Chapter XIII: Part 13

Complaints are sometimes made of the want of due respect paid on the part of porters to passengers’ luggage. It appears that occasionally a like lack of caution is manifested by owners to their own property. It is said that on a train lately on a western railway in America, some passengers were discussing the carriage of explosives. One man contended that it was impossible to prevent or detect this; if people were not allowed to ship nitro-glycerine or dynamite legitimately, they’d smuggle it through their baggage. This assertion was contradicted emphatically, and the passenger was laughed at, flouted, and ignominiously put to scorn. Rising up in his wrath, he produced a capacious valise from under the seat, and, slapping it emphatically on the cover, said, “Oh, you think they don’t, eh? Don’t carry explosives in cars? What’s this?” and he gave the valise a resounding thump, “Thar’s two hundred good dynamite cartridges in that air valise; sixty pounds of deadly material; enough to blow this yar train and the whole township from Cook County to Chimborazo. Thar’s dynamite enough,” he continued; but he was without an auditor, for the passengers had fled incontinently, and he could have sat down upon twenty-two seats if he had wanted to. And the respectful way in which the baggage men on the out-going trains in the evening handled the trunks and valises was pleasant to see.

The neglect of carefulness appears, in one instance at least, to have involved inconvenience to the offending official. “An unknown genius,” says an American periodical, “the other day entrusted a trunk, with a hive of bees in it, to the tender mercies of a Syracuse ‘baggage-smasher.’ The company will pay for the bees, and the doctor thinks his patient will be round in a fortnight or so.”

—Williams’s _Our Iron Roads_.

STUMPED.

Several Sundays ago a Philadelphia gentleman took his little son on a railway excursion. The little fellow was looking out of the window, when his father slipped the hat off the boy’s head. The latter was much grieved at his supposed loss, when papa consoled him by saying that he would “whistle it back.” A little later he whistled and the hat reappeared. Not long after the little lad flung his hat out of the window, shouting, “Now, papa, whistle it back again!” A roar of laughter in the car served to enhance the confusion of perplexed papa. Moral: Don’t attempt to deceive little boys with plausible stories.

EXCURSIONISTS PUT TO THE PROOF.

A good story is told of the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln Railway Company. A week or two since, the company ran an excursion train to London and back, the excursion being intended for their workmen at Gorton and Manchester. There was an enormous demand for the tickets; so enormous that the officials began, to use an expressive term, “to smell a rat.” But the sale of the tickets was allowed to proceed. The journey to London was made, and a considerable number of the passengers congratulated themselves upon the remarkably cheap outing they were having. But on the return journey they made a most unpleasant discovery. Their tickets were demanded at Retford, and then the ticket-collectors insisted upon the holder of every ticket proving that he was in the employ of the company. The result can be imagined. There were more persons in the train who had no connection with the company than there were of the company’s employés; and the former had either to pay a full fare to and from London, or to give their names and addresses preparatory to being summoned. We hear, from a reliable source, that the fares thus obtained amount to about £300.

—_Echo_, Sept. 23, 1880.

A MONKEY SIGNALMAN.

We learn from the _Colonies_ that a monkey signalman manages the railway traffic at Witenhage, South Africa. The human signalman has had the misfortune to lose both his legs, and has trained a baboon to discharge his duties. Jacky pushes his master about on a trolly, and, under his directions, works the lever to set the signals with a most ludicrous imitation of humanity. He puts down the lever, looks round to see that the correct signal is up, and then gravely watches the approaching train, his master being at hand to correct any mistake.

A CURIOUS CLASSIFICATION.

The guard of an English railway carriage recently refused to allow a naturalist to carry a live hedgehog with him. The traveller, indignant, pulled a turtle from his wallet and said, “Take this too!” But the guard replied good naturedly, “Ho, no, sir. It’s dogs you can’t carry; and dogs is dogs, cats is dogs, and ’edge’ogs is dogs, but turtles is hinsects.”

PULLMAN’S CARRIAGES.

In the discussion on Mr. C. Douglas Fox’s recent paper on the Pennsylvania railway, Mr. Barlow, the engineer of the Midland, observed that there was a certain attractive power about a Pullman’s carriage, which ought not to be overlooked, a power which brought passengers to it who would not otherwise travel by railway. A Pullman’s carriage weighed somewhere about twenty tons. The cost of hauling that weight was about 1½d. per mile; that was the sum which the Midland Company proposed to charge for first-class passengers, so that one first-class passenger would pay the haulage of the carriage. If the attractive power of the carriage brought more than one first-class passenger it would of course pay itself.

_Herepath’s Railway Journal_, Jan. 23, 1875.

PROFITABLE DAMAGES.

The Springfield _Republican_, of 1877, is responsible for the following story:—“The industry of railroading has developed some thrifty characters, among whom a former employé of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford road deserves high rank. He was at one time at work in the Springfield depot, and while taking a trunk out of a baggage car from Boston he was thrown over and hurt, the baggage-smashing art being for a time reversed. The injured employé suffered terribly, and crawled around on crutches until the Boston and Albany and the New Haven roads united and gave him 6000 dollars. He was cured the next day. Shortly afterwards a man on the Boston and Albany road was killed, and the Company gave his widow 3,000 dollars. The former cripple, who had scored 6,000 dollars already, soon married her, and thus counted 9,000 dollars. He recovered his health so completely that he was able again to work on the railroad, but finally, not being hurt again within a reasonable time, he retired to a farm which he had bought with a part of the proceeds of his former calamities.”

RAILWAY ENTERPRISE.

It would be difficult to close this series of Railway Anecdotes more appropriately than in the words of George Stephenson’s celebrated son Robert at a banquet given to him at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in August, 1850. “It was but as yesterday,” he said, “that he was engaged as an assistant in tracing the line of the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Since that period, the Liverpool and Manchester, the London and Birmingham, and a hundred other great works had sprung into vigorous existence. So suddenly, so promptly had they been accomplished, that it appeared to him like the realization of fabled powers, or the magician’s wand. Hills had been cut down, and valleys had been filled up; and where this simple expedient was inapplicable, high and magnificent viaducts had been erected; and where mountains intervened, tunnels of unexampled magnitude had been unhesitatingly undertaken. Works had been scattered over the face of our country, bearing testimony to the indomitable enterprise of the nation and the unrivalled skill of its artists. In referring thus to the railway works, he must refer also to the improvement of the locomotive engine. This was as remarkable as the other works were gigantic. They were, in fact, necessary to each other. The locomotive engine, independent of the railway, would be useless. They had gone on together, and they now realized all the expectations that were entertained of them. It would be unseemly, as it would be unjust, if he were to conceal the circumstances under which these works had been constructed. No engineer could succeed without having men about him as highly-gifted as himself. By such men he had been supported for many years past; and, though he might have added his mite, yet it was to their co-operation that all his success was owing.”