Page:Hine (1904) Letters from an old railway official.djvu/77

 same block. Remind your conductor that when he fails to read the orders to the engineman in person and sends them forward by the porter or the head brakeman, that is the very trip the orders get torn or smeared so that a fatal mistake results. When a passenger train breaks in two the air usually sets on both portions. It fails to do so when bums or misplaced safety chains have turned the angle cocks; and that is the time there should be a trainman riding in the rear car. Men will tell you so and so cannot happen, but next week it does happen just the same. The whistle hose and the brake hose cannot be coupled together because the connections are purposely made of a different pattern. A green apprentice coupling an engine to a tender at a roundhouse managed to pound together the couplings of the wrong pairs of hose, which the engine inspector had failed to notice were badly worn. That was the day the car inspectors neglected to try the signal and the air before the train left the terminal. By a strange fatality the conductor trusted the car men for the station test. The engineman was too busy to make a running-test. They all got wise when the air wouldn’t