Dick Carter dropped in at my little place the other night. Dick himself is not at all a peculiar man, but his business is peculiar. He is in the employee of the New York Central Railroad, and is what is called a “car spotter,” a man who travels round the country huntin’ up missin’ cars that belong to the New York Central Railroad Company, and which have not turned up, but have gone astray.
This car spotting strikes me as an odd business. The idea of a car gettin’ lost, just as if it was a lead pencil, or a handkerchief, or a memorandum, or a diamond ring, or a love-letter–the idea of the big freight car goin’ astray, just as if it was a young damsel, or a church deacon, or a bank cashier, or a lamb, or a nice young man. And then, the idea of a set of men makin’ a livin’ by huntin’ those great big cars up, as if they were detectives on the track of bank burglars, or confidence women, or missin’ financiers.
Dick Carter got talkin’ to me about these missin’ cars and this car spottin’, and about railroadin’ generally, and some of the things he told me are worth retellin’ here.
Of course parlor cars, sleepin’ cars, and passenger cars generally being very valuable and in constant use, don’t often go wrong. But freight cars, like pretty girls, are all the time gettin’ lost.
You see, a freight car, full, goes right on to its place of destination all right. But once there, and once unloaded, it has to take its chances of gettin’ back again–perhaps don’t get back at all. Perhaps some shipper of freight at some way station gets a hold of it, and loads it up again, and the car is sent off on some other destination and gets off on some other road, and so may not turn up on the original road it belongs to for months or years, or never.
The first car Dick Carter went on a hunt after turned up at last in a very unexpected shape. Dick found it in the shape of a shop and a house combined–a very unexpected transformation.
One day, at a disused sidin’, at a station in Central New York, Dick came across a rather picturesque lookin’ house, a house all overrun with vines, quite romantic lookin’ and all that. But what concerned dick chiefly was the fact that this house was on wheels. It had been a freight car once, and, examining this car-house, Dick became convinced it was the long lost freight car he was in search of.
A country photographer had found it some six months ago, and had at once moved into it with his wife–a pretty little woman–and his stock in trade of chemicals and plates. The one end of the car was used as a “photograph gallery,” while the other end was used as a livin’ room; and quite cosily the couple lived in it, too.
As in duty bound, Dick claimed the car as the property of the New York Central, and made his report to the division superintendent. But, actuated partly by the eyes of the pretty wife of the country photographer, Dick also said in his report–what was really the truth–that it would cost more to get the car back to the shop and to fix it up than it was worth. So the division superintendent didn’t bother anymore about that car, and Dick and the photographer’s pretty wife got to be the best of friends, and Dick had all the photographs he wanted taken for nothin’.
As a freight car new is often worth some thousands of dollars it becomes quite an object to recover a missin’ car. It also becomes quite an object to keep possession of a missin’ car after you have once got it.
Sometimes the letters and numbers and private marks on a stray freight car are rubbed off or painted or cut, and then the car is run into some repair shop and fixed up a little, and then does duty as a brand new car on the road that happens to have got hold of it, and is often charged for, too, as a brand new car, to this very company, by the men who happened to have come across it and who are in the “ring.” For there is a “ring” in missing freight cars just as there is a ring and everythin’ else in the world.
The car spotters seldom report a car thus taken hold of and altered by another railroad company. They simply recognize it, if they can, give a hint to the party’s concerned that they have identified it, and then pocket there little divvy–for “silence.” Dick Carter says that, “for reasons,” a car spotter can hold his tongue quite as effectually as “any other man.”
Sometimes the car spotter who has come across an “altered” car goes to the division superintendent’s office and drops him a hint. Then he drops another hint to the division superintendent that he happens to be “a little short” just then and would like the division superintendent to loan him a hundred for a few days. And the division superintendent takes both hints, but the spotter don’t take the car.
Dick Carter, in his looks at least, reminds me very much of another New York railroad man, Jim Wood, the best locomotive engineer in this country or any other.
Jim Wood is about forty-five years old and a very quiet man–never brags or fusses. Great men in any line never fuss or brag. Off his engine Jim Wood is a very ordinary man, but once put him on a locomotive and let him put his hand on the throttle and you will see a very extraordinary man indeed.
