9:30
The story is told by the telegraph operator at Mt. Clemens , where the red-headed conductor threw the train boy and his laboratory off the train . '' ` Young Edison , ' says the station agent , ` had endeared himself to the station agents , operators and their families all along the line . As the mixed train did the way-freight work and the switching at Mt. Clemens , it usually consumed not less than thirty minutes , during which time Al would play with my little two-and-a-half-year old son , Jimmy . '' ` It was at 9:30 on a lovely summer morning . The train had arrived , leaving its passenger coach and baggage car standing on the main track at the north end of the station platform , the pin between the baggage and the first box car having been pulled out . There were about a dozen freight cars , which had pulled ahead and backed in upon the freight-house siding . The train men had taken out a box car and pushed it with force enough to reach the baggage car without a brakeman controlling it . ''