Brave Engineer

On Sunday night, April 29, 1900 Engineman John Luther Jones, called "Casey" because he came from Cayce, Ky., and Fireman Sim Webb rolled into Memphis, Tenn. from Canton. Miss. They climbed down from their cab in the Illinois Central roundhouse, began washing up to go home. Some one called out: "Joe Lewis has just been taken with cramps and can't take his train out tonight." Jones said:

"I'll double back and pull Lewis' old No. 638."

Casey Jones mounted to the cabin, Casey Jones, his orders in his hand.

It was raining hard when No. 638, pulling through Pullmans from Chicago to New Orleans, rattled out of the South Memphis yards. The switch lamps flickered across the slim shiny rails.

All the switchmen knew by the engine's moans That the man at the throttle was Casey Jones.

At 3 a. m. Monday No. 638 was chuffing toward Vaughan, Miss. At the end of a long curve there was a siding. "There's a freight train in the siding," Jones called to Webb. There were two freight trains. The end of one stuck out on the main line at the far end of the siding. The crews planned to move the first out on the main line when the Cannonball Express passed the near end.

"Put in your water and shovel in your coal, "Put your head out the window, watch them drivers roll."

The freight crews had not reckoned on Jones's speed, 50 m.p.h. When No. 638 was within 100 yd. of the end of the siding, Jones and Webb saw movement through the rain and darkness. A few box cars at the end of the second freight were still swinging along the main line. With three instinctive movements, Jones sanded the track, set the air brakes, threw the Johnson bar into reverse. He then gave his last order to his fireman: "Jump, Sim!"

Turned to the fireman, said "Boy, you'd better jump, " 'Cause there's two locomotives that's a-goin' to bump."

Sim Webb hurtled into a bush unhurt. No. 638 crashed with a splintering roar into the freight train. No jumper, John Luther Jones took his farewell journey to the promised land. No one grieved over Jones more than Wallace Saunders, a Negro engine wiper at Jackson. Homer to the man who was to become the nation's No. 1 railroad hero, Saunders used to moan a homemade song about the brave engineer. Two professionals named Eddie Newton and T. Lawrence Seiberg heard it, polished it off, published it in 1902.

Mrs. Jones sat on her bed a-sighin', Just received a message that Casey was dyin' Said, "Go to bed, children, and hush your cryin' "Cause you've got another papa on the Salt Lake Line."

Mrs. John Luther Jones never remarried into the Salt Lake Line or any other. Last week at Fulton, Ky., 10,000 people watched her mount to the cabin of a replica of the first railroad train to run in Western Kentucky. The line, now a part of the Illinois Central System, had been opened just 80 years before. "Judge" Charles N. Burch of Memphis, I. C.'s general solicitor, made the principal address and an old woman from Fulton recalled riding the original train.

Widow Jones looks well and buxom. She must be over 70, though she will not reveal her exact age. She and a married daughter live in Jackson. Tenn. "I rent a room," she says, "and enjoy life." Her two sons took to railroading. Casey Jr. died last January. "C. B." is a maintenance-of-way laborer.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.