Jim was a poor boy and didn’t like railroadin’ a bit at first. Now he loves it more than life itself, I believe, or as much.
Years ago Jim Wood made the fastest run ever made up to that date on a New York road–eighty-one miles (with two long stops) in just one hundred minutes, the biggest thing of the kind on any American railroad then.
It was run on the New York Central, takin’ the Cincinnati Express through from Rochester to Syracuse.
But on his favorite engine, No. 110, Jim would beat his first feat. He brought a special train from Buffalo to Syracuse, 157 miles, in two hours and forty-five minutes, stoppin’ twice for water and havin’ to “slow up” five times.
At one time near Syracuse the train went at over seventy miles an hour. This beats flyin’. Once Jim Wood took W. H. Vanderbilt alone at the rate of eighty-one miles in seventy-five minutes, and on another occasion Jim went too fast for even old Commodore Vanderbilt himself. Jim had made up his mind this time to go five miles in four minutes, and came mighty near doin. it. In fact, he would have done it if the old Commodore, for the first time in his life, hadn’t got frightened.
“Wood is gettin’ along too fast,” said old Vanderbilt, lookin’ out of the car window and seein’ everything in a blur–everything all at once. “Ring him to slow up.” And Jim had to “slow” just a little.
The old Commodore thought a deal of Jim Wood, and paid him more attention than he did State Senators. They never frightened him.
Jim Wood was a friend of Ransom Bishop, another New York engineer, who went to California among the forty-niners. Bishop set up the first locomotive engine on the Pacific slope.
Bishop was a “brick” in every way, one of the old style of heroes–a hero who didn’t really know he was one.
Once he was runnin’ his engine at tip-top speed, when he saw a man and a child in a country wagon tryin’ to cross the track right ahead. It was utterly impossible to stop the train by any ordinary means in time to avoid a collision that meant certain death to the occupants of the wagon. But Bishop took extraordinary means just then to stop his train. Without a moment’s hesitation or thought of himself, he instantly “reversed” his engine, not merely stopping it, but “reversin’” it, taking ninety-nine chances out of a hundred under the circumstances of the boiler burstin’, the steam bein’ entirely shut up in the cylinder, and blowin’ him into eternity. Just as the cow-catcher of the engine touched the wagon’s wheel the train had been brought to the quickest standstill on record. The man and the child, as well as the horse and wagon, were saved. Bishop started his train again very quietly, and never said anythin’ more about the affair till he was publicly thanked by the officers of his road, who had heard of it through Bishop’s fireman. As for Bishop himself, he seemed quite surprised at so much fuss bein’ made about so simple a matter as taking ninety-nine chances to one of bein’ killed yourself for the sake of savin’ two people’s lives whom you never saw before.
A man has to be Mighty quick in an emergency to be a railroad engineer. Mere thinkin’ don’t count for much when you are goin’ at the rate of a mile or so every minute, and the somethin’ you want to think about lies on the track not a hundred feet ahead. One second of feelin’ the right thing is worth more than two months’ solid philosophical thinkin’ it out.
Jack Bates, for example, saw once when he was drivin’ his engine at about a thirty-five mile an hour gait, a fallen Tree on the track about sixty yards or so ahead of him. Had Jack been a deep, philosophical thinker he would have tried to stop his train, and failed to do it in the limited space and time, and an accident would have been the consequence. But, as it was, bein’ a first-class engineer, he felt the right idea at once. He threw the throttle of his engine wide open, doublin’ the speed at which it was goin’. Instead of slowin’ up he went faster than ever. The consequence was he flew against the tree instead of merely strikin’ it. And this rate of flyin’ was so great that the tree was picked up by the cow-catcher and hurled from the track as if it had been a toy. The very speed of the engine saved it.
A friend of Jack Bates was once bringin’ an express train in, when just before he reached a bridge, just about ninety feet from this bridge say, three or four old horses strayed on the track, trottin’ toward the bridge. Now the point of this horse business lay right here, and one had to look a little ahead to find it. There wasn’t much danger, except to the old horses ‘emselves in their bein’ on the track, but if they once got to the bridge, which was a very rickety affair, for horses and passengers at least, why, the chances were that some one or more of the old horses would stumble and become thus such an obstacle as would suffice to throw the train from the track into the river, involvin’ a fearful loss of life, all on account of some old horses.
