Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 310, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 December 1912 — HANDLED BY ONE MAN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HANDLED BY ONE MAN

LINE THAT 18 UNIQUE IN HISTORY OF RAILROADS. New Jersey Has the Honor of the Possession of This Really Remarkable Route —Runs for Years Without Accident. “Every one has heard of a ‘onehorse railroad,’ said the engine sales-

man at the Machinery Club. “That is a descriptive, term, of course. But do any of you know of a one-man railroad, using those words in their literal sense? There 1b one, and it’s up among the hills of New Jersey a real line handled by one man. “He’s engineer and conductor, ticket agent, train crew, master me-

chanic, road repairer and baggage master. He runs the one train, engine, passenger coach and flat car for baggage, all the rolling stock this railroad possesses, single handed. If anything is wrong with engine, cars or roadbed he drops- his other duties and turns himself into an emergency gang. A great and versatile man is ‘ken’ Hauck, and he has made his railroad the most accommodating in the country. i“It is not as fast a line as some, I will acknowledge, but then it will stop for any one regardless of stations, and ‘Hen’ has been known to halt his engine and go up to the nearest farmhouse to arrange for a horse and buggy to carry a stranger up ip the mountains. There’s a sort of schedule, of course. ‘Hen’ plans to make two round trips a day, but when it comes to a question of pleasing passengers he lets his time table slide and lays himself out to be obliging. “Nobody would ever imagine there was a railroad like this, a few miles over the mountains from Newark. But ‘Hen’ is a real character. His railroad’s the Rockaway Valley railroad. It runs from Chester, through Mendham, over a little more than thirty miles of wild, beautiful country, a good deal of it away back from civilization and along a historic route. They do say, Washington marched through there. The little railroad comes to an end in the woods miles from anywhere, a mile even from the nearest house. “This terminus is five miles from Morristown, and if any of you are really Interested you can take a stage from Morristown over there. That stage, let me tell you, is one of the picturesque things of New Jersey. No one can tell how old it is. It looks as if it had been used in the days before any railroads at all. “I can’t say for certain, but I was told by one old man up in the Rockaway Valley that this ‘one-man railroad’ never has had but one accident. That was not at all a serious one. It’s the custom of ‘Hen’ to start the engine, get her running nicely, and then come back in the passenger coach to collect the tickets. That might sound dangerous, but it Jsn’t, for there are no switches and 'no grade-crossings on this railroad, and nothing can happen. This isn’t a seventy-mile-an-hour train, you know. And When ‘Hen’ leaves the engine to take care of itself on his ticket collecting trips it’s Just ambling along easy. “Something did happen once, though. They tell me a cow stopped to nibble on the track too long—for grass grows close to this roadbed; it’s not a model track—and the engine Jolted her. As I heard it, the cow wasn’t hurt at all, and had to be driven away by ‘Hen.’ Then ‘Hen’ turned his attention to the casualties. They were very light. All that had happened was the Jouncing ofT of a gocart that had been bought by a widow living in the woods near the end of the line from a mail-order house In Philadelphia. It hadn’t proved satisfactory, and she was sending it back. “The go-cart, at that, wasn’t injured. It simply jounced off from the flat baggage car where ‘Hen’ stacks all the freight and express packages. ■Hen’ remarked afterward that he \*as,to blame; ‘he’d orter ha’ wedged it better.’ “As ‘Hen’ puts it, any point on the Rockaway Valley railroad where any one wants to get on or off is a ‘station.”’—New Jork Press.