The boys' book of railroads

Front matter

THE

OF

MA

Contents

I Baw Material

II In the Cab

III With the Train Crew

Chapter II

Ask the average locomotive engineer if he ever had any thrilling experiences, any narrow escapes or any really close situations where quick thinking and quick action were demanded, and he'll say no.

" Shucks/' rumbled a great, big powerful fellow with closely cropped hair, who drives a fast passenger train into Jersey City every morning, " shucks, no. There aren't any thrills, just plain humdrum every-day experiences. That's all."

Any fireman you ask will tell you the same thing.

They are not evading the question. They

are truthful when they make the statements they

do, for to most of them the expression " all in a

day's work " means just that and nothing more.

But the average human being knows that they 24 are wrong. They are constantly facing situations that would make the other fellow's hair stand on end and his courage ooze out of his finger tips. Indeed, they have become so accustomed to quick thinking and quick action that they hardly know how to distinguish the heroic from the commonplace.

Take the experience of Fireman Tracy — Jim Tracy, we'll call him, for he is too modest to be willing to have his name appear in print. .

Jim Tracy was firing for Gordon Nixon on No.

8, the fast passenger express between S

and W . No. 956 was their engine, one of

those hard coal burning, camel back type, where the cab is perched midway on the boiler and the fire pot reaches to the rear. On engines of this kind the driver is alone by himself cooped up in his cab forward, while the fireman is between the fire box and the tender — a mighty unsociable sort of an arrangement since the two men are separated by ten or twelve feet of boiler with only a narrow board foot-path by way of reaching each other in case of trouble.

But Nixon and Tracy had been driving old 956 so long that the arrangement had grown to be perfectly satisfactory. Up forward the engineer operated the train, knowing full well that behind him Tracy was firing with the care and attention that all good firemen devote to their work. Number 8 was an evening train out from

S that made a run of 148 miles to

W arriving there in the small hours of the

morning. It was a fast run with but few more than half a dozen stops and these only at the big

towns on the way to W which is the state

capital. Every night they pulled out of the terminal at S at 9.35 promptly and every

morning at ten minutes after two they arrived at

W , old No. 956 thundering into the train

shed, snorting and puffing for all the world like a big animal of steel whose brazen lungs were heaving and panting after the run. But there came a morning when the hour of two ten passed and No. 8 did not put in her appearance at the W terminal. Indeed it was after three before she rolled into the train shed and wonder of wonders, it was not Nixon but a strange engineer who climbed down from the cab, while a mighty relieved looking Tracy swung down from behind the fire box. It all happened this way.

EST THE CAB 27

It was a cold but snowless December night. Nixon and Tracy buttoned their overcoats about them as they left the warm companionship of the glowing stove in the bunk house. Lunch pails in hand, they began picking their way toward the roundhouse across the network of track in the yard. Eed and green signal lamps seemed to wink and blink in the frosty air, while above them gaunt semaphore arms with their equipment of lights stood out against the cold starlit night sky.

Across the yard was the roundhouse, from which rolled clouds of black smoke and white steam, to be whipped away into the night by the bleak wind. Beside this strange looking stable for the engines were the glowing ash-pits about which gnome-like figures worked with long pokers cleaning out the fire boxes of several powerful locomotives, that, with their day's work done, were being made ready for their rest period in the stalls of the roundhouse.

Beyond the ash-pits on another track were several other engines, their fires up, and steam hissing from cylinders and exhausts, looking for all the world like steeds champing at their bits and waiting to be off. Busy hostlers and wipers were pottering about giving them their final touches before their departure for the night's run.

One of these was Nixon's 956 and the engineer and fireman automatically looked the big camel back over as they approached. Stripping off his overcoat, Tracy climbed up between fire box and tender. The scorching heat from the furnace doors as he swung them open to inspect the fires felt mighty good after the bleak winds of the night.

Nixon did not climb to his place immediately. Instead, he reached into the cab for kerosene torch and long goose-necked oil can, and, with this in one hand and the light in the other he began to inspect his big charge, squirting tiny jets of oil into various places with a care that almost suggested affection for the big beast.

Presently he finished, and, with a word to Tracy about the yellow train order sheet he held in his hand, he went forward and climbed into his cab. Then he eased steam into the cylinders and with a great hissing and snorting the engine rumbled slowly across one switch after another and backed down toward the train shed where, on track three, the string of coaches and sleepers had already been made up and were waiting for the engine to be coupled fast.

