Jerk lightning

I am trying to find the meaning of the phrase "jerking lightning". In doing genealogical research, I have come across two newpaper archives (one from 1879 and one from 1880) that use the phrase, but there is not enough context to even guess at the meaning.

In one of the newspapers, the following was written on June 24, 1880 in an Indiana newspaper about a young 18 year man named Morgan Jolly (a relative of mine a few generations back)...

"Morgan Jolly is jerking lightning at Nebraska."

While sarching for a meaning, I also found another reference to the phrase in a newspaper on Jan 22, 1879.

"Young fellow who has been jerking lightning here..."

Morgan Jolly worked for the railroad, so it is possible that "Jerking Lightning" was a phrase related to railroad work. The way it was used in the newspapers leads me to believe that it was a widely understood phrase in 1880. If anyone can tell me what it means, I would appreciate it.

I couldn't find anything in my references, including a book of railroad slang. But I did find this under by googling "jerk lightning":

What a Train-Despatcher Does
by Charles De Lano Hine
with drawings by E.L. Blumenschein, ca. 1898

".The despatcher, always clear-headed but coatless, takes a pull at the ever-present, nerve-soothing cigar, and bitching up his shirt-sleeves, grabs the telegraph-key to 'jerk lightning,' no less valiantly but much more discreetly than did Ajax of old..."

www.catskillarchive.com/ rrextra/wkdesp.Html Accessed February 6, 2005.