Man, wife and tramp killed by train (ca. 1900)

[Amateur Barbarian]

Robert Heinlein had a story that he told a few times in print, in both fiction and nonfiction.

A man and woman were walking through a park when the woman got her foot caught in a railway switch. The husband could not work her foot free, so another man, usually described as a hobo or a tramp but in any case a complete stranger, stopped to help. The train got closer; the woman remained stuck; the men continued their attempts... until all three were hit and killed. Heinlein's point was that the actions of the tramp represent the highest form of heroism: he owed the woman nothing and absolutely no one would have faulted him for jumping clear, but he stayed in place until and beyond the final moment, trying to save a complete stranger's life with utter disregard for his own.

Can anyone locate a source for this story, in reality or fiction? Heinlein told it as something that happened (or that he heard) as a boy, so it would have happened around 1900-1915, maybe. He set it in Swope Park in at least one telling, so it possibly happened in KC. However... a very good researcher has gone through the archives of the KC paper from 1880 to 1940 without success. It would be a couple of feathers in a Doper cap to locate the source, if it exists and if Heinlein weren't simply making the story up or greatly rewriting some other real event.

[lisiate]

I don't know about Heinlein's example, but a similar situation happened last month in Auckland. A woman got her wheel chair stuck in the tracks and two bystanders were almost killed whilst freeing her. The world isn't as full as selfish people as it sometimes appears.

[maggenpye]

Originally Posted by lisiate

I don't know about Heinlein's example, but a similar situation happened last month in Auckland. A woman got her wheel chair stuck in the tracks and two bystanders were almost killed whilst freeing her. The world isn't as full as selfish people as it sometimes appears.

Damn, lisiate, you beat me to it.

[lisiate]

Heh, maybe you could link to the Marine Parade human chain instead?

[maggenpye]

No impending train, dammit. The Bay's doing well on the alturistic scale though, several people running into a burning building at 5am this morning to try and rescue (sadly unsuccessfully) the resident.

Human Chain

Fire

[Satchmo]

One place he told the story was in his speech as Guest of Honor at the 19th World Science Fiction Convention in 1961. The place, Swope Park in Kansas City, still exists and had active trains running through part of it for many years, though I don't know if it still does. The entire speech is here:
http://americandna.org/rah1961.htm

It is perhaps a parable. It does contain a valuable lesson.

[Washoe]

And he placed it in Swope Park when he retold it in Expanded Universe. I think it’s safe to say that ol’ Bob was a lot like G. Gordon Liddy. Take everything he says with a grain of salt, and wear hip-waders.

[Chronos]

Assuming the story is true... Who told it? The only people involved, for most of the story, didn't live to relate it. We'd have the forensic results, of course, and probably the engineer's account, but would that have been enough information to reconstruct it?

[Cyros]

Originally Posted by Chronos

Assuming the story is true... Who told it? The only people involved, for most of the story, didn't live to relate it. We'd have the forensic results, of course, and probably the engineer's account, but would that have been enough information to reconstruct it?

Perhaps the cowardly Heinlein and his friend the scarecrow were standing by at a safe distance watching the action unfold.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by Chronos

Assuming the story is true... Who told it? The only people involved, for most of the story, didn't live to relate it. We'd have the forensic results, of course, and probably the engineer's account, but would that have been enough information to reconstruct it?

It's fairly easy to be close enough to watch something in detail without being close enough to do anything. Someone standing on a bridge or overpass, for example, may be just metres from an event as the crow flies, yet need 5 minutes or more to actually reach the scene. The observer may also have been unable to help, due to being an invalid, or they may have been unwilling to help, or maybe they were helping, but got out before they got killed.

There would seem to be lots of ways for this event to be observed and reported.

[t-bonham@scc.net]

The story seems a bit questionable -- "got her foot caught in a railway switch." How did that happen?

1) Switches aren't located in walking paths, they are down the railway line. So how could she step into a switch, unless they were walking down the tracks?

2) Switches pivot from a point, so where the switch rail meets the fixed rail is a v-shaped area, open at one end, and narrowing to a point. So they should have been able to just push her foot back toward the wide end to free it. Or the husband could have gone to the nearby switch control and thrown the lever to open the switch.