At 9.35 on the dot Nixon saw the yard signals giving him all clear, and with the monotonous call of the train crew's " All aboard ! " echoing through the terminal and the clanging of iron gates, No. 8 started rumbling off on her nightly trip.

Across the switches of the yard they clanked, then through the roaring gas-filled tunnels and out onto the broad meadows that reached away toward the distant mountain. Here the winking signal lights were left behind and Nixon knew that he had a clear track with plenty of room for speed until he struck the stiff grade that would let them into the mountains through which their

way to W— led. Slowly the engineer

opened the throttle and No. 956, as if eager to be unleashed, rushed forward with a roar, dragging its snake-like appendage of coaches and sleeper through the night at forty-five miles an hour.

On and on they thundered while Tracy, knowing each, curve and grade, watched his fires and steam gauges to see that the engine had power enough to carry her through. Past fields, through sleeping towns, over bridges, through cuts and tunnels they roared, the engine's sirenlike whistle shrieking warnings as they raced through the night.

The first hour of the run had slipped by when, suddenly, Tracy got a strange presentiment that something was wrong. He became peculiarly uneasy. He wondered what it was that disturbed him. He paused a moment in his shoveling and listened. There was nothing wrong about the rhythmic throbbing of the engine and the constant clanking rumble of the big drive wheels over the rails. It was all quite regular and as it should be. Quite too regular, Tracy began to think. He noticed that there was hardly a variation in the speed of the train. It had gone on at the same high rate of speed for goodness knows how long. There had been no slowing up for crossings or curves.

Even as Tracy was turning the matter over in his mind, the train struck a sharp curve which Tracy instantly recognized as one at which

Nixon always eased up a little in his speed. There was no change in speed to-night ; the train struck the curve art a smashing rate and whipped around it under such perilous headway that Tracy staggered across the narrow confines of his own cab. He wondered as he clutched to save himself from falling, why the rear cars of the train were not snapped off the tracks.

Then another disturbing situation arose in Tracy's mind. He recalled that he had not heard the deep-throated whistle of the locomotive for a long time despite the fact that several serious grade crossings and at least three whistle posts had been passed during the last ten minutes.

"What on earth ails Nixon to-night? He's running like a madman. Why doesn't he blow? Why ? "

Tracy stopped, startled at the thought that flashed through his brain.

Could anything have happened to Nixon? Was he ill? Was he injured? Was he (Tracy shuddered at the thought) dead at the throttle? The fireman had heard of such an accident on another line and it frightened him to think that perhaps his partner had passed away of heart failure or something else up there in his little cab, and the train with its precious freight of human beings was roaring down the night with a dead man's hand clutching the throttle.

Tracy leaped to the window of his own cab and looked ahead. For several seconds he strove to pierce the blackness with eyes that were blinded by the glare of the furnace. And as the outline of the cab became clear to his vision he gasped with surprise, for he was certain that he could see the limp form of Nixon hanging out of the window of the engineer's compartment, one arm flapping loosely against the cab's side, while his head rolled on his shoulder each time the engine swayed.

A closer scrutiny left no doubt in Tracy's mind of what he saw, and he knew that he must climb to the engineer's cab and take control of the flying train immediately. But what a task that was to be ! Tracy saw it only as a matter of duty, nor did he reckon the risks he would have to run. "Not once did he consider that only a narrow path of board scarcely six inches wide afforded him access to the cab. Not once did he think of the perilous rate the train was going, of the curves ahead around which it would careen in its mad flight onward, of the cutting cold of the December night and the roaring arctic wind created by the train's headlong plunge. None of these factors entered Tracy's mind, or if they did they did not cause him to hesitate a fraction of a second.

Without even pulling on his overcoat, though his body reeked with sweat from the heat of the fires, he climbed through the narrow doorway of his cab, and, clutching at the iron railing, crept out on to the narrow pathway that led to Mxon's cab. The blast of cold air that struck him caused him to gasp for breath, and the swaying of the speeding engine made him cling on with all his strength.

Stronger courage than Tracy's would have failed there, for every inch of that fifteen feet of plank was covered with ice crystals from the moisture of the condensing steam that had spattered there and frozen in the cold December air.

But Tracy's courage was plussed by that sense of responsibility that all railroad men possess. Never once did he think of his own safety. His thoughts were all for the lives that were in those snug coaches and sleepers behind him, all blissfully unconcious of their peril.

