This is the 3rd time I am sending it. Is anyone else having trouble with their posts not going through? Chapter 34 cont. Well, we had steam gauges in those days that were differently rigged from those we carry now. Now the safety valves are set with a wrench and you have to get out to the valve, on top of the boiler, and make something of a job of it, to set one of them; but then all you had to do was to merely slip a block under the end of the lever that came back into the cab and let the pressure go on rising; and every one of us carried his little block. I had mine with me that day, but I didn't keep it in my picket while we were approaching and climbing that hill, you bet! Twombley came to me afterward and said, "Well you got up the hill. How much steam did you carry?" "I had enough," said I. One hundred and thirty pounds was the limit in those days, and many engines carried less than that. When I cam here J. W. Moak was roadmaster, later becoming superintendent, and A. Kimball was master mechanic, and they were both good ones. Moak came off the Rome & Watertown, and he was a fine man. Mr. Kimball later succeeded him and T. P. Twombley left an engine to take the place of Master mechanic that Mr. Kimball thus vacated. addison Dad was superintendent in 1857, when I began with the company. He was a man of fine religious scruples, and wanted no swearing among his men. When I got on the payroll there were about twenty engines, and we were running two passenger trains a day each way between here and Iowa City. Later, when the panic came on and times got hard, these trains were mixed, to carry both passengers and freight. Those were not the palmy days of railroading, for company or employe. I was too poor to won a pair of overshoes in the winter, and went in the snow with my shoes muffled up in rags. I remember, just after I was married, when I had hardly a quarter in my pocket, trying to find a house to rent in Iowa City. C. W. Phillips, long with the company there as superintendent of the water service, told me he had one, a nice little one of three rooms, so I went and looked at it. There were four cords of good hard wood, all cut and dry in the shed, and the place was cosy and neat and attractive, but I could see that it was too rich for me, and I went back and told him so. But he would not let go. "You go back there and look it over again," he said, "and I guess we can fix the rent right." I went. Somebody had been there in the meantime. On the kitchen table was a sack of flour, with potatoes, a ham and all the other necessaries and a note that said, "Move in and make yourself at home, and pay when you get ready." It was worth being poor to meet such a man as that. We used to have some fun with the snow in those days, too. I was stuck once within four miles of Grinnell with a passenger train, four engines and 100 men shoveling hard, and we stayed there three days. I had the old Antoine LeClaire one time, out toward Wilton. A. Kimball dropped off No. 3, westbound, to take a hand. He found Jack Tarsney on the snowplow with an engine that wouldn't steam, so he cut him off and put Walt Hess on in his place. Walt had an engine that was no better, so Mr. Kimball came to me and asked me if I thought the 'Tony would handle the snowplow. She was pretty light, but I said I would do what I could with her, so we rigged her and started on. The snowplow was mounted on a frame, the rear of which was attached to the front of the engine, while the point of the plow was carried on wheels on a truck. This side of Bear creek we saw a cut ahead that was drifted level, and we raced at it. It turned dark when we got into the snow, there was so much of it in the air, and right in the thick of things I heard something cracking. We didn't get far after than, and when we stopped we found that the snowplow had turned off to one side and was at right angles to us, and Mr. Kimball was nowhere in sight. I was scared and began to call, "Kimball! Kimball!" "All right!" he said, somewhere down in the snow to the rear, and pretty soon he climbed on. I told him I thought something had happened to him. "Oh, no," he said; "I got off when i heard that plow going." We had a siderod bend and the cylinder cocks knocked off, and other damage on that side, and we had a hard time getting out of there, but we did get out, and that night the engine was safe in the roundhouse at Brooklyn. It was about 11 o'clock that night when I got there. Old man Skinner was in the office of the hotel. He would let me have a room, but he said I couldn't have supper; girls were all in bed. "All right," I said, "I guess I won't go the room just yet," so I sat there in the office and waited, and after a while A. Kimball came in, following me on the train for which I had opened th way. "Had your supper, Charley?" he asked me, first thing after we met. "No," I said, "Mr. Skinner says I can't have any supper tonight, for the girls are all in bed." Mr. Kimball turned on Skinner with that look that we all knew would stand for no fooolishness, and said, "You get this man some supper, and you get it damn quick." Pretty soon I had a hot beefsteak, hot biscuits, potatoes, honey, coffee, and anything else there was in the house. It happened that the house stood, by Mr. Kimball's permission, on the company's ground. Debbie Clough Gerischer Iowa Gen Web, Assistant CC, Scott County http://www.celticcousins.net/scott/ IAGENWEB: Special History Project: http://iagenweb.org/history/index.htm Gerischer Family Web Site: http://gerischer.rootsweb.com/