When Sam reports for work, his big steam locomotive is all ready. Men
have oiled it and checked it. The fire is roaring in the firebox. In the
old days, a fireman spent most of his time shoveling coal. The faster
the train went, the more steam it needed and the faster the fireman had
to work with his banjo. Sam knows how to use a shovel if he needs to,
but that’s not his main job. His locomotive has a machine called an
automatic stoker which feeds coal into the firebox.
Sam just checks up on the fire. He looks at dials and gauges in the
locomotive cab, and they tell him what he wants to know. There is enough
steam. Everything is ship-shape.
Sam and the engineer and a brakeman work at the front of the train, so
they are called the head-end crew. Another brakeman and the freight
conductor work in the caboose--the last car on the train. In between the
caboose and the locomotive are sixty cars of important freight that has
to be delivered fast. A fast freight is called a hotshot or redball. A
slow one is a drag.
Sam and the engineer are ready to go. Far down the track the conductor
raises his arm and gives the highball signal. He is ready, too. Now the
engineer pulls the throttle lever. The long train snakes out of the
freight yards onto the main line, and pretty soon they are “batting the
stack off her”--which means making fast time.
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[Illustration]
Sam, on the left side of the cab, watches the track ahead. The engineer
sits on the right, keeping a sharp lookout. When they come to a curve,
Sam looks back along the train to make sure everything is all right.
After a while they see a little town up ahead, and beside the track
stands a signal they have been expecting. It looks like a round plate,
with places for nine lights in it. But only three of the lights are ever
flashed at once. At the top of the page you will see what each set of
lights means.
This time three green go-ahead lights are showing.
“Clear signal,” Sam calls to the engineer.
“Green eye it is,” the engineer replies.
All through the trip he and Sam will call the signals back and forth to
each other, just to make sure there is no mistake. The engineer gives
one long blast on his whistle to tell the station agent in the little
town that the train is coming.
As they go past the station, Sam leans out of the cab and snatches a
hoop from the station agent’s hand. Quickly Sam takes a piece of paper
from it and tosses
[Illustration]
the hoop out again. In the meantime the agent hands another hoop to the
conductor in the caboose.
The paper that Sam takes off the hoop is a train order, called a flimsy.
On the flimsy the station agent has written instructions for the train’s
crew. Orders come to the station by telegraph. Sometimes they tell the
crew that the train must make an unexpected stop at the next station.
Sometimes they give information about other trains that have been
delayed.
Bigger stations often have train order posts that stand beside the
track, but small-town agents hoop the orders up by hand. Usually the
agent has to walk along the track and pick up hoops that the crew toss
down. But the one who gave the orders to Sam has a dog trained to chase
hoops and bring them back!
[Illustration]
Sam and the engineer and the brakeman read the orders to be sure nobody
makes a mistake that might cause an accident. Back in the caboose the
other brakeman and the conductor read their copy of the orders, too.
Then the conductor goes to work at his desk again. The caboose is really
his office. There he checks the papers that tell where every freight
car in the train is supposed to go.
[Illustration]
The brakeman pours himself a cup of coffee that’s been heating on the
stove in the caboose. Then he climbs to his seat in the cupola--the
little tower with windows through which he can watch the train. Squirrel
cage is a nickname for the cupola. The caboose has the most nicknames of
all. Crib, crum box, crummy, bounce, doghouse, parlor and monkey house
are some of them.
Safety is everybody’s job on a train, and each man in the crew knows the
rules. If the train makes an emergency stop, the men take care that no
other train will bump into them. One brakeman runs out ahead and the
other runs back along the track with signal flags to warn the other
trains. At night they take along fusees, which look like giant
firecrackers and burn with a bright red warning glow. Torpedoes are the
best warning of all.
[Illustration]
The brakeman fastens torpedoes to the track with little clamps. Then, if
a locomotive runs over them, they explode with loud bangs that tell the
engineer to stop before he runs into the stalled train ahead.
The first regular stop for Sam’s train is a station where the tender is
filled with water. The long string of freight cars waits here on a
siding while a fast passenger train goes by.
On the next part of Sam’s trip, the train has to climb some steep
grades. One engine alone can’t do all the work, so a helper engine
couples on just ahead of the caboose. On the days when Sam’s train is
extra long and heavy, two helpers are needed.
Going downhill in the mountains is work, too--work for the brakes. In
the old days, the brakeman had to run along the tops of freight cars and
“club down.”
[Illustration]
That means he used a long club called a sap, to turn the wheels that set
the hand brakes on each car.
The catwalks or decks along the car roofs made a path for the brakemen.
Sometimes they walked up and down inspecting the train. Then they said
they were “deckorating.”
Fast freight cars, and slow ones, too, now have air brakes which are
squeezed against the wheels by compressed air. Every car has an air hose
that runs underneath it to the brake machinery. The hose from each car
can be joined to the hose on the ones behind and in front, and finally
to the locomotive’s hose. A pump in the locomotive compresses the air
for the whole train. Now if the engineer wants to stop, he just moves a
lever. A whoosh of air tightens the brakes on every car.
When the train goes down a long hill, the squeezing of the brakes can
actually make the wheels get red hot. Some freight trains have to stop
and let the wheels get cool. But the cars in Sam’s train have a sort of
fan built into the brake machinery. The fan cools the wheels, and the
redball freight goes right on down.
After a while, Sam takes a little scoop and tosses some sand into the
firebox. He knows that the engine’s flues are likely to get clogged up
with soot, and the sand will clean them out. Later on, sand does an
even more important job. The train has run into a storm in the cold,
high mountains. Slushy snow has frozen on the rails. Instead of pulling
ahead, the engine’s wheels begin to slip round and round.
But the engineer fixes that easily. He squirts sand onto the slick track
to make the wheels pull again. The sand comes from the dome, which is
the hump you can see behind the stack on top of a locomotive. Pipes lead
down from the dome on each side and aim the sand onto the track just in
front of the driving wheels.
A locomotive’s sand is just as important as coal and water. Ice or rain
or even the dampness in a tunnel can make slippery tracks. So the
railroads keep supplies of fine dry sand to fill the domes. Sam always
checks to see if he has enough sand when the tender takes on coal.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: STOP SWING BACK AND FORTH ACROSS TRACKS