Williston graphic. (Williston, Williams County, N.D.) 1895-1919, 1898-12-23
WATCHING THE CARS.
A Common Sight, Yet One That Is AL
ways Interesting to Young
and Old Alike.

SAID 10 me the Other DAY: love to
watch the cars!' We were standing
on a bridge where many trains pass.
seeing the cars go under; trains going
one way and the other, and engines
backing down and hooking on to trains,
cars and locomotive all the time in mo-
ton. Even in it's most commonplace
aspect fascinating spectacle, and
told the boy that I loved to watch 'em
too, and so we stood there long time
and looked at 'em.
ut made me think of the time when !
was young, about 714,ooo,ooo years ago.
though I feel young still for all that
when I used to watch the cars myself
Locomotives burned wood in those
days, and the tenders were stacked up
high with cordwood. The engines were
not half so big as they are now, and
they had great funnel-shaped smoke
stacks, faring wide at the top, but they
were fascinating just the same.
''In the town I lived in then the en-
gines waiting to couple on to trains to
take them along their stretch of the
road from that point on, used to back
down from the roundhouse and wait
in a cut a block or two from the rail
road station. This cut was walled up
on the sides, and the outside tracks of
the lines laid in the cut came close to
the wall, the top of which was about on
level with the top of the locomotive
tender.
Sometimes there would be three en-
gines waiting in this cut for trains.
And that always made an interesting
scene, the three engines standing close
together, all breathing in the peculiar
way that engines have, more like a
short, regular cough, than it is breath
ing, but I was always the most in
terested in the one on the track near
est the wall where I went.
''Every once in awhile I used to go
down there on that wall and stay there
and watch the locomotive, right close
by, until it went out, and, sometimes,
if it's train was late, that might be half
an hour or more, but never tired of it.
I used to see the engineer pick up his
oil can with the long spout and swing
down out of the cab to the ground and
walk all around the engine very de-
liberately and oil everything every
where, and then he'd seem to sort of
take look all around and then he'd
climb up in the cab again and put the
can down and get some cotton waste
out of the box on the tender and rub the
Oil off his hands. All this time the fire.
man would be doing something, shin
ing the brass for last touch may be-
they used to have more brass on en-
gines then than they do nowadays
and all this time, quiet and still as it
was in the cut, all three engines would
be breathing in that slow sort of a
cough-like breathing -. seemed as
though they were breathing just as
slow and easy as they could, and sort
Of saving themselves up for the time
when they have to stretch out.
"Pretty soon the other engines would
back down, one after the other, and
then the time would come for my en-
CINE to go. I used to see the engineer
touch the throttle gently, starting the
engine backing down, and then in two
or three minutes I'd see him coming UP
the track again hauling the train. Run
ming slow through the cut. but picking
up, little all the time, sitting with his
hand on the throttle and looking out
ahead; fireman sitting now on the seat
over on the other side of the cab, look
L 4 ~
ing. 1t was great delight to see the
train go by, and how empty the cut
seemed after 1t had gone.
Glove to watch the cars? We all do
and l don't know of anything that
would do better for type or symbol OF
emblem or whatever you call it of the
American people than that splendid
swift, and powerful machine, the mod
ern American locomotive. IN. Y. Sun