The only way to prevent this chance, this almost certainty of a terrible accident was to kill all the horses and hurl ‘em off the track, down the embankment in front of the bridge. And in order to accomplish this it was necessary to put on all the steam at once the locomotive could carry. The engineer had to think all this out in one-tenth the time I have taken to write it, and had to do it. But he did it, made his engine “rip,” killed two old horses, and threw the rest down the embankment, dashed over the bridge at an unusual speed and saved his train.
The engineer nowadays is, of course, an altogether different personage from the conductor, and is considered officially as bein’ under the latter’s control. But in the early days of railroadin’ the engineer did the conductor’s line as well as his own.
Old Dick Rastell used to collect fares, see to the loadin’ and unloadin’ of freight, call out “all aboard,” yell out the names of the stations, swear at the baggage men, as well as start and stop the train.
This was in “the first times” of the Erie Railroad, before it connected with Jersey City, and when it stopped at Turner’s on the west and Piermont on the Hudson on the east.
A Dutchman called Abe Hummel (no relation to the Tombs lawyer) was engineer then and conductor both, and for a while had things on his train about his own way, which state of things he liked very much, for although he liked hard work he liked authority and his own importance a good deal better.
But after a while, though, the railroad officials didn’t lessen his work much, they lessened Abe’s authority on various points, and finally appointed a well-known character, Capt. Ayres, conductor of his train.
Ayres wanted to be boss and Abe wanted to keep on bein’ boss, so there was bound to be a conflict of authority, or, in shorter English, a row, between the two men sooner or later.
Every now and then in those days some drunken chap, or bully, or inpecunious fellow, would try to get a ride on the cars without plankin’ down the fare, and the company told Ayres that he must stop this practice at once by stoppin’ the cars and puttin’ the non-paying passenger off the train.
Ayres was perfectly willin’ to do all this, but the trouble just then was to stop the train. There was no regular way of communication then between the cars and the engine, and of course the engine only stopped at regular stations.
Ayres told Abe to keep lookin’ back at the train every now and then from his engine, and when he saw Ayres wave his hand to stop the train.
Abe grunted out “Yah,” but made it a point never to see Ayres’s hand wavin’. You see, Abe looked at all this stoppin’ of the train at the conductor’s whim or will as a direct fling at his own authority, and was determined not to encourage it, and he didn’t.
Ayres might have well have waved his hand to the sun as to Abe Hummel, who laughed in his sleeve at Ayres. But Ayres was an inventive genius, and he set to work to get up a contrivance to signal Abe, whether he would or no.
So Ayres, after a deal of thinkin’, got a stout piece of cord, long enough to reach from the end of the cars to the engine. To this cord he fastened a stick of wood, so that when he pulled the cord on the cars the stick of wood would be raised on the engine, which raisin’ of the stick would serve as a signal to Abe to stop the train, the stick being placed right by Abe’s place on the engine, so he couldn’t possibly help seein’ it.
Ayres thought for sure he had Abe now, but he hadn’t, for Abe cut the stick loose from the cord several times.
Finally, one mornin’ Abe and Ayres had words about that stick. Abe told Ayres that he proposed to run his engine himself without any interference, and Ayres told Abe that if he cut that stick off once more he’d either have to lick him or be licked by him, “and if you lick me,” said Ayres, “why, then you’ll run your engine your way, otherwise, you’ll run it mine.”
Well, Ayres started off his train and Abe cut the stick. When the train stopped at Turner’s Ayres found the cord stickless. And then Ayres pulled off his coat, while Abe Hummel also skinned himself. And then the would-be boss conductor and they would-be boss engineer contended for the mastery beside the engine, in the presence of the depot men and the passengers.
It was a sharp fight, but a short one. Abe was a fat Dutchman, and was soon knocked out of time by Ayres, who was as tough as a pine knot. From that time on Ayres was boss.
And this cord with a string was the beginnin’ of what is now found on every train as the bell-rope.
[Editor’s notes: Jim Wood and Ransom Bishop were famed railroad men. “Dick Carter” is unknown, but since the column admits he was corrupt on occasion, may be an alias.]
