[Illustration: "WHEN THE TRAIN COMES TO A WATER STATION THE FIREMAN GETS OUT AND FILLS THE TANK"] [Illustration: A FREIGHT-CREW AND ITS "HACK"] [Illustration: A VIEW THROUGH THE SPAN OF A MODERN TRUSS BRIDGE GIVES AN IDEA OF ITS STRENGTH AND SOLIDITY] [Illustration: THE NEW YORK CENTRAL IS ADOPTING THE NEW FORM OF "UPPER QUADRANT" SIGNAL] On a pleasant day this is a task that can give the average brakeman a sort of supreme contempt for the man whose work houses him within four walls. If the road lies through a lovely country, if it pierces mountain ranges, or follows the twisting course of a broad river, he may feel a contempt, too, for the passenger who observes the lovely scenes only through the narrow confines of a car window. To him there is a broad horizon, and he would be a poor sort of man indeed if he did not rise to the inspiration of this environment. There is quite another side of this in the winter. Let wind and rain and then freezing weather come, and that icy footpath over the top of the snaky train becomes the most dangerous way in all Christendom. It consists of only three narrow planks laid lengthwise of the train, and between the cars there is a two-foot interval to be jumped. Hand-rails of any sort are an impossibility, and the brakeman now and then will receive a sharp slap in the face that is not the slap of wind or of sleet, and he will fall flat upon the car-roof or dodge to the ladders that run up between the cars. That slap was the slap of the "tickler," that gallows-like affair that stands guard before tunnels and low bridges and gives crude warning to the man working upon the train roofs of a worse slap yet to come. There are other dangers, not the least of these the possibility of open battle at any time of day or night with one or more "hobos," tramps, or "yeggmen," who seem to regard freight trains as complimentary transportation extended to them as a right, and train-crews as their natural enemies. The list of railroad men who have lost their lives because of these thugs is not a short one. It is one of the many records of railroad heroism. Still the brakeman has a far easier time of it than his prototype of a generation or more back. The air-brake is a big help. When a train breaks in two or three parts on a grade, the pulling out of the air-couplings automatically sets the brakes on every part, and if you do not know what that means ask one of the old-timers. In the old days of the hand-brakes the very worst of all freight accidents came when a section of a freight train without any one aboard to set its brakes, broke loose and came crashing down a hill into some helpless train. Ask the old-timer about the hand-couplings and the terrific record of maimed arms and bodies that they left. The modern automatic couplings have been worth far more than their cost to the railroads.