Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 171, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 July 1914 — LOOKING BACK ON LINE [ARTICLE]

LOOKING BACK ON LINE

BEST PLACE TO VIEW OPERATIONS OP RAILROAD. Writer Recalls Impressions From Seat In Observation Car —Note# important Duties Devolving on “Rear Brakeman.” When I can I like to sit in the rear seat of a train and look back on the line as the cars rush ownard. It gives a different view of the landscape from that one obtains from the side windows. You see more of the operations of the road. It would be still better and vastly more, thrilling- if- only l could ride on the locomotive. I have always wanted above all else to ride with the engineer of a fast limited train; but as that is a celestial privilege accorded to few the next best thing is to get back to the observation car and look back at the tracks, says a writer in the Lowell Courier-Citizen.

Usually nothing happens. You sit there in comfort, and if the car also happens to be a smoker, in supercomfort. The parallel lines of steel Bridges crash past and dwindle to a speck. Nonchalant -flagmen- at-the-leveL crossings flutter their diminutive banners for a moment and betake themr selves to their shanties and their pipes. Semaphore arms bring, themselves to the horizontal with a jerk. A pall of dust and smoke settles murkily down over it all. Now and again another train rattles by on the other line, a medley of green and brass, with a silent figure in the rear door, who gives a wave of the hand to the rear brakeman at your elbow. Then comes ..a tnxFva; am» yon. pass out. of .that Jand-_. scape into another. The rgar brakeman Is to me an object~of"awe ¥hd-vencratlon;-next to~tlre~ engineer whom I almost never see at all. He has nothing to do with the brakes in these days, but his name persists. He figures chiefly as the rear guard in event of an unexpected halt. His is the task, no matter what the weather, of running back along the rails to flag even the unlikely pursuing train, regardless of a multitude of block signals that are supposed to take care of all such without his intervention. s p The rules are just as insistent on this form of protection as if block signals had never been invented. It Is the same old rule that was in force from the beginning. If the train stops in mid-career this man is supposed to jump off and run back with red flag, a I lantern, a bundle of “fusees”" and torj pedoes. On some roads he does this without being told. On others, he goes out on hearing the admonition of certain whistles from the engine. In any case he stays out until he is notified by the whistles to return, and mighty glad he is to get the summons. The train will not start until he comes panting up the steps and waves his hand.