Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 274, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1910 — STALLED BY BISONS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

STALLED BY BISONS

INCIDENT CF RAILROADING IN KANSAS IN 70s. Herd Mlles Long Holds up Train for Three Hours—Wild Game Cause the Railroad Men Much Trouble. "Forty-two years on the pay roll of the Santa Fe, 38 of those years run-

nlng an engine and never missed a pay check.” This was the statement of Pete Tellin as he stepped from his train at Kinsley, Kan., a few nights ago after completing his passenger run, which takes In the line between Hutchinson and Kinsley. Perhaps no other railroad man of the west can boast of so long a service with a single com-

pany. Tellin began work for the Santa Fe at Topeka In 1868. He had come to this country only a year or two before from Sweden, and he could neither read nor write nor speak English. He helped build the Santa Fe from Topeka to Emporia, later being advanced to boss of a construction gang, in 1870 he got a job as fireman and two years later he was assigned to a run as engineer, and he ran an engine until-he got a place as passenger conductor two years ago. In the wild days of Newton and Dodge City Tellin dodged bullets in both towns. In 1873 he ran the first construction train from Dodge City to Granada, Col. He took the first Santa Fe.train into Colorado and ran the first train across the Arkansas river when the bridge at Granada was completed. “That ’Aas July 4, 1873,” he said, "and it was the drunkenest Fourth I have ever seen. Engine 32, named Kansas, had the distinction of being the first to cross the river. The engines were named as well as numbered. From the time the railroad was first built to the western line of Kansas and for 20 or more years afterward I ran out of Dodge City; and I want to tell you that if I had been offered all the land as far- as J could see in all that part of the state I wouldn’t have had it as a gift. It was the most lonesome, dreary and forlorn looking country under the shining stars. Today you can’t buy some of that land for SIOO an acre. “There was one thing this country was good for then, however, and that was wild game. It wag a daily sight on my run to pass herds of buffalo, antelope and other game. “Buffalo never gave me any trouble but once. That was when a bad herd started across the track. There were one or two herds known to the pioneers as bad because of their ugly disposition. This was the only time I ever saw a herd of that kind. Generally the buffalo were as meek as cattle. “This herd was miles long, and it seemed to me there were millions in it. I sounded the whistle and popped off steam and did everything to scare them, but they wouldn’t scare, and for nearly three hours my train was held up waiting for the brutes to get across the track. “Usually we would find most of the buffalo near Cimarron. They would get between the track and the river and chase along with us. They could run 20 miles an hour all right, and that was as fast as we generally ran. Every day I would see antelope by the million, it seemed, in herds. They were always shy and the noise of the train frightened them. - And wild ducks? I never saw so many in my life as there used to be where Hutchineon now stands. The sky would be black with them. You could shoot from the train and get any number of them just pot shooting.”

Disinfecting Cars in Prussia. Disinfection of the coaches of the Prussiain state railways has been annoying the sanitation authorities, with the result that the government recently established a system of steel tubes, boiler rivetted, into which coaches may be backed and exteriors and interiors rendered germless through a treatment of formalin. Cars are run Into these tubes, one at a time, the end of the tube closed, and its interior filled with formalin gas. The gaa tank is set up as a unit tn connection with the metal tubing, feeding the disinfectant gaSes into the tube at short range.