Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 83, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 April 1910 — ATOP THE FREIGHT TRAIN. [ARTICLE]

ATOP THE FREIGHT TRAIN.

Walldag the Cara a Hair Ralalaa Experience for a Novice. There came over me as I sat in the caboose thpt evening a wild desire to ride with the engineer in the cab. Planning to slip ahead along the half mile or so of at the first stop, I made known my desire to our conductor over that part of the run. 'They’ll be glad to see you,” he told me. “You won’t have any trouble gettin’ there. It’s a mild evenin’.” He swung open the window of the lookout and called to his rear brakeman. “Jimmie, run along with this here party.” Jimmie pulled me through the window of the lookout-before I clearly realized the entire plan. It was a slippery path over the roofs of sixty cars to the big engine that was pulling us, and the wind that swept in from the shores of the ice-, bound lake* along.which the tracks ran for many mtlejj, snapped sharply over those car roofs-. Jimmie hung on to his lantern with one hand, to his convoy with the other. Long miles over those slippery ear roofs had taught him to regard it as no very serious business. “This ain’t nothin’,” was his assurance. “It sometimes gets nasty when we get down to zero an’ a blizzard comes a-rippin’ from off over the lake. Sometimes you have to get down and crawl on all fours. It wouldn’t--1® much fun to be_jwept off the tops of these cars.” » There was no disputing that, nor that the three lengthwise planks at the gable of the car roofs were nqt wide promenades. You jump from one to another to cross from car to car, and a man has got to have something of a gymnastic training and some circus as well as railroad blood in his veins to do it many times without droplng into one of the hideous dark abysses between them. A hand out of the dark slapped me in the face. “Drop,” said Jimmie, and, fearing possibly that fr might not obey, he pulled me flat down, upon the car roof. "That was a ‘telltale,’ ” he explained, and before I could ask further we were in a short reach of a tunnel, and I understood. We were whirled through that tunnel like a package in a tube, and if we had raised our arms we could have touched the flying roof of the bore. The smoke lay heavy in the place. It filled our eyes and nostrils.

“Not real nice,” said Jimmie cheerily. “But no danger in the holes, save now and then an Icicle gets a crack at your nut. You see, there ain’t much use In arguin’ the matter after that ‘telltale’ strikes you,”— Edward Hungerford In Harper’s .