his thirty-five years of track patrol. Burns, whose hair and mustache are as yet unstreaked by gray, is fifty-eight years old. His eyes are keen, his face, roughened by weather, is ruddy and there is a hint of alertness in every swing of his short, lean frame.

Four times a day Trackwalker Burns journeys between Greensburg and County Home Junction on the southwest branch of the Pennsylvania Railway, a distance of 3.53 miles. Four times a day he walks his beat, carrying his hammer, wrench and oil can. He leaves home in the morning at 6:45, covering his beat and back again before noon. In the afternoon he again makes the trip, this time lighting the signal and switch lights that he has filled in the morning. Daily he walks the same stretch. of track he has walked for over a third of a century.

"Oh, I get tired, you bet," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. Then he slid down into his chair with the air of a man who withal was content and added, "but no other work would suit me now."

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go" came over him so strongly that he pleaded for permission to go back to his old job and was allowed to do so.

He

The necessity of working week days and Sundays alike, of having only one warm cooked dinner a day and the great responsibility resting on his shoulders are not irksome to Trackwalker Burns. says the life in the open and the pleasant acquaintance with people along his stretch of track, counteract the deadly monotony of walking the same ties, tight

ening the same bolts, riveting the same plates, seeing the same landscape and carrying the same load three hundred and sixty-five days in the year and an extra one in leap year. Winter and summer for twenty-five years Terence. Reilly, the oldest trackwalker in the employ of the New Haven system, has patrolled his beat of five and one-quarter miles once a day or ten and one-half miles for the round journey, and, together with extra walking, has rolled up a record of a little over 102,000 miles. The wind blows cold for six months of the year upon his beat, coming down from the Vermont and upper New York highlands and sweeping across Long Island Sound, but Reilly has stuck to his job and is proud to think that he is in the one-hundred-thousand-mile class of the men who walk the track.

In all his long service, Burns has had only one narrow escape from death or serious injury and this he characterizes merely as a "bump." The accident occurred in November of last year. While engaged in the placing of a splice bar he failed to hear the approach of an engine or its warning bell because of the blowing off of steam of another engine nearby, which deadened all other sounds. His right hip received the terrific impact and he was sent rolling down over a high embankment. This accident took him off duty for nine days. In all his years spent trackwalking Burns estimates that he has only been off duty for a month.

"It might be a month or a little over," he finally grudgingly admitted. "Take it altogether, it's very little more than a month."

In December, 1910, Burns was transferred from trackwalking to a position as watchman of a dangerous grade crossing, a busy section of Greensburg. But after a while the love of "keeping on the

Mr. Riley has discovered a number of bad breaks in his time and once near Waterville, Conn., found that some would-be train wreckers had wedged some brake-shoes in a switch. A passenger train was about due, but Riley was able to clear the track of the obstruction in time for the train to pass. He also did duty during the blizzard of March 12-15, 1888, in clearing the tracks of snow.

The trackwalker who has been longest in the service of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company is Frank August, who entered the employ of the company in 1888 and is credited with a record of nearly 75,000 miles. Part of the time since that year he has been in section gangs, but has walked

track for over sixteen years. August's beat is between Bergen Junction and Kingsland, N. J.

A great many railroads have no patrolmen with regular beats. Although all their tracks are patrolled every day, the officers of the New York Central told me that they had no trackwalkers with known records, for the reason that a man might be walking track one week and working in the section gang the next. This system of changing men about is pursued by many companies on the theory that a man is likely to become careless and inattentive if he passes over the same beat year in and year out. Some men are so constituted that the monotony of this sort of work results in a superficial examination of the track they are

walking and this is fatal to effective inspection. Stevenson says Nature sets a brand upon the face of the man who is much alone, and Spencer declares that monotony of any kind is unfavorable to human life and particularly to mentality. Such being the case it is small wonder that so many railroad companies shift their trackwalkers about, giving them different beats and otherwise varying. their work.

But beside Silva, Rowan, Burns and Reilly there are other railway patrolmen with big records. There is William Young of Franklyn, Pa., with 154,000 miles in 22 years and 8 months; Simon Owens, Washington, D. C., 135,626 miles in 23 years and 4 months; Dennis Watters of Norristown, Pa., 111,624 miles in

24 years; and Julius Hein of Edgewood, Md., who has covered 101,100 miles in 23 years and 3 months. These four men have walked over half a million miles.

William Young, whom the railroaders refer to as "Uncle Billy," went to work twenty-six years ago on the old Allegheny Valley Railroad and has been working there ever since. For most of this time he has been occupied in trackwalking. The public refers to the line he works on as the "Valley road," but railroaders who know its dangers, call it the "Valley of the Shadow road." It is simply a succession of curves along the Allegheny River, and on one side is a high hill the base of which was cut away to make room for the roadbed. result landslides have always been a menace, and it is for them that trackwalkers have to watch more than for broken rails.

As a

When asked if he ever had any narrow escapes Uncle Billy broke into a laugh.

"Death has approached me in many forms," he said. "One night I was walking along without a thought of impending danger and suddenly an immense boulder dropped off a cliff above and struck three feet in front of me. I have had so many narrow escapes from being hit by trains that I can't recall them all. Once I got off the track so close to an express train that I could have touched the pilot with my hand. I remember one night I found a bad slide and I went up the track to flag a fast passenger train. There was a terrible snow storm and I couldn't see or hear the train. So I placed two torpedoes on the rail. A second after there was a 'bang,' 'bang,' and I jumped. The train had come without my hearing it, and the torpedoes were the only thing that saved it and inci

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dentally myself. Many a train I have stopped near a slide or a broken rail and thought nothing of it. It was my busi

ness.

