| OCR Text |
Show all ales As told to: ELMO "" FRANK E.' i SCOTT HAGAN WATSON The Colorado Cinder Beetle WHEN" the Santa Fe railroad was built Into Colorado, its coming brought rejoicing to the residents res-idents of the rich Arkansas River valley. It meant an outlet for their crops and prosperity. But that lasted last-ed only a little while. Then disaster dis-aster swept down upon them. Every ni li t a large section of the roadbed disappeared. Some thing was taking asvay the cinder ballast. Train schedules were disrupted dis-rupted and there were endless delays de-lays until the damage could be repaired. re-paired. In several cases freight trains were wrecked or derailed. Santa Fe officials were frantic, for no one could discover what was carrying away the ballast. Finally a newspaper man, Charley Blakes-ley Blakes-ley of the Kansas City Star, suggested sug-gested that possibly the Colorado cinder beetle was eating up the ballast bal-last and his surmise proved correct. How to check the ravages of the insects was the next problem. That was solved when it was discovered that the cinders used for ballast were from soft coal. So hard coal cinders were substituted and the cinder beetles broke their jaws trying try-ing to eat them. For some time, it is said, passengers on the Santa Fe were kept awake at nights by the cinder beetles screaming with the pain of their broken jaws. So the railroad speeded up the schedules of their passenger trains. They now went so fast that the passengers passen-gers heard the moaning of the broken-jawed cinder beetles merged into a symphony of sound, like the rustle of wind through pine trees, that quickly lulled them to sleep. When a hardier race of cinder beetles developed with jaws capable capa-ble of eating hard .coal cinders, the Santa Fe was ready for them. They began using crushed rock and since that time have had no trouble with the little pests. Western Newspaper Union. |
