RAILROAD SUPERSTITIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14133, 7 August 1909, Page 1 (Supplement)

RAILROAD SUPERSTITIONS.

.V* -,S ' ■■ i : :' hVKRTnoDT is more or less familiar with tho superstitions of sailors, but those of railroad men, though perhaps equally curious, are by no means so well known. A writer in the New York Railway and Locomotive Engineering has collected a few of them in the rather cautious spirit of the old rhyme : —

I know not how the truth may be; I tell the tale aft 'twas told to" me. In fact, the writer admits that reporters "gifted with imaginations" may hear very queer things in the resorts of stove committees."

Certain superstitions are held to be the monopoly of engineers and firemen who never place confidence in any locomotive that has ever been in an accident. The engine may be in .perfectly good condition and' the run mere child's play, but they would prefer going out on the hardest possible run, and " on the worst belonging to the road," to trusting themselves with an engine that has met with an accident, no matter how long ago. Another superstition common among enginemen has to do with the direction to which the engine is turned on the turn-table. " Some of the men," says the writer in the railway paper, " prefer turning to the right, others to the left, and they are as particular about this as the Mussulman is about facing the east when howling his evening prayers." Many enginemen are most particular about being present while their engines are being turned. If, during their absence, it has been wrongly done, from their point of view, they will have it done over again before they consent to climb into the cab. Many accidents have been attributed to the fact of engines having been turned from east to west with the front buffers towards the north.

There is a superstitious prejudice against stepping on to an engine with the right foot first, and it is an error of equal seriousness to climb out of the right side of the cab to oil the engine. Such a mistake would signify an accident sooner or later. Enginemen who are indifferent to the supposedly sinister number thirteen are prejudiced against locomotives bearing the figure 9," or a number that can be equally divided by nine. This number is detested by many workers in locomotive cabs. "One will sometimes see," says the writer I have quoted, " a track-Layer who has stumbled in crossing a rail retrace his steps and cross the rail again with sure feet. To stumble over a rail is productive of misfortune, and the only way to ward off disaster is to take the step again. Cross-eyed men are unpopular. Some support to this superstition is discoverable in the story of a gang of tracklayers who, during the ten months' presence among them of a cross-eyed man, lost nine of their number by accidents on the line (so it is said), and the cross-eyed man himself was killed as .the tenth victim."