Tracy crept forward slowly, grimly, despite the numbing cold that had driven the blood from his face and fingers; despite the swaying of the big steel giant that now, without the restraint of human control, seemed to Tracy to be bent on running away — running amuck and wrecking itself and the cars it carried on some perilous grade or at some dangerous crossing.

Inch by inch the fireman moved forward. His progress was slow — all too painfully slow for him, for into his brain were crowding a thousand terrible thoughts of curves and crossings ahead, of open switches, perhaps, and towns where speed must be controlled.

He was half-way across that perilous space — half-way to the cab, where he could see distinctly now the pathetic figure of the unconscious Nixon lolling out of the cab window — when ahead loomed just the hideous situation he had conjured.

Far up the track lie saw the ominous red light of an open switch while beyond it crawling slowly into a siding was a freight train, trying in its tortoise-like way to get out of the path of the flying passenger train.

It was the midnight way-freight that always laid over in this siding to let the flying passenger train go by. Tracy recognized it and his heart sank. No. 8 had been booming along at such a terrific speed that it had overrun its schedule, and he knew now that, unless he could reach the throttle in a matter of seconds, his train would overtake the freight before it had drawn its full and cumbersome length onto the siding.

There would be a rear-end collision and

the Tracy muttered a prayer as he thought

of the consequences.

All caution thrown to the wind, the fireman worked his way along the narrow path at redoubled speed. How he clung on he himself could not tell you. He only knew he must hurry, for every fraction of a second meant something now.

At last, in safety, he reached the narrow doorway of the engineer's cab, and stepping through

36 THE BOYS' BOOK OF BAILKOADS

and over the body of Nixon lie reached for the throttle. A glance ahead made him gasp with horror. The ominous, red blinking eye of the switch seemed almost before him, while up the tracks he could see the glimmering lights Of the caboose directly in the path of No. 8.

Desperately he shifted the throttle, and grasped the air brake lever. His hands moved with lightning swiftness but with precision. Then as the air hissed through the pipes he deluged the tracks with sand from the sand chest and breathed another prayer.

Sparks flew from every brake-shoe, the engine lurched and its brakes shrieked as if in protest at being throttled down. The headway decreased swiftly but not swift enough to suit Tracy. Sliding and grinding along the rails the heavy train plunged on toward the switch light. Tracy watched with eyes bulging. Would it stop in time? Could a collision be avoided? He yanked again at the air, and threw down more sand. The brakes seemed suddenly to clutch on with renewed vigor, and with a clank and a rattle and a jolt that shook the whole vertebrae of cars, No. 8 came to a dead stop not twenty feet from

The engineer is a very high type of railroad man. He must be, for to his care are entrusted human lives and millions of dollars in property

The track walker is a trouble hunter, always searching for defects along the line. He walks a good many weary miles a day the open switch and the caboose of the way-freight that was just crossing onto the siding.

" Did it, by George ! " was all that Tracy said, then solicitously he turned to Nixon.

*******

It was the engineer from the locomotive of the

way-freight who finished the run to W

while Nixon, suffering from a fractured skull from a stone that dropped from a grade crossing bridge through the cab window, was left at the hospital in Blue Lake.

That heroic achievement was " all in a day's work " for Tracy, and he hardly ever mentioned the episode to his friends in the roundhouse. To be sure he was made an engineer soon afterward and perhaps his heroic action had a great deal to do with his quick promotion, but the fact remains that he had accepted the perils of the situation as part of his duty, and after the climax was passed he felt quite sure that his life as a railroad man was really a humdrum existence after all.

The way up to a position in the cab of a locomotive, which to us all seems to be the most interesting position one could possibly hold in rail-

38 THE BOYS' BOOK OF RAILBOADS

roading, is long and tedious and crowded with hard work, uncertain hours and serious responsibilities.

Jim Tracy attained those heights while still a young man, yet he had been railroading nearly ten years before he finally got his hands on the throttle of his own engine.

Let us, for an example, trace his progress from the time he first discovered that the only way he could be thoroughly happy through life was to be in the service of a railroad.

He was a boy of eighteen then, just out of high school. For several years he had been hearing the call of the railroad. From the windows of his school he could look out across the fields to the highways of steel that reached out across the country leading to distant points ; places that he longed to visit.

Most of his leisure time he spent at the train station, absorbing railroad romance, listening to the clatter of the Morse keys, and making friends with the trainmen who periodically put in their appearance at the long freight shed across the track while their trains dropped off or took on cars.

