Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 173, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 July 1912 — GUARDING THE RAILS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GUARDING THE RAILS

TRACKWALKER SAVES THOUSANDS OF LIVES. 7T~~ ~I : .; V ~ *'■ • ~~ a ~—^ Patrolmen Trudge Along Lonely Beats In All Kinds of Weather to Safeguard Traveler's Way—Saving —— Llfe of President. A special train was humming along through the night over the windswept

beach-side track of the Southern Pacific company’s coast line between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Trudging ahead of the train, between the rails and carefully inspecting every foot of the roadbed by the light of his

lantern went an humble employe of the company named Abe Jenkins. It wac Abe’s business to see that the track was in proper shape for the passage of trains. As he walked out upon a bridge he saw the dark figure of a man bob up from between the ties in the middle of the structure and run quickly toward the opposite side. Abe ran after the man, seized him, and would have captured him hut that another man appeared and beat him off. While these two ware vanishing in the darkness Abe walked back to the middle of the bridge and there he found on a crosspiece under the ties a box with a rope protruding from it. He opened a box, and in it found 39 sticks of dynamite. The rope was a ten-foot fuse. And now-down the line and out upon the bridge shone a big electric headlight of the special Abe stepped aside with the box in his hands, the train thundered out upon the bridge and whisked by him while he lifted his cap. And the reason why he lifted his cap was because he knew that in a car of that train, little dreaming of the plots of anarchists or of any danger whatsoever, was the president of the United States.

It is not every, trackwalker who has had the honor, of saving the life of a president, or at least of rendering him so great a service, but trudg--ing up and down their lonely beats, many patrolmen of the rails have saved thousands and thousands of lives of lesser persons.. You in your overheated Pullman berth, on a stormy winter night rarely, If ever, give"' a thought to the man walking the roadbed ahead of your train, facing the blizzard while his bright lantern gleams along the double row of rails, looking for loose platebolts, for track obstructions or whatever else might prove of danger in your swift flight through the darkness. But ahead of you there, safeguarding your way, the trackwalker tramps his cold, dismal beat, with wrench and oil can and lantern, with alert eye and ready hand to repair, if it is in his power) whatever damage has been wrought by the elements or by the heavily grinding wheels, and, if he cannot repair it, to set signals for the engineer and to summon the roadmaster and his gang. At all seasons and at all hours these careful inspectors are on the job and the number of disasters they avert in the course of a long term of years is Incalculable. —Technical World Magazine.