Locomotive Ball

In Halethorpe, near Baltimore, there commenced last week the Fair of the Iron Horse, a pageant-exhibition designed in observance of railroading's first centenary, sponsored by the Baltimore & Ohio Rail-road Co. In sheds and on sidings, locomotives gathered like blackamoors to an autumn ball. Chooing and spitting cinders, old grandmother engines chatted in squeaky, steamy voices and pooh-poohed the advances of young, sleek, oily, lusty freight-pushers. The Exhibition began when some Indians, who were really porters and ticket takers on the Baltimore & Ohio, went whooping loudly past the grandstand. Then came stage coaches, one of which had been lent by Comedian Fred Stone. Then, on the loop of tracks, came a reproduction of Tom Thumb, the first of all steam engines, driven by an imitation of its inventor (Peter Cooper), dressed in breeches too bright for a hard-working engineer. After this a proud little ponyish Yorkshire engine that panted first in 1831 puffed slowly down the tracks. The General was there, an engine of the old Western & Atlantic R. R., bearing the scars of Civil War battles--battles in which it had brought powder and shot, in which it had been captured by the Confederates and recaptured by the Boys in Blue. There was a Wells-Fargo express stagecoach which had once carried gold-dust from the San Francisco mining camps. There were, great behemoths, now in use to pull freight or passengers; G-3-d engines, the most powerful in use on the Canadian Pacific; the John B. Jervis, new Delaware & Hudson locomotive, using the new water-tube boiler system, weighing 314 tons, the King George V (biggest locomotive in the British Empire), sent down from Canada for the show.

On the fairgrounds were to be found exhibits of tickets, travel-folders, timetables, trunks, baggage, Pullman cai's, Pullman-car china, antique wooden rails, tiny reproductions of modern electric engines; collections of new and old railroad watches, telegraph instruments, telephones, canal boats, pictures of locomotives. Also a rickety-looking rod, the predecessor and progenitor of telegraph poles.

The People. The exhibition had been directed by Edward Hungerford, journalist, magazine writer. The drum major of the centenary band was one F. E. Czarnowsky, who for 31 years was drum major of the 5th regiment Maryland National Guard, which he joined as drummer-boy in 1868. Chief Two Guns White Calf, an Indian whose avaricious profile appears on all U. S. five-cent pieces, was brought to the fair with some of his tribesmen in a special historic coach. One Gladys Miller, a member of the treasury department of the B. & O., who acquired, in a recent beauty contest, the cognomen, "Miss Maryland," was trundled along upon a float. Governor of Maryland Albert C. Ritchie officiated at the opening of the show. Secretary of Commerce Herbert C. Hoover, too, was present.

The Railroads. Though the pageant was organized specifically for the centenary of the Baltimore & Ohio lines, other rail companies cooperated. The Canadian Pacific, the Pennsylvania, the Great Western, were represented by exhibits. Ten shipping lines sent curiosities.