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in the old days and at other hump yards. Such tales would usually hinge around what happened when a car got out of control and plowed into a string at excessive speed. We were told at least two stories about cars "fetching up" so fast that their roofs came off--simply kept righton going when the car hit the string. One prize story concerned a rider who was a "wise guy" and insisted he could handle two cars coupled together--but he lost control of them and they crashed so hard into their train that the roofs of both of them were knocked off. On a few occasions, I've seen cars which have been humped or kicked and make contact at say 10-15 mph and they appear to jump right up into the air on their springs about a foot and a cloud of dust bursts out all round them as though they've exploded. These are some of the reasons why railroad equipment must be built tough.

However, hitting cabooses hard is the basis of some of the very best stories of this type. The following are a few brief samples we heard during the course of the tests and these are all claimed to be true:

A brakeman was washing up in the hack (caboose) when it was hit so hard that he pulled the washbowl clean off the wall.

On another occasion, a hack got slammed so vigorously that it knocked the stretcher right out the back window.

On one tremendous jerk, a man sitting in the cupola was thrown out of it and landed behind the stove where he got singed a bit before extricating himself.

A screen door got knocked off its hinges and wound up draped over a brakeman's head.

After a particularly severe impact, a brakeman walked up to the locomotive and asked the engineer if he could borrow his ax, saying that everything in the crummy (caboose) was smashed but the stove, and he wanted the ax to break that up and make a clean sweep of it.

We worked at Cedar Hill for a few days and did some heavy switching but the speeds involved were so low that we got away with it. In fact, this was largely the story wherever we went and had been one of the factors we'd been counting on to get us by. This is because of one of the most fundamental relationships in this work:

Horsepower = Pounds tractive-effort x MPH [[divided by]] 375

(It's many a long year since I wrote that one down the last time.)