Chapter Fourteen
C. V. and the Trainmen
Friday, August 27, 1886, New York City
This morning, Cornelius Vanderbilt was doubly worried — first, as an expectant father and second as chief executive of the New York Central Railroad. These twin challenges occurring at separate times would have been difficult enough, but their converging on the same day was almost unbearable. This would be the seventh child for him and Alice, so it wasn’t as though he hadn’t already undergone the experience. They’d lost their first child, also named Alice, when she was just five, and he felt no ordeal could be as punishing. His wife had carried this one well enough, and she had the best of care in Dr. James W. McLane, one of the most prominent physicians in New York. The worrisome complication was that today
