Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 November 1884 — A Private Railroad Station. [ARTICLE]

A Private Railroad Station.

"We made a singular discovery the other day,” remarked an official of a road running into Chicago.) "About three miles beyond a certain station on pur line there is a farm-house by the side of the track. Just beyond the farmhouse is a littlo creek, over which there is a small ■ bridge. About four years ago some repairs were made to that little bridge, and, of course, the bridge gang; , had to put up a signboard‘Bun Hlow,’ on either side, during the day or so the bridge was weakened. When they had finished their work, they went off and forgot the signs. The fact is, the, boards had disappeared* and they didn’t take the trouble to hunt them up. “Some weeks afterward, no one knows just when, those signs reappeared in their former places. Nobody knew who put them therfefOr what for. Nobody cared. If the section men noticed them at all they thought the bridge men had done it. It was none of the engineers' business why they were there —it was their duty to observe regulations, which required them to slow down at all such signs. Observe regulations they did. For about four years not a train had passed over that little bridge without slowing almost to a standstill. The culvert, for that’s all it is, has been as safe as any part of the road-bed, and yet stopping and starting trains there has cost this company thousands of dollars. You know, it costs money to stop and start traihs. “You are wondering how it all comes about, of course. Well, that farmer stole those boards and put them up again at his leisure. Foi four years he has been going into the town or coming from it on our trains, getting On or- off right at his own door. It was a slick scheme, and how he must have laughed at us and enjoyed it all the while. But his game is up now, and the engineers are having their revenge by keeping up an infernal screeching of their whistles at all hours of the day or night whenever they pass that farm house.”— Chicago Herald.