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RECORD ATTENDANCE 0 Advance Reservations for Derby Presage Vast Crowd. . — - c Remarkable Preparations Being Made to Care for Great Influx of Visitors. a o t LOUISVILLE. Ky., April 16.— ATI records _ for attendance- will be surpassed this year, j, it, if one can judge by the advance reservations. r box requests, hotel pressure and general in-terest in the fifty-fourth Kentucky Derby to be run at Churchill .Downs Saturday, May » *r 19. , The crowd this year will come earlier and t remain longer, according to the belief of t those who keep tab on such things. Racing here starts ten days prior to the Derby, a new angle developed by the fact that Lex-ington. which opens the Kentucky season a j week from next Saturday, or April 21, has j three Saturdays in its thirteen-day meeting, while Louisville will begin on the Tuesday ", after Lexington closes and continues for twenty-three days. May 8 is the date set lor the local opening. Extraordinary preparations are being made to care for the visitors at Derby week-end. The railroad officials recently held a conference and have mapped out every detail, even to the exact location where every Pullman . will be parked. j ARMY OF PULLMANS. ; It is anticipated that there will be at least J 500 Pullmans quartered in Louisville on Friday night. May IS. This number, of course, , includes the private cars, of which there will be at least fifty here. These private cars are veritable hotels on wheels, but they do not accommodate many persons. They gen- , erally have six or seven guests, four or five servants, one or two trainmen and have limited sleeping quarters, bathrooms, kitchen, dining-room and special observation space. : It is said to be impossible at -is time to obtain any private car for the Derby trip, as all of those not otherwise engaged have . been booked for the wealthy and distinguished visitors who are coming to Louisville. Harry Payne Whitney, who won the Kentucky Derby last year with Whiskery, will be here in his own special car, the Wanderer, and will have another private car for additional guests. Harry F. Sinclair, who captured the Derby in 1923 with Zev, uses a car called Sinco. Many other prominent turfmen have their own traveling equipment. The average Pullman will take care of twenty passengers and, with train crews, this means fully 10.000 visitors in the fleet which will be parked in the various train sheds May 18-19. The vast majority of these visitors will come overnight in their Pullmans, thus relaxing somewhat the strain on the accomodations in Louisville. Forty-five dining cars will be parked in the yards at the same time, serving meals to the army of racegoers who come here in the Pullmans. SIZE OF THE CROWD. That there is a possibility of a crowd of 80.000 to witness the running of the Derby is not to be disputed, and these would be distributed about as follows: Visitors here for the entire meeting, 5,000 ; coming in on Pullmans and private cars, 10,000 ; arrivals by automobiles, busses, inter-urbans and regular trains, 40,000 ; and home folks, 25.000. The last-named figures are estimated on the basis of one person out of fifteen living in Louisville or immediate vicinity attending the Derby, which is a conservative estimate. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad alone will have more than 110 Pullman cars, while the Pennsylvania Rr.il road will have more than eighty. There will be sixteen Pullmans from Pittsburgh, and Chicago will have the largest delegation of any outside point. The Monon Railroad will have extensive traffic on this occasion. These three roads will probably have more than any of the ! others, but the Baltimore and Ohio, L. H. and St. Louis Henderson route, Illinois Central, Big Four, Southern, and other main and collateral lines will be largely represented. The handling of the Derby crowd is a task equal to the moving of two full divisions of troops, wtih the further complication that the l assengers do not hr.ve to march in close formation and obey military rules. C. W. Bradshaw is chief operating officer of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, corresponding ! to the chief of staff of a division, while W. C. Smith is traffic commander at the , . Union Station. These men have to be pretty-hard boiled to keep things moving on clockwork schedule, but they do their work efficiently, and it is wonderful how well it is . done. The fleet of Pullmans is policed day and i night by the high grade private police force ; of the railroads. All sanitary arrangements s have been perfected and standardized, even l down to the icing of the cars. Everything is s anticipated and reduced to a routine. The I Pennsylvania and Monon roads have already ! issued an order that ordinary railroad passes 5 will not be honored on trains coming here I •Thursday, Friday and Saturday, or depart- - i ; s l s I ! 5 I - _ ing Sunday, of Derby week. This is done so f as to give the right of way to paying pas- - sengers, and other railroads are expected to o follow this example, if the recommendations s of traffic heads are adopted. Report! re- - ceived by various railroad chiefs in Louis- - ville indicate an increase of something like 20 per cent over the immense business of f 1927 for the Derby.
