Jerry O’Connor, veteran section foreman of the Springfield division, was retired recently after forty-nine years of faithful service.  Following is an excerpt from the Illinois State Register of Springfield, wherein mention is made of his faithful service.
    Forty-nine years of honorable service with the Illinois Central Railroad, retirement with a small pension, a comfortable home, and five children all well located in business and in profession, is the happy situation of Jerry O’Connor, 1128 East Adams street, who, with his wife, is about the most contented person in the city of Springfield.
    Jerry O’Connor came from a family of railway men.  His father was employed as a section foreman as far back as Jerry can remember and it was with his father as a track laborer that Jerry began his service with the Illinois Central on the track between Anna and ________.  Since that time he has held the position of section foreman, supervisor of division, section foreman again, flagman, and laborer, but always with the same railroad.  He was holding the place of flagman at the Eighth street crossing in Springfield in July this year when he was stricken with apoplexy and was declared physically unqualified longer to serve the railroad.  Two years were still lacking in the length of service to give him a retirement with a pension, but the committee at its meeting in August granted the retirement anyway, and with it the part pay, and a pass over any of the company’s lines for the remainder of his life.
    Mr. O’Connor, in his forty-nine years with the railroad has seen many changes in the construction of roadbeds, and his coming in contact with the railway public has given him an insight into the habits of all people.  He says there are more accidents on the roads now than forty years ago, but he attributes them to the fact that there is more travel.
    “People are not more careless than they were forty years ago; there are just more people,” was his explanation of the increase in number of railway casualties.  “People do not walk the tracks now as they did years ago,” continued Mr. O’Connor in speaking of persons being killed by trains.  “Forty years ago the streets and roads were bad and people living in the outskirts of the city or in the adjacent country always used the railway tracks in walking into the city.”
    One of the greatest inventions in road building in his experience, he said, was the “angle bar” connecting the rails on the road, which permits them to contract and expand with the change of temperature without becoming disconnected.  The block system of controlling trains on the track is another invention of such value, thinks O’Connor, and also the larger rails being used now.  Forty years ago trains were drawn by the 10-ton engine, and seventeen cars was a heavy drag.  Now the rails are much larger and permit the use of 100-ton engines and the drawing of 100 cars.                                                                                                                        (Illinois Central Magazine, January 1922, page 57)