N&W and Virginian in 1912--Four items

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Bluefield Daily Telegraph
February 2, 1912

IN CITY AND COALFIELD
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Private Smoking Room
    In the good old summer time the comic sections of the newspapers make many satirical references to the ??* hog, but yesterday afternoon the funeral editor of the Daily Telegraph saw something on a Norfolk and Western passenger train which would make one of the sphinxes laugh.  A traveling man boarded train No. 2 and after depositing his hand baggage in the smoking compartment of one of the day coaches, pulled a book from this pocket and extracting an order blank, wrote on the plain side of the yellow paper, "Private.  Keep Out."  He then pasted the paper on the glass on the smoking room door.  When this operation was completed the man reached down into one of this grips, took out a magazine which he laid on his knee, and after lighting a cigar proceeded to take things easy, while at least a dozen men looking for seats scanned the writing on the inside of the door, and seeing the apparent important man seated inside, and the notice which told them the compartment was private, they passed on to crowd themselves in with the common herd.  In this way the gentleman traveler avoided paying a twenty-five cent Pullman fare and had a whole compartment to himself.
[*This word was blurred on the microfilm.]
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Instrumental Special
    Train No. 2 yesterday might have been called the instrumental special.  When the train stopped here a corps of engineers with their instruments, a corps of telephone linemen with their instruments and several musicians with their instruments, mostly brass horns, got off the train and scattered to all sections of the city.  In addition to these gentlemen there were a number of traveling men whose instruments of trade were their sample cases, who rushed across the street to the hotels where they secured rooms and then started out drumming the city trade.
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New Depots Planned
    New depots are planned for Emory and Blacksburg, Va.  Both of these places are college towns, the latter being a station recently acquired by the Norfolk and Western, which took over the Virginia Anthracite on Jan. 1st.  Emory and Henry college is located at Emory, while V. P. I. is at Blacksburg.
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Strike Situation Unsettled
    The Virginian Railway shopmen's strike situation at Princeton remains unsettled, although it is understood that Mr. Burlington, assistant to the general manager, has agreed to set a new date for the conference between the men and the officials if the men will go back to work.  It was reported yesterday that this offer was refused on the grounds that it was not definite enough.  The railway is considerably hampered in the movement of trains due to the lack of shop men at various points along the line.
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Gordon Hamilton
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