Homemade Gondoliers

1901

How many citizens of Buffalo who have watched the imported gondoliers on the exposition canals realize that we have developed a race of gondoliers of our own right here in Buffalo? The dirty old skiffs down in the harbor are not so pleading to the eye as the smart Venetian gondolas at the fair. The grimy ferry boys who propel them don't look so foreign or so picturesque as their fellow craftsmen from abroad. But when it comes to skill in handling a boat with a single stern oar, dodging around between steamers and tugs, through narrow passages and over the swells made by the big ships the Buffalo boys have no need to fear comparison.

It would be an interesting and popular exhibition if the Pan-American authorities some day would take three or four of the best of the ferry boys from Buffalo harbor up to the exposition grounds, put them on the canals in their old skiffs and match them in a contest of speed and skill against the imported gondoliers. I'd bet my money on the Buffalo boys. — Buffalo Express.

Train Ferries in Europe

1894

From the Engineering Mechanic

English engineers, finding it necessary to adopt our system of train ferries, and not wishing to give us credit of inaugurating that system, have managed to discover a Sir John somebody who worked the whole thing up fifteen years ago.

A New York paper says: "There seems to be nothing in the way of running unbroken trains between London and Paris, except the necessary capital and the employment of sufficient technical skill. If the London, Chatham, and Dover would combine with the Northern, of France, and employ an experienced American engineer to plan and construct the docks and appliances for embarking and landing the trains, and at the same time send to any of the shipbuilding establishments on our great lakes for a man to construct the ferry boats, the arrangement could be perfected in a year and a half or two years, when freight and passengers could be transported from any part of Great Britain to the Continent, and eventually to all of Asia and Africa, without change of cars or break of bulk."

The system of train ferries will no doubt be established throughout Europe in a few years, and will do much to expedite and cheapen transit.