While the first of these wires are beginning to swing back and forth the despatcher will hear the wrecking-train, pulled by the neatest and swiftest bit of motive power from their big roundhouse, go scurrying by down the line. The road is cleared. Everything stands aside, and for weeks after, the stove committee in every roundhouse on the division will be telling how she made the run. They don't talk about the run when they get to the accident. They pile off the train and get to work quickly. Every man is a trained wreck-worker, as a fireman is trained to his peculiar business. In such hours as they are not out on the road, the wreckers are repairers of cars. It keeps them busy during the long seasons when the line is lucky and has no wrecks, and it gives them the skill with which to tackle the difficult problems that confront them after a smash. By day these men--eight or ten or twelve of them to a crew--work in the yard close to the waiting wrecking-train; by night the telephone at the head of the bed of each man will bring him quickly to the near-by yard. "How do you handle a wreck?" we once asked an old-time wrecking-boss, a man grown gray in keeping his line open. "I don't know," was his frank response. "I've probably handled a thousand wrecks--perhaps more--but I have yet to see two that were the same. Different cases demand different treatments. Any surgeon will tell you that; and you know," this with a bit of a laugh, "we are the surgeons of the steel highway. "We've only one rule that is absolute, and that rule is to take care of the folks who are hurt in the first place, and in the second place to get the line open. If it is multiple-track line--two or three or four tracks in operation--and the muss is sprawled over the entire right-of-way we get a through track working in shortest interval. When we can wire "number two open" or whatever it is, the despatcher down at headquarters will catch the stations where there are crossovers and he'll be handling his first-class traffic of all sorts past us while we'll still be stocking the arm of the old bill crane down into the smash." The arm of that crane can lift a freight-car--if there is enough freight-car left to lift--off the rails and into the ditch in almost a twinkling. Two of these great cranes can grab a wounded mogul locomotive and put her out of the way. The wrecking-trains on a first-class road are kept along the line in profusion. Each is supposed to cover a territory of 100 miles or so in every direction from headquarters, and a sizable smash will bring two or more to work in unison. Two wrecking-cranes working into the remnants of a head-on collision from each direction can accomplish marvels. They will come together finally at the chief test of their strength--the point where two locomotives have firmly locked horns in dying embrace. That is a point that finds the nerve and ability of every wrecking-boss.