"Brakeman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Tommy Tucker, overhearing this. "You'll think it's wonderful. The brakeman told me that the drivers were clogged at six o'clock and the wheels haven't turned since. We're completely buried in snow and it's still snowing. Head engine's an oil-burner and there is plenty of fuel; but there isn't a chance of our ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... to be strong like you, Brick," said Goosey. "Some of us kids have been talking about it and one fellow says he's noticed that strong men like sailors and railroad men always have tattoo marks like you got. A brakeman told him that's what made him strong. Some of us want you to fix ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... passengers to one-o'clock dinner and a Christmas tree afterward with games and punch. I shall invite the conductor and the brakeman; the porters shall come to serve dinner. I shall invite the engineer and the fireman and the express-man. I ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... only visitors. Everybody seemed to be especially nice to them on that wonderful morning. Even the supercilious ticket-seller at the San Francisco depot had unbent, and wished them good luck. The conductor of the train had shown himself affable. The very brakeman had gone out of his way to apprise them, quite five minutes ahead of time, that "the next stop was their place." And at San Bruno the proprietor of the road-house himself hitched up to drive them over to the lake, announcing that he would call for them at "Richardson's" in ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... car, or whether they suppose their hearers to be so ignorant of the most common facts as to believe that there is no way of bringing a carriage to a stand but by a sudden jerk, or that God is more stupid than the brakeman of an express train. We will do them the justice, however, to say, that they did not invent it, but merely shut their eyes, and opened their mouths, and swallowed it for philosophy, because they found it in the writings of an Infidel scoffer, and of a Neological professor ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... his ideas on universal brotherhood? She didn't have to listen specially, because she knew just what he was going to tell: the story about how he went out from his parlor-car and hunted through the day-coach to find a brake-man, on purpose to tell him how fond he was of him. And how the brakeman's eyes filled up with tears at being loved, and how Mr. Gosport had to hurry back to his Pullman in order not ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... and after having had their tea, the wounds have to be freshly dressed. This takes till midnight, perhaps longer, and the surgeon must be on the watch continually, for on him falls the responsibility, not only of the welfare of the men, but of the safety of the train. There is a conductor and brakeman, and for them, too, there is no rest. Each finds enough to do as nurse or assistant. In the morning, after a breakfast of delicious coffee or tea, dried beef, dried peaches, soft bread, cheese, etc., the wounds have to be dressed a second time, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... with stops at "everybody's barnyard gate," and the coaches filled up and were half emptied again two or three times during the journey. Janice had made no preparation for luncheon and once when the train halted at a junction "ten minutes for refreshments" as the brakeman bawled it out, she could find nothing in the bare and dirty lunchroom ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... When the brakeman swung back the door and with resonant indifference shouted in Esperanto "Granderantal stashun," Galbraithe felt like jumping up and shaking the man's hand. It was five years since he had heard that name pronounced as it should be pronounced because it was just five years since he had resigned ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... then. The thing happened in no time, of course. The girl got over screaming, and ran down to the track, frightened out of her wits. The train managed to stop, about twice its own length farther down, round a bend in the track, and the conductor and brakeman came running back. The mother came out of her hovel, carrying twins. The—the—thing was on the track, across the rails. It was a beastly mess, and Ferguson got the girl away; set her down to cry in a pasture, and then went ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a brakeman with a dirty blue bandana knotted about his brown throat, waved to them and shouted something which they could not hear. He held aloft a white stick from which he had peeled the green bark, pointed to it, then cast it back towards them and pointed ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... worked in a coal mine, made cross ties (and walked them), worked on a farm, taught a district school (made love to the big girls), run a threshing machine, cut bands, fed the machine and ran the engine. Have been a freight and passenger brakeman, fired and ran a locomotive; also a freight train conductor and check clerk in a freight house; worked on the section; have been a shot gun messenger for the Wells, Fargo Company. Have been with a circus, minstrels, farce comedy, burlesque and dramatic ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... way the character of the country changed suddenly just before you got there merely to justify the name. Surely no one would have the temerity to conjure up so beautiful a name for a desert town. Yet, half unwillingly, I thought of a little place I once visited—against my will, since the brakeman put me off there—by the name of Forest City. I remembered with misgivings how there wasn't a tree within something