A Palace on Rails Arrives in Newport

The new passenger equipment of the Idaho Washington Northern Railroad arrived at Spirit Lake on Sunday and Monday, and on Tuesday one of the new baggage cars and a smoker were put in service, making the first trip out of Newport on the 5:15 p.m. train. It consists of three coaches, a combination baggage and passenger coach, and a baggage car. At present only the new baggage car and one of the coaches, used as a smoker, are in service; the day coach which goes through to Spokane is a Spokane International car as before, and will be used until the new through service to Spokane is established. Arrangements for that service have not yet been completed and the date for its inauguration has not been set.

The new equipment was manufactured by the Pullman Company, and the builders do not hesitate to pronounce the coaches the very finest that have ever turned out of these noted shops. Several new features of construction are to be found in these coaches which were never used before, and every detail is of the very best that the ingenuity of the car builder can devise and money buy. The coaches are 88 feet long and have a seating capacity of 88 people. They are steel frame and weigh 112,000 pounds. Six-wheel trucks are under them, insuring comfortable and easy riding. The train is vestibuled throughout; the vestibules are the Pullman standard width with steel traps and equipped with an anti-telescoping device known as the Foresight buffer device, a recent invention used for the first time on these coaches, all of which insures safety to passengers. Steam heat is furnished and the coaches also have emergency heaters.

The Bliss Axle lighting system furnishes electricity for the illumination of the coaches, each coach having a separate axle generator and storage battery, and one coach can light all the others in case of emergency. This is the very latest and best system in use and has only recently been perfected after years of experiment and expenditure of vast sums of money. The storage batteries supply light while the car is not in motion, and when a speed of 16 miles per hour is reached the axle generator automatically takes the place of the storage battery in supplying current without even a flicker of the lights. Each coach is brilliantly illuminated with 50 incandescent lamps. The exterior color is a dark olive green, familiar as the old Pullman color. The lettering and trimmings are gold, and the vestibule hand rails, brakes, etc., are brass.

In the interior finish of the coaches the acme of coach building to this date has been reached. The smokers are finished in quarter-sawed oak, the day coaches in African mahogany. The woodwork is embellished with parquetry, an expensive hand-finished decoration in which five different colored woods are used. The high domed ceiling is in beautiful tints, the windows arched, the upper part being stained glass. The seats of the smoker are upholstered in Fabrikoid, an imitation leather, and the day coaches in red plush. Every comfort has been provided for the accommodation of passengers, the day coaches having complete lavatory equipment for ladies and gentlemen, similar to those found in Pullman sleepers. To fully appreciate the beauty of these coaches it is necessary to see them at night when brilliantly illuminated. Each of the coaches cost $17,000, and the baggage car, which is equipped with every convenience for handling baggage and express, cost $13,500. As ordinary coaches used on most roads cost in the neighborhood of about $5,000, it will be understood that the equipment far surpasses the day coach equipment of any road in the country, and the verdict of the Pullman Company, master car builders, is fully justified. None of the great eastern roads use anything near as fine as the cars that will soon be running daily between Spokane and Newport, and it will be an eye-opener for visitors to this section to take a ride on these trains.

In addition to the coaches that have arrived, three more coaches of similar grade and one baggage car are being turned out at the Pullman shops and will be here in time for the excursion business to Spirit Lake and Newport which the company will put on during the summer.

The officials of the road have every reason to be proud of the equipment they are placing at the service of the public, and when the new trains are put on every want of the traveling public will be supplied. Everything that the new road has undertaken has been carried out in the most substantial and up-to-date manner, and its operations in the development of this country are bound to be a great factor in bringing to the front the resources which nature has granted so freely. With the cooperation and patronage of the public in the work of opening up the resources of this section, the dawn of a new era of industrial importance is sure to come. And this year's work is but a beginning of what Mr. Blackwell and his associates are planning to do, and it is coming to be recognized that what they undertake to do will be carried out.

The road at present owns 8 locomotives, 25 box cars, 100 flat cars, 25 steel gondolas, 5 cabooses, 2 steam shovels, one wrecker, three first-class coaches, one baggage car, and there are three coaches and one baggage car under construction. A connection with the electric road from Coeur d'Alene to Spokane is being perfected by the building of an extension of the road from Grand Junction to Maguire.