A Lamp Against the Express
Mrs. A. McIlvain races down the Great Northern grade to warn an oncoming train of a fallen telegraph pole.
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.
SPOKANE.—Mrs. A. McIlvain, living in Minnehaha Park, is receiving congratulations from railroad men and others for her noble deed in preventing a serious railroad accident on the Great Northern tracks, which connect Hillyard with Spokane. The grade between the two places is a very heavy one, and after leaving Hillyard the train, despite the fact that the air-brakes are applied, always gains momentum, the passenger trains as a rule coming down at a thirty-mile-an-hour clip.
About dusk Mrs. McIlvain discovered that a telegraph pole had fallen across the tracks. She had no facilities for communicating with the company at Hillyard. The time when the express would pass was near at hand. Realizing the danger and knowing that she must act promptly, she picked up the lighted lamp and made up the road in the direction of Hillyard and had gone at least 200 yards when the bright headlight of a locomotive became visible around the curve.
The engineer's quick eye saw the woman holding the lamp high above her head. He reversed his engine and came to a stop as he neared the figure. He soon learned the story of the woman with the lamp. A brakeman removed the obstruction, which was done without the loss of much time. The engine men and trainmen were very grateful to Mrs. McIlvain, who has modestly refrained from talking about the affair to anyone.
“The engineer's quick eye saw the woman holding the lamp high above her head.”
Mrs. McIlvain's lamp was a low-tech signal in a rail corridor that still shapes Spokane's north side. The story celebrates a quick-thinking neighbor, but it also shows how much early rail safety depended on people posted along the line rather than automatic signals.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.