At eighteen, having graduated from high school, he heeded the call and taking a train to

S , the terminal, he found his way to the

employment office. He underwent a close scrutiny there, for the men who hire railroad employees are most careful of the human timber they pick to build into their road.

But Tracy had a clear eye that told of a clean, quick thinking mind within. He had a smile, too, and his fingers were free from that smudgy yellow that tells of cigarettes. Tracy passed inspection with flying colors and was told to report to the foreman of the roundhouse.

"Roundhouse," that was a magic name to Tracy. He had seen one only at a distance and how he yearned to have a peep inside! Would he report? At double quick and in a real hurry.

Armed with the card that told inquisitive people that he was now an employee of the road, employee No. 5787, Tracy left the office in the terminal building, and with new blue jumper and overalls rolled in a bundle under his arm and a sandwich or two in his pocket by way of lunch, he found his way into the busy terminal railroad yards.

For a few minutes the big and extremely busy yard almost awed this boy from the sleepy country village. But Tracy gradually mastered a feeling akin to panic that the bigness of the yard had caused, and, standing on an island of safety between the tracks, he decided to have a good look about him and take in all the details of this huge railroad plant.

His eye swept the busy expanse of tracks (he learned later that there were nearly 150 miles of trackage in the yard with several hundred switches) with the endless procession of cars, its snorting engines, and myriad of gaunt semaphore signals.

Into the train shed were backing and drilling passenger and Pullman coaches while to his right near the long freight houses, he noted the fact that all the activities seemed to be with the constantly drilling freight cars. Here, he learned later, the freight cars were being sorted according to their destinations and made up into trains, some for the south, some for the north and some for transcontinental shipment. It was a busy scene, indeed, and for a time it held him spellbound.

m THE CAB 41

But soon Ms roving eyes picked out the sooty, grimy looking roundhouse, with the glowing, steaming ash-pits hard by. There were strings of inactive giants clustered about the place, some being wiped and polished, some having fires drawn and fire boxes flushed out with hoses, some proceeding in a leisurely way to their stalls in the big round stable, to rest after a long run, some just emerging from the roundhouse, fires built, exhausts hissing and plumes of smoke rising gracefully from their stacks. They were waiting for the master hand at the throttle to guide them to the waiting trains to be started on some overland journey.

It was while he watched this activity that Tracy got the real thrill of railroading and he knew then that never could he be happy until he could grip the throttle of his own engine. He little dreamed then that he would acquire his engine in the spectacular way he did.

His nerves were all atingle with anticipation, and it was with eager tread that he picked his way across the intricacy of tracks toward the roundhouse.

He found the foreman of engines in his little, booth-like office against the wall of the roundhouse. He was a gray-haired, keen-eyed veteran of the road, and when Tracy presented his employment credentials he felt very nervous and he had to gulp down a lump in his throat before he could speak clearly.

" I — I — I've come from " he began.

" Sure, I know. You're Tracy. Just got a call on the 'phone about you," said the foreman. Then he was silent again as he looked deep into the big brown eyes of the boy from the country village.

" You'll do, I guess," he said succinctly. Then he added kindly, " Get into your jeans and I'll turn you over to O'Brien. He'll show you where to start."

That was the beginning of Tracy's career as a railroad man. He was a humble messenger boy first, carrying orders and messages about the domains of the engine foreman, and routing out engineers and firemen to tell them of their runs. He was not long at this, however, and then he became one of the dozens of men who were tinkering about the big giants of the roundhouse. These men were called " hostlers " and

W THE CAB 43

wipers. He considered it strange that the name " hostler " should apply to these men who cared for and polished up the engines, but when he found that each engine had a "stall" in the roundhouse he quickly deduced that these names were strange survivals of the days before steam engines were known and railroads were run by horses.

Tracy worked hard and willingly as an attendant to the engines and you may be sure that he examined and studied and asked questions about every mechanical part and contrivance of the huge mastodons of the line. He absorbed the real spirit of railroading there and the pleasure he got in listening to the gossip of the roundhouse and in the association with the men made him more than ever convinced that he had made no mistake in selecting railroading as his vocation.

By asking questions and listening to the gossip of the roundhouse Tracy learned a host of things worth while and that later were to stand him in good stead. He took special pains to learn the meaning of the red lights of danger, the yellow lights of slow and cautious operating. He

44 THE BOYS' BOOK OF RAILKOADS

learned the meaning of the different positions of semaphore arms. He discovered that on some roads these indicated a system of blocks of sections of tracks and that no two trains were permitted to be in the same section at the same time. He learned the meaning of switch lamps, and how the one type of switch differed from another in that some were turned by hand while others were operated from switch towers at some distant point, the operating being done by electricity, compressed air or another form of hand levers which was fast passing out of existence. He committed to memory the train signals sounded by means of the locomotive which he mentally catalogued in this way.

