Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1894-01-19
INDEFINITELY LATE.
What the Bulletin Led to in the
Way of Recollections of
Trainmen.
Trainmen.
Freight TRAINS ::snowed Under in a
Marrow Gut and the Crew
Barely Escape.
MenaGerie in q Cut Between James
town and Bismarck-Pretty
Little Stories,
Old Times Again.

OlO Times again.
Indefinitely Late" was the notice
which appeared on the Northern Pacific
bulletin board this morning, relative to
No. l. As might be expected, the word
indefinitely led every man who hap.
pened to catch sight of it into the office
to find out when the train would arrive,
and at q little after 8 o'clock there was
quite a select little crowd congregated
there. There we're q number Of the rail-
road boys in the gathering, and presum-
ing that a blizzard was the cause of the
delay of the train, there were numerous
recollections of bygone days and bygone
billiards..
SWELL" SAID one of them, as he leaned
back a little farther in his chair, and
glanced about at the assembled, "things
are not as rough with the Northern Pa
cifc as they were back in the early SOS.
I was running out on the Montana divi-
sion back in '81. We had some pretty
bad cuts to pass, and when there was q
heavy snow and blow, it was almost i'm
possible to get through some of them.
1t was along in the early part Of Janu-
ary when we had our first severe biz
card, and we left division headquarters
about an hour late. We ran along for
about an hour, losing time all the way,
until we came to what we called DEVILS
Gulch, q cut about a half mile long, and
very narrow. We looked for trouble
here, and we got it, too. The engineer
ran into the cut about twenty feet, and
stopped, it being level full of show. He
knew a freight train had preceded him
about an hour, and he wondered
how that cut had filled up so soon
after the freight had gone through 1t.
At any rate, he concluded it must be
light snow, so he ran back about a
quarter of a mile,% uncoupled his engine,
and made a run for the cut. He went
into the cut this time about a quarter of
the way through, and stopped again.
We waited for him to come back, and
when he backed his engine to the train
he told us there was something in the
cut besides snow. To prove it, he got
out and looked at the pilot, which was
smashed up as though it had run into
something solid. Accordingly we all
jumped on the engine, and he went
slowly into the cut again. When we got
about as far as he had before, we noticed
just a faint outline of something ahead.
We went nearer, and sure enough it was
the end of a caboose, the snow drifted a
foot over the top Of it. We finally got
the engine coupled to it, and backed up.
After a hard pull, we got it out of the
drift, and found every mothers son of
the freight crew inside of it. They had
run into the cut about an hour before,
when it was clear, and the snow started
to blow, and drifted the cut full so
fast they couldn't get either backward
or forward. It showed 'em clean out of
sight, and they were waiting in the
caboose for death when We found EN-.
After we got the caboose out, we went
at the rest of the train, thirty-six cars.
and hauled 'em out one by one. It took
us eight hours, but we resurrected that
train, and took it into the next station
with us"
Every man in the office breathed a
long sigh of relief at the climax of the
thrilling tale, and the narrator blushed
and drew his chair back a little farther
from the stove. "Cuts do drift full fast
out in the prairie country" assented
another railroad man, dreamily ponder
ing over experiences of past winters.
"Tbere's one between jamestown and
Bismarck, which has a peculiar history.
The event which made it historic hap
pened about five years ago. There
hadn't been a train out of jamestown
for two days, and when the storm which
had been raging ceased, they sent out a
rotary snow pillow TO clear the cuts along
the track. We got through several Of
them all right, but finally we came
to one which was a sticker. We went
into it and shoveled off about
three feet from one end, leaving
the snow bank a fiat surface, like the
side of a house. AS soon as the snow
cleared from the air, we went at it again,
and when We ran 9 the edge of the
bank, the engineer stopped dead.
SWELL, sir, the edge Of that snow bank
and it presented to us a fiat sur
face about twenty-five feet square,
looked like a section Of peanut taffy. Up
in one corner a cows tail protruded and
hung down along the fat surface; about
foot from this q horses head stuck
forth from the bank. Up in another cor
ner q pigs snout protruded, and at vari-
GUS intervals Of space along the surface
of the bank were various of the members
Of pigs, sheep, horses, COWS, coyotes, an
telope-heads, tails, legs, ears-all etick-
ing forth from the bank, and showing
plainly against the clear white of the
snow. II was the same all through the
cut. The animals had taken shelter in
the storm, and the cut had drifted from