The Lake County times. [volume] (Hammond, Ind.) 1906-1933, 1907-01-08

Napoleon boots, a sealskin cap drawn
snuggly over his straight black hair. 4
watching, ordering. signaling, while /
No. 1, with its frost bitten sleepers be- /
hind a rotary. struggled TO buck +
through the ten and twenty foot cuts /
which lay bankful OF snow west of
McCloud.
Not until April did it begin TO look
as If we should win out. \ dozen
times the line was all but choked on
US. And then, when snowplows were
disabled and train crews desperate,
there came a storm that discounted the
worst blizzard of the winter. AS the
reports rolled in on the morning Of
the 9TH. growing worse as they grew
thicker. Neighbor, dragged out, played
out mentally and physically, threw up
his hands. The 9th it showed all day.
and on Saturday morning the section
men reported thirty feet in the Black
wood canyon.
Ii was o'clock when we got the
word and daylight before we got the
rotary against 1t. They bucked away
till noon, with discouraging results.
and came in with their gear smashed
and a driving rod fractured. 1t looked
as if we were beaten.
No. l got into McCloud eighteen
hours late 1t was Sankey's and Sin
clair's run west.
There was a long council in the
rUIndhouse. The rotary was knocked
out Coal was running low in the
chutes. If the line wasn't kept open
for the coal from the mountains. it was
plain we should be tied until we
could ship it from Iowa or Missouri
West Of Medicine Pole there was an
other big rotary working east, with
plenty OF coal behind her, but she was
reported stuck fast in the Cheyenne
hills.
Foley made suggestions, and Dad
Sinclair made suggestions. Everybody
had a suggestion left The trouble
was, Neighbor said, they didn't amount
to anything or were impossible.
Its a dead block, boys" announced
Neighbor sullenly after everybody had
done. "We are beaten unless we can
get No. L through today. Look there.
By the holy poker, it's showing again"
The air was dark in a minute with
whirling clouds. Men turned to the
windows and quit talking. Every fell
low felt the same-at least all but one.
Sankey, sitting back of the stove, was
making tracings on his overalls with a
| piece of chalk.
you might as we'll unload your pas
sengers, Sankey," said Neighbor. You'll
never get 'em through this winter"
And 1t was then that Sankey propos-
ed his double header
He devised a snowplow which com
bined in one monster ram about all
the good material we had left and sub
mitted the scheme to Neighbor. Neigh
| Dor studied it and hacked at it all he
could and brought it over to the office
1t was like stalking everything on the
last cast of the dice, but we were in
the state of mind which precedes a
desperate venture. 1t was talked over
for an hour, and orders were finally
given by the superintendent to rig up
the double header and get against the
snow as quick as it could be made
ready.
All that day and most of the night
Neighbor worked twenty men on San
keys device. By Sunday morning 1t
was in such shape that we began to
take heart
IF she don't get through she'll get
back again, and that's what most of
'em don't do" growled Neighbor as he
and Sankey showed the new ram to
the engineers.
They had taken the 566, George Sin
clair's engine, for one head and Burns
407 for the other. Behind these were
Kennedy, with the 314, and Cameron.
with the 296. The engines were set in
pairs, headed each way and buckled
up like pack mules. Over the pilots
and stacks of the head engines rose
the tremendous plows which were to
tackle the toughest drifts ever record
ed, before or since, on the West End.
The ram was designed to work both
ways. Under the coal each tender was
loaded with pig iron.
(To be be concluded in next fssue)