Worcester morning daily spy., 1898-02-22

but\ north and west the storm was
particularly severe.
The principal damage within the city
limits is on Quinsigamond avenue,
where II 50-foot poles, located between
Bowler's brewery and Cambridge street,
that carry about so wires, are down.
Some of the poles are snapped off short
to the ground, while others are broken
off from 5 to 20 feet from the ground.
The lines carried down include the
Spencer, Millbury, Whitinsville, Provi-
dence and part of the Springfield cir
cults.
At Greendale four poles are gone
which carry all wires north, as well as
the fire alarm box 913, located in this
neighborhood, which was found lying IN
the gutter, filled with water Another
pole at the corner of Fulton and SUM
mer streets, is broken off and is held
In place by guy rope
Outside the city, the storm seems TO
have been most severe between Cherry
Valley and Spencer. Twenty-Five poles
are down between these two points.
From McDermott's store in Cherry VAL
ley to Leicester, the poles are practically
all gone, and from the power station 10
Spencer. most of the arms are broken
from the poles. Forty wires run on this
line as far as Leicester, while 20 go
through. Early in the morning, COM
right, but later in the day, when the
linemen arrived on the scene, the poles
began to drop, until finally realizing
the futility of the attempt to repair the
| damage, they came back to Worces-
ter.
Two or three poles fell across the troll
ley line of the Worcester and Suburban
road opposite the A M. Brown place in
! Cherry Valley, Monday forenoon, and
blocked traffic on this line. The early
morning cars from Spencer had to lit
orally hew their way through the tan
gled wires which had fallen across the
tracks. The linemen sent out from the
local exchange, pulled the wires back
out of the road and secured them.
The wires are gone between Charlton
and Southbridge, and the telephone com
pany had men patrolling the road be-
tween these towns all Monday night
All county towns are completely cut off
from communication with Worcester.
The American Telephone and Tele-
graph Company sent out man from
Providence, and at Z o'clock Monday
night, two pairs of wires were fixed up
temporarily, and communication estab-
lished with this city.
! The most serious break reported thus
far is on the Massachusetts Central
Railroad Early Monday evening it was
reported that the big pole line which
forms the main artery between Boston
and the west, was down, west Of Oak
dale. 1t was impossible to ascertain
any particulars.
A. l.. King, superintendent of con-
struction, was sent out from Lowell
with force Of 25 men, to help out the
linemen of the Worcester exchange, and
an additional force from Salem is ex-
pected today. All the inspectors in the
| local exchange have become linemen,
| &c, nj },
mighty effort to get the exchange back
i'm shape Special attention was given
to getting physicians lines and others
of equal Importance into working con-
dition The principal trouble with the
local lines seems to have been caused
by the limbs that broke off and fell
across the wires.
AS the lines show up in trouble on the
switchboard at the telephone office, the
line lamps are taken out and green
lamps substituted, indicating that the
line is in trouble. A glance at the board
gives the impression that a many-eyed
demon is casting the baleful light from
it's many optics upon the unoffending
operator.
All sorts of people said all sorts of un-
kind things about the electrics all day
Monday. In the summer months, and,
in fact, during Observation-Disclosures Of
the year, everybody believes the electric
cars are good things, and far in ad-
vance Of the old horse cars. But in the
remaining twentieth, the electric cars
are inclined to cut up all manner of Gu
rious prankS, that were unknown to the
more staid horse cars. The worst of it
all is that the electrics go off on their
little 1unkets when the people most
want them to be steady and reliable.
Monday was one of those days when
Worcester's thousands upon thousands
of people wanted to patronize the cleo
tries. 1t was slushy walking and ordi-
nary rubbers or even goloshes were but
the slightest protection against the all
penetrating snow-water.
So it was that everybody turned to
the Consolidated Street Railway Com
pany to find relief in it's usually excel
lent car service. But the cars, as if
to be in fashion, and to demonstrate
that people don't always appreciate a
good thing when they see it, were not
always on hand when they were need
across the track Or it might have been
a broken wire that caused the trouble.
Early in the day the officials of the
company began to realize that there
was to be trouble in store for them if
the storm continued with all it's fury of
the morning hours. The condition was
fulfilled, and in consequence the result
was realized.
The cars had been running only a
few hours, when reports began to pile
in down at the car house that there
was trouble here; then there was trou-
BILE somewhere else. The ice on the
rails, the ice on the trolley and the ice
on the wires, all figured in the diff
Guilty
But too much ice was not the only
thing. There were too many big limbs
! nf tTaa
telegraph poles across the car tracks to
make progress easy. The removal of
these obstacles always took time, and
in not few instances were accompan-
led with positive danger.
The conductor AMI motorman of each
car served as an Independent wrecking
crew for its own car and line They
cleared the way as they went, tossing
the limbs into the cutters and then
hustling along to the next piece of
broken tree. All this took time The
cars were correspondingly late
No one of the Consolidated's lines
was wholly free from difficulty. The
Boynton street line, as on several for
nler occasions this winter got the most
fun out of the storm, apparently, Early
in the afternoon two Of the cars that
make regular trips between the city's
two educational Worcester
, Polytechnic and Holy CrossAgot tied up
on Southbridge street. At l o'clock this
morning they We're still there.
The tle-up came near Madison square
where the Leicester track crosses the
Consolidateds path and was due to the
lack of power on the Leicester lines
This left the Boynton street route with
only two cars in active service. These
two made trips between the fair
grounds and the post office with as
, much regularity as was compatible with