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Updated: June 10, 2025
"The first thing I remember is waking up to feel the car jerked, or stopped, or started, and Seeing lights flash past the windows lanterns of the brakemen, or lamps of some town, dancing along the track. The sleeping-car was home the only home I knew. All night long there was the groaning of the wheels, the letting off of steam, the calls of the men.
Drinks went up from six cents to ten and twelve and a half cents. In Baltimore, the men in the Baltimore and Ohio Railway shops struck. They were followed by all the conductors, brakemen, and locomotive engineers. Machinists employed in other shops soon joined them, and the city's industries were virtually paralyzed. In New York nearly every industry was stopped by strikes.
Even the brakemen and the locomotive-engineer who walked in advance of the horses were completely painted with it. And before we got out of the woods, so were the passengers. This railroad feeds the trenches, carrying to them water and ammunition, and to the kitchens in the rear uncooked food.
As the train had only recently been made up and few passengers were expected, there were only one or two brakemen waiting. They entered the rear day coach and sat down. Almost immediately, "All aboard," resounded faintly from the outside, and the train started. Carrie began to think it was a little bit curious this going to a depot but said nothing.
More than once he was beaten and maltreated by railroad conductors and brakemen. For a time the Eastern Railroad ran its cars through Lynn, Massachusetts, without stopping, because Douglass, who resided at that time in Lynn, insisted on riding in the white people's car, and made trouble when interfered with.
Train men two hundred dollars per month for conductors, one hundred and twenty-five dollars for brakemen, two hundred dollars to two hundred and fifty dollars for engineers, and one hundred and fifty dollars to one hundred and seventy-five dollars for firemen. Telegraph operators eighty dollars to a hundred dollars.
The engine gave short calls with its whistle, and frequently the bell rang. Several brakemen came through, bearing lanterns. They were locking the vestibules and putting the cars in order for a long run. Presently it began to gain speed, and Carrie saw the silent streets flashing by in rapid succession.
McTeague heard two brakemen discussing him one night as they stood outside by the halted train. "The livery-stable keeper called him a bastard; that's what Picachos told me," one of them remarked, "and started to draw his gun; an' this fellar did for him with a hayfork.
Poor man, he had a game leg as long as I knew him, which was only natural, since when the rail burst through the floor it struck him fair. I was traveling free, as the friend of one of the brakemen whom I had got to know in St. Paul. He was a queer fellow, named Burrdock. The railroad company set great store by Burrdock on account of his dealings with some Sioux Indians.
"Where I grunt, you'd lie down, Poney: but, as I was saying, I don't blow much. Notwithstandin', if you want to see freight that is freight moved lively, you should see me warbling through the Alleghanies with thirty-seven ore-cars behind me, and my brakemen fightin' tramps so's they can't attend to my tooter.
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