How Palace Cars Were Invented And Introduced

Senator Wagner got the 4ea of building the sleeping cars from a man living above Palatine Bridge, who had built one of a clumsy pattern. Mr. Wagner was impressed with the idea of building sleeping cars, but he had little capital, and applied to Wm. H. Vanderbilt for the use of an oíd car to illustrate his theory. The Hudson river night boats then had a monopoly of the sleeping passenger traffic. It seemed to Mr. Wagner that muchtime could be saved merchants and others by providing sleeping accommodations on the faster trains. The experimental car was given Mr. Wagner, and he worked for months to get it into presentable shape. Some trouble was experieneed in inducing Commodore Vanderbilt to look at the car. Through the influence of Wm. H., however, the old man was finally induced to make an examination of it. One Sunday morning in 1858 he went to the Thirtieth street depot, where the car lay, and Mr. Wagner explained its construction to him, The old gentleman walked back and forth through the car, closely examining every part. At last he turned abruptly to Mr. Wagner and said: "How many of these things have you got on hand ?" Mr. Wagner replied that he had only one. "Go a-head and build more," said the Commodore. "It's a good thing, and you can't have too many of them." This was the beginning of the Wagner sleeping cars. Vanderbilt, however, insisted that thp cars should be built by a company, and he have an interest in it. It is said that hollow steel shafting is made in France in a way which most pepple would like to see actually done before their own eyes. !'The metal is flrst cast around a core of lime, the ingot being flnally rolled into the shafting, the lime core going with it, and diminishing in diameter in the same proportion as the metal even whpn the total diameter is reduced as low one-fourth of an inch." A long running watch. - A watchmaker at Vouvry, Switzerland, claims to have made a watch which run for years without winding up. Nature says that a box containing two watches in trusted to the municipal authorities on January 19, 1879, has just been opened and the watches were found going.