The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1913-04-17
RAILROAD STORIES.
Old-Timers Have Them On Hand to
Satisfy Public's Craving.

There is a great deal Of romance
woven about the business of railroad
ing Books have been written of it,
poems sung of it. When one sits at
ease behind the brass-railed platform
of the observation car, it is quite easy
| to think of the romantic life of the
engineer ahead.
If you should some time get per-
mission to ride on a locomotive and
the fireman lets you feed the hungry
NAV Of the engine for several miles,
romance will take a seat some dis
tance in the FEAR. There is nothing
| particularly romantic about shoveling
a few tons Of coal into the mouth of a
| flaming furnace, and if hot cinder
pops out and flies. down the collar Of
your shirt, that is not very romantic
either.
1t is source of constant amuse-
ment to seasoned railroad men to
of the rail" To them it means toiling
and sweating for livelihood. But if a
curious person is determined to find
| romances, the average railroader will
be tickled to help him alon. The av-
erage railroader is champion kid
der" with a wonderful fertile imagl-
nation; he loves to sit down with some
open-mouthed, wild-eyed person and
spin his supply of yarns, most of
which would bring a blush of shame
to the notoriouly inaccurate Baron
Munchausen.
Any one searching for railroad tales
was, sooner or later, sent to see I'm
Gle Nick" an antiquated stationary
engineer, who was employed in the
Wabash roundhouse at Moberly, Mo.
Uncle Nick had but one tale, but 1t
was a good one Here is the way 1t
ran:
Il forget the exact date, but the
Wabash was the Old North Missouri
in those days. We used wooden
stringers for rails, with strip OF
metal nailed on top of them. We used
to name engines, calling them Yer
mont mississippi and so on. Fin
ally, they got so numerous that it
was decided to- number them instead.
had the original No. 13. She burned
sticks of wood instead of coal, and
the fireman was called wood pass
er.
'On the day l am telling about l
noticed that it was the thirteenth day
of the month; that, with engine No.
l3, made a combination that would
scare a superstitious man stiff. To
add to that we pulled out of Moberly
just 13 minutes late with 13 passen-
gers aboard. My wood passer was
mighty scared but just laughed at
him.
The Old North Missouri ran from
st. Louis to Macon. We were running
along nice and smooth with our trip
almost over, when-bingo! A warped
wooden rail sent us into the ditch.
None of us were hurt, but, believe me
Or not, the first thing l saw when l
crawled out from under the wreck
was a mile post it said, Macon City,
13 miles
Uncle Nick told his story in very
convincing fashion, and it was quite
disappointment to find that mile
posts were unknown in the days he
described. But, worst of all, was the
discovery that mis- experience had
been confined to the kind of engine
that has to be hauled by other power
than it's own. The only way he ever
rode on a railroad was as passen-
ger.
When a passenger hands the brake
man and conductor a perfectly good
cigar and proceeds to get chummy,
the two railroaders know that they
are about to be pumped for yarn.
On a local freight one day cigar
won me the invitation to climb into
the cupola of the caboose, place re-
served exclusively for the train crew,
with a Keep Out sign for others.
This is the story the brakeman told
me:
He was slim, red-headed kind
and we called him Splinter. He was
night man at the signal tower at
Ona, w. Va. The Baltimore and
Ohio tracks go through the side of
hill at Ona and a cut has been made
through solid rock. Splinter's tower
was just outside Ona Cut, as it was
called.
Splinter was plug tobacco flend;