3) Did she get caught when the switch suddenly closed on her foot? But in 1900-1915, switches were manual; some switchman had to be standing a few feet away and throw the lever to close that switch (unlike today, where switches are automatic and controlled remotely from miles away). He wouldn't have done that if there was someone standing in the switch. (Instead, he would have been yelling "get off the track, you bloody fools!")

4) At the end, as the train approached, why did they stay standing in the way? And why did they leave her standing in the path? They could have just moved to the side, and laid her down alongside the track, even with her foot still stuck -- the train's steel wheels would have cut off her foot, but that isn't fatal (not necessarily). And the two men would still have been alive to get her to a hospital. You have to be pretty dumb to just stand in front of an oncoming train.

So this whole story seems like a nice moral parable than an actual occurrence.

[Bear_Nenno]

Originally Posted by t-bonham@scc.net

Or the husband could have gone to the nearby switch control and thrown the lever to open the switch.

Aren't they locked? Can anyone just throw switches on a track?

[Amateur Barbarian]

Originally Posted by t-bonham@scc.net

So this whole story seems like a nice moral parable than an actual occurrence.

I think you're over-analyzing the details, but I don't disagree with the possible conclusion. The story is too polished and self-contained, though, for Heinlein to have made it up from whole cloth, so if it doesn't stem from a real event, or a similar real event, then I suspect there is a fictional or faux-true telling of it somewhere. That's what I'm hoping to find - any of those four potential sources.

[cmkeller]

Nitro Press:

The story is too polished and self-contained, though, for Heinlein to have made it up from whole cloth

Are we not talking about a professional author?

[md2000]

It sounds like one of those urban legends, like the $200 Cadillac or the 200mpg carburetor that escapes from the Ford/GM/Chrysler testing grounds. (Seriously, someone told me back in the 1970's that happened to his uncle's friend) - or George Washington and the cherry tree. In the days before snopes.com and straightdope, sometimes people repeated stories they heard and believed to be true, and others weren't above serious embellishment in the company of listeners.

Heinlein probably heard the story - either in the bar or in a sermon - and wanted it to be true because it fit the point he wanted to make.

[Amateur Barbarian]

Originally Posted by cmkeller

Are we not talking about a professional author?

Of course. But Heinlein-as-author and Heinlein-as-reteller is fairly distinguishable if you have sufficient familiarity with his works, especially working notes, letters, etc. I believe the tramp story is one Heinlein acquired from outside.

[kaylasdad99]

Who builds a railroad through a park?

[maggenpye]

Hastings New Zealand, that's who. Not just through a park, right through the middle of a fountain.

[MichaelEmouse]

Originally Posted by Satchmo

It is perhaps a parable. It does contain a valuable lesson.

Get the fuck out of a train's way?



If a train is travelling at 40 mph and a woman on the same track is travelling at 0 mph, when is it pointlessly dangerous to position yourself over the tracks to help her:

1) When the train is within earshot.
2) When the train is in view.
3) When the train is a few seconds away.
4) When the train is about to kill all of you.

[DrDeth]

To paraphrase Gen. Patton: “Heroism isn’t dying for a stranger, it’s doing your best to save that stranger, then saving your own ass.”

[Sicks Ate]

Originally Posted by kaylasdad99

Who builds a railroad through a park?

Swope Park still has an active train track running through it. In fact, it bisects (along with the Blue River) the Kansas City Zoo.

The railroad line may pre-exist the park, which was formed when the land was donated in 1896.

ETA: There is very old railroad grade which follows the river for several miles south of the park. I'm not sure how old it is, but the new track, if I recall from dates on bridges, was built in the fifties.

[Washoe]

Originally Posted by kaylasdad99

Who builds a railroad through a park?

From The Pragmatics of Patriotism:

It was a wonderful place for kids, with picnic grounds and lakes and a zoo. But a railroad line cut straight through it.

Google Maps clearly shows an active rail line in the area, but not running “straight through it.” It runs along the eastern boundary of the park. I would venture to guess that in that era, it would have been impossible to build such a park without rail access.

[Washoe]

Originally Posted by Sicks Ate

Swope Park still has an active train track running through it. In fact, it bisects (along with the Blue River) the Kansas City Zoo.

Oops—missed that one. So the lagoon is considered part of the zoo?

[Sicks Ate]

It is, the zoo encircles the south half of the lagoon, and also extends by footbridge over the blue river to the west of the lagoon. Odd that the foot paths in that area don't appear on the map...

[Amateur Barbarian]

Originally Posted by MichaelEmouse

If a train is travelling at 40 mph and a woman on the same track is travelling at 0 mph, when is it pointlessly dangerous to position yourself over the tracks to help her:

Not married, are you?

[MichaelEmouse]

Originally Posted by NitroPress

Not married, are you?

Well, on our wedding day we decided to take a walk in the park and for some curious reason, urban planners had decided to put a railroad through it. Anyway, short story, I'm not married anymore.

[Chronos]

Quoth md2000:

It sounds like one of those urban legends, like ... the 200mpg carburetor that escapes from the Ford/GM/Chrysler testing grounds.

Which story Heinlein also retold as true, in the short story "Let there be Light".

[t-bonham@scc.net]

Originally Posted by Sicks Ate

Swope Park still has an active train track running through it. In fact, it bisects (along with the Blue River) the Kansas City Zoo.

The railroad line may pre-exist the park, which was formed when the land was donated in 1896.

ETA: There is very old railroad grade which follows the river for several miles south of the park. I'm not sure how old it is, but the new track, if I recall from dates on bridges, was built in the fifties.

But that is a single-track roadway! So no switches at all (switches are used to go from one track to another). Doesn't seem to even be any places where there might have been a switch at one time. Even the old railway alongside the river appears to have been a single-track line (from what can still be seen of it).

So how could she get her foot stuck in a railway switch, when there are no switches in the park?

[Blake]

Originally Posted by t-bonham@scc.net

But that is a single-track roadway! So no switches at all (switches are used to go from one track to another). Doesn't seem to even be any places where there might have been a switch at one time. Even the old railway alongside the river appears to have been a single-track line (from what can still be seen of it).

So how could she get her foot stuck in a railway switch, when there are no switches in the park?

In my experience, switches are actually more common on single track railway lines. Because you have just a single track, every time trains need to pass one another, one of them has to be switched onto a siding. The same is true for every time you want to uncouple a wagon for repairs or unloading.

So just because a stretch of line is single track, that doesn't mean there aren't any switches.

[t-bonham@scc.net]

Originally Posted by Blake

In my experience, switches are actually more common on single track railway lines. Because you have just a single track, every time trains need to pass one another, one of them has to be switched onto a siding. The same is true for every time you want to uncouple a wagon for repairs or unloading.

So just because a stretch of line is single track, that doesn't mean there aren't any switches.

But if there is a siding, it's not a single-track any more. The siding is a second track.
The whole line may be a single-track, from a dispatchers perspective, but for the section where there is a siding, there are two tracks. And switches.

The railroad going thru that park has no sidings, and no switches.

[Blake]

I'd have to take your word for it. The link I followed only showed a line map, which typically do not show sidings. If you've got an old controller's map that doesn't show any sidings then I'll accept what it says. If you don't have such a map, I'm not sure how you could say there are no sidings.

[t-bonham@scc.net]

Originally Posted by Sicks Ate

Swope Park still has an active train track running through it. In fact, it bisects (along with the Blue River) the Kansas City Zoo.

Originally Posted by Blake

I'd have to take your word for it. The link I followed only showed a line map, which typically do not show sidings.

I followed the link from Sicks Ate above, and used the Satellite view, which shows pictures. It seemed pretty clear from that view that there are no sidings in the park.

[Amateur Barbarian]

Originally Posted by t-bonham@scc.net

I followed the link from Sicks Ate above, and used the Satellite view, which shows pictures. It seemed pretty clear from that view that there are no sidings in the park.

1) "switch" may be a gloss; she could have gotten her foot stuck in a rail or whatever the metal side things are on roadways.

2) This was around 100 years ago. I don't think looking at Google Earth is going to give a definitive answer.

[CalMeacham]

Heinlein liked his illustrative ccases, and sometimes these contradicted the facts. I started a thread several years ago about his citatioon of the court martial of William Sitgreaves Cox in the War of 1812, described in Starship Troopers. The unfortunate lieutenant took a fallen comrade below to medical help, and in his absence the officers were killed, leaving him the ranking officer, who was courtmartialed for his inattention to duty to the rank he had acquired in his absence. heinlein tells it as a cautionary tale, being careful to point out that, despite the family's efforts to have the charge reversed, it never had been, even by the date the story takes place in the future.

The problem, of course, is that the decision HAD been reversed before Heinlein even wrote the original version of his story. He apparently wrotye it in 1958 or 1959. As "Spaceshipo Soldier", the story was serialized in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction at the end of 1959 and published in book form in December 1959.

But Harry Truman had reversed the decision against Cox in April 1952, over seven years earlier. Like other such long-delayed decisions, it wasn't exactly quiet, and made the national nrews, including newspapers amnd Time magazine:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...816263,00.html


When I brought this up as perhaps willful ignorance, people said that how was it possible for Heinlein to know this, years later. I sometimes get the impression that people think it was impossible or extremely difficult to look things up before the advent of computer database searching. In any event Heinlein was in contact with military folk, was an active veteran, and spoke and interacted with people at the Air Force Academy and elsewhere, where the matter was likely discussed.

It's possible that Heinlein remained blissfully unaware of developments in the case, but you'd think he'd check it out, or that one of his editors at F&SF or at Putnam's would have -- it's a striking incident, and Heinlein makes a big deal of it in the story, and it surely would hsave aroused interest*.


But it dramatically makes a point, so I suspect that, if he didn't ignore contrary evidence, he simply didn't look very hard into corroboration.






























*Dammit, I get queries about curious or questionable things in my writing.

[Hermitian]

Originally Posted by lisiate

Heh, maybe you could link to the Marine Parade human chain instead?

Confusing name. I was imagining some parade with Marines in it. Then suddenly there was an emergency which forced the parading Marines to form a human chain to save someone.

[md2000]

Originally Posted by NitroPress

1) "switch" may be a gloss; she could have gotten her foot stuck in a rail or whatever the metal side things are on roadways.

Blessed are the cheesemakers.

[Quercus]

Originally Posted by DrDeth

To paraphrase Gen. Patton: “Heroism isn’t dying for a stranger, it’s doing your best to save that stranger, then saving your own ass.”

And I even think that has things in the wrong order.

Rule #1 of rescues: Don't make another victim.

It's not rule # 17, for a reason.

Once you've made sure you're not going to be victim #2, and only after that, you should start trying to save the stranger.

[Dallas Jones]

I suspect that the railroad incident is pure Heinlein embellished fable. The moral being that people who are down on their luck still retain their basic human dignity.

The OP instantly reminded me of another Heinlein story with a Noble Tramp. In the story he doesn't even have a name other than 'the tramp'. It's a short story, it isn't even Science Fiction. I read that RAH said the story came to him in a dream one night.

From Argosy in 1947 and later in the anthology "The Menace From Earth" It is here in it's entirety in PDF form.

"Water is For Washing"

http://gpnp.net/backshelves.gpnp.net...%20Washing.pdf

[Washoe]

I wonder if she was actually trampled by an elephant and old Bob just went senile a hell of a lot earlier than we suspected…

The text of the 1961 SF Convention contains an account that is substantially reworded from the text of The Pragmatics of Patriotism. In the earlier (1961) telling, RAH claims to have actually been at the park when the event occurred:

I don't know anything about him. I didn't see it happen and when the crowd gathered - amazing how fast a crowd can gather even in a lonely spot once an accident happens. My parents got me quickly back and away from there to keep me from seeing the mangled bodies. So all I really know about it is what I can recall from hearing my father read aloud the account in the Kansas City Star.

I don't even know the stranger's name. The newspaper described him as about twenty-eight, I think it was, and a "laborer." Probably that means "hobo" as he was walking along the tracks. It is possible that this married couple who died with would never, under other circumstances, have met him formally, might not have been willing to sit down and eat with him.

This account essentially narrows it down to either 1911 or 1912, as RAH was born in 1907. In 1973, RAH said that it happened “sixty years ago,” which would make it pretty consistent with that time frame. If it was printed in the Kansas City Star, it would be ridiculously easy to verify. Even if by some weird happenstance the archives were destroyed in a fire (as so often seems to be the case), there would be police and coroner’s reports to back it up. However, the KC Star’s website offers access to archives dating between 1880 and 1922.

[Sicks Ate]

I found a link that provides an image of a 'KCPS Trolley Ticket for Swope Park'.

http://oldkc.com/cgi-bin/viewer/oldk...wopeparkticket

Requires a password.

Could indicate rail trolley service to the park in the past. If so, the woman's foot may have been caught in rails that there are no contemporary traces of. I'll look at little bit more when I get a chance.


Got it: http://www.davidrumsey.com/InsightRe...y.com&ig=David Rumsey Collection&id=23955&ir=870017&iwas=2

Street car line right to Swope Park.

[Sicks Ate]

Crap, bad link and I missed the edit window:



Got it: Steet car line right to Swope Park. It's te one that runs to the SSE. Oh, and terminates in a large park.

[Washoe]

Not to discount your trolley car theory, but as an aside I can’t find any reference anywhere to the Katy Line running through Swope Park, as RAH indicated. Most references I can find vaguely describe it as following the Missouri River. I’m guessing that it’s the line on the map you linked to which does parallel the river, and serves the stockyards on the west side of the city. The line that runs through Swope Park is the St. Louis – San Francisco Line.

[Blake]

Originally Posted by t-bonham@scc.net

I followed the link from Sicks Ate above, and used the Satellite view, which shows pictures. It seemed pretty clear from that view that there are no sidings in the park.

Do you really think that a Google Earth view will tell you anything at all about conditions over 100 years ago?

[Washoe]

Google Earth seems to be exactly consistent with the historical map that Sicks Ate linked to. It also shows a cluster of enormous manmade structures on the west side of Cairo, Egypt that are in the exact same location that they were 4500 years ago.

The St. Louis – SF Railway also went bankrupt twice. It didn’t regain solvency until 1916 and may not have even been in operation when RAH was five or six years old.

[Lord Mondegreen]

Originally Posted by maggenpye

Hastings New Zealand, that's who. Not just through a park, right through the middle of a fountain.

That's nothing. Sydney Airport used to have a railroad which crossed a runway. From the Sydney Airport Wikipedia page, "On 18 June 1950 a Douglas DC-3 of Ansett Airways taxiing for take-off from Sydney's now non-existent runway 22 for a night-time passenger flight to Brisbane, hit and partially derailed a coal train travelling on the railway line that crossed the runway. Only the co-pilot was injured."

[DrDeth]

Originally Posted by Washoe

. It also shows a cluster of enormous manmade structures on the west side of Cairo, Egypt that are in the exact same location that they were 4500 years ago.

.

Naw, what with continental drift, they actually have moved quite a bit.

[ElvisL1ves]

Originally Posted by Lord Mondegreen

That's nothing. Sydney Airport used to have a railroad which crossed a runway.

So did Midway in Chicago.

To the OP, Heinlein's point would have been stronger if he didn't have to invent his sole example.

[maggenpye]

Originally Posted by Lord Mondegreen

That's nothing. Sydney Airport used to have a railroad which crossed a runway. From the Sydney Airport Wikipedia page, "On 18 June 1950 a Douglas DC-3 of Ansett Airways taxiing for take-off from Sydney's now non-existent runway 22 for a night-time passenger flight to Brisbane, hit and partially derailed a coal train travelling on the railway line that crossed the runway. Only the co-pilot was injured."

Well, that's just silly.

[digs]

Originally Posted by MichaelEmouse

If a train is travelling at 40 mph and a woman on the same track is travelling at 0 mph...

I hate story problems...