The Appeal. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. ;) 1889-19??, 1909-01-23
JUST SWUNG A HAT
AND TRAIN WOULD STOP At
FARMERS SIGNAL.
In Early Days Of the Rail This Was az
Effective as the Red Light
Now, But the Times
Have Changed.

Among the first railroads ever laid
in this country were the Hartford &
New Haven and the Boston & Provi-
dence-both new parts of that great
N. Y, N. H. & H. system which comes
near to controlling the transportation
business of all New England. The
early railroad corporations conducted
their affairs on somewhat different
basis from the present day corpora
tions.
One old farmer on the line of the
B. & p, just outside of Providence,
was urged to give the struggling road
permission to lay it's tracks through
his farm. Being a Yankee, it was nat
ural for him to look to the main
chance in every transaction, and aside
from the great public benefit that the
building Of the road was supposed to
be, he wanted to know what he was
| going to get out of it.
"Why, you'll want to ride to town on
it, won't you?" it was suggested. "The
trains will travel faster than horse"
"Ah, but your station is two miles
AAA SAAS OIAOA I'LL CSCAOu. OOA w LIZ
any good" grumbled the farmer.
So they told him that when he want
ed to go to town all he had to do was
to go down to the railroad, stand be-
side the track, swing his hat when
the train came along, and it would
stop for him. And it did, too, for some
years. Then the company began to
make money-began to feel it's oats"
as it were-and new and younger men
got control. A new superintendent
was put on that branch of the road,
and riding over the line one day he
saw the farmer stop train in this
manner and get aboard. Needless to
say that was the last time the old man
was so accommodated. He could swing
his old hat till he was blue in the face
thereafter and, as he said himself in
after years, "She'd whiz by an would
not even hesertate!"
Speed was certainly not the first OBJ
ject of the early railroads. Freight
was what the promoters of the rail-
road kyars'' were after. Stage coach
drivers held the new-fangled trains in
much contempt. In the beginning cars
travelled little if any faster than the
coaches. Supt. Davidson of the old NJ
H. & H. once told of driving with his
father behind team Of horses, in
1910, when they had race with a pas
senger train near Wallingford, Conn.,,
where the railroad and turnpike are
parallel for three or four miles and
for all that distance the carriage kept
pace with the railroad train.
Sometimes an inch of snow on the
rails would stop a train Henry G.
White, one of the first conductors on
that road, related how he and the bag
gage master used to sit on the pilot Of
the locomotive, one on each side, and
brush off the snow from the rails with
broom as the train slowly crawled
on. Each had pail Of sand and now
and then sprinkled a shovelful on the
slippery rails. The driving wheels (en-
gines only had one pair them, used to
slip in a most irritating way, and a
grade on a wet day was an experience
to turn mans head gray! On one
occasion a train got stuck on the
Galesville grade by one inch Of snow,
and the wood and water gave out be-
fore the locomotive could pull to the
top. At length they got out the neigh
bors, yoked four pairs of oxen to the
train, and drew it, passengers, bag
gage and all, into Meriden with flying
cOlOrSi