Wheeling Register

CAMP-GROUND CRITICISM.
The B. & O. Railroad Under Fire.

Correspondence of the Register.

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company has complained somewhat bitterly, of late, that there is a feeling of enmity and opposition existing in this community toward its road—that the sympathy of our people, in a contest with a rival corporation, is always with its opponent. I do not propose to discuss the question as to the degree in which this complaint is justified, or how far it may be the result of a blind and unreasoning prejudice.

But, however great the benefits that a corporation like the B. & O. road, may bestow upon a community it is impossible that it should escape criticism by the people upon whose patronage it has grown great and independent, if in any part of its management it lays itself open to censure. There are little things in its methods of management; little courtesies or little slights on the part of its officers and employes; little accommodations or little inattentions towards its patrons, that do more than anything else to make enemies or friends to a railroad corporation, or any other corporation.

The Baltimore and Ohio Company may be unconscious of the fact that much of the disfavor existing in this community toward it has grown out of these same "little things" of which I speak. It may not be conscious of the fact that there is a wide spread indignation in this community in regard to the character of accommodations that were furnished its patrons in going to and returning from the Moundsville camp ground on last Sunday, yet a little inquiry will furnish the company all the proof it desires as to the effect on a community of such treatment as that to which they were subjected at that time. And it is the sole purpose of this article to suggest to the company, in a perfectly friendly spirit, that it is both natural and just that such management should make it enemies.

The company was doubtless aware from past experience, that there would be, as there was, from three to five thousand people depending on it for passage to and from the campground on Sunday. Yet there was not a single announcement, in the way of advertisement, either in the newspapers of the city or by posters, either here or at the campground, as to when the B. & O. road would run trains in either direction, or whether it would run any at all. There was no other resort for persons in the city to find out the time of trains than in going to the depot and making inquiry. On the campground it was an absolute impossibility to ascertain anything concerning the running of trains. Crowds of people sat around the depot and at other points for an hour or more at a stretch, waiting the starting of a train as the only surety of getting passage.

Now will the B. & O. Company say that if there had been a competing line to the camp grounds, that it would not have announced, for the accommodation of the public, the hours at which it would run its trains? Would it have left the people to run a hap-hazard chance all day of catching a train? These are questions the patrons of the road are asking, and it may be well that the Company consider them.

But this is not all. There is even a greater complaint that the trains were kept on the road between the city and the camp ground, a distance of eleven miles, from one and a half to two hours. We judge that the ordinary railroad time for such a distance is thirty minutes.

The trains were run, or seemed to be running, from each point at intervals of not less than one hour, so that there was ample time at an ordinary rate of speed, for the trains to run the whole distance without the necessity of passing each other. Yet hundreds of passengers were kept lying on switches along the road during the entire day, unable then, as they are now, to explain any necessity for such a predicament.

With a repetition of such instances of bungling management and lack of enterprise, can the B. & O. Road complain that it has enemies in this city?

CITIZEN.