THE WRECKING TRAIN.
In the morning, as I have watched the conductors, engineers, and trainmen
trooping down to the Union station, and marked one of them, a fine,
hearty, lusty, fellow, I have wondered if he would ever come back. A
collision, a pitch-in, a broken rail, or a low bridge are possibilities
always before them. I was in the Union station one afternoon when a
wrecking train came in from the east, bringing the crew and portable
parts of a train which had been wrecked by a pitch-in away down the line.
Four of the train-hands, including the engineer, had been hurt, some of
them seriously, and to see the fine young fellows, all broken and hurt,
lifted out of the car to be sent to the hospital, was most sad. On the
platform stood an old woman, who, on seeing her boy borne out, broke into
bitter weeping.
“Oh, Johnny, Johnny, my boy, my boy! Didn’t I always want you to keep
away from them awful trains? Don’t take my Johnny to the hospital. I’ll
nurse him—indeed, indeed, good gentlemen, I can nurse my Johnny better
than anyone.” Then the subtle woman rose up in her. “Is his face hurted?
Will he be disfigured? No, thank God! Oh, but he was a pretty boy.”
“How did it happen?” I enquired.
“Freight train ahead of us lost her grip on a grade. The brakes wouldn’t
hold and she broke away and run back and we pitched into her.”
“I suppose your engineer stuck to his place?”
The train hand smiled a superior smile.
“You bet he did; catch Bill leaving his post while there is any show to
do anything.”
One man had his leg broken, another had his breast crushed, the engineer
had sustained fatal internal injuries, and Johnny had his shoulder
crushed. These things don’t bother railway men much. In a few months
after all hands, with the exception of the engineer, were back at their
work again as devoid of fear and careless of consequences as ever.
CONDUCTORS’ EXPERIENCES.
“There is a sameness about our lives which makes it monotonous,” said
Conductor B—as he lit a cigar and reflectively tossed the match into the
gutter.
“Yes, but you have a variety, surely.”
“Yes, but this variety becomes the regular thing, and I tell you it
gets monotonous; still what we see may perhaps be worth reproducing in
print. The latest thing that I remember as peculiar is this: I noticed a
well-dressed, middle-aged lady on the train every day going to Toronto
and coming back. She was as regular as clockwork, always wore the same
highly respectable clothes, never had any baggage, always sat alone and
never spoke to me. She made the trip with us every day for two weeks
steady and I began to get interested in her. Just when I was getting
thoroughly puzzled as to who she could possibly be, she disappeared.”
“Well.”
“Well, she was a mad woman, that’s all. As crazy as a bedbug and this
railroading was a mad fancy. She broke out bad at last and they had to
put her in the asylum. It makes me cold to think of what she might have
done had she broke out in the car.”
“Have you thrown off any tramps?”
“Oh, that’s an old story and we get used to it by degrees. I remember one
thoroughbred, however, who was a dandy. I was running from Hamilton and I
found out he had neither money nor ticket, so I put him off at Waterdown.
I thought that settled him, but in going through the cars I found him on
the rear platform, looking as comfortable as you please. I jilted him off
at Bronte and told him that if he got on again I would paralyze him. When
we reached Oakville the station-master told me that a man had ridden
in on the cowcatcher. I went forward and caught my joker sitting on the
pilot smoking a clay pipe.
I FIRED HIM OUT
of that, but when I was collecting tickets for Mimico I found him sound
asleep in a cushioned chair in a first-class coach. I kicked him this
time, but when we got to the Queen’s wharf he jumped down from the top
of one of the coaches and disappeared in the darkness. Oh, he was a
thoroughbred, I tell you. When I was a freight conductor I used to have
a lot of trouble with them. I soon was able to distinguish between the
regular tramp and the poor fellow who was in a hole and trying to get
home to his friends. That kind of a man I would give a lift to, but the
others, you bet, I give them the grand bounce every time. I have caught
them riding astride of the bumpers; I have caught them under the car
swinging by the rods; I have caught them in the bonded cars, in the
cattle cars, anywhere they could get, and always bounced them. They are a
funny crowd.”
“Have you much trouble with gamblers and crooks on the cars?”
“Not much now, but we used to, though. The line from Detroit east is
still infested with them. They are confidence men and three-card monte
players chiefly. You know what three-card monte is, and how it is worked,
don’t you? Well, one night a man rushed into the car where I was and
told me he had been swindled at cards. I went out, and when I entered
the coach where the deed had been done three men rose from their seats,
darted to the other end of the train and jumped off. We were going at
the rate of forty miles an hour through a rough country, and I was sure
they would be killed, but I never heard of them after—they escaped by a
miracle. On another division of the road, however, a gambler jumped off
and paid the penalty of his crookedness by breaking his neck.”