The Railroad Problem

f traffic that, in this memorable winter that ushers in 1917, are coming to its sidings and to the doors of its freight houses. Consider now the condition of its great

ad of better-and this despite a constant improvement i

vidual railroader of today than with the average individual railroader of, let us say, a quarter of a century ago. With the railroader's boss-his grand chief an

oad wrecks, some of them admittedly the fault of the engineer. But apparently we have ceased to have railroad wrecks due to the fact that there was a drunken man in the engine cab. The last serious wreck where this accusation was made was near Corning, New York, on the night of the Fourth of July, 1912. More than forty persons lost their lives in a rear-end collision and the railroad which paid the damages, both in money and in reputation

yees when on or off duty but also against their frequenting the places where liquor is sold? Time was when the abuse of Rule G sometimes was winked at, upon certain roads. That time has passed. Today it is

f West Virginia suspected one of his fellows in the engine cab of drin

heir heart-to-heart talk, "you've

don't,

up at the lodge. You know the Broth

hand upon the

ght rather you'd report me, if you feel that y

e sight of the responsibility that rests upon the man in the engine cab. It is one of the strongest arguments which they may use in their appeals for increased wages. It is an argument which meets with ready and popular approval in th

rains and watch the man there at his task. So, if you would know something of the man in the engine cab, come and ride a little way with him. It is not easily arranged. The railroaders have grown very strict in the enforcement of the rule which forbids strangers in the engine cabs. It is one of the ways in which they have been tightening their safety precautions. Yet in this one instanc

e; part of his pride as well. And even though it cuts him out of a Sunday dinner with his folks in the little house at the edge of the town, he prefers that it be so. In his simple, direct way he tells you that he has the same satisfaction in speeding a locomotive on which, by personal inspection, he knows that ev

knew the complications of a locomotive as you and I know the fingers of our two hands. It was not a "seniority" appointment. The "seniority" jobs come to the very oldest of the passenger engineers who, because of the very length of their service, are permitted to pick and choose the runs

ENGI

matter to be deputed, so

of the locomotive and of all of its whims and vagaries. And if his is one of the hardest jobs on the big road for which he works

e pulls out the throttle ever and ever so little a way-a distance to be

the first stop and scheduled to be reached in forty-three minutes. That means, with "slow orders" through station yards, as well as o

nd their way to the long crossover that brings her from the platform track in the tangle of the terminal yard over

goes, bag and baggage, upon the rails of a connecting road. He is supposed to read, the fireman to repeat. As a practical thing it is sometimes out of the question. The cab of the big passenger puller is far from a quiet place. There is the dull pound of the drivers over the smooth rails, the roar of

d ran straight for many miles and across a level country. Each mile of its path was marked by a clock signa

en the safety color, not the green that

d come the reply. A

and "Whit

red-red, the changeless signal for danger. But our engineer did

his echo to "Red she is," looked up for a moment into his chief's fac

hi

n, and grinned as he thrust another

ng counter of the Railroad Y.M.C.A., I asked the engineer

bloody eye? I could get the next two blocks and saw they were safe. I know every inch of the line, and knew that there was not an in

," I suggested, "wouldn't that break the curre

inal terminal. To have stopped this train flat at the red signal, when he felt morally certain and could practically see that the line was clear and open, would have cost fifteen minutes or more. If the practice was repeated and even his detention sheets showed that the time lost was due to stopping

." Freeman speaks a good word for the signals. You take note of it. Then you remember that in one of the innumerable cases that came up before the Interstate Commerce Commission down in Washington, the engineer of the Congressio

his big long-boned black baby is edging gently into her bunk for a few hours of well-earned rest, he will tell you frankly that

ut the signals to pull Twenty-four at a sixty-mile-an-hour clip. To my mind they're like watchmen, with flags or lanterns every mile up the main line. Only a watchman couldn't see a mile and know of a break in the rail, the way that electric block kn

maximum speed limits for every mile of the main line and its branches-ways by which the road knows that the maximums are not being exceeded. And Freeman likes to quote the big

aking his schedule time we want to know it-at once. If we believe the rule is wrong we

nstead of eighteen, as was the case when they were first installed. The famous run of the Jarrett and Palmer special in 1876, from Jersey City to Oakland on San Francisco Bay, in four days flat, still stands almost as a transcontinenta

right-hand side of the engine cabs appreciate that. They know the responsibility t

k. Curving? Forever curving, and each time it swerves and the path that we are eating up at the rate of eighty-eight feet to the second is lost behind the brow of a hill or through a clu

expressionless. Yet behind those same protecting glasses the windows of his soul are open-and watching, watching, forever watching the curving track. Sometimes the tr

or signals. He never permit

w it myself," says he, "and it wi

ood of Locomotive Engineers, to which Freeman and most of his fellows belong, eleven years and seven days is the average length of service for an engineer upon an American railroad. The railroad managers figure it a l

railroad to give annual passes to the employees who have been in its service more than fifteen years. More than half of its engineers receive such passes. And early in the present year it retired from active service Engineer James

-close round about us the railroad yards, vast in their ramifications and peopled with a seemingly infinite number of red and blue and yellow freight cars. There is a trail of them close beside Freeman's arm. The trail culminates in a caboose which shows flags and we know that it is a freight

ys the fireman; "the boy who is pulling that greasy old Baldwin comes ne

ne, must keep out of the way of the gleaming green and gold and brass contraption that has the right of way from the very moment that she starts out from the terminal. Yet it is the freight-puller and his train that are earning the money that must be used to pay the deficit on the limited that whirls by him so contemptuously. For that proud and showy thing of green and

rakes, the big engine is feeling its way cautiously through the maze of tracks and switches while once again you hear the fireman call the signals. Three minutes later the train is halted-beside the long platform under that great and smoky shed, folk are getting on and off the cars-there is all the gay confusion that marks the arrival

ity in the

well paid-whether it is responsibility at the dispatcher's desk, in the lonely signal tower, in the track-foreman's shanty, in any of the many, many forms of railroad operation where the human factor in s