The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-03-12
WHAT CAUSES TRAIN DELAYS.

Annoying Little Accidents and Inci-
 dents That Compel the Pliers to Lose
 Time.
 Perhaps one of the most exasperating incidents of the railway journey is to be delayed so that the train will be late in arriving at it's destination. says the Duluth Herald. It is annoying in itself
 to be compelled to remain idle at some lonely siding but when one has an en-
 gagement to keep or a, connection to
 make, the ordeal is rendered doubly try ing.
 As a rule, most delays are caused by through trains failing to arrive at june ton points, though occasionally cars off the track. washouts, broken rails and other happenings, which may be term ed accidents, and in winter severe or
 stormy weather, are responsible. Such delays are aggravating enough, but to be held up for halt an hour or longer for apparently no reason at all is suff1- cient to strain ones patience to near breaking.
 Of these mysterious waits hot box" is, perhaps, the most common cause. This is the heating of the journal by
 constant friction with the moving wheel.
 ordinarily the bearing is protected by oil-soaked cotton waste, but often the latter is stolen or works loose. Train
 men who have strict orders to watch
 out for sshot boxes" discover them by the smoke and sometimes by the flames srom the burning waste. The moment
 the discovery is made the train is stop ped and the crew treats the journal with oil and water. Should a "hot box be neglected there is great danger of the axle giving away. with fatal re- suits.
 Frequently delays are caused by the
 mismanagemen of the trains on the To- cal division. A dispatcher, becoming ratt1ed, fears that he may give lap order, goes to the other extreme and
 holds some train unnecessarily. Per-
 haps something unforeseen runs up after train has left the station, and it is too late to countermand orders. Not long ago passenger headed for Duluth left a small town with orders to meet an outbound train midway between sta- tions. A 'hot box discovered at the last moment, unexpectedly delayed the latter half an hour. The first train,
 waiting blindly on the siding, was held up for the same length of time, plus the
 running time. to the meeting point.
 Freight crews are often to blame, for, although they are fully informed of the
 passengers movements, they carelessly block the main line in yards, or, start
 ing out on an upgrade run with too
 heavy a load for their engine to pull, prefer to let themselves be stalled and have the passenger push them up the hill rather than to take more time and
 struggle up themselves. This conduct. which may make passenger half to three-cuarters of an hour late, is too
 often passed unreprimanded by the proper officials.
 One branch line, where mixed trains
 are run to a very loose schedule, en-
 gineers who like to go fast sometimes go
 ahead of time. It therefore happens
 that. for no apparent reason, a train.
 which had been sailing along at a pretty good gait, suddenly slows down to a
 snails pace, or stands idle as the golden l minutes go by. The exasperated travel
 CT vainly cudgels his brain for the cause | of this delay, until the conductor re- lassuringly informs him that they are
 merely ahead of time''
 Once in while the delay is due to some unusual occurrence. Tn winter
 the brakeman sometimes finds it inpos-
 sible to throw the switch unaided. and once a train, less than a mile from the