The Locomotive Engineer

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_ I

HOW IT FEELS TO RIDE AT NIGHT ON A LOCOMOTIVE GOING NINETY MILES AN HOUR

IT is 8.30 P.M., any night you please, and for miles through the yards of East Chicago lights are swinging, semaphore arms are moving, men in clicking signal-towers are juggling with electric buttons and pneumatic levers, target lights on a hundred switches are changing from red to green, from green to red; everything is clear, everything is all right, the Lake Shore Mail is coming, with eighty tons of letters and papers in its pouches. Relays of engines and engineers have brought these messages, this news of the world, thus far on their journey. Up the Hudson they have come, and across the Empire State and along the shores of Lake Michigan, nearly a thousand miles in twenty-four hours, which is not so bad, although the hottest, maddest rush is yet to come.

It is a fine thing to know the men who drive the engines on these trains; just to see them is something, and to make them talk (if you can do it) is better business than interviewing most celebrities you have heard about.

To this end I set out, one evening early in January, for the great round-house of the Northwestern road, that lies on the outskirts of Chicago. A strange place, surely, is this to one who approaches it unprepared--a place where yellow eyes glare out of deep shadows, where fire-dragons rush at you with crunchings and snortings, where the air hisses and roars. It might be some demon menagerie, there in the darkness.

To this place of fears and pitfalls I came an hour or so before starting-time, and here I found Dan White, one of the Northwestern crack-a-jacks, giving the last careful touches to locomotive 908 before the night's hard run. In almost our first words my heart was won by something White said. I had mentioned Frank Bullard of the Burlington road, a rival by all rights, and immediately this bluff, broad-shouldered man exclaimed: "Ah, he's a fine fellow, Bullard is, and he knows how to run an engine." White would fight Bullard at the throttle to any finish, but would speak only good words of him.

"Tell me," said I, "about the great run you made the other night." From a dozen lips I had heard of White's tremendous dash from Chicago to Clinton, Iowa.

"Oh, it wasn't much; we had to make the time up, and we did it. Didn't we, Fred?"

This to the fireman, who nodded in assent, but said nothing.

"You made a record, didn't you?"

"Well, we went one hundred and thirty-eight miles in one hundred and forty-three minutes; that included three stops and two slow-downs. I don't know as anybody has beat that--much."

By dint of questioning, I drew from this modest man some details of his achievement. The curve-bent stretch of seventeen miles between Franklin Grove and Nelson they did in fourteen minutes, and a part of this, beyond Nachusa, they took at an eighty-mile pace. They covered five miles between Clarence and Stanwood in three minutes and a half, and they made two miles beyond Dennison at over a hundred miles an hour. As the mail rushed west, word was flashed ahead, and crowds gathered at the stations to cheer and marvel.

"There must have been five hundred people on the platform at Dixon," said White, telling the story, "and they looked to me like a swarm of ants, just a black, wriggling mass, and then they were gone. We came on to a bridge there after a big reverse curve with a down grade, and I guess no one will ever know how fast we were going, as we slammed her around one way and then slammed her around the other way. It was every bit of ninety miles an hour. You got all you wanted, didn't you, Fred?"

The fireman looked up, torch in hand, and remarked, in a dry monotone: "Goin' through Dixon I said my prayers and hung on, stretched out flat. That's what I done."

"Fred and I," continued White, "both got letters about the run from the superintendent. Here's mine, if you'd like to read it."

The pleasure of these two blackened men over this graciousness of the superintendent was a thing to see. For such a bit of paper, crumpled and smeared with oil, I believe they would have taken the Mississippi at a jump, engine, train, and all. Superintendent's orders, superintendent's praise--there is the beginning and end of all things for them.

My first long ride on one of these splendid locomotives was with the Burlington night mail (no passengers), 590 pulling her and Frank Bullard at the throttle. It is said that the Baldwin Locomotive Works never turned out a faster engine than this 590. The man must be a giant whose head will top her drivers, and, for all her seventy tons, there is speed in every line of her. She is a young engine, too--only four years old--and Bullard swears he will back her in the matter of getting over rails to do anything that steel and steam can do. "She's willing and gentle, sir, and easy running. You'll see in a minute."

These words from Bullard, first-class engine-driver of the C. B. & Q., a long, loosely jointed man, with the eye and build of a scout. As he spoke they were coupling us to the mail-cars, in preparation for the start. In overalls and sweater I had come, with type-written authority to make the run that night. This was in the first week in January, the second time Bullard had drawn the throttle for Burlington on the new fast schedule. Burlington lay off there in Iowa, on the Mississippi, with all the night and all the State of Illinois between us.

