RAILROADING AT THE FRONT IS NO PICNIC —— Engineer of Big Lizzie Takes Reporter for a Ride and Explains a Few Professional Difficulties. —— BOCHE TRIES TO BEAN HIM WITH BOMBS. —— Problems of Garb, Breakfast and Tobacco Happily Solved by "System D." ——

"Casey Jones—mounted up the cabin Casey Jones—with his orders in his hand!"

The singer, to judge from the way he rolled his r's, ought to have come from somewhere out in the perrrarrrie country of North America; but to judge from his costume, he might have come from about anywhere. He wore the red fez of the Algerian troops, the tunic of his Britannic Majesty's fighting forces, the horizon-blue slicker of the Armee de France, but his underpinning, as well as his voice, was downright United States. Only the khaki trousers and canvas leggins identified him, in part, at least, as a member of an American Railroad Engineers' Regiment.

"Up to look us over, are you?" he inquired, grinning genially at the STARS AND STRIPES reporter who had made his way up right behind the fighting lines, to see the engineers at their work of running supply trains for the French. "Well, sonny, take a good look. We ain't much on clothes"—indicating his motley garments—"but believe me, bo, we're there on work! Y'see, the Boche's birdies make things pretty hot for us at times, flyin' over our perfectly good right of way and tryin' to beat us where the stack shows up bright in the dark. So we have to lay over until they fly back, and then git out and hustle to keep things moving som'ers near on schedule. At that, day before yest'day, we had every blooming train on time.

The Workings of System D.

"These duds"—indicating his international collection of garments—"I know they look funny, but what can a man do? Well, it all works out right enough by what the French call 'System D'—shift for yourself. We start out under the U.S., and we draw some—just some—clothes from them. Then they turn us over to the French gov'ment to run this here line up to the front, see? French gov'ment gives us more clothes—some. Then along come some Canucks—damn decent chaps, too, and more like Americans than anything else they've got over here—and they want to trade off with us for some stuff. That's where the coat come from. This red dicer"—pointing to the fez—"I copped off'n a nigger. Funny kind of coon he was, too; couldn't talk English, only French; and we had to teach him how to shoot crap!

"But we got three complete Uncle Sam uniforms, in three different sizes, for the use of the whole outfit. Y'see, three men from our comp'ny get leave in Paree every week, and they just nachhully got to look right when they go down there. So they match, and the odd man has the pick of the three suits, so's he can take the one that fits him. Then the other two flip up, and the guy that don't call it has to take what's left. Gen'rally he's outer luck.

"Look at this engine o' mine," continued the engineer, pointing to the big Baldwin locomotive beside him. "Is't she a pippin, though? These little French ones look like fleas up alongside an elephant aside of her. They're forty-five like her in the same lot, bought by the French for $45,000 a throw, and turned out at the works in Philly in twenty days. They're owned by the French now, but they've got the good old 'U.S.A.' right up there on the water-tender. See it?" He obliged with his flashlight. "Pull? They can handle 166,000 pounds without batting an eye!

Misses the Old Bell.

"Only trouble is," he explained, "we haven't got any spare parts for her, not even spare valves, she was rushed over here in such a hurry. But at that, she's got it over anything that ever sailed over this line before. Why, when we first got here some of the French lines were using old engines that had been made in Germany in 1856. 'Sfact! One of ours, like Big Lizzie here, can do the work of three of the little fellers; and, while I'm not the one to say it, perhaps, our regiment has done the work of an outfit two and a half times as big since it came here.

"Climb up alongside of me in the cab," the engineer invited, "and we'll give her a pull up the line to the next station." The reporter complied, and soon his ears were startled with the long blast of a real American whistle. "Sounds like the real thing, doesn't it?" beamed his guide. "Beats those little peanut whistles they've got on the little French dinkeys. Only thing the boys miss is pulling the old bell, but they can't do it here. Bells in this country are only used for church and for gas alarms. And it bothers 'em a bit the different signals they've got to learn: One to start, two blasts to stop, and eight for a grade crossing. Whew! How much chance would we have to blow eight for a crossing in the States and let anything get out of the way?"

Every Station Is a Block.

Up grade Big Lizzie puffed, and pulled away with a right good will, scuttling around the many curves in the road as if she were on a dance floor. Military railroads have to have plenty of curves, so the Boche airplanes cannot follow them too closely. At the next station the reporter had a chance to examine the office of the Illinois Central agent, all decorated with shells picked up on the famous battlefields at the head of the line, and to see the bunk house and restaurant for the men who lay over there. Every station on the line—there are seven—has an American station master, and all the yards have American yard-masters and American switchmen. There is, strictly speaking, no block system in France, but each station is supposed to be the boundary of a block, and a train simply stays in one station until the one ahead is clear.

"Want some hot water?" queried the engineer of an American who, carrying a big tank, came up to the engine at one of the stations. "All right: it isn't Saturday night yet, but over here you've got to wash while the washing's good. Help yourself out of the engine!" And the American did—with thanks.

The engineer paused a moment to scan the sky. "Pretty dark for the Boches to be out," he remarked. "First night out we were chased by one of 'em in a machine, but we got in all right. That's why we run without lights now, and make the crew use flashlights instead of lanterns. Right over there"—pointing to the side of the roadbed, in the snow—"a 'flyin' Dutchman' came down last week, after being chased by a French plane. His chassis was all riddled with bullets till it looked like Cook's strainer, and his wings were bent till they looked like corkscrews. When they came up to look at the machine, they found the pilot's right body in it, burnt just like a strip o' bacon that's been left on the stove too long. They found the carcass of the officer that was with him about 500 yards away, in the woods somewhere. He must have got a helluva toss when he went.

In Luck on Tobacco.

"Like it?" He repeated the reporter's question. "Like it? Sure; who wouldn't? Only thing is, we're loaned to the French army, as I told you, and the French never have learnt how to cook a man's size breakfast. Now, how in the name of time can a railroad man do a day's work when he begins it on nothin' but coffee and a hunk of sour bread? But we've been runnin in luck lately, buyin eggs and things off the people along the line, and gettin' a little stuff from the U.S.Q.M. now and then, so we make out pretty well. The only thing that got our goat was when they offered us the French tobacco ration—seein' as we were in their army, they thought we were entitled to it. We took one whiff apiece—and then we said 'Nix!' Since Christmas, though, we've come into luck," he added, pulling a big hunk of long-cut out of his Canadian blouse. "Have a chew?

"Danger? Hell! What'd we come over for, a Sunday school picnic? No, when you come right down to it there isn't much. If we get the tip, we just crawl into the dugouts along the road, and shuffle the pasteboards until we get the signal that the party is over. I've had livelier times 'n this out west, with washouts and wrecks and beatin' off a crowd of greasers from the tracks when they went wild, many a time. No, sir, war hasn't got much new in the movie thrill line for a railroad man!"