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Show STORIES RELATED By Railway Employes Here to attend at-tend G. W. Thatcher's Funeral. Sovcral old time railway men, drawn hero by tlio funeral of their old Super-Intcndant Super-Intcndant Hon. G. W. Thatcher, were collected In the barber shop Monday, discussing their experiences of twenty-five twenty-five or thirty years ago, from which wo glean the following: Railroading In Utah, and the entire west for that matter, was In rather a primitive state then, compared with what It Is today. The overland trafllc was confined entirely to the Union and Ccntial Paciilc railways and they only ran one passenger train each way dally. These trains were made up of eight or ten coaches and made the run 1 from Ogdcn to Omaha In a little over 1 two days and a half. Seventeen miles an hour was the schedule time,and we used to statu! by the track and wonder how they could slay on the rails and go so fast. And they were fast too, compared with tho eight yoke ox .freight teams of those times. "When John W. Young commenced to build the Utah Northern he bought a little old coffee pot of an cnglno made by the Grants, that weighed about 10,000 pounds, two or three little dinky box cars, that would carry about 7,000 pounds, and half a dozen Hat cars about the size of a trolley section car of the present time. The rails were 2o or 30 pound lion and would bend If, yon stepped on them. The above was about the equipment when the road reached Logan some time during the winter of 1872. Still with that equipment equip-ment there was no car famines like there is nowadays. It was in Xovcm- bcr, If wo remember right, that the I road reached Logan. The entire B population was down at the depot to I sec tho train come In. We remember we were exploring the mysteries of the iron horse, gathered about it like B flies around a inolascs can, when some B villain hung a weight on the whistle lever. If some fellow had holloed Bj "Dynamite," it could not have had a BJ v greater elTcct. "We fell over each BJ "4 other in our efforts to get away from BJ tho infernal machine. The next day BJ we were all treated to a free ride down flj to Logan river and we had to push the J thing back. "When snow began to fall 9 the road was tied up for the winter. MJ The John W., as the engine was S called, would jump the track in six , Inches of snow. But all this is foreign .- to the subject. 'M Gould bought tho road In '78 and M commenced at once to extend It north- jB ward. In the fall of '81 the road M reached liutto. During this time the 9 traffic increased enormously. New engines, cars, etc., were procured. A B great many Logan people were given , employment. Itobt. Croft was master M mechanic; Win, Toombs, road master; m II. E. Hatch, agent at Logan; Charlie M Paul, George I. Fames, Zeph Thomas B and Evan Jones, engineers; Bill Hop- kins, George Baugh, Dave Evans and M Dan Roberts, conductors; and a '- whole host of us found employment In B the shops or along the line. What B we knew about railroading was ex- 9 celled only by what we thought we B knew. But somehow wo managed to Bj get the trains over the road at the J rate of about twelve or llftcen miles jS an hour. That beat the stage coach B and that was all that was required. t"B - Lj" Wk x "Butthey did make fast runs In thoso B days," said B . "Don't you remember B the tlmo when Operator Simpson's H wife had the colic at Pocatello and Bj they ran an engine to take Dr. Ormsby BJ' up thcroV Tliat englno made tho Mr fastest run on record. I was at Oxford S at the time. 1 heard tho operator at S. Battlo Creek report her out and a IjB' minute or two later heard her whlstlo jflj at the crossing a mile down tho track. K I had Just time to step out .on the Bt platform when she went by llko a' B Hash. Tho concussion of tho air threw IH. me back against tho station building Bfc and before 1 could recover my jjK equilibrium I heard tlio engine K whistle for Swan Lake, four miles Bt "That reminds me, "said II ,"of the BJ time when wo were loading gravel up jflp at Monldu. A car load got looso and JBt. started down towards Beaver Canyon jHt at a two-forty rate. "We ran down to BJf the olllco and had the dispatcher warn IB Beaver Canyon to turn tho switch and tiKL throw it off. A man ran for tho fe switch and a second later tho operator , IflE said: "Hero sho comes llko h ," and BB yaftcr a pause, "She's gono by llko tho HE wind." Camas was called and told 'to HE get the track cleared. A freight train was Just pulling In from tho South, and to side track and ditch the car and to bo quick about It. A few minutes late wo heard him say. "Here she comes. Great snakes." "Did you get here," excitedly asked the dispatcher. dispatch-er. "Yes, and she keeled plumb over." That car made scvcnty-llvo miles an hour. "I was operator at Logan, "said D , during tho winter of '81. One day we received a wire from Omaha for Superintendent Super-intendent Thatcher to change the name of Hampton station as there was already one station on the Union Pacific by that name. Coll Fullmer. Bill Hopkins, John Price and several others were present when Mr. Thatcher Thatch-er road the message aloud and asked them to suggest a name. Several mimes were suggested when Fullmer said If we would "awe It Colllnstonhc would put up tho beer for the crowd. After discussing tho names suggested for half an hour without results the superintendent turned to Fullmer and said, "Go get the beer Coll." The beer was brought and the station named Collinstnn which nmnc- It still bears, Engineer F. was firing for Dick O. tlio winter of 1880. One night In Jan. they were coming south pulling a passenger. pas-senger. Snow commenced to fall at Idaho Falls and fell all night. At Blackfoot they received orders to meet the up bound passenger at Black-Bock, Black-Bock, a station in the Port Ncuf canyon. can-yon. The crew had been up most of the night before and were pretty well worn out. There was no stop after leaving Blackfoot until they reached Black Bock the conductor and brakeman botli tried to get a few minutes sleep. The engineer leaned back In the seat and dosed. "As for mo" said F. "I shoveled a good supply of coal into the fire box and curled up In iny corner and took a nap. When 1 awoke I found the lire was getting a little low. I replenished it, examined the water gauge and turned on the injector. in-jector. All this time tho engineer had not moved and I concluded he was taking a nap also. I looked out Into the storm but could not tell where we were. I shook the engineer and asked him where we were. He looked out Into the night but seemed as badly lost as myself. We watched for some landmark that would enable us to locate ourselves and In a few-minutes few-minutes passed a point of rocks and a bridge about threo miles south of Black Bock, at the same time I saw the glimmer of the north bound passenger pas-senger in the distance. The engineer saw it to. "Get out quick Jim," said he "and put your coat over the headlight." head-light." I lost no time in doing so while he stopped the train and commenced com-menced to back down as fast as he could towards Black Bock. When the north bound train reached the station I was at the switch to head her in and our headlight shown out bright and clear. A few days after I met Dick Wilson engineer of the north bound train In Ogdcn. "How long had your folks waited for us at Black Rock that night," he asked. "Oh," said X, "wo must have been there twenty minutes or more." I could have sworn I saw your headlight head-light four or live miles down tho track that night but guess it must have been a light in an Indian wickiup." |