Overview

Barring accidents, a good hobo, with youth and agility, can hold a train down despite all the effortsof the train-crew to ditch him-given, of course, night-time as an essential condition. When sucha hobo, under such conditions, makes up his mind that he is going to hold her down, either he doeshold her down, or chance trips him up. There is no legitimate way, short of murder, whereby thetrain-crew can ditch him. That train-crews have not stopped short of murder is a current belief inthe tramp world. Not having had that particular experience in my tramp days I cannot vouch for itpersonally.But this I have heard of the bad roads. When a tramp has gone underneath, on the rods, and thetrain is in motion, there is apparently no way of dislodging him until the train stops. The tramp, snugly ensconced inside the truck, with the four wheels and all the framework around him, has the cinch on the crew-or so he thinks, until some day he rides the rods on a bad road. A bad road isusually one on which a short time previously one or several trainmen have been killed by tramps.Heaven pity the tramp who is caught underneath on such a road-for caught he is, though thetrain be going sixty miles an hour.The shack (brakeman) takes a coupling-pin and a length of bell-cord to the platform in front ofthe truck in which the tramp is riding. The shack fastens the coupling-pin to the bell-cord, drops theformer down between the platforms, and pays out the latter. The coupling-pin strikes the tiesbetween the rails, rebounds against the bottom of the car, and again strikes the ties. The shack playsit back and forth, now to this side, now to the other, lets it out a bit and hauls it in a bit, giving hisweapon opportunity for every variety of impact and rebound. Every blow of that flying coupling-pinis freighted with death, and at sixty miles an hour it beats a veritable tattoo of death. The next daythe remains of that tramp are gathered up along the right of way, and a line in the local papermentions the unknown man, undoubtedly a tramp, assumably drunk, who had probably fallen asleepon the track

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