The Coconino weekly sun., 1894-02-15
RAILRoApERs supERsTIrrous.
When They Escape from Any Great Dan
 ger They Regard It Merely as Luck.

when They Escape from Any Great Dan-
 ger They Regard It Merely as Luck. If there is one thing that railroad employe believes in more than another it is luck. No matter how clearly a practical man may analyze a certain odd occurrence, they will dubiously shake their heads and contend that it was a case of luck, good or bad, pure and simple. For instance. if one of their number had been ordered out on a certain train and through sickness had failed to report and the man talk ing his place had been killed, they will, one and all, emphatically declare it was case of lucky sickness for the man that was compel ed to remain at home. They fail to see the fact that the substitute proved negligent in his duty, and had the regular man been in his place it was hundred to one chance that the accident would not have oc- cured.
 It is however, an undeniable fact that there are more strange and weird occurrences taking place daily in the railroad service than in any other branch of employment The ponder ous rolling stock, the swift flight through the country, over spider-like bridges, under the earth in long dis nal tunnels and in weather varying from the pleasant to the most trying, all tend in the direction of beliefs all most supernatural Then, again, train service is not the kind that calls so much for brain as physical equipment. The element of chance does, to a cer- tain extent, enter into the everyday service of trainmen, and that they should be superstitious is only follow ing natural lines
 It is occurrences like the following, the details of which come from Hazel ton, Pa, that lends color of substance to trainman's belief in luck When coming into the yard at Wetherly, a small station near Hazelton, with his train, Conductor John McIiugh told one of the brakemen to cut the caboose loose at the lower end of the siding and let the engine take the train to point near the western end McHugh had then been on the read for twenty hours
 
 sleep As ordered, the brakeman few minutes later pulled the pin holding the caboose, and, supposing that the conductor would take care of the ca- boose. continued up the track with the cars He noticed later, however, that the caboose had run out on the main line again and that McHugh had not 1a.f at tbat point is marked by grade which drops fifty feet to the mile, and to catch the caboose was impossible.
 Taking in the situation, the trainman hastened to the telegraph office, and messages were sent to the differ ent offices below to either side track or derail the runaway whether the conductor was on it or not. The operator at Black creek re- ported the car by his station and the man at Pen Haven was barely notified when the runaway shot by the window of his station. Down the mountain side the car rushed with the rapidity of lightning, while within it sat Con- ductor McHugh asleep and oblivious to the danger his nap was incurring. For tunately, there was no west-bound trains started out from Packington, and the immense distance allowed time for the operator to set the switches and run the car up the safety track Other trainmen were distributed along the graded track, and as the speed of the runaway caboose decreased as it climbed the hillside, one of them was enabled to board it and apply the break before it reached the obstruction at the end.
 When they did so McHugh was found on the bench sitting bolt up- right and sound asleep. When aroused and told of the perilous ride he had had he refuse to believe it, and only after looking in vain for his train did he come to a sense of the situation There were hundred and one chances for that car to either jump the track or crash into another train and kill the sleeping McHugh, but he can cer- tainly be chased with the ones born under lucky star-N. Y. World.
 Paraphrasing His Remark.