KICKED OFF TRAIN

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 98, 16 December 1931, Page 6

KICKED OFF TRAIN

AN INCIDENT IN LIFE OF THOMAS A. • ' EDISON " STARTED A FIRE All was well at Smith's Creek one fine spring day in the early 'sixties. The usual group of idlers leaned to support the walls of the little station. On the platform peering down the tracks, beaver-hatted, fawn-vested local dandies contemplated a forthcoming trip to the "city." The telegraph operator prepared to desert his lcey and assume the role of station agent. A critical hour of the day had arrived for the populace of this small Grand Trunk point. The Port Huron-Detroit local was due. Down the rails appeared a coughing "monster," its inverted eoneshaped smoke-stack spitting forth smoke and cinders' over the peaceful countryside. It slowed down as it reached Smith's Creek and drew finally to a stuttering halt. Onlookers by this time had assumed strategic positions on the board platform to examine arrivals and otherwise to keep us with local news, which began and ended at the station. A flurry of excitement went through the crowd, and eyes spread wide out as the baggage coach rolled by, smoke issuing from its open doors. Excitement was climaxed with amazement when a hazy form precipitated itself through the smoke of the platform. Its exit from the baggage coach was unaided, however, and the departure was hastened by the impact of a sturdy shoe. There was a final bang as a case of type jarred downward after the figure, and the form of an irate conductor, appeared in the doorway, scarce able to express itself from the righteous indignation which rose within. And the unhatted figure which first appeared waited not on the order of its going. Truly events were moving fast at Smith's Creek. Golden Jubilee Celebration The event was more significant than the spectators knew. Railway officers believed they had rid themselves of an outrageously troublesome newsboy who had persisted bebeyond the good nature of the hrain crew, which tolerated and liked him; for he outrageously violated all rules of the road by starting a fire in the baggage car with smelling chemieals. It was Thomas Alva Edison they threw off the train that day, and wished good riddance. To-day that .same station is an exhibit in a remarkable group of objects that Henry Ford has collected together in a model early Aremican village at Dearborn, portraying milestones in the life of the famous inventor. It was transplanted briek by briek, and reproduced faithfully. In midOctober of 1929 the United States celebrated the Edison golden jubilee anniversary of the inventor's completion of his experiments with electric light. Another train with the wood-burning engine, lamp-lit : coaehes, and bronze-armed seats I pulled into the transplanted Smith's Creek station. Th'omas Edison, the clever young "news butcher" of earlier days, again sold fruit along its aisles and distributed papers like those printed and edited by himself in earlier days on his own small press. Early "Operating" Days The Grand Trunk Western Railway played a not unifiiportant part in the inventor's early life. He served as newsboy, and in his spare time with that company read and experimented. He put together a minature printing press, and enterprisingly sold his weekly newspaper, known as "The Grand Trunk Herald," in the towns along his line and to passengers. Always interested in electricity, he delighted to watch the operators at their telegraph instruments at the stations. He was conducting a chemical experiment when he so unceremoniously lost his job as a newsboy. He rescued a child from death beneath a train's wheels, and a grateful company allowed him to learn telegraph despatching at Mount Clemens, Michigan. As an operator, he came to Ontario points, in Canada, and still has friends along the old Grand Trunk Southern Ontario lines, now part of the Canadian National Railways, who knew him in early despatching days.