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Show LONG HOURS FOR THESE TRAINMEN A Rio Grande BraKeman, SpeaKing for Comrades. TaKes Exception to Article Arti-cle in the Herald. To The Telegram: In an article in the Herald a few days ago it was stated that Mr. Geiger, the superintendent of the Rio Grande, was being overworked in his efforts to handle the business on the Bio Gnrfde, but happily the men were not putting in long hours and were having plenty of rest. Now these are evidently the facts of the case, so far as Mr. Geiger is concerned, but is it with the men? Let us see. The writer knows that when a train crew leaves Halt Lake eastbound, in nine cases out of teu the crew will b on duty at loast twenty hours before reaching Helper, the terminal. ter-minal. Westbound, from helper to Selt Iake, the tripe are longer, and there is more work for the crews. One instance of the " sufficient rest" the men get: A crew was out twenty-three hours from Helper to Salt Lake, and asked for twelve hours' rest. It was just exactly seven hours and fiftj- minutes from the time of 1 r-rival r-rival until they were called agniu. When they asked why they were called before their rest was up, they were informed in-formed that eight tours' rest was all thev were entitled to. Now let us look into the eight houre rest proposition, propo-sition, and see how much rest they got. 8uppose the time of arrival was 1 a. m.; that would make the rest np at 5 p. m., for eight hours' rest if the men could tumble into bed at once, but when one walks home, say thirty minutes, min-utes, has something to eat, a romp with the baby and talk with the wife, another hour is gone, which leaves only six hours snd thirty minutes to sleep after twenty-three hours' work. Then they must start oa another journey equally as long, just because some eight or ten hours a day oWeinl says the men bsve had enough rest, and no matter how hard they try, tbey are bound to be drowsy snd fall asleep if they are not extremely careful. Evidently, the Herald man learned from Mr. Geiger 's office that the employees em-ployees were having such S nice time on the road, but had he stirred his stumps and consulted the trainmen or enginemen, he could have learned the truth. It is about time the Government Govern-ment took hold of this thing of long hours on the road and passed the six-teen-hour law, which I am glad to note your paper favors. About esr shortage and inability to ce,t coal to Salt' Lake from this cause. Take a trip, Ogden to Helper, aad you caa find nearly 350 cars standing on side-tracks, snd 'the yards blocked at Bingham and Thistle Junction and other plsees, filled with cars suitable for such business. A BRAKEMAN. - V .- ",- " - ' ' ' '. . |