Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/186

 Popular Science Monihht

���of the lines may mean a stoppage of the whole railway system, with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of freight tied up, confusion, loss, waste.

And well he knows his work. The crane for this car, the jacks for that. This engine looks like scrap but will probably run; put her on the otlu-r track. That engine looks all right but is vitally wounded; throw her ofT. This car is too inextricably tangled with another in loving embrace to take to pieces, part by part; Ijurn it up and throw the trucks trj one side. The small man, a necessary factor, crawls into and out of openings and holes too small for his stronger mates, attaching chains and ropes, reporting conditions, doing work as valuable as that of the Hercules who, with a crowbar, heaves up a tangle of wheels that a jack may be slipped into position.

��The doctors and the nurses and the relief-train have come and gone ; down the line stands an impatient express, behind it a long freight. In the other direction, a local is filled with fuming commuters and per- haps the President's special the division, and soon to spread through the whole system, is delay, stalled trains, trains waiting orders, trains costing the company thousands of dollars a minute. Over the tangled debris one man stands supreme, snapping his orders like the crack of a whip, utterly unmindful of the property he destroys that other l)ropcrty may move. x\nd, as if by magic, the lines clear. The last of the bent and broken cars are turned on their sidesand slid down thebank. Theinjurcd engine limps off behind a fussy switch- engine sent for the purpose. If the delay looks long, a temporary side-track has been swittly built and the se\'eral waiting- trains pulf slowly by. The wrecking-train whistles. Its crew, dri\ing the last spikt- to make the injured track secure, pull out jimmy-pipes. The big crane folds its sin- gle arm and rests. The men pile into their caboose. The wreck isoff the lines — time, fifty-five minutes. The wrecking- train has finished its work.
 * *-- is close behind. All along

�� �