent as to the safety of human life, and if the Northern Pacific cannot afford to run a passenger train they should turn the road back to the old Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern managers, who always have managed to do it. The schedule, as published last Monday in the POST-INTELLIGENCER, read that the train for North Bend and Snoqualmie would leave Seattle at 9 a.m. Believing in this statement, the writer boarded the 9 a.m. train, only to discover, when too late, that he could go no farther than Woodinville Junction, where he was obliged to stay until the arrival of the regular through freight.

The next day after reaching North Bend, having finished my business, I made an effort to return by boarding freight train No. 2, but was informed by the conductor that I could not ride on his train. I offered to pay my fare, but he said: 'Say, can't ride—dangerous—liable to get killed. Company won't allow passengers on freight trains.' I asked him how it was that I came up on a freight. He replied 'that there was just as much difference in some freight trains as there was in any other freight train'—such a lucid explanation that I haven't gotten over it yet; but I thought 'O, consistency, thou art indeed a jewel.' I could ride out on a freight train, but it was dangerous and against the rules of the company to return on one. Let's have a change. REX.