Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 104, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1902 — ENGINEERS FEAR OMENS. [ARTICLE]

ENGINEERS FEAR OMENS.

They Believe that Accident* Are Foretold by Strange Omens. Railroad engineers are a superstitious set. Most of them hold the belief that danger Is usually preceded by a warning sign. A man who has worked for years on the Rio Grande says that never since he was married has he been in a wreck but his wife had predicted it beforehand. Once she awakened him in the night to tell him of a horrible dream she had just had. She saw his engine plunge into another. She distinctly heard the crash and the sound of the escaping steam, and the cries of the victims. She was so worked up over the matter, be says, and begged so hard that in the morning he didn’t take his engine out, but got a substitute to go in his place. Sure enough, there was a smash-up, and the substitute was bought home dead. Ever since then he has thought it cowardly to flinch, and has refused to be guided by his wife’s dreams. “If my engine is going into a smash-up,” he says, “I am going to be at the throttle, and the little woman at home must depend on her prayers to save me.” Several wrecks have occurred since that first one, and every time the woman has told beforehand of their coming. Some engineers regard the number 13 peculiarly unlucky.. Charles Frye, another veteran engineer on the Rio Grande, declares that It Is interwoven with the tragedies of his life. On July 13, for Instance, his train, with thirteen passengers aboard the sleeper, was pulling out of Denver, when, at thirteen minutes past 12, it struck a wagon containing a 13-year-old boy, who was killed in the accident. Tom Loftus, of the Colorado & Southern, insists that he has an unlucky day —Dec. 31—on which all of his wrecks occur. It began ten years ago on the 31st of December. His engine was pounding along from Trinidad to Denver at thirty miles an hour, through a blinding snow storm. Between Benares and Huerfano his train crashed into another double-header that was making forty miles an hour in the direction of Trinidad. He saw the collision coming, reversed the lever and jumped. He saved his own life, but one of the firemen was killed and the rest of both crews more or less Injured.