Word: trainman
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Cover) No green light flared from a track-side tower; no warning whistle echoed down the line. But no trainman missed the signal. When the Supreme Court gave its approval last week to the merger of the Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads, it was clearing the track for the nation's entire rail system. It was giving railroad management permission to highball into the future...
...both the hydraulic and steam-brake systems without raising an alarm. In choosing Bridego Bridge as the transfer point, they picked one of the most deserted spots along the rail line, and further safeguarded their escape by systematically cutting all telephone lines in the vicinity. Borrowing a bicycle, a trainman pedaled to the nearest police station in Cheddington, and reached it an hour after the crime...
...book's best piece is about railroading - how to set a freight car's brake and then, perilously, slip blocks of wood under the wheels; the arrogant, slow-motion skill of well-paid oldtimers in clean overalls; the trainman's contempt for the placid, nonrolling civilian world. The author's stream-of-consciousness gibberish is fairly effective as he tells of being summoned at 4:30 a.m. to catch an early run ("I wake up ... in the mouth of the night and there everything knows that I have no mother, and no sister, and no father...