Chapter 34 cont. The most remarkable thing that ever happened to an engine in my hands was the throwing of all four of the drivers of the 188, on the night of February10, 1883. It was about 9:45 in the evening, between Midway and Iowa City. I was pulling passenger No. 1, and we were running up close to sixty miles an hour. Something smashed; I thought it was the siderod under me, and jumped down off the seat to the floor of the cab. The rear of the engine was sagging down till the ashpan was on the ground, its front end carried by the forward truck, and the train was crowding us along from the rear by its momentum, John Neiswager, the fireman, yelling like mad to me to stop her. It was 1,120 feet from the first mark on the ground to the point where the engine stopped. Jim Rayner was conductor. He came up to see what was the matter. I told him a driver was gone on my side, and supposed that was all there was to it. Later I found that, except the wheels of the forward truck, there wasn't a wheel under her. Both drivers were gone on both sides. It all happened so quickly that I don't know which one went first, or the order in which they went, or whether they all went at once. The reain held the track and not a soul was hurt. We sent in a messenger to Iowa City, and the construction train came out, bringing with it a pair of pony trucks that they used about the roundhouse there. The rear end of the engine was jacked up and this pony put under it, and the wheels were gathered up and in this way the cripple was taken to the hospital. Drivers, eccentrics, links, all went in the wreck; the right sylinder head was knocked in and the left main ord was broken in the center, but all these things were soon and easily mended, and the 188 had years of good service in her after that. I had the first run of the famous Silver engine, the America, and Al Lund fired for me. Grant, her builder, rode with us, and the cab and tender were filled with other persons, both gentlemen and ladies. they were members of a big party of railroad people who came out here on that occasion. The America ran only to Council Bluffs, her first trip a sort of advertisement of the road, but later she was in the passenger service. Jack Williams, now of Stuart, ran her for years on the west end. If there were room for it a good many old memories of the old engineers of those first days might be aroused. There was Johnny Buswell, whom I mentioned; and Doc Weatherby, who came off the Little Miami and who started in by firing for A. Kimball's brother, Moody Kimball; and there was Moddy Kimball, a natural clown for fun, always at some joke or prank, and as different from a. K. as one man could be from another; and John Mousley, who died here in Rock Island last holidays, engineer of the 33, and the John A. Dix, and later foreman at Brooklyn for years following 1870; and there was J. E. Morrill, who ran the A. C. Flagg, the 80, and the McPherson, which the company got in the days of the war, and who succeeded Twombley as master mechanic at Davenport when Twombley went to Chicago as general master mechanic; and there was Mose Hobbs, who ran the John A. Dix and the A. c. Flagg and the Iowa City - a generous man to anybody in need; and John H. Williams - Jack, we called him - who was running a stationary engine at Iowa City when I first knew him, and who went firing on the John A. Dix for Mose Hobbs, and later became her engineer - a fine man whom everybody on the road liked; and Tom Holmes, who fired and ran an engine here for years, now in partnership with Jack Williams at Stuart in the implement business; and from these I might go on and take up others - Frank Bliss and George Weed and 'Dite Smith, yardmaster, and so on to the end of a long chapter, but it would take me more than one day to tell it. Very dear to me are the memories of some of those men, pioneers in the railroad history of the country west of the Mississippi, but I am not so sure that everybody else is as much interested in them as I am. Since writing this account Mr. Davis and G. B. Swan have been put on the pension list of the Rock Island system and have retired. Mr. Davis draws the road's largest pension with one exception, that awarded Ex-Supt. H. F. Royce. 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/