Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1917 — ALERT AND KEEN OF SIGHT [ARTICLE]

ALERT AND KEEN OF SIGHT

Men at the Throttle Realize the Grave Responsibility Which Goes With Their Position. The engineer’s figure is immobile, but his mind is alert. His touch upon the throttle is as light as that of a child. His face, half hidden behind - his great goggles, is expressionless. Yet behind those same protecting glasses the winCjMys of his soul are open— and watching/watching, forever whtching the curving track. . Sometimes the track curves away from his Side of the and then file fireman climbs up on his seat behind and picks up the lookout. But he does not pick up the engineer’s responsibility. I recall hearing once of an engineer who used to pull a passenger train up in Wisconsin. Midway on his run the road crossed a small creek which the rivers and harbor bill had declared a navigable river. It spanned the waterway by a drawbridge. The drawbridge was protected by -automatic home and distance signals —and a lazyslgnaltender. Despite the fact that the draw was rarely ever opened, he habitually set the distance signals at danger and the home signals—at the very portal of the bridge—at safety. That relieved him of labor. One day the draw was open the United States government inspectors were at work upon it. But one of the engineers, with a contempt for that lazy sign of danger at the distance hoard, came down upon it with a long freight at 40 miles an hour. It took ten minutes to fish him out of the river, and ten hours to get the locomotive out.—Sunday Magazine of the Washington Star.