The Unlikely Tale of the 'Pull-Back' Train Stopper
A small-town mechanic's wild invention—a massive rubber cable designed to hook trains that left without their passengers—actually worked.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
An interesting experiment was conducted Monday, causing intense excitement among the inhabitants of this quiet town. A modest local mechanic, tired of being 'just in time to be two late,' obtained permission from the railroad company to test what he calls his 'gimmick pull-back.' The inventor had the end of his pull-back sunk several feet into the ground between the rails at the station, anchored by bolts. The device consisted of an immense elastic cable made at the local rubber works, which ran twelve hundred feet to a hook poised above a telegraph-triggered spring. The purpose was to catch and draw back trains that left behind passengers or cargo. During the test, as the 11:30 express pulled out, the mechanic ran down the street, signaled the operator, and the iron hook successfully caught the last car. The cable stretched out like a serpent, gradually slowing the train and pulling it back to the station. The crowd cheered, the engineer laughed, and the inventor stepped on board to continue his journey, having lost only thirty seconds to the miraculous catch.
“The speed of the train gradually slackened, then finally stopped, and then the cable, with prodigious power, began to redeem its tension and draw back with increasing speed the captured train.”
While this story reads like a tall tale from an era of unchecked mechanical optimism, it captures the perennial frustration of missing transit in a town defined by its commute. Today's light rail schedules may be more reliable, but the longing for a 'do-over' when the train pulls away remains a universal Seattle sentiment.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.