The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1906-07-23
Asleep at Telegraph Key
New York Evening Post)

I
There is an ancient saying that no
particular harm is to be appfehended
from knave. as he can be guarded
against, but that heaven is the only
protection from fool, because no one
can tell what he may do next. This
adage, attributed by them TO the Of
| fetal in charge of transportation on
the canals of Egypt, has been adopted
! by the general managers of railroads
| in this country as their own particd-
lar property. 1t has unquestionably
been heavily overworked in times past
| as applied to the IMAM underneath" III
accounting to the public for wrecks
which were really due to lack of Juds-
ment and foresight on the part OF the
operating officials and their superiors,
the board of directors. There have
been many instances in the history OF
American railroading. however, where
| "asleep at his post" or forgot his or
ders'' was the true explanations for
bad accidents, with either enginemen,
signalmen or train dispatchers as the
| offenders. From the latest accounts
of the terrible wreck at Adobe, Colo,
recently. that disaster was clearly
caused by a lapse of this kind on the
| part of one of the Denver RIO
Grande agents.
In the face of negligence of the sort
! that killed upward of forty people IN
Colorado the railroads are almost help
less. There is little that can be done
to guard against such Indifference TO
duty as that shown by man who will.
no matter how great his fatigue, fall
asleep knowing that hundreds of lives
are dependent upon his vigilance. The
railroads use the utmost care In hiring
| n ftae -
that they are performing their duty
conscientiously. Once in a while. how.
ever, a fool will get by the boards of
examiners by whom all railroad en-
ployes in responsible positions are now
hired, and when he does, only too Of
ten 1t takes a wreck to show him up.
A Flssman Who Lost His Head"
Twenty years ago one of the large
railroads of the east was poor There
| never had been Q time when ii hasn't
been poor. but at this particular period
the treasury had but recently been
looted for the third time in ten years
The salaries of some of the officers
were in arrears, and wrecks were un-
popular, not so much from the danger
to human life as the cost of re-equip-
ment. On a certain division of this
neer WHO had been but a few years
out of college. By midnight raids on
the equipment piles of the neighbour
ing divisions he had succeeded in build
ing up the section of the line over
which he was "roadmaster" until 1t be-
came the envy of the other division
roadmasters and attracted the notice
of "the old man. himself. As Lowell
said of two of Emerson's associates:
They might strip every tree and e never
/ would catch 'em,
His Hesperides have no rude dragon to
4 watch EN-,
When they send him a dishful and ask
him to try EN-,
He never suspects how the sly rogue
came by EN-;
He wonders why t is there are none
such his trees on
And thinks 'em the best he has tasted
this season.
Thanks to a sly old Irish foreman
with a pretty knack at rsiding, the
Young roadmaster was laying foun-
dation for a record breaking future.
when ne had a wreck and bad one.
He was LAYING new track on section
of his division shut off frem the rest
of the line by heavy curve. One OF
the section hands was sent back with
torpedoes and red flag, to warn trains
to "come on slow" He was particu-
larly warned to look out for an ex-
press which was due about half an
hour after he went out The track
gang had Just lifted an old rail pre-
paratory to letting in a new one when
this train rounded the curve at full
speed and went into the ditch. Disre-
garding everything else, the young en-
gineer knowing that his reputation
was at stake, ran back TO the spot
where he had posted the f1agman, taxi
ing the foreman and laborer with MN
as witnesses They found the man
pale as death sitting by the side of
the track, his flag beside him. He was
trembling like a leaf and the only eX-
PLANTATION he could give for his failure
to signal the engineer was that the
onrushing train frightened him so that
he was unable to move hand or foot
Improbable as this seems, subsequent
investigation proved that the same
man was discharged from another road
for having failed to flag train that
he had been sent out to stop. The
swift approach of a train apparently
affected him in much the same way
that standing on the edge of preci-
pice does some persons.
The Man Who Takes Chances.
A division engineer was one day max
ing an Inspection Oh JTdch IIOHi the
cab of a passenger locomotive which
he had boarded for the purpose. The
engine driver called him over to his
seat to look at some object at the side
of the road as the division engineer
supposed. Instead, he pointed to q
large boulder, the size of an egg crate,
that had rolled down the hillside and
lay directly between the rails in front
of them. There was plenty of time to
stop and the division engineer ex-
peeted the driver to shut off steam.
Instead, he opened the throttle wide
and yelled:
'See me bunt 1t off"
The engine hit the rock with a
mighty thud, rolled a trifie, and then
settled down on the rails again, the
boulder having gone over to one side.
The division engineer, as soon as he
could get possession of his voice, made
the driver stop his engine.
"You fool" lie called back as the
climbed down from the cab, 81 wouldn' t
ride another mile on the same engine
with you for 81 ,000.'
The fireman, meaning to throw oil
on the troubled waters said
why, that's nothing. Mr.. -. Gus
never stops for little thing like that.