Western American Literature

238 Western American Literature Finally, there are two indices, one of titles and first lines, the other of a general nature. Anyone who has used an archive knows that the more a col­ lection has by way of cross-references, the more useful it is. I can only speculate who might be interested in such a book. Certainly the folklorist will want it. The Westerner (authentic, professional, or acci­ dental) will have to have it. The cultural and social historian must have it for the same reasons that the student of American Studies must. And I would bet that the general reader, he for whom the title was shaped, perhaps, will find this book to his liking. L ouie W. A tte b e ry , The College of Idaho Workin’ on the Railroad: Reminiscences from the Age of Steam. Edited by Richard Reiqjiardt. (Palo Alto: American West Publishing Company, 1970. 318 pages, illus., $8.95.) On die first page of his introduction, editor Reinhardt states that the age of the steam railroad lasted from Horatio Allen’s first run of the Stourbridge Lion in 1829 until the unveiling of diesel motive power at the Century of Progress exposition in 1934. Wisely, Reinhardt does not pretend to cover this entire period in his one short volume. His first chapter consists of three accounts of first runs of steam locomotives in North America, all in 1829. The second chapter begins with an autobiographical account of a Boston and Maine train crewman’s life in the 1840’s. Then it skips to 1869 and the Central Pacific’s construction of a record ten miles of track in one day during its final race with the Union Pacific. This last incident can be considered the book’s real beginning. The earlier selections are introductory in function, useful to give those who are unoriented to railroad history some inkling of what proceeded the period the rest of the book concentrates on. The joining of the Central Pacific to the Union Pacific on May 10, 1869, opened the nation’s last era of major railroad construction. By 1910, six other transcontinental rail routes had been com­ pleted. Like the builders who followed them, the surveyors who located the thousands of new routes-miles across the western plains and mountains were distinctly frontier characters. There were virtually no construction crews working elsewhere, and already eastern railroad surveyors were absorbed in the relativtly mundane tasks of straightening curves and eliminating bridges that have occupied their entire profession during the twentieth century. The western telegraph operator shared with tht railroad builders the dangers of the countryside. He was usually at the mercy of assaults on his solitary post by prairie fires, marauding Indians, and stampeding buffalo. But if Reinhardt is to be criticized for letting non-railroad elements gain the upper hand at any point in the book, his chapter on the telegraph operator Reviews 239 is one such place. It contains two selections, one o£ which deals entirely with the environment dangers faced by the western station agent, not with his work. Earlier in the book an incident from the autobiography of James H. Kyner, contractor on the Oregon Short Line (now Union Pacific) across south­ ern Idaho is quoted. The subject is Kyner’s elaborate precautions to safely transport a large payroll. It too is an interesting and suspenseful tale, but one having more to do with banking than with railroading. Reinhardt chose a most fruitful period to probe for potential rail folklore. The Civil War had abruptly thrust modern demands for all-weather, nation­ wide common-carrier transportation upon the railroads. But human muscle still accomplished most of the work of keeping the trains running, unaided by the myriad of mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, and pneumatic devices of modem times. Brakemen, for example, still stood between cars to hook their link-andpin couplings. The engineer’s whistle for brakes still sent them scurrying over the cartops to twist down the brakewheels. Death and crippling of brakemen remained indices of growth in the nation’s rail traffice until the turn of the century when the federal Railroad Safety Appliance Act of 1893 required application of air brakes and...