like four hundred miles. But I pushed that memory aside as a lying prophet. I believed in Goodale and beefsteak. Goodale would be a neat, quiet little town, set snugly in a verdant ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... The brakeman and conductor came running in to see what was the matter. Nobody knew why the train had stopped. It was several minutes before they discovered the cause, but I had found out while Stuart was climbing back to ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... my train was coming, asking if I felt able to take it. I decided to make the effort. He dared not leave his post to help me, but he signaled to the train, and I began my progress back to the station. I never clearly remembered how I got there; but I arrived and was helped into a car by a brakeman. About four o'clock in the morning I had to change again, but this time I was left at the station of a town, and was there met by a man whose wife had offered me hospitality. He drove me to their home, and I was cared for. What I had, it developed, ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... down to the hut, which was thick with smoke from burnt 'flap-jacks' and frizzled bacon, but found no sign of Jock or Collie. Round the curve they ran, and there, still on the boulder, was Collie, barking, as the brakeman expressed it, 'to beat ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... secretively—the train moves out of the terminal. It moves smoothly and practically without jarring sounds. There is no shrieking of steel against steel. It is as though the rails were made of rubber and the wheel-flanges were faced with noise-proof felt. No conductor comes to punch your ticket, no brakeman to bellow the stops, no train butcher bleating the gabbled invoice of his gumdrops, bananas and ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... The brakeman's wolf-like yelp—"Greenfields!"—was ringing in his ears when he awoke and stumbled down aisle and car-steps just in the nick of time. The train, whisking round a curve cloaked by a belt of somber pines, left him quite alone in the world, cast ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... even, were with my suit in the care of my friend, two hundred miles away. Hastily, and with trembling fingers, I searched my clothes, the lunch-basket, my linen; not even a pin could I find. I shoved open the sliding door, and swung my hat and shouted, hoping to attract some brakeman's attention. The train was thundering along at full speed, and none saw or heard me. I knew her stupor would not last long. A slight quivering of the lip, an occasional spasm running through the frame, told me too plainly ...
— A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car - 1898 • W. H. H. Murray
... New York to meet one of their number who, beginning life as a telegraph operator out beyond the Mississippi, was at the head of one of the two greatest railroads in the east. Of the guests, one, the president of another important railroad, was once a farm boy, then a freight brakeman in that same western State; another, the president of one of the longest railroads, was the son of a stone-mason out in that valley; another, the head of the Interborough system of New York, also a prairie- born boy; another, ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... Arkansas since February 5, 1880. I come to Little Cypress. I worked for Mr. Clark by the month, J.W. Crocton's place, Mr. Kitchen's place. I was brakeman on freight train awhile. I worked on the section. I farmed and worked in the timber. I don't have no children; I never been married. I wanted to work by the month all my life. I sells mats (shuck mats) $1.00 and I bottom chairs 50c. The Social Welfare gives me $10.00. That is 10c ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... A good-natured brakeman picked her up and lifted her to the rear platform of the last car as it drew out. That saved the day for Patsy, for her strength and breath ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... evil like our railroad management with its yearly tale of bloodshed and dismemberment, its hundreds and thousands of killed and wounded. We cannot pick out and hang a director or president when the dead brakeman is dragged out from between the cars that did not have automatic couplers. The man is dead, is killed, is murdered—but we cannot fix responsibility. Can we arrest for murder the poor mother who is caring for her boy sick with typhoid ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... had to make of him was that he was too fussy about his caboose. His former brakeman had asked to be transferred because, he said, "Kennedy was as fussy about his car as an old maid about her bird-cage." Joe Giddy, who was braking with Ray now, called him "the bride," because he kept the ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... Louisiana and Texas Railway stood at the rear door of the last coach, eying critically the track as it glided swiftly from under the train and shrank perpetually into the west. The coach was nearly empty. No one was near him save the brakeman, and by and by he took his attention from the track and let it rest on this person. There he found a singular attraction. Had he seen that face before, or why did it provoke vague reminiscences ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... young man in vigorous health and of ardent temperament, with great energy of character. His office was that of a brakeman upon the Railroad. A long line of freight cars had been delayed a few minutes behind the time, and must hasten to reach the turnout in season for the passenger train, which was expected to pass in a few moments. Two cars were to be detached; which, by a dexterous movement, could be done without ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... unhesitatingly said, "No." An instinctive wisdom seemed to direct Hetty's every step. She waited at some little distance from the station till the train came up: then, without going upon the station platform at all, she entered the rear car from the opposite side of the road. No one saw her; not even a brakeman. When the train began to move, the sense of what she had done smote her with a sudden terror, and she sprang to her feet, but sank down again, before any of the sleepy passengers had observed her motion. In a few moments ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... he said. "Dan the brakeman has taken my boat to the Railroad Dock. He will return in an hour. If you are hungry, you can sup with us. Emily, set ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the bank, one finger tucked into the heel of her shoe, Hilma hesitated. Suppose a train should come! She fancied she could see the engineer leaning from the cab with a great grin on his face, or the brakeman shouting gibes at her from the platform. Abruptly she blushed scarlet. The blood throbbed in her temples. Her heart beat. Since the famous evening of the barn dance, Annixter had spoken to her but twice. Hilma no longer looked after the ranch house these days. The thought of setting ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... A brakeman far down the track was flagging the locomotive; it came to a stop, and several men were seen climbing down from the cab. Two of them eventually disengaged themselves from the little group and hurried forward. One was carrying ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... But while statutes requiring pilots to be licensed[346] and railroad engineers to pass color blindness tests[347] have been sustained, an act making it a misdemeanor for a person to act as a railway passenger conductor without having had two years' experience as a freight conductor or brakeman ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Peter. He has a heart, I know, as clean as an Alpine village, and the very sense of his remoteness, as I'd already told him, gives birth to a sort of intimacy, like the factory girl who throws a kiss to the brakeman on the through freight and remains Artemis-on-ice to the delicatessen-youth from whom she buys ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... Joe Stoker, rear brakeman on the —— accommodation train, was exceedingly popular with all the railroad men. The passengers liked him, too, for he was eager to please and always ready to answer questions. But he did not realize the full responsibility of his position. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... "Yes, sir," interposed the brakeman, who had designated the act as "number three." "I saw Mr. Hamblin, and I sung out to McDougal to turn the hose. He turned round and asked me what I said, and before I could answer Mr. Hamblin cried out ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... forty-four years as a brakeman and five years on ditching trains before I went to braking. My old road master put me on the braking. A fellow got his fingers cut off and they turned his keys over to me and put me to braking and I ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... this stop? They were slowing up. It was not time to get to the home station; there were no lights. Murray's mother waylaid a passing brakeman. ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... and spent more time in the train sheds of his native town of Monroeville, Ohio, than he did at school. At twelve years of age he ran away to join the Union Army, in which he served as an orderly until the end of the war. He then followed his natural bent, became a switchman and later a brakeman, was a charter member of the Brotherhood, and, when its outlook was least encouraging, became its Grand Master. At once under his leadership the ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... rumbled over a bridge across the Shrewsbury river, which flows into Sandy Hook Bay, and then, after passing a few more stations, the brakeman cried: ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope
... lumbered along to the crest of this heave of barren land Casey observed that some one at the station was excitedly waving a flag. Thereupon Casey, who acted as brakeman, signaled the engineer. ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... engineer, brakeman, and conductor which they thought the safest car, and getting a different answer from each, she finally ensconced herself in the third car from the engine. Opening the window, her attention was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... below the switch, the train crew knew that a tramp had been caught. At intervals they heard groans under the wreckage, which was piled high there. Sinclair stopped at the derrick, and the freight conductor went on to where his brakeman had enlisted two of Sinclair's giants to help get out the tramp. A brake beam had crushed the man's legs, and the pallor of his face showed that he was hurt internally, but he was conscious and moaned softly. ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... the smoke became too dense. A short, thick-set fellow with an evil dark face coolly thrust his heel through a window. The conductor, who, with the brakeman and baggage master, was seated in the baggage van, heard the jingle of glass. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... up a brisk conversation, Albert speaking in a loud tone, for he was feeling very merry. "Ha, ha, ha!—but I did think the old fool would hear the brakeman call the station, though. I didn't suppose I could get him any farther than the door. To think of his clambering clear out on the platform, and getting left! He believed every word I told him. ...