"I see," he continued, "that the fellows who figure make out that I have walked 154,000 miles. Well, they're off, for I have done a lot more tramping than that. I suppose they found the total by crediting me with the length of my beat each night I have worked. They take no credit of the hundreds of miles I have walked in retracing my steps. Why, one night I walked nearly fifty miles on a mile of track. It had been raining for several days and I suspected that any minute a part of a hillside would come down, maybe on me. Back and forth I walked, fearful almost that the jar of my foot would bring down the avalanche. But it didn't come, at least not that night. Besides these extra steps I walk two

miles a day to get to my home."

Asked if he had ever been commended by his superiors, Uncle Billy said modestly that he once got a letter. He wouldn't tell what was in it. He admitted that not long ago he was called in on the carpet because a train in daylight had plunged off the track into the river. The superintendent thought a broken rail had been the cause and wanted to know why Uncle Billy hadn't seen it. The veteran trackwalker told the superintendent that fast running had caused the accident, and when the official verified the statement by a station agent he sent Uncle Billy home on the road's crack train, which made a special stop at the way station where he lives.

Uncle Billy says that when he is walking track his mind is constantly on his work. He realizes that any relaxation may result in the death of many people, and he draws a sigh of relief when he goes

off duty with the feeling that nothing has happened during his vigil.

"If I were a railroad magnate," he says, "I would have only intelligent men for trackwalkers. I wouldn't employ an ignorant foreigner. A trackwalker should be wideawake and a good thinker.

"Everybody blames things on the trackwalker. One night I was on my beat and an engineer who had run into a landslide reported that the trackwalker had stood on the bank and watched him go into the slide. I called him a liar, for I wasn't near the place and hadn't time to get there. Not long afterward the same engineer overspeeded and went into the river with his train and was killed. I honestly believe that if he had come out alive he would have blamed the accident on the trackwalker.

"During all my years of railroading I have never been sick a day, and never took more than two pills in my life. But my right ankle is simply wearing out. Those four days I missed in twenty-six years? Oh, yes, that was when I buried. the woman.

Accidents to trackwalkers are frequent. Last year two were killed on the same Western line. Although the patrolmen on double tracks are supposed always to walk so coming train, re

that they face ontrains sometimes a versing the rule on an emergency, sneaks up behind them and flings them into the ditch. On single-track roads the patrolman must be Mr. FacingBoth-Ways, for a special or a light engine of whose schedule he has no knowledge may run into him from around a curve ahead or attack him unfairly in the

GEORGE A. BURNS, OF THE PENNSYLVANIA SYSTEM. Transferred from track-walking to watchman he pleaded

rear.

One of the most dangerous roads for the trackman is an

"JIM" ROWAN, OF THE NORTHERN PACIFIC. WHO WAS GIVEN A TRIP TO EUROPE IN RECOGNITION OF HIS MANY YEARS OF SERVICE.

line in a great city. On these roads scarcely a week passes without a fatality. In the New York subway, although trains are passing every five minutes and even oftener during the rush hours, there is plenty of time for a trackwalker or repairer to dodge in between the columns where he is perfectly safe, but sometimes men will stand as if staring at an approaching train, and in spite of warning signals, will permit themselves to be run down.

"There is a psychological reason for this," said Engineer Lockwood, manager of maintenance of the Interborough, to me. "It is that blank moment that comes to a man at times, during his waking hours. To railroaders that blank moment is such a recognized fact that they do not think it strange or unusual. I knew a civil engineer, a man who had been on and about railways all his life, who, forgetting where he was, deliberately stepped in front of a moving train and was

In the New York subway trackwalkers work in ten hour shifts. They patrol their dark, draughty beats, lantern in hand, and when they discover any part of the track or accessories which they cannot readily repair they turn in a signal that summons the roadmaster and his gang. Nowadays few deaths either in subways, on elevated lines or other electric systems are caused by the highly charged third-rail, once considered such a menace to life. This rail is now covered and it is not so easy to step upon or otherwise to come in contact with it.

The patrolling of trolley tracks, particularly in bad weather, is now the practice on suburban lines with heavy traffic, but out in the rural districts, where cars are run infrequently, the motorman is often the only inspector of roadbed. Judging by the increase in trolley accidents this lack of proper inspection is little short of criminal, and there should be stringent laws requiring the employment of regular trackwalkers on all such lines.

The duties of trackwalkers have increased with the years and the improved systems of railroading. On big lines like the New York Central, the Pennsylvania and the Lackawanna track inspection has been reduced to an exact science. The patrolman registers in the tower at the end of his beat the hour and minute of his arrival, departs on his journey and

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registers in the tower at the other end. He carries a registering clock, by which his trips can be checked to the minute. His route usually covers about four miles, but is less than half this on stretches where special watchfulness is needed. Night or day the trackwalker must see that every frog, switch and signal is in good order. If a nearby tree looks dangerous, he must report, so that it can be chopped down. If an overhanging rock may become loose the trackwalker must know about it in time to avert a possible accident. Road crossings must be examined for danger to teams as well as to trains. Other things that demand his attention are out-lying water stations, overhead wires and even the cattle loose in the fields.

It is right that these veterans of the railway service should be pensioned or given free trips to Europe or wherever they may wish to go. In the first place it proves, what is so often denied, that there really is such a thing as official appreciation of long and faithful service, and it also proves how significant is the position of the trackwalker. In fact, since I have been studying this subject I have seriously questioned, when I have heard the name of this or that great man of the dollarocracy, whether his business, though highly esteemed of men, was half as important as that of the obscure and humble trackwalker..