Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1885 — Superstitious Engineers. [ARTICLE]

Superstitious Engineers.

During the recent convention of locomotive engineers in this city, a number of them were invited to the house of a local railroader to meet gentlemen from the various other branches of railroading. As the evening wore on, the grizzled old throttle-pullers and their friends fell to relating anecdotes and experiences, from which the following are taken:

“Locomotive engineers are very superstitious,” remarked the first speaker. “One of the queerest cases that I know of illustrative of this tendency, ” he continued, “was that of old Adam Brown, who ran an engine on the Northern Pacific for many years. Adam, who was a German, was quite an eccentric person any way, and had a habit of approaching the climax of his yarns, of which he was an industrious spinner, by the introductory announcement that ‘we was yoost a goin’ around the corner, about forruty miles an hour’— under such circumstances a cow’s tail would be discovered waving a danger signal, or some other emergency would present itself, calling forth a display of the ingenious Adam’s presence of mind and dexterity. “Well, on the night in question, Adam was pulling a mixed train—that is, one composed of both passenger and freight cars —out of Duluth, the village made famous by Proctor Knott’s allusion to it as the ‘ Zenith City of the unsalted seas.’ I was train-dispatcher for the Northern Pacific, whose trains ran over a joint stretch of road from Duluth to Northern Pacific Junction, and were not under our immediate control until after passing the Junction. “Adam’s train left Duluth on time, but arrived at the Junction late. We could obtain no satisfactory answers to our inquiries regarding the time lost, the conductor reporting everything all right as far as he was concerned. The train continued to lose time, however, and reached Brainerd, the end of the division, where I was stationed, five hours late. I tackled the conductor for an explanation when he came in, and What do you suppose he told me ? Why, that Adam dreamed the day previous that a huge tie had been strapped across the track by train-wreckers. The whole surroundings were vividly impressed on his mind, and he had awakened just as the engine touched the tie. So firmly did he believe in the ‘premonition’ tlißt he could not be induced to run along at the ordinary rate of speed, but crept along all night. “The engineers appear to have a Btrong belief in the strange fatality that seems to attach to some engines, and not altogether without cause. The old No. 47, which used to run on the Dakota Division of the Northern Pacific years ago, was one of these cases. She was wrecked at least half a dqgen times within a few months from various causes, and we never felt confident when she was on the road.”

“Recently I boarded an engine on a train coming west from Sacramento, ” Raid another, “the engineer of which •was an old friend of mine. Noticing a horseshoe hanging in his cab, I asked him why he carried it. ‘i’ll tell you, Tom,’ said he. ‘For a month I was never able to make our time; if it wasn’t a break-down the engine would not steam, or we’d be -troubled with hot boxes, or perhaps go into the ditch. At last I got the horseshoe, and, on my oath, I’ve not had a bit of trouble since. We haven’t been ditched once; have had no trouble in getting up steam; the boxes have run perfectly cool, and the machine hasn’t so much as slipped au eccentric or blown out a soft plug.’ ”