Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 67, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 April 1904 — DELAYED BY COLD WEATHER. [ARTICLE]

DELAYED BY COLD WEATHER.

Time-Tables Broken by Thick Oil, Poor Coal, Frozen Water, Etc. Reasons are numerous for trains being behind in exceedingly cold weather, but railroad men are always extremely careful not to acknowledge that trains are behind, except in individual Instances. Passenger trains are as often delayed by freights, it is said, as by anything else. Freights have X bard row to boe In cold weather. • They stop so often that they cannot keep warm. The oil in the boxes of the journals freezes or becomes hard after the train has stood for a few minutes, and it is Impossible to start tip. Perhaps the train gets half-way into a switch or out of it and cannot move another inch. Then a passenger comes along and Cannot get by. This hardening of the oil in the axles is the worst trouble. The train must run ten or fifteen miles before friction warms it to easy running. 'There is great difficulty iu getting up steam in cold weather. Everything is cold about the engine. Conditions are not normal and tlie machine—for an engine is as much a machine as any other —will not work well. Often it is impossible to get up steam. Sometimes the pipe freezes between the engine and the tender, preventing water from running from the supply tank into the boiler. This, however, is not common. Even the railroads have trouble with tlieii; coal. If the fireman chances to shovel in poor coal on a very cold day it will not make a hot tire. Officials arc not anxious to make time in cold weather. They know that more breaks and defects in rolling stock will come.to light \Vlth the first hard freezing of the winter than in all the rest of the year, and they’ know that more accidents are likely to occur during cold weather than at any other time, A wheel or a weak rail that has stood the test of all the rest of the year may break during the first cold snap aud cost a hundred lives. Even passengers delay trains in cold weather, though they do not know It. They take n long time to put on -their wraps and they walk slower in getting into the cars. Each little station requires a longer stop to do the same amount of business than on other days.—Milwaukee Free Press.