Many railroad men carried pets with them in days past. One was an engineer named Jerry Phalen of the St. Louis, Iron Mountain, and Southern Railroad, who had a small mongrel dog in the cab with him one day. The dog, named Dick, latched on to Phalen’s pants leg and began tugging at him. The engineer thought something might be wrong with the dog’s bed. Phelan stepped across the cab to check. He had no sooner stepped across the cab than the side drive rod snapped. The rod whirled around and stripped the engineer’s side of the cab right off the locomotive.
