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The general manager's story (1898)

von Herbert Elliott Hamblen

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712,356,196 (3.5)1
The general manager of a large nineteenth-century railroad line reminisces about his boyhood when he ran away to work on the railroad.
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Hamblen’s book is a work of fiction presented in the form of an “as told to” biography. It details the trajectory of the life of General Manager M______ . It begins with his leaving home in search of work, his first job as a brakeman and his rise through the ranks of employment on “a great railroad system branching out from Chicago.” Hamblen himself was a railroad engineer from 1880 to 1894 and, like the banker Frank Spearman (Held for Orders), it is obvious he used his personal experiences and impressions of railroad work to frame the content and dialogue of the book. As was noted in the review published in The Nation in 1898 “In most tales in which commonplace argot or speech is employed, the illusion is marred through the interjection of literary words which the speakers would not employ in colloquial intercourse. Mr. Hamblen never offends in this particular.”

The only drawback to the novel, which was noted in the 1898 review, is that Hamblen’s General Manager has an unrealistic overabundance of good fortune. Again, from the review in The Nation, “The crowning achievement, however, is a collision that requires such a nice adjustment of favorable conditions as to border on the miraculous. Two trains travelling on a single track meet immediately beneath a bridge (which the accident destroys) that carries the track of a second railway across that of the first. Into this chasm an opportune train of the second railroad tumbles upon the debris of the other two a few moments after the collision. As may be imagined, this causes serious complications, to no one more than our hero, who is pinioned beneath the wreck with fire sweeping down upon him. Of course he escapes, but with the loss of all that is consumable about his person except the actual flesh. ”

In spite of this, many of the stories ring true and are probably slightly fictionalized accounts of incidents in Hamblen’s career that were either experienced or witnessed (See Common Knowledge for an example of this side of his writing). Indeed, the descriptions of some of the events are such that more than one subsequent author of railroad history has presented sections of Hamblen’s book as historical fact.

I wouldn’t class Hamblen’s book as a must-read but I do think it is worthwhile because, phenomenal luck aside, it is a reasonably well written book and many of the stories do mirror real accounts of railroad life.(Text length - 311 pages, Total length - 311 pages)

Addendum June 2021: Since writing this review back in 2013 it appears that, the 1898 review notwithstanding, recent research by Richard Reinhardt indicates Hamblen's book is essentially an autobiography and should be considered non-fiction. Reinhardt's findings are briefly summarized in Grant Burn's book The Railroad in American Fiction. So, as an update, I've changed the tags to indicate the book's change in status. ( )
  alco261 | Jul 4, 2013 |
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To The Railroad Men of the United States
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Do I remember my first day railroading?
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Old Pop was a hard man to fire for, because he was a pounder; but I hadn’t been long enough at the business to know that, so I shoveled away for dear life and was ignorant and happy. One trip Pop reported sick, and an extra engineer took her out. As a rule, firemen hate to see an extra man get on the engine, as he has different ways from the man you are used to, and railroad men of all degrees get set in their ways and don’t like to have them disturbed. This extra man, however, was a genuine and pleasant surprise to me. With old Pop at the throttle I always had to bend my back as soon as he pulled her out and keep the shovel and the firebox door on the swing as regular as the pendulum of a clock. No need to hook the fire; for as Pop said, he’d keep it from freezing up on me and so he did too; for I wouldn’t have a chance to stop shoveling until he shut her off. No need to worry myself by looking at the steam-gauge; for as Pop said again, he could take care of all the steam I could make. There were two coaling stations on the division, each about twenty miles from either terminus, for the convenience of engines that needed more coal to take them in. We never passed them, - indeed, we sometimes had trouble to reach them, - although Pop had sideboards put on the tender, saying he liked to have plenty of coal; and when other engineers bragged about how many water-plugs they passed, Pop would remark sagely that “he allus liked to have coal an’ water enough,” – and he did too. Well, when the extra man started I began as usual to “ladle in the lampblack” until we were about five miles out, when he called me up to him and asked me if there was a hold through the front end of the firebox. “No,” said I. “Why?” “What is the trouble, then? Is there somebody buried back there, an’ you’re trying to dig him out?” I stared at him, wondering what he was talking about. Seeing that I didn’t understand, he said, ”For Heaven’s sake, man, get up there on your seat an’ sit down! I never saw anybody shovel coal like you do; you’ve got enough in there to run to the next water-plug now. I can’t put any more water into her till we get there; so crack your door an’ let’s have a smoke.” I did as he told me to; and yet, though I saw by the gauge that we had, as the boys say, “a hundred an’ enough,” I was worried; and at last, when I could stand it no longer, fearing that my fire would go entirely out, I stepped down and picked up my scoop again. “Say,” said he, “hand me that scoop a minute.” I did so, wondering what he wanted of it. He threw it on the foot-board in front of him, and told me if I didn’t sit down and rest myself until we got to the water-plug he would report me for wasting the company’s fuel. That trip was a revelation to me. We not only ran by half the water-plugs and the coal station, but made the run in two hours’ less time than usual, arriving with nearly half a tank of coal left, although we had our regular train of forty-five loads. The next day I asked him how it was done. He took me to his side of the cab and showed me a notch in the quadrant that was worn smooth and bright. “That,” said he, “is the notch Pop runs her in.” Then he showed me where he ran her, and gave me the most lucid explanation of early cutting off and running expansively, and of its effect on the coal-pile and water-tank, that I had ever heard. Pop was laid up a week with rheumatism, and during that week I gained several pounds in weight. I had such an easy time of it that, although I was very fond of the old man, I dreaded to see him come back, and said as much to the engineer. “Why don’t you tell him how to run her,” said he. “Pop’s a good old feller. He won’t get mad; and even if he does, you’d be a blamed fool to keep heaving coal in there for him to throw out the stack. I wouldn’t do it, an’ don’t you.” Well, at last the day came when the old man returned to work. He looked poorly, and I could hardly find it in my heart to speak to him on a subject which I knew to be a delicate one, for he was a very old engineer, and had been running just that way probably long before I ever thought of railroading. Still, I had lots of sympathy for my own back. So at last I broached the subject…I spoke rather diffidently, but told him the whole story, to which he listened very patiently, and when I got through, he said, - “My boy, I don’t want to break your back. I know there’s something in what you say, for I’ve had firemen kick before, but none of them in such a decent way as you have…Now show me how Laws ran her, and by gum, I’ll do the same; then we’ll see if we can’t run by water-plugs and coal stations as well as some others.” I showed him, and away we went. At first he was afraid she wouldn’t make time, cut back so fine, but when he say how she was going past the stations, he was a pleased as a child with a new toy….He was as pleased as Punch when we wheeled into the end of the division after the fastest trip he had ever made in all those twenty years, and never relapsed into his old style of running, and for the remainder of my time with him no fireman on the road had an easier time of it than I.
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The general manager of a large nineteenth-century railroad line reminisces about his boyhood when he ran away to work on the railroad.

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