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| An important part of the war game: repairing after the Confederate raid on Pope's line of March A problem for the practical railroad man. It takes all kinds of people to make up a world and it takes all kinds of men to make up an army. In the volunteer forces that fought in the ranks of both North and South were men of every calling, every profession, mechanics, artisans, artificers, men familiar with machine-shop practice as well as the men of field and plow, and the thinking soldier whose hand was as ready with the pen as with the sword. Was an engine-driver needed, or a farrier or carpenter, the colonel of a regiment had but to shout. But so important did the lines of communication by railway become to both armies that separate commands of practical engineers, trackmen, and wreckers had to be organized and maintained. Train-wrecking seems a cruel act of deliberate vandalism, yet it is part of warfare. When penetrating the enemy's country over unpatroled and ill-guarded routes, the engine-driver might expect any time to see just ahead of him, and too late to call for brakes, the misplaced rail or the broken culvert that would hurl him and his train, laden sometimes with human freight, into river-bed or deep abyss. War leads to strenuous life and deeds of daring, and upon no force was the labor and the danger harder than the men of the track and throttle. |
