THE WRECKING TRAIN AND ITS SUPPLIES--FLOODS DAMMED BY AN EMBANKMENT-- RIGHT OF WAY ALWAYS GIVEN TO THE WRECKING-TRAIN--EXPEDITIOUS WORK IN REPAIRING THE TRACK--COLLAPSE OF THE ROOF OF A TUNNEL--TELEGRAPH CRIPPLED BY STORMS--WINTER STORMS THE SEVEREST TEST--TRAINS IN QUICK SUCCESSION HELP TO KEEP THE LINE OPEN IN SNOWSTORMS--THE ROTARY PLOUGH. A cub reporter shouldered his way into a railroad superintendent's office. Outside, a late winter's storm howled around the terminal; the morning was nipping cold, the air curtained with myriad snow-flakes, a great railroad was making a desperate fight against the mighty forces of nature. "My city editor wants to know what you folks are doing to get the line open," demanded the reporter. The big superintendent swung in his swivel chair and faced him. It was a place where angels might well have feared to tread--a place surcharged with the electricity of fight. The superintendent's mind was filled with the almost infinite detail of the fight, but he liked the cub reporter and greeted him with a smile. "You can tell your city editor," he replied slowly, "that it is as much as a man's job here is worth for him to think that the line is going to be opened. I'd fire him if he as much as thought that it was ever closed. We don't die. We fight. It's a hard storm, sonny, but we make muscle in storms like this. We don't _get_ the line open, we are _keeping_ the line open. D'ye see?" In that the big superintendent had sounded one of the biggest principles of railroad operation. The line must be kept open. That slender trail of two rails, stretching straight across the open land and writhing and twisting through the high hills, is a living organism. The railroad is no mere inanimate organization, like a store, for instance. It is a right-hand of the nation's life; it is life. The railroad is like a great living thing, its many arms reaching long distances back into the land. You cannot cut off the living arm and then bring it back to pulsing life. Just so the railroad arm cannot be severed--the line must be kept open. Strange things may come to pass: the right-of-way may be littered with the wreckage of trains, brought together through a defect in the physical machine of the human; unexpected floods of traffic may seek to overwhelm the outlet; in spring the power and might of flood may descend upon it; winter's storms may seek to paralyze it; still, always the railroad must be kept open. "We can't lie down," the superintendent explained to the cub reporter. "We've got to get the traffic through. Do you know what it would mean if we were to follow the path of least resistance to-day--to let this storm get the best of us? Let me give you an idea of just one thing. There's food coming in here in trainload lots every night--fresh meat, fresh vegetables, fresh milk. Folks would go hungry if we were to say 'We can't, this storm is a gee-whilicker. We give up.'"