ABSTRACT
The speciality of the Yellow Creek Works, in which they were without rivals, was the invention and perfecting of automatic machines. The public had been considerably startled by the first proposal to run railway trains without driver or stoker on the locomotive, but the proposition was generally regarded as a mere piece of clever advertising until actually carried out in the summer of '40, when a train of six passenger cars was run with speed and safety on the automatic principle from Detroit to Chicago. The deputy manager, Cornelius J. Hanap, who had the entire charge of the "loco" department, was a shrewd, hard-headed, middle-aged New Englander of the old Puritan stock, with all the valuable Puritan qualities except the Puritan creed. A hard worker himself, he suffered no idleness among his subordinates. To his admirable qualities as a business man he added that of an expert mechanician.
