Held for Orders: Being Stories of Railroad Life

Ten, twenty, thirty, forty minutes went, with Martin Duffy at intervals vainly calling. Then--as the crack opens in the field of ice, as the snow breaks in the mountain slide, a...

"Well, for God's sake let up, Chris," said the yard master at last. "I'll come down a while after Twenty-three comes in. Get back early after supper, and we'll make up Fifty-fiv...

For three months Bucks sat his new saddle without a word or an act to show what he was thinking: then there came from the little room a general order that swept right and left f...

Bullhead's letter of resignation with the print of his hand on it hangs framed over Callahan's desk, and is shown to railroad big fellows who are accorded the courtesies of the...

When he began passenger braking the trainmaster put him on with Pat Francis. The very first trip he made, a man in the smoking car asked him where the drinking water was. Bullhe...

The storm shook them with freshening fury and drove the flanges into the south rail with a grinding shriek, as they sped from the shelter of the hills. The rain fell in a sheet,...

Doubleday was right in his device, as time has proved; but it was unheard of then and moreover, the assistant master mechanic sensitive to criticism at any time, was a fearful m...

"'The Mountain and the Inter-mountain divisions are hereby consolidated under the name of the Mountain Division with J. F. Bucks as Superintendent, headquarters at Medicine Bend...

Aloysius's fingers closed slowly on the sand lever. There was nothing on earth for it but sand, merely sand; and even the wiper's was oozing with the stream that poured from the...

There was frightened crawling out of the shattered cabooses, a hurrying up of the stunned crews, and a bewildering count of heads. Both engine crews of the stock train had jumpe...

The staff of the superintendent, and the force of despatchers, a handful of men all told, gathered at the upper windows and opened fire with revolvers. It was just enough to inf...

"He's rather a bad lot, I guess," wrote Bucks to Callahan, "but I am satisfied of one thing--you can't run that yard with a Sunday-school superintendent. He won't make you any t...

All day it was that way: train after train and ovation after ovation. The day was cool as a watermelon--August--and bright as a baby's face all through the mountains; and the Te...

Neighbor himself was on the Piedmont platform that morning, watching things. The McCloud despatchers had promised the train to our division on time, and her smoke was due with t...