Buildings of every description for the use of these railways are there in a cluster, the most conspicuous of which is the immense manysided engine-house of the Western Road, whose great dome, covered with bright tin, is a conspicuous object on a sunny day for scores of miles around.

The Hudson Eivcr Railway is on the east side of the stream, and follows its tortuous banks all the way from Albany to New York, sometimes leading through tunnels or deep rocky gorges at promontories, and at others making tangents across bays and the mouths of tributary streams by means of bridges, trestlework, and causeways. Its length is 143 miles. More than a dozen trains each way pass over portions of the road in the course of twenty-four hours, affording the tourist an opportunity to visit in a short space of time every village on both sides of the river, there being good ferries at each. The shores are hilly and generally wellcultivated ; and the diversity of the landscape, whether seen from the cars or a steamer, present to Vre eye, in rapid succession, ever-varying pictures of life and beauty, comfort and thrift.

^.t?' HE first village below Albany is tlie pretty one of ■^'C Castleton, on tbe Hudson River Railway, about "''^'' eight miles below Greenbush. Around it is a pleasant agricultural country, and between it and Albany, on the western shore, flows in the romantic IS'orman's-Kill (the Indian Tawasentha, or Place of many Dead), that comes down from the region of the lofty Helderbergs. Upon the island in the Hudson, at the mouth of this stream -- a noted place of encampment and trade for the Iroquois -- the Dutch built their first fort on the Hudson in 1614, and placed it in command of Captain Christians. The island was named Kasteel, or Castle, and from it the little village just mentioned received its name.