After following the growth of a great railroad system which during the term of his employment has grown to nine times its size when he entered its service, and having watched and been identified with the growth of a State from humble beginnings to magnificent achievements, and other veteran of the Burlington railroad is about to retire from active service. Through the succeeding official administrations he has witnessed the building up of a system of railroad transportation west of the Missouri river that is comparable with any system on earth.

James Rivett, supervisor of buildings for the C.B. & Q. Railroad west of the Missouri river, will retire from active service on Dec. 31st 1922, after 42 years and six months’ service. This service has been continuous with the exception that about 30 years ago he was away three months on a trip to Europe. He has spent 50 years in this State, and more than four-fifths of that time in the employ of the Burlington railroad. He has had charge of the construction of buildings over all of the lines west, and all classes of buildings have come under his supervision. Among his railroad associates it is understood that Mr. Rivett, eligible four months ago to a place on the company’s pension-rolls, asked that he might be permitted to finish the season’s work which was under way. This permission was gladly granted, and he is continuing his full duties until the end of the year.

“A man of 70 years should not try to keep up with the young men,” says Mr. Rivett. “That is unfair to himself and to his employer. A railroad man is a part of a big machine. His part of the machine must perform its functions. It is a serious matter when any part of the machine fails. Therefore the older men should give over the strenuous work to the younger men.”

Mr. Rivett was born at Podington, Bedfordshire, England, in August 1852, and is now 70 years old. After completing his education he was bound out as an apprentice to the firm of Joy and Carter in Bedford, England, for four years, after which he served as an improver with Cosford Company at Northampton, England, there learning the building trade.

As there were seven sons in his father’s family, he decided to seek a broader field, and so he emigrated to Nebraska in 1872, settling at Nebraska City, where he worked as a carpenter for two years. Moving then to Weeping Water, he, together with E. Rafnour as partner, worked for five years as contracting builder.

In July 1880, he accepted an invitation from T. E. Calvert, who was then chief engineer of the Burlington and Missouri river railroad in Nebraska, to join the engineering staff of that road as superintendent of construction of buildings. At this time the B. & M.R.R.R. Co., now the C.B. & Q.R.R., was entering upon its plans for the extensive construction of new lines in Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, and South Dakota. Mr. Rivett continued in the company’s service up to the present time, under the able direction of I. S. P. Weeks, who succeeded Mr. Calvert as chief engineer from 1885 to 1908, and G. W. Holdrege, who has recently retired from the office of general manager.

His original appointment was signed by A. E. Touzalin, general manager, and T. E. Calvert, chief engineer. The Burlington then had 596 miles of line west of the Missouri river. Today it has 4,896 miles. The end of the Denver line was then at Indianola. The Billings line extended only as far as Aurora. Mr. Rivett’s office was in the frame depot at Lincoln. The present brick station been contracted to Boss Stout, of the penitentiary, who was beginning the work with convict labour.

Mr. Rivett was married in January 1882, to Carrie L. Logan, of Tecumeseh, Nebraska. Mr. and Mrs. Rivett were charter members of the organisation of Plymouth Congregational Church, and have been active members for 35 years. Their two sons, Harry and Paul, are married, and together are in the lumber and coal business in Omaha.

During the course of Mr. Rivett’s long railroad career he has seen great changes and improvements in the types of buildings and other facilities. In the early days, as the railroad was advancing in rapid strides over the undeveloped and sparsely settled western country, building construction had to keep pace, and wood was the only building material available and adaptable to the urgent need. Large material yards were maintained “at the front” with lumber for depots, sectional houses, roundhouses, etc., ready at hand, so that, although the track advanced at the rate of one to three miles per day, Mr. Rivett, with his large force of carpenters, masons, painters, etc., had the buildings ready for occupancy almost as soon as the track reached a station site. This rapid progress was also due in a large measure to Mr. Rivett’s personal handling and treatment of the men. Wages were low and the frontier accommodation often poor, but each man employed endeavoured to give a full day’s work, and on many a time the work extended into the night to complete a structure and avoid delays to the railroad’s advance.

Many of the small frame depots which were built then, with agent’s living-quarters above because the little hamlet offered no other accommodation, have given place to modern structures of brick and concrete as the settlements have grown to thriving cities. Wooden “Prairie Queen” turntables have been displaced, as the locomotives have grown longer and heavier, with steel tables of twice their length and three times their capacity. Where wooden coal-bins and hand-operated buckets supplied the engines of the first transcontinental trains, steel chutes automatically hoisting a ton of coal at a time now tower. The wooden windmills and small wooden tanks of the old days are fast disappearing from along the main lines, and huge steel tanks of 100,000 gallons or more capacity, filled by large modern gas or electrically operated pumps, are requires to supply the big engines which take 10,000 gallons at a single “drink.” Immense shops and power plants have been built at division points and terminals where formerly the facilities consisted of a small roundhouse and a “lean-to” blacksmith shop.

Through all these changes from pioneer work with hand tools and simple materials to modern methods in the use of stone, steel, and reinforced concrete; from the crude equipment of four decades ago to the complex mechanism and intricate design of present-day railroad structures, Mr. Rivett has kept young in spirit, and in thought and action has always been abreast the times in the work in his department.

It is the intention of Mr. and Mrs. Rivett to spend several months of the coming summer in England and France, but they will make their permanent home in Lincoln at their Twenty-fourth and Summer-street home where they have lived for the past 37 years. Mr. Rivett built the house he now occupies.