— Tiger and Tom and Other Stories for Boys • Various
... the corner as fast as his rickety old limbs would carry him. When he reached the corner he saw a car standing on the track. There was a brakeman at one end, holding a coupling link in one hand, and a coupling pin in the other, his eye on an engine and train of cars only a rod or two away, advancing to pick up the single car. At the same ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... size and very excitable, he went down to the crossing, and, sure enough, there stood, in defiance of his orders, a long freight train, anchored squarely across it. A brakeman who didn't know him by sight sat complacently on the ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... toward Cockermouth. The day was breaking. From the window Paul Ritson could see vaguely the few ruins of the castle. That familiar object touched him strangely. He hardly knew why, but he felt that a hard lump at his heart melted away. By and by the brakeman shouted to the signalman in the gray silence of the morning. The words were indifferent—only some casual message—but they were spoken in the broad Cumbrian that for a year and a half had never once fallen on Paul Ritson's ear. Then the lump that had melted ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... After asking the Brakeman if he had been to each of the leading churches, the querist finally suggested the Baptists. "Ah, ha!" he shouted. "Now you're on the Shore Line! River Road, eh? Beautiful curves, lines of grace at every bend and sweep of ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... his essay, Partington endeavored to get a position on a railway somewhere as a conductor or brakeman; but failing in this, he returned once more to his writing-table and wrote a novel. This was the hardest work he had ever attempted. It took him quite a week to think his story out and put it together; ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... along the year before Ed and got a steady job as brakeman on the railroad, over on the Coeur d'Alene Branch. He told me he was going to make railroading his life work and had started in at the bottom, which was smart of him, seeing he'd just come off a farm. They probably wouldn't of let him start ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... if they are the noble red people, my illusions are dispelled." She did not look out of the window again, not even when the brakeman called out the ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... imitation of a heretofore conscientious dog that has just been discovered in the act of killing a sheep. Poor Daniel was easy prey for the efficient nurse. He retired, chop-fallen and ashamed, and the day following, two conductor's wives and the sister of a brakeman, armed respectively with a brace of quail, a bouquet of assorted sweet peas and half a dozen oranges, came, deposited their offerings, ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... it; hence the smoke, which escaped through a crack and floated above him. The few people in the car were climbing out of the windows as best they might. A pair of grimy arms reached down to Demming, and he heard the brakeman's voice (he knew Jim Herndon, the brakeman, well) shouting profanely for ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... it, the administration, and themselves. Waco did not agree with everything they said, but he wished to tramp with them until something better offered. So he fell in with their humor, but made the mistake of cursing the trainmen's union. A brakeman had kicked him off a freight car just ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... ladder.[61] For instance, a typical passenger train engineer starts as fireman on a freight train, advances to a fireman on a passenger train, then to engineer on a freight train, and finally to engineer on a passenger train. A similar sequence is arranged in advancing from brakeman to conductor. Along with seniority the brotherhoods received the right of appeal in cases of discharge, which has done much to eliminate discrimination. Since they were enjoying such exceptional advantages relative ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... sunny-souled, irrepressible Senior, danced madly about on the tiger-skin rug in midfloor, evidently laboring under the delusion that he was a lunatical Hottentot at a tribal dance; he waved his arms wildly, like a signaling brakeman, or howled through a big megaphone, and about his toothpick structure was strung his beloved banjo, on which the blithesome youth twanged at times an accompaniment ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... upon the moving steps and had feared for his safety—had shown in her glorious face that she was glad he did not fall