Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 73, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1915 — ONE-MAN RAILROAD STILL A MYSTERY [ARTICLE]

ONE-MAN RAILROAD STILL A MYSTERY

Loae Worker Remains an Unsohred Puzzle to Many Carious Men. 5 ..A BUILDS RAURBAD SINGLE-HANDED No One But the Mysterious Promoter Knows Objeet of Work Thst Is Being Done. Jetmore, Kan.—“ When the One-Man Railroad grade Is built an additional mile it will be out of the woods." This is the way the people look at the efforts of Rudolph Meyer, proprietor of the “One-Man Railroad” in Hodgeman County. When the work now completed is pushed forward another mile it will be up on the fiat country that Btretches off toward Garden City, fifty miles away. The grade will have reached the flat lands that make further expensive grade work unnecessary. But the people of Jetmore know but little more of Meyer than any one else in Kansas. He keeps his own counsel. He will talk, and talk freely, about everything but his actual plans. He enjoys his talk with strangers, but they go away no better informed than before. The building of this One-Man Railroad grade has almost ceased to be a wonder here. For four years Rudolph Meyer has been at work on it Sundays were no exception, and early and late his animals dragged the dirt from the pits to the tops of the grade or pulled huge stones from the side of a canyon. The Santa Fe Jetmore branch ends here, in the lowland of the Buckner Creek valley. It is a rough country. The railroad line is pointed southwest, when it comes to the “end of the track.” Meyer, when he came here four years ago, went into the country, two and a half miles, up a canyon or draw of a dry run that connects with the ever flowing Buckner Creek, and started his grade. He began in the edge of a rocky bluff, where he leveled a grade through this formation and the red, sandy soil. He has carried this grade toward the southwest, reaching for the higher land, with evident precision, though no engineer has Bet the stakes, and the line and the elevation of the grade has been established by eye. People who know say the grade is an excellent one. When he has come to depressions that are torrents of water in the heavy downpours-of rain, Meyer has brought a group of two or three of these depressions together and directed their course to one common opening under the grade, thus to cut down the number of bridges. Engineering science seems to have taught him this. These draws are not bridged, but the “fill” comes up to them and rock has been drawn there in quantity for foundations for bridges and culverts, showing aptness for railroad building. Does anyone know why Meyer is building this grade? No one in Jetmore claims to have knowledge. Meyer doesn’t owe any one. He has no large expense, for he lives in his own “shack,” sometimes mounted on wheels and other timer placed on the ground near his work. But when he does buy things in town he pays cash or else gives a check on a bank in Valley Falls, Kan., which is always honored. A large share of the work on the grade of this One-Man railroad was built by using four mules, hitched abreast of two “slip" scrapers, one alongside the other. Meyer would put the lines around his shoulders, stand between the two scrapers and fill them as the mules pulled them along, one with each hand. Then he would follow and dump them at the top of.the grade. It was almost superhuman work, but day after day, with long hours, Meyer has done this. No one here believes Rudolph Meyer is in the employ of the Santa Fe Railroad. The Santa Fe should be the only one interested, for there is no other road anywhere near. But a system like the Santa Fe would find no reason for such a course, as there is from one to -a half dozen ways out of the Buckner Creek canyons, each as advantageous as the one selected. Jetmore people declare the Santa Fe could easily secure a free right of way for a grade and track, yet Rudolph Meyer has paid $39 an acre for all that he’s used, a strip nearly four miles long. In all, it is believed he has paid $1,500 for land, and all of it with the understanding that it is to revert to the former owners if the railroad is not in operation in five years. Scarcely a year yet remains to Meyer for a portion .of this grade, and still he keeps on and on. “Are you going to build your road to Garden City?” is asked of him. “Sure,” is his reply. Others will ask if Cimarron is the intended point he hopes to reach, and he says again, “Sure.” Pressed for a statement as to the actual point to which he means to extend his railroad grade, he will Bay: “See that weed up there t' pointing; to any that appears prominent on the skyline of the hill to the southwest, ‘that’s where I’m going to build.” Then be -will chuckle and make you understand in no unfriendly way, that it is none of your business., - People ask for an explanation as to such a freaky way of doing things.