Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1888 — Railroading in a Blizzard. [ARTICLE]

Railroading in a Blizzard.

Interview in St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 1 talked with the engineer as I came down and he told me that the storm in Dakota was the fiercest ever known. Be had seen several of the train bands as they cume into St. Paul, and they gave a terrible account of the state of affairs. All freight trains had been abandoned, as it was utterly impossible to find men to man then. It is hard to see how any one could stand the exposure to which the freight brakemen are subjected. Tbe brakes must be put on constantly which involves crawling along narrow footboards on top of the cars, which are coated with ice and snow and exceedingly slippery. With the wind blowing at fifty miles an hour, and the train butting itself through tbe snow, it is impossible for the brakemen to maintain an upright position, and they are obliged to crawl from car to ear -on their bands and knees, handle the cold iron, with the thermometer ‘49® below zero, and remain exposed to tbe storm for hours,'as they never have time to go to the caboose. Tbe men have no shelter beyond what they can find by clinging to the ladders between the cars, and suffer fearfully. The engineer told me that'dozens of men had frozen their hands and feet, and that finally several crews bad refused to work and nad taken shelter in the caboose, it is a well known fact that in the Northwest that scarcely a freight brakeman works more than a year, as the experience of ope winter ia such as to make him prefer anything to repeating if.