These wrecking-trains are the emergency arms of railroad operation. They stand, like the apparatus of a city fire department, at every important terminal or division operating plant, awaiting summons to action. You may see the wrecking-train at every big yard, waiting on a siding which has quick access to the main-line tracks. It consists of from four to six cars—a tool-car with all sorts of wrecking-devices—replacers, blocks and tackle, extra small parts of car-trucks for emergency repairs, and the like. There are more of these extra parts—axles and wheels and four-wheel trucks on a “flat” that is fastened to the tool-car; and if this wrecking-train has a couple of miles of heavy traffic line to serve, there may be three or four of the “flats” with tools and spare equipment. You cannot have too many of those in a big wreck. The wrecking-train is sure to have a crane—a big arm of steel, compressed to come within the slim clearances of bridges and of tunnels, but capable of reaching down and tugging at a 100-ton locomotive with almost no effort whatsoever. And quite as important as the crane is the cook-car—generally some old-time coach or sleeper descended to humble service on the road. The cook-car has a rough berth and a kitchen; and you may be mighty sure that there is a good griddle artist upon it. You cannot expect a wrecking-gang to get into a twenty-four hour job without being pretty constantly provisioned while it is at work.
Only a little while ago, one of the officers of an Eastern trunk-line railroad and a member of one of the State railroad commissions were coming toward New York. The trip was in the nature of an inspection on the part of the State official, but as a matter of comfort and convenience to the two men, it was made upon the former’s private car. The comfort and convenience suddenly ceased while the two were still nearly 300 miles away from the seaboard. The road rested there for many miles in heavy country; its rails found their curving way in the crevices between high hills. It had rained steadily for a fortnight; the little mountain brooks were raging mill-races. In the low flatlands of one deep valley lakes were being formed. There were long stretches where the four rails of the double-tracked trunk-line railroad lost themselves under the glassy surface of the waters. Up and down the valley trains were standing helpless between those lakes, their passengers fuming at the delay. Fast freights stood axle-deep in water; their title, for that moment, was an occasion for joyous humor. The comfortable, convenient trip of the railroad operating man and the railroad commissioner was at an end.
An embankment that the railroad had built for a branch down the valley was blocking the waters, and orders had come from New York to dynamite out that embankment. It would cost the railroad nearly $50,000 to destroy that half-mile of track but it might save the valley millions. There had been no hesitation on the part of the “old man”—the road’s tried executive. That is a phase of American railroading not often brought to light.
Orders came that the engine hauling the “special” of the operating man and the railroad commissioner was to be taken for a work-train down at that damming embankment. That’s the way with railroading. When the clattering telegraph keys sound the note of trouble, even that mighty soul, the chairman of the board, may find himself “laid out” at some jerkwater junction, while his pet engine goes into service with a wrecking-train. But the chairman of the board, whose time is real money, offers no protest. He knows that to block the main line costs his road $250 a minute for the first 60 minutes; that that figure doubles and trebles in the second hour; in the third, his auditors may check off $1,000 a minute, at the least, as the cost of a blocked railroad. No wonder that they insist that it is “keeping the line open.”
Before the engine of that special was cut off to go scurrying down to the embankment where the skilled workmen were making preparations to dynamite away a half-mile of track, the operating man lifted his hand. He had, like any trained railroader, been listening to the clattering telegraph key.
“They’ve come away without their cook—those wreckers,” he told the gentleman who regulated public utilities. “I think I’ll go down with the ‘eats.’ There’s an old hotel across from the railroad track down at the next station, and the landlord, Uncle Dan Hortley, will fix me up.”
“I’ll go with you,” said the State official. “I want to get my finger in the pie.”
So it came to pass that they both went, the private car stopping at the little hotel long enough to get in an overwhelming supply of bread and ham. As they whizzed through the scene of trouble all hands joined at making sandwiches.
“Butter them on both sides,” said the railroad commissioner.
“They’re better with the butter on one side,” insisted the operating man.