| The section men had even got upon their handcar and were pumping away up the east-bound track. |
| Over the hill from the next valley, the locomotive steamed down on the little handcar. |
| There was nobody left in the cut, and both the train and the handcar on which the section hands had traveled, were out of sight. |
| The crippled one was helped aboard of the handcar, Zeph joined them, and the handcar sped away. |
| They found the manual gate valve, which can be opened by laboriously cranking a metal handle through hundreds of revolutions, like a man pumping an old-fashioned handcar down a railroad track. |
| But on this brilliant autumn day in the late 1880s the Truckee just trickled, and nothing threatened to break the boredom of the ride to school until McCarran spotted a handcar standing lonesomely on a siding. |
