The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-08-04
WHEN A TRAIN IS WRECKED
FOREMAN OF THE WRECKING
 CREW TELLS WHAT'S DONE.

The Outfit, Consisting of Seven Cars, is
 Always in Readiness--First the In-
 iured are Taken Out-Next in Impor-
 tnnce, Get the Track Cleared for
 Traffic.
 You want a story of how we clear away wrecks?
 Well" says the old wrecking fore- man, in an article in The Iron Trail, perhaps 1t is after a hard days work and herded into the field to be finally down cars; for usually the wercking crew is made up of ten of the car re- pair men.
 Every man knows exactly where the wrecking outfit is-on by the round- house where the night crew Is doing all it can to hurry along the fire and the rising steam pressure of the engine that is to take the outfit on its errand of mercy.
 This outfit, if it is modern, consists of g. steam derrick car, with steam al- ways up, weighing in the neighborhood of 160,000 pounds, with a flirting capa- city of sixty five tons.
 Behind the derrick comes the truck car It contains extra trucks to be used under derailed cars bodies whose trucks have been ruined. Next comes the blocking car, loaded down with all necessary blocking and timber.
 Then there Is the track supply car, equipped with all the necessarya track material, such as ties and rails. The tool car is the next in order. This car- ries jacks of all descriptions from a 6 inch pony jack to 40 ton hydraulic. It is loaded also with bars, chisels, hammers; wrenches, dope buckets, packing spoons. lines, tackles and blocks, night and day signals tar paulins for covering merchandise and stretchers, blankets and sheets for the injured and the dead
 Next is the cook and bunk car and finally the caboose The former has q range, a refrigerator and a stock of food that will keep. It has hunks for eighteen or twenty men. This train. or outfit as 1t is called, Is always coupled together and stored on a side track
 "The first thing that a wrecking fore man does on being called is to get into communication with the chief train de- spatcher and find out all the particulars possible. If 1t is a merchandise wreck, empty freight cars are taken along in- t3 which can be transferred such freight and grain as can be saved
 He also finds out as near as he can lust where the wreck lies and how bad ly it is piled. If it is a passenger wreck why of course, it Is a case of get there as quickly as possible, wondering all the time who the dead and injured are and what new scene of awfulness will be confronted
 "The wrecking outfit has the right of way over all trains between the starting point and the place where the wreck occurs. Passenger, stock and freight are all side-tracked.
 "A stop is made at the station or sid- ing nearest the wreck. Here the steam derrick is switched ahead of the engine, with the rest of the outfit coupled be- hind. On arriving at the wreck man is stationed at the front end of the crane whose duty is to give signals to the engineer of the derrick, whether to raise, lower or to swing the crane.
 "The first thing a wreeking fore- man does after finding out where the injured are and getting them loose is to figure on working a passageway through the wreck and replacing the track as the debris is cleared. If the wreck is bad one and there is the chance a temporary track is built around the mess that traffic may be re- sumed as soon as possible.
 Cars that are damaged to the ex- tent of $100 are dragged into the ditch. all the truck and air brake rigging taen from them and the body of the car set afre All of the iron parts .are after ward loaded on to flat cars, often even the boiler of the locomotive. This scrap is taken to the shop to be repaired and used over again.
 Even freight wrecks can present a terrible appearance One of the worst of these ever saw was forty-loads of wheat the products of many a hun dred acres, piled forty feet high and ex- tending from right of way fence tc right of way fence--a regular hill ot gold which took one solid weeks worl, to clear away. Carload after carload of wheat had to be loaded by basket in to new cars-while many tons of bent and twisted iron and heap upon heap of ashes told a silent story of the werck.
 "One time we went out to pick up a stock of eleven cars. These next to passenger wrecks, are the worst tc handle. This particular wreck was onC of great confusion, The pened cattle were believing frightfully. On each side and far over toward the fence lay dead or injured stock.
 Nov there is nothing tha makes these Western steers so angry as tht smell of blood, and add to that injury and the terrible excitement of a wrecl and you have 8 combination that makes the DOT animals fairly crazy. Woe tc the man who gets close to a head or the heels of a struggling beast. The cars were piled in such a way that we were compelled to rip the tops off.
 "Then men crawled out along the wreckage, fastened lines about the horns, and with the aid of the derrick