The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1892-09-24
WaIsTLING OUT BRIDGES.
A Chicago Construction Engineer and
His Queer Methods OF Work.

A Chicago Construction Engineer and
His Queer Methods OF Work.
From the Chicago Tribune.
Did you ever hear A. G. French whistle
out bridge for the Illinois Central rail-
road9 He has been the superintendent OF
of bridges for that road for thirty years,
He has grown with the system. He is the
bridge architect and supervises the con-
struction of all the roads stream-spanners.
his headquarters are at TwentY-second
street station. When the road needs new
bridge French strolls into a quiet German
beer saloon where there are tables and
chairs and chance to rest ones legs He
never goes into one of those Irish saloons
where there's popcorn and cheese cube
lunches, no tables, chairs, not even a bar
foot-rail, nothing but the bar, whisky. poll
tics and mad rush to consume the drinks.
once seated he gets glass OF beer and
some pretzels. They are placed on the
table beside him, more as an assurance that
he has them than that be will use them,
for he merely sips the beer and gnaws a
pretzel
Then he whistles out the bridge.
He pulls his SLOUGH hat over his eyes, be-
gins drumming pensively with his finger
tips on the table and commences whistling
in a low key. Billiard balls may be oliuk-
ing about him, poker chips may rattle in
his ear, and the loud, laughable or luRu-
brious din Of the saloon brawlers rool
around him, but the noises are in vain. He
never lets up on that low whistle. There he
will sit, and whistle, and think, sip beer,
gnaw pretzels for from one to four hours.
After this he will RISE 90 to his office or to
room at some hotel, lock himself in and
draw the plan Of the bridge, transfer the
whistled structure to paper. Then the work
is done. He seldom changes the plan from
the whistled one.
The tunes he whistles vary with the
bridges. The great bridge at Cairo, one Of
the most magnificent feets of modern me-
ohanical engineering, he whistIed out sit
ting In Steve rarts saloon, at Kaukakee,
while Aid, Enrich. Couger, Mollauson and
Laparle were making scrambled air at the
next table over a game of poker. He used
THE Arkansaw Traveller In whistling
out that bridge, and as each bar of that
familiar melody rose from his puckered lips
up went another span of the great structure,
until the bridge stood entire before him,
ana then he hurried over TO the Illinois
Central freight office and transferred it to
paper.
Mr.. French's peculiar method of whistling
out bridges is well known to all veteran o.
tciels and employees on the road. The boys
say ''the bigger the bridge the faster the
tuue required to whistle it out" He whis-
tied out the bridge at Ksukakee, just above
tAo uhu1 Will d SuRR6SJlV6ISSS 20 LQ0 tune
OF Nearer, My God, to Thee" The long,
scraggly bridge over the buoys near New
Orleans he whlstled out on
"Weary cleaner whence CONTEST thou,
With empty hands and couded brow?n
The bridge slouches along over the lazy,
heavy-eyed alligators to about the same gait
as the ose-jointed tune drags its heavy
feet across ones ears.
| One day French sat in saloon whist
| ling, keeping time with his fingers
| and CHANGING over the beer from
| under his hat brim, when in STROBE
Conductor Ed Lynch, Dave Lavery
| Fred Carrigan and other veteran Illinois
Central workers. What was their astonish-
ment at hearing him whistling away for
dear life on that imported English abomi-
nation, "Ta-ra-ra Boom1de-ay."
| Lynch says: Here the old man has got
to have some respect Tor the road. A
| bridge whistled out by that tune will draw
trainload Of passengers with the crew
down to dusky death. We must draw the
| line somewhere as a matter of self-defense
Let's ask him where that bridge is TO be
builrr
They touched French's shoulder. He
turned away from his whistliug trance To
them, and they asked him where he would
locate this last designed piece Of whtstling
architecture, and he replied modify:
''It's a cattle guard I'm drafting and re-
lapsed back into the bounding, billoway
notes Of the "Boom-de-ay.n