beneath the wheels. Doubtless she would have been as solicitous had he been the porter or the brakeman, he reasoned, but that she had noticed him at ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... my company, at least; and as I found that a milk-train stopped at the village at ten that night, and had learned from experience that much might be accomplished with a banknote and a cigar and an obliging brakeman, I was glad enough to stay on, and with a curious feeling of return to the actual world I pushed out across the beach with Roger and Margarita, who dropped on the sand with the great dog at their feet. I joined them quietly and we sat, hardly ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... other robbers escaped the wounded bandit eluded the conductor, and made his way into the sleeper, where he climbed into an empty berth. But he was soon traced by the drops of blood from his wound. The conductor and a brakeman hauled him out and battled with him in the aisle amid ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... been for years trying to throttle the two twin enemies of the railway man, alcohol, and the freight-car equipment of link-and-pin coupler and hand-brake. It was he who agitated unceasingly for national protection to railway men, and to the brakeman especially. He and his fellow reformers asked for a law compelling the use of a brake which would relieve the crew from such awful exposure and foolhardy risk of life on the icy roofs of the cars in winter, and for ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... a dizzy descent to make to Lake Bennett. Conductor and brakeman were on the alert. With their hands upon the brakes these men stood with nerves and muscles tense. All talking ceased. Some of us thought of home and loved ones, but none flinched. Slowly at first, then faster ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... railway brakeman," Ventner said, rushing up to the boys with an air of importance, "that the two lads you are in search of were seen leaving a box car at a little station in Ohio. I don't just recall the name of the station ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... engaged a brakeman in conversation, and at last returned to the boys, who were on tenterhooks to learn ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... brakeman hops the next to the last car with grace and carelessness. From every platform devoted friends and relatives are spilling—it is a point of honor in Homeburg to remain with your loved ones in the car as long as you dare ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... the only people that paid car fare were the Knights of Pythias on their way to their annual convention. Railroad workers could get all the passes they wanted, and any toiler whose sister had married a brakeman or whose second cousin was a conductor "bummed" the railroad for a pass and got it. None of my relatives was a railroad man, and so to obtain the free transportation which was every American's inalienable right, ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... changed his occupation of driver for that of a brakeman on the railroad between Canandaigua and ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... a hand-car gone up ahead of us," informed the brakeman in response to his inquiry. "This is the only train ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... the express agent tied hand and foot in the corner of his car, and, telling a brakeman who had followed me to set him at liberty, I turned my attention to the safe. That the diversion had not come a moment too soon was shown by the dynamite cartridge already in place, and by the fuse that lay on the floor, as if dropped suddenly. But ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... next stop. There a man with a lantern had searched him out, much as a nigger shines the eyes of a possum, and had dragged him forth. He was dragged forth at the second stop, and again at the third. Finally, the train was halted far out on a lonely prairie and a large brakeman with gold teeth and corns on his palms held a knee upon Mr. McWade's chest until the train started. Ignoring the hoarse warning breathed into his dusty countenance, along with the odor of young onions, the traveler argued volubly, but with no heat, that ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... blithely down the Pullman aisle to rejoin the Winnebagos after a sojourn on the platform with the brakeman, whom she left exhausted with answering questions. When Sahwah traveled she traveled with all her might and there was nothing visible to the naked eye that she did not notice, inquire about, and store up for future reference. She observed ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey |
