# Man, wife and tramp killed by train (ca. 1900)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [March 12, 2013, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765 "2013-03-12T23:15:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/21 "2013-03-13T19:28:55Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#):
>
> Who builds a railroad through a park?
Swope Park still has an active train track running through it. In fact, it [bisects](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=swope+park&hl=en&ll=38.999175,-94.521732&spn=0.032551,0.050554&geocode=+&hq=swope+park&t=m&z=14) (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.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swope_Park)
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.
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### Author:  [@Washoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Washoe)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/22 "2013-03-13T19:29:52Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#):
>
> Who builds a railroad through a park?
From [The Pragmatics of Patriotism](http://westernrifleshooters.blogspot.com/2008/03/pragmatics-of-patriotism.html):
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.
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### Author:  [@Washoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Washoe)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/23 "2013-03-13T19:37:38Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#):
>
> Swope Park still has an active train track running through it. In fact, it [bisects](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=swope+park&hl=en&ll=38.999175,-94.521732&spn=0.032551,0.050554&geocode=+&hq=swope+park&t=m&z=14) (along with the Blue River) the Kansas City Zoo.
Oops—missed that one. So the lagoon is considered part of the zoo?
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### Author:  [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/24 "2013-03-13T19:44:03Z")
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…
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/25 "2013-03-13T19:50:27Z")
> [@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?
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### Author:  [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/26 "2013-03-13T19:53:54Z")
> [@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.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2013, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/27 "2013-03-13T22:17:31Z")
> [@](#):
>
> 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”.
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### Author:  [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2013, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/28 "2013-03-14T07:53:27Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#):
>
> Swope Park still has an active train track running through it. In fact, it [bisects](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=swope+park&hl=en&ll=38.999175,-94.521732&spn=0.032551,0.050554&geocode=+&hq=swope+park&t=m&z=14) (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.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swope_Park)
>
> 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?
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### Author:  [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2013, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/29 "2013-03-14T08:29:02Z")
> [@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.
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### Author:  [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2013, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/30 "2013-03-14T08:47:53Z")
> [@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.
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### Author:  [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2013, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/31 "2013-03-14T09:00:22Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2013, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/32 "2013-03-14T09:33:07Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#):
>
> Swope Park still has an active train track running through it. In fact, it [bisects](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=swope+park&hl=en&ll=38.999175,-94.521732&spn=0.032551,0.050554&geocode=+&hq=swope+park&t=m&z=14) (along with the Blue River) the Kansas City Zoo.
> [@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.
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### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2013, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/33 "2013-03-14T12:47:48Z")
> [@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.
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2013, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/34 "2013-03-14T13:29:49Z")
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/article/0,9171,816263,00.html](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,816263,00.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.
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### Author:  [@Hermitian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermitian)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2013, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/35 "2013-03-14T14:58:34Z")
> [@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.
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### Author:  [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2013, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/36 "2013-03-14T15:09:30Z")
> [@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._
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### Author:  [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2013, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/37 "2013-03-14T16:17:42Z")
> [@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.
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### Author:  [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2013, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/38 "2013-03-14T17:50:44Z")
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/001%20scifi%20ebooks/scifi%20fav%20authors/heinlein%20ebooks/Robert%20A%20Heinlein%20-%20Water%20is%20for%20Washing.pdf](http://gpnp.net/backshelves.gpnp.net/001%20scifi%20ebooks/scifi%20fav%20authors/heinlein%20ebooks/Robert%20A%20Heinlein%20-%20Water%20is%20for%20Washing.pdf)
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### Author:  [@Washoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Washoe)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2013, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/39 "2013-03-14T20:19:22Z")
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](http://home.comcast.net/~hefferman/2002-10-24.txt) 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.
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### Author:  [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)
#### Post date: [March 14, 2013, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-wife-and-tramp-killed-by-train-ca-1900/652765/40 "2013-03-14T20:34:18Z")
I found a link that provides an image of a ‘KCPS Trolley Ticket for Swope Park’.
[http://oldkc.com/cgi-bin/viewer/oldkc\_viewer.pl?kcmo\_kcps\_swopeparkticket](http://oldkc.com/cgi-bin/viewer/oldkc_viewer.pl?kcmo_kcps_swopeparkticket)
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/InsightRedirector/InsightRedirector.asp?cid=RUMSEY-8-NA&iia=1&gwia=0&u=davidrumsey.com&ig=David](http://www.davidrumsey.com/InsightRedirector/InsightRedirector.asp?cid=RUMSEY-8-NA&iia=1&gwia=0&u=davidrumsey.com&ig=David) Rumsey Collection&id=23955&ir=870017&iwas=2
Street car line right to Swope Park.
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