Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1910-11-22
RAlLRoADING WAS STRENUOUS
Days of Link Couplings and Wheel
and Chain Brakes.

You can't wash off, wipe off or smile
off the characteristic complexion of
the old-time locomotive engineer
Just as the lungs of the person who
has lived for years in smoky Chicago
are black from floating atoms of car
bon, so the face of the old engineer is
tattooed with them.
He was standing in the downtown
Chicago ticket office of railroad hav-
ing scenic routes east and west, just
at the time when they were coming
(and going) back" Men, women and
children were there in dozens, sign
ing up" or buying railway "litera-
ture," cataloguing points of interest
everybody wanted something or any
thing that would while the tedium of
travel.
They make me dead sore" said the
old engineer as finally he got his tick
ct reading from Chicago to Kansas
City. I've been out of the railroad
game for ten years, but this namby-
pamby travel business gets on my
nerves. When l got my first engine
on the old North Missouri railroad
from st. Louis to Kansas City, about
1874, that was travel
i've been in this office thirty min
utes by the watch, just to get a ticket
to Kansas City. Why? Because lot
of these candy people travelling want
to get everything that's going with 'em,
besides trying to take the ticket agent
along to do sand dances and black face
stunts for 'em. They're afraid of be-
ing bored.
say! They didn't get bored when
l pulled 'em along the old North Mis-
souri, on the division run between st.
Louis and Moberly, Mo. That was rail-
roading and it took a man somewhere
between a blockade runner and bur-
glar to sit in the engine cab or knock
down fares in the train. l lived in
st. Louis and everytime I started west
on my run my wife sobbed on my
shoulder with fear, and when l got
back all in one piece she used to kiss
and cry most of the smudge off, just
for joy.
we didn't have the air brake, YES
tibule couplings and palace trains that
these people have. One sleeper on
six coach train would be half empty
for the reason that most people were
afraid to undresS at night. In sum-
mer and winter the choice seat in the
day coaches was the one nearest the
box having the sledge hammer and
the saw. The roadbed at best was a
sort of first aid to travel. We had
grades that you couldn't see the top of
looking out of the cab window.
The DID, light iron rails after Il
year would be worn so ragged and
splintered in places that schoolboys in
shoes didn't dare walk on the rails
The ties were laid on top of the clay
SubsOil and in the spring, when the
first frost was going out of the ground
wit pnlll1n't
guess within eight inches of how the
pitch of the outer rail on the sharp
curve would be.
and the riding in those days of the
link coupling and the wheel-and- chain
brake! 1t was like bronchO busting.
1t was a common sight for man
SnooZing for minute in a day coach
to he pitched across the aisle of the
car into the opposite seat, breaking Il
rib. or rose. or wrist. In those days
when some pretty girl sat opposite a
near maSher all he had 10 do to get
acquainted was to wait minute for
conveniently strong lurch of the car
and pitch over into her lap. He would
smile. apologize, talk about the dan
ger Of travel and before he or she
left the train. they'd promised to write
to each other.
I'VE didn't have barbed wire fences
along the line, and the breachy,
would come over the rail or plank
fence to chew off the ffshplates. To
get a bunch of fifteen or twenty of
'em on the rails in cut was n picnic.
used to let out old 126 to the limit
and buck 'cm. I've splaShed tons of
beef along that old right of way.
Sometimes in hot summer weather
there was so much of it that the wO-
men had to use smelling salts for
miles at Il stretch.
You can imagine what that would
be. We had a single track and with
twenty cattle punched in cut you
could bowl over anywhere from four
to seven at crack. | remember the
time when out of only seventeen cat
tie i'm long. deep cut near Martins
burg. l got clean ten of EN-, be-
sides tumbling the other seven over
four times to the bottom of a grade
that began just where the cut left off.
And say. the conductor told me at
: Gtnn a three