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TRACK LAYING ON THE UNION PACIFIC
From the Leavenworth Weekly Commercial, June 20, 1867.
An observer thus tells how the track-laying on the
Pacific railroad is done: "A small car having been loaded in the same manner and
with the same precision as the large ones had been, was run forward to the end of
the track by horse-power. A couple of feet from the end of the rails already laid
down checks were placed under the wheels, stopping the car at once. Before it was
stopped, a dozen men grasped a rail on each side, ran it beyond the car, laid it
down on its chairs, gauged it, and ere its clank ceased to reverberate, the ear
was run over it and another pair of rails drawn out. This process was continued
as rapidly as a man would walk. Behind the car followed a man dropping spikes,
another setting the ties well under the heads of the rails, and thirty or forty
others driving in the spikes and stamping the earth under the ties. The moment
that one car was emptied of its iron, a number of men seized it and threw it off
the track into the ditch and the second followed on with its load."
LOVE IN BLOOM
From the Kansas Daily Tribune, Lawrence, May 13, 1868.
A newly married couple, from some place away up the
Kaw, made their appearance on the streets yesterday, who had evidently been
united so recently as to still be under the influence of the "gentle delirium."
In passing down Massachusetts street, in the distance of one square, they stopped
four times on the sidewalk to kiss, and otherwise exchange compliments. 'Twas a
sweet and touching sight.
INDIANS VS. THE UNION PACIFIC
From the Marysville Enterprise, May 16, 1868.
A band of Indians, ten or twelve in number,
attacked one of Shoemaker, Miller & Co., trains, seventeen miles west of
Coyote [the fight took place in present northern Gove county], at about noon
today, and burned three freight cars on a side track, tore down the telegraph
poles, and destroyed a portion of the track. They also attempted to throw a
construction train from the track, but failed. A number of other Indians were
seen at some distance off, but how many was not known-Lawrence Tribune,
9th.
From the Junction City Weekly Union, May 16, 1868.
A few days after the recent attack by Indians on
the construction train west of Coyote, our Railroad friends tell us that the
Indians attempted to capture the locomotive alive. They took a large quantity of
telegraph wire, and doubling it several times, stretched it across the track, an
Indian or two holding each end. They didn't want to shoot the thing lest they
might injure it, and hence this strategy.
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