There is quite another side of this in the winter. Let wind and rain and then freezing weather come, and that icy footpath over the top of the snaky train becomes the most dangerous way in all Christendom. It consists of only three narrow planks laid lengthwise of the train, and between the cars there is a two-foot interval to be jumped. Hand-rails of any sort are an impossibility, and the brakeman now and then will receive a sharp slap in the face that is not the slap of wind or of sleet, and he will fall flat upon the car-roof or dodge to the ladders that run up between the cars. That slap was the slap of the “tickler,” that gallows-like affair that stands guard before tunnels and low bridges and gives crude warning to the man working upon the train roofs of a worse slap yet to come.
There are other dangers, not the least of these the possibility of open battle at any time of day or night with one or more “hobos,” tramps, or “yeggmen,” who seem to regard freight trains as complimentary transportation extended to them as a right, and train-crews as their natural enemies. The list of railroad men who have lost their lives because of these thugs is not a short one. It is one of the many records of railroad heroism.
Still the brakeman has a far easier time of it than his prototype of a generation or more back. The air-brake is a big help. When a train breaks in two or three parts on a grade, the pulling out of the air-couplings automatically sets the brakes on every part, and if you do not know what that means ask one of the old-timers. In the old days of the hand-brakes the very worst of all freight accidents came when a section of a freight train without any one aboard to set its brakes, broke loose and came crashing down a hill into some helpless train. Ask the old-timer about the hand-couplings and the terrific record of maimed arms and bodies that they left. The modern automatic couplings have been worth far more than their cost to the railroads.
In the course of time and advancement the brakeman leaves the freight and enters the passenger service. Now he is called a trainman and is attired in a natty uniform. He has to shave, to keep his hands clean, wear gloves perhaps, and be a little more of a Chesterfield. He must announce the stations in fairly intelligible tones, and be prepared to answer pleasantly and accurately the thousand and one foolish questions put to him by passengers.
As a conductor he will probably begin as Collins began, in the freight service. When he comes to the passenger-service there will be still more book-keeping to confront him, and he will have to be a man of good mental attainments to handle all the many, many varieties of local and through tickets, mileage-books, passes, and other forms of transportation contracts that come to him, to detect the good from the bad, to throw out the counterfeits that are constantly being offered to him. He will have to carry quite a money account for cash affairs, and he knows that mistakes will have to be paid out of his own pocket.
All this is only a phase of his business. He is responsible for the care and safe conduct of his train, equally responsible in this last respect with the engineer. He also receives and signs for the train orders, and he is required to keep in mind every detail of the train’s progress over the line. He will have his own assortment of questions to answer at every stage of the journey, and he will be expected to maintain the discipline of the railroad upon its trains. That may mean in one instance the ejectment of a passenger who refuses to pay his fare, and still he must not involve the road in any big damage suit; or in another, the subjugation of some gang of drunken loafers. The real wonder of it is that so many conductors come as near as they do to the Chesterfieldian standards.
In the forward part of the train are still other members of its crew, some of them possibly who are not paid by the railroad, but who are indirectly of its service. Among these last may be classed the mail clerks, who are distinctly employees of the Federal Government, and the messengers of the various express companies. If the road is small and the train unimportant, these workers may be grouped with the baggagemen in the baggage-car. If the train is still less important the baggageman may assume part of the functions of mail clerk and express messenger. If so, he is apt to have his own hands full. The mere manual exercise of stacking a 60-foot baggage-car from floor to ceiling with heavy trunks (and the commercial travellers and theatrical folk do carry heavy trunks) is no slight matter. But that is not all. The trunk put off at the wrong place or the trunk that is not put off at all is apt to make the railroad an enemy for life and the baggageman is another one of the many in the service who are permitted to make no mistakes.
When he has United States mail-sacks and a stack of express packages to handle, his troubles only multiply. His book-keeping increases prodigiously, and his temper undergoes a sharper strain. Give him all these, then a couple of fighting Boston terriers, which must, because of one of the many minor regulations of railroad passenger traffic, ride in the baggage-car—a cold and draughty car—and you will no longer wonder why the baggageman has a streak of ill-temper at times. His office is certainly no sinecure, neither is he in the direct path of advancement like his co-workers, the fireman and the brakeman.
These train-workers who are so little seen by the travelling public—baggagemen, mail clerks and express messengers alike, ride in the most hazardous part of the equipment, the extreme forward cars of the train. Read the list of train accidents, involving loss of life, and in nine cases out of ten you will find that these have headed the list of killed or injured. There work is hard, their hours long, their pay modest. They form a silent brigade of the industrial army that is always close to the firing line.