Within the limits of the United States the transportation question soon
solved itself. Five-sixths of the seventy-four thousand miles of railway
which lead, without interruption of track, to Fairmount Park are of
either one and the same gauge, or so near it as to permit the use
everywhere of the same car, its wheels a little broader than common.
From the other sixth the bodies of the wagons, with their contents, are
transferable by a change of trucks. The expected sixty or eighty
thousand tons of building material and articles for display could thus
be brought to their destination in a far shorter period than that
actually allowed. Liberal arrangements were conceded by the various
lines in regard to charges. Toll was exacted in one direction only,
unsold articles to be returned to the shipper free. As the time for
closing to exhibitors and opening to visitors approached the Centennial
cars became more and more familiar to the rural watcher of the passing
train. They aided to infect him, if free from it before, with the
Centennial craze. Their doors, though sealed, were eloquent, for they
bore in great black letters on staring white muslin the shibboleth of
the day, "1776--International Exhibition--1876." The enthusiasm of those
very hard and unimpressible entities, the railroad companies, thus
manifesting itself in low rates and gratuitous advertising, could not
fail to be contagious. Nor was the service done by the interior lines
wholly domestic.
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