Next comes the front brakeman in a plug hat about two sizes too large for him. He also wears a long-waisted frock coat with a bustle to it and a tall shirt-collar with a table-spread tie, the ends of which flutter gayly in the morning breeze. As the train pauses at the first station he takes a hammer out of the tool-box and nails on the tire of the fore wheel of his coach. The engineer gets down with a long oil-can and puts a little sewing-machine oil on the pitman. He then wipes it off with his sleeve. It is now discovered that the rear coach, containing a number of directors and the division superintendent, is missing. The conductor goes to the rear of the last coach, and finds that the string by which the directors' car was attached is broken, and that, the grade being pretty steep, the directors and one brakeman have no doubt gone back to the starting place. But the conductor is cool. He removes his bell-crowned plug hat, and, taking out his orders and time-card, he finds that the track is clear, and, looking at a large, valuable Waterbury watch, presented to him by a widow whose husband was run over and killed by the train, he sees he can still make the next station in time for dinner. He hires a livery team to go back after the directors' coach, and, calling "All aboard," he swings lightly upon the moving train. It is now 10 o'clock, and nineteen weary miles still stretch out between him and the dinner station. To add to the horrors of the situation, the front brakeman discovers that a very thirsty boy in the emigrant car has been drinking from the water-supply tank on the tender, and there is not enough left to carry the train through. Much time is consumed in filling the barrel again at a spring near the track, but the conductor finds a "spotter" on the train, and gets him to do it. He also induces him to cut some more wood and clean out the ashes. The engineer then pulls out a draw-head and begins to make up time. In twenty minutes he has made up an hour's time, though two miles of hoop-iron are torn from the track behind him. He sails into the eating station on time, and, while the master mechanic takes several of the coach-wheels over to the machine-shop to soak, he eats a hurried lunch. The brakeman here gets his tin lanterns ready for the night run and fills two of them with red oil to be used on the rear coach. The fireman puts a fresh bacon-rind on the eccentric, stuffs some more cotton batting around the axles, puts a new lynch-pin in the hind wheels, sweeps the apple-peelings out of the smoking car, and he is ready. Then comes the conductor, with his plug hat full of excursion tickets, orders, passes, and timechecks; he looks at his Waterbury watch, waves his hand, and calls "All aboard" again. It is upgrade, however, and for two miles the "spotter" has to push behind with all his might before the conductor will allow him to get on and ride.