Short blast, stop apply brakes. Two long blasts, release brakes. Two short and three long blasts, flagman go back along the tracks with flags, torpedoes or caution lights to protect the rear and warn approaching trains that a train ahead is stalled. Five long blasts, flagman is called to return to train. Three long blasts, train in motion has parted. Three short blasts, standing train must back. Four short blasts, a call to conductor, trainman or switchman for signals. Two short blasts, acknowledgment of signals. One long and two short blasts, calls attention to train following on same track. Two long and two short blasts, warning at highway crossing. One extra long blast announces approach to station, junction or grade crossing.

The code of hand signals between engineer and some one standing on or near the track puzzled him for a long time until he mentally catalogued them thus: hand or arm swung across the track, stop. Hand or arm raised and lowered vertically, proceed. Hand or arm swung vertically in circle across the track meant that a standing train should back or that a train in motion had parted. Hand or arm swung in a circle called for air brakes. Hand held at arm's length above head called for brakes to be released. He also learned that any object waved violently by any person on or near the tracks was a stop signal.

All these and hundreds of other interesting details he learned and stored away in his memory for future use. He even rigged up a Morse key in his boarding-house bedroom, and after hours lie practiced sending on this, for lie was determined to become a first rate railroad man.

He sought and created opportunities to climb into engine cabs and study the gauges and other mechanism there. He learned to operate the control levers, and after a time, usually nights, he got permission to start and stop the engines that were being shunted out of their stalls onto the big turntable in the center of the roundhouse, which provided means for turning the hundred ton giants.

Then one day came the longed-for opportunity. Somehow there was a shortage of men in the staff of the train-master. He needed two firemen and needed them badly. He communicated with the engine foreman for suggestions and the keen old boss of the roundhouse assured him that Tracy and another chap of Tracy's age were the brightest boys to be had.

They were called before the train-master, who looked them over critically but with a goodhumored smile on his face.

"Both of you have the arms and shoulders of young giants. If you have the brains that should go with 'em to make a railroad man, you'll do."

Enthusiastic Jim Tracy was elated. To be sure, he was assigned to the crew of a freight engine, for that is the bottom rung of the ladder on most roads, and thereafter he fired for grim old Dave Carroll, on 'No. 1090, a freight engine of no mean standing in the roundhouse. Tracy knew 1090, for he had wiped and polished her bulging flanks many a time.

It was as fireman of the freight hauler that he learned what really hard work was. To heave countless shovels of coal into the yawning maw of the fire box for hours in a stretch called for the back and shoulders of a Hercules and muscles and sinews of steel.

It was hard work, but Tracy loved it and he was never happier than when he was in the swaying cab of the huge locomotive.

He studied the engine as a cavalryman studies his horse. He knew just how much coal was needed to bring her steam gauge clicking up to eighty and a hundred pounds or better. He studied the line, too, and learned each grade and curve of the division, for he soon discovered that grades and curves demanded more power, and more power meant more steam, and more steam, steadier and hotter fires.

Soon he was getting along famously and 1090 did some exceptional work in hauling the clanking freights across the division. Grim Dave Carroll knew he had a real fireman "beside him, one who knew his job and knew it well. He warmed to the boy with real affection and told him frankly that he was good enough to go into the passenger service. 1 1

Tracy got into the passenger service in due time. Gordon Nixon, the driver of 956, had been watching him for a long time and when his fireman was given an engine, he asked to have Tracy made a member of his crew.

Again the bright chap from the country, now a man in the twenties, found that he had more to learn.

Firing a passenger locomotive required even more careful attention than his old job. But he bent to the work with a will, despite the fact that more than once by careful estimation he discovered that he shoveled between twelve and fifteen tons of coal into the fire box on a run. Still* with all his hard work, he found time to study the line. Every bridge, every crossing, every siding, every switch, he added to his mental catalogue of grades and curves until gradually he began to know the division as well as a river pilot knows the stream he navigates. He learned more about the mechanism of the engine, too, and he absorbed every scrap of knowledge he could gather, for he was preparing; — preparing for the time when he should be called, perhaps at the most unexpected moment, to assume command of the engine, nor did he guess how soon or through what circumstance this call would come.