The White Flyer

 In honour of Halloween here is short tale from Syracuse Post Standard.

Enjoy
KJ

Syracuse Post-Standard, Sun., Sept. 23, 1945

Just Around the Corner

By Bertrande (Bertrande Snell)

Not so many years ago, the village depot was a kind of general meeting place, where citizens in all walks of life were prone to meet informally and often to discuss the pros and cons of this and that, while waiting for the evening train from the city.

There was always a continuous flow of light, or heavy, sarcasm thrown in the general direction of the station agent, who, generally, richly deserved it and always had more or less an adequate answer.

Yes, sir, it was always a jovial and carefree crowd that watched No. 3 come in, each evening. After the train's departure, the agent always hied himself homeward, leaving the premises to the tender care of the night operator. All he had to do was hang around from 7 p.m. until 7 a.m. - or whatever time the usually fat and always blowsy agent considered near enough - sweep the floor, trim the lamps, copy train orders and telegrams off the Morse wires, and, hardest of all, keep awake - at which last task he was seldom successful.

It was, of course, one of these night men who first saw and reported the "White Flyer" - a legend on the old RW&O railroad- which more or less serves the village north of Syracuse to Watertown and points north and east.

This branch of the NYC has from time immemorial, been known as the "Hojack." The origin of this title seems to be lost in the mists of antiquity, which mists will be in some future article, endeavored to pierce - but that will be another story.

To return to the "White Flyer."

In the lonely watches of the night, as the presumably wide awake telegrapher kept his lonely vigil at the key, he would, betimes, hear a sound like the rush of a mighty wind, and peering fearfully through the window, he would see the White Flyer - ghostly engineer at the throttle and fireman with his hand on the bellrope - tearing swiftly through the night.

It was never my good, or ill, fortune to see this phantasmagorum, but I have the (almost)unimpeachable evidence of many old-time Hojackers who did.

There was George Murphy, now retired and dwelling in Phoenix, who counted the coaches on the ghost train, as it swept through Parish. He made the number six, but Frank Hayner at Mallory claimed there were but five that night.

You don't suppose, do you, that they might have stopped at Hastings and switched one?

George Rowe relates that he saw the White Flyer pulling in to Central Square about 3 a.m. one dark, misty night.

He grabbed a red lantern and ran out on the tracks to flag it. George says he caught his foot on the outside rail and fell flat, directly in the path of the on-rushing train, which passed over his prostrate body, doing him not the slightest harm. He admits, however, that he was considerably peeved!