The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-07-09


 stock of ardyisions in on hand as ready for instant use as the train itself.
 The rear section of this car Is fitted up as a nving-robrr. No carpet on the floor, but everything is put in, com- fort and shipshape. Bunks are provided; chairs and folding tables stand ready for use. In short, every thing that men want when they require humoring to do good work is ready and waiting for them. Formerly a wrecking crew depended upon picking up its meals at a neighboring house, the rail- road company footing the bill. Wrecks often occurred at considerable distances from human abode. and at times the men had to go hungry. As 1t Is now, during the heat of summer-and no place on earth is as scorching as a rail- road track in the midle of August-all a wrecker needs to do is to send for dip per of iced oatmeal water and if it hap pens to be a biting winter night there is scalding hot coffee to put new life into the veins of the frozen workers.
 ''The second car of the train looks like an ordinary box ear. but it is really a huge tool box on wheels. In it every thing is arranged in order as neat as the silver implements in a high school girls first manicure set. You cannot mem tion d tool that might be required in wrecking but what you will find it here, excatly in it's place, where men can run in in the dark and pick up what they want without having to spend a minute Eo G1,, "A clnnN els, saws, picks sledges, hammers, blocks and tackle, ropes, chains, jacks, and hundred tools you never heard of are to be found in the car. 4
 The third cas is an ordinary fiat car loaded with several car trucks. Often in wreck the body of a car escapes damage, and only the trucks are broken and bent and twisted. In case like this all that is necessary is to raise the body of the car by means of jacks and put a, substitute under it and couple 1t fast, so the car may be hauled to the re- pair shop for permanent fixing up. Be- sides, the flat car is used for taking home iron work and whatever is and is not worth saving but would look bad and suggestive lying beside the railroad track "The last car of the train is the most important of all. It is the derrick car. This car is. built exceptionally strong. A short, stout derrick, built on a racket turntable, stands in the middle of the car. This is capable of wonderful lifting power. Once the little steam winch on the end of the car begins to squeal and puff, anything fastened to the derrick just-comes. A derrick of this description could raise an end of the biggest locomotive ever built and set in back on the rails as neatly as you could set chess figure on its proper square. The wrecking train stands ever ready on sliding especially allotted to it. This must not be used by any other train under any. conceivable cireum- stances. If a wreck occurs the track must be cleared--froin three to five minutes being the, time usually allowed for crew to get under way during the daytime. An engine ready to haul the train to a wreck stands always waiting. The water tank in it's tender is always full. Its coal supply Is heaping ten- derful. Steam is constantly kept up, an engineer and firemen are ever ready to jump to work at a minutes. notice.
 "As soon as a disaster occurs the wrecking trains is given the right of way over all other trains. At a speed ranging anywhere from 45 to 75 miles an hour the engine shrieking her whistle like frightened cat. The one object is to get the track. cleared 50 the main line of the road can be operated. No wreck ever happens but what it piles over the main line-that goes without saying, for it Is within the law of cus- sedness of things. And what it means to have main line bloekaded only an experienced railroader can appreciate. There are the thousands of cars filled with perishable stuff. A score of freight trains and coal trains are held up many of their loads intended for out going steamers that cannot afford to wait. Thousands of persons are incon- venienced and "put-out.' Many of them missed connections which they hoped to make with other railroads. On top of all this surface annoyance is the danger of further wrecks by a discorganized system; the trouble of getting the schedules, freight and passenger, set up in shape as they were before the smash and the added notoriety gained with every hour that the road is blocked. For the time while at work, the wreckmaster is man of more irn- portance than the superintendent him. self [
 What happens when a wrecking train reachas the scene of the disaster depends entirely on circumstances. Just as no two wrecks are alike. so no two methods of clearing the debris are alike. As rule, if the wreck includes passenger train and if persons were killed or injured, the gruesome work of saving the survivors and of rescuing what remains of the dead has to be finished. Only the actual work of get ting the road back into shape is what confronts the wrecker. At times he must exercise ingenuity and invention on the spot. About the limit in this direction, always thought, was shown by western wrecking master, who, on finding he could not clear the track of a pair of hopelessly smashed engines, ordered them hoisted clear of the tracks took the rail from under them, with some spare rails which are on western long-distance wrecking trains, built a curve of track around the obstruction until, in time, it was removed.