Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1897 — "THAT TERRIBLE STRAIN." [ARTICLE]

"THAT TERRIBLE STRAIN."

Engineers Are Too Busy to Think of Passengers or Fret Abont Dangers, “It does beat the mischief,” remarked a railroad engineer the other day, “how the public clings to the old-fash-ioned, worn-out notion that every rail road driver lives about six years, and then, if he ain’t killed on the road, dies of nervous prostration or brain fever caused by the terrible strain lie is under and the awful thought the next instant lie may be wafted into the beyond along with 400 or 500 passengers at his back. That notion Is as old ns the first locomotive ever built, anil it is just as much played out. “You never heard a story of a railroad englueer in your life that he wasn’t just everlastingly shaking in overalls at the thought of his •terrible responsibility’ and the ‘thousand souls’ or the ‘precious freight’ that is entrusted to him. “Now, I’ll admit that" it’s all pretty and sounds nice and brave, liui the only trouble with Jt Is that there is nothing in it. “I have no doubt the engineer would think about the responsibility and worry some about the women and children behind him if he had time and didn’t have to hustle so all-fired hard every minute to pull his train in on time. “But you see he hasn’t got the time. From the minute he Jumps into his cab and pulls open the throttle he Is kept guessing to keep his old machine going fast enough under him to make the distance in schedule time. Nowadays the railroads don’t allow many minutes for the passengers and crew to get off and shoot jackrabbita, and the driver of a fast train over a division has his mind full all the time without going behind the tender and worrying about what Is going to happen to the passengers If there is a smash up. “Then there Is the mechanical part of the game to keep your thoughts off the passengers. ‘How much coal is your fireman burning?’ “Could we pull up that hill if burning less coal?’ or save time by crowding on the steam going down bill?’ Every engineer wants to get the maximum amount of speed out of his engine and burn the minimum amount of coal. He can’t think about that and the passengers, too, and so he lets the passengers slide and take care of themselves. “I do not mean to say that an engineer who is true to his duty does not worry when there is actual cause for it, or that he will not hang to his post till he has had the life mangled out of him, if he thinks it will do any good. There are too many cases on record where locomotive drivers have sacrificed their Lives; but I mean to say that the popular notion that engineers stay awake nights dreading the responsibility before them is all wrong. They get just as hardened to' the- work and callous to the dangers as a circus performer, and they think no. more oi the-risks that they are taking.”