Take a quick peek over ’cross there: that’s Plantation Center station,
on the line we just went up over. Remember? The two lines are hardly a
hundred yards apart right here. Sometime Mr. Atwood may lay a connecting
track across this dike. Only a stone’s throw. Notice this big fill here:
all new grade across the corner of the swamp. Kind of sags in the
middle; will be filled and raised sometime. See No. 7 puffing up out of
there!
Look: we’re beside the canal now. There’s the grove and yard ahead.
We’re coming in on that line I told you about--from across the canal.
There’s the work train’s smoke. She came in ahead of us and it looks to
me like No. 4 engine is out there too. Where could she have been when we
left town?
Take it easy: I’m trying to stop this jalopy. We’re back in the yards
again. Quite an array of power, eh? No. 7; the work train; No. 4 engine;
the railbus which beat us down from the Ball Park; and there’s even
little Plymouth No. 14 with a string of bog dumpcars. You couldn’t get
so much action short of North Station.
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
Look out--stand back! Here comes a freight train, cuffing the wind up
Mt. Urann with the little red kiboose lurching and swaying behind.
]
[Illustration:
(_Hosmer Photo_)
The switch by the little reservoir, where trains may go left through
the grove, or around the curve through the woods to Edaville. No. 7
is about to swing through the switch for the climb up the hill.
]
All set? Then take a look at this Plymouth: all right, isn’t she? Mr.
Atwood bought her up to Quincy a year or so ago. Alec MacLellan, a
railroad fan, told him about her. You should have seen her then: about
the sorriest little mill you could imagine. No cab, no bell, no nothing.
Mr. Atwood’s crew took over and, patterning their dream-engine after
those big he-Plymouths, they built her into this trim little
cock-sparrow!
For real economy she puffs black all over the ledger. Will haul two or
three cars like nobody’s business; will do shifting and light work as
well as a steam engine. One man can run her without continually getting
down to tend his fire. Has her limit, of course; but she weighs only
four tons.
There: the work train’s going out; the passenger is hauling up to the
depot to swap passengers for her next trip; I think that No. 4 is going
out around the Edaville loop into the station that way. Why don’t we
ride in on her?
[Illustration:
(_Moody Photo_)
John Holt and Charlie Smith have invaded the sacred precincts of
pullman cars by bringing the sooty freight train right into Edaville
station--and see the crowd stare!
]
[Illustration:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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