Now the train stands ready--three mail-cars and the engine, not a stick besides. No Pullman comforts here, no bunks for sleeping, no man aboard who has the right to sleep. Everything is hustle and business. Already the mail clerks are swarming at the pouches, like printers on a rush edition. See those last bags swung in through the panel doors! Not even the president of the road may ride here without a permit from the government.

Bullard takes up a red, smoking torch and looks 590 over. He fills her cups, and prods a two-foot oiler into her rods and bearings. Dan Cleary, the fireman, looks out of his window on the left and chews complacently. Down the track beside him locomotive 1309 backs up, a first-class engine she, but 590 bulks over her as the king of a herd might over some good, ordinary working elephant. As she stands here now, purring through her black iron throat, 590 measures sixteen feet three inches from rails to stack-top. Both engines blow out steam, that rolls up in silver clouds to the electric lights.

Bullard climbs to his place at the right, and a hiss of air tells that he is testing the brakes. Under each car sixteen iron shoes close against sixteen wheels, and stay there. Down the length of the train goes the repair man with his kit, and makes sure that every contact is right, then pulls a rope four times at the rear, whereupon four hissing signals answer in the cab. Bullard shuts off the air.

"It's all there is to stop her with," says he, "so we take no chances with it. She's got high-speed brakes on her, 590 has--one hundred and ten pounds to the inch. Twenty-four, Dan," he adds, and snaps his watch. "We start at thirty."

Dan chews on. "Bad wind to-night," he says; "reg'lar gale."

Bullard nods. "I know it; we're fifteen minutes late, too."

"Make Burlington on time?"

"Got to: you hit it up, and I'll skin her. Twenty-six, Dan."

Four minutes to wait. Two station officials come up with polite inquiries. The thermometer is falling, they say, and we shall have it bitter cold over the plains. They reach up with cordial hand-shakes. I pull my cap down, and take my stand behind Bullard. Our side of the cab is quite cut off from the fireman's side by a swelling girth of boiler, which leaves an alleyway at right and left wide enough for a man's body and no wider. Bullard and I are in the right-hand alleyway, Bullard's back and black cap just before me. Dan, with his shovel, is out on a shaky steel shelf behind, that bridges the space between engine and tender. That is where he works, poor lad! We are breathing coal-dust and torch-smoke and warm oil.

"F-s-s-s-s-s!" comes the signal, and instantly we are moving. Lights flash about us everywhere--green lights, white lights, red lights, a phantasmagoria of drug-store bottles. The tracks shine yellow far ahead. A steady pounding and jarring begins, and grows like the roar of battle. Our cab heaves with the tugging of a captive balloon. Our speed increases amazingly. We seem constantly on the point of running straight through blocks of houses, and escape only by sudden and disconcerting swayings around curves that all lead, one will vow, straight into black chasms under the dazzle. Whoever rides here for the first time feels that he is ticketed for sure destruction, understands that this plunging engine must necessarily go off the rails in two or three minutes, say five at the latest; for what guidance, he reasons, can any man get from a million crazy lights, and who that is human can avoid a snarl in such a tangle of bumping switches? I am free to confess, for my own part, that I found the first half hour of my ride on 590 absolutely terrifying.

Thus, at break-neck speed, we come out of Chicago, all slow-going city ordinances to the contrary notwithstanding. We are chasing a transcontinental record schedule, and have fifteen minutes to make up. I breathe more freely as we get into open country. We are going like the wind, but the track is straighter, and the darkness comfortable. I begin to notice things with better understanding. As the lurches come, I brace myself against the boiler side without fear of burning; that is something learned. I find out later that I owe this protection to a two-inch layer of asbestos. I catch a faint sound of the engine bell, and discover, to my surprise, that it has been ringing from the start--indeed, it rings, without ceasing, all the way to Burlington, the rope pulled by a steam jerking contrivance, but the roar of the engine drowns it.

Deep shadows inwrap the cab, all the deeper for the glare that flashes through them every minute or two as Dan, back there on his iron shelf, stokes coal in at the red-hot door. Two faint lights burn for the gages--a jumping water column in front, a pair of wavering needles on the boiler. These Bullard watches coolly, and from time to time reaches back past me to turn the injector-cock, whereupon steam hisses by my head. For the most part he is quite still, like an Indian pilot, head forward at the lookout window, right hand down by the air-brake valve, left hand across the throttle lever, with only a second's jump to the reversing lever that rises up from the floor straight before him. As we race into towns and roar through them, he sounds the chime whistle, making its deep voice challenge the darkness. At curves he eases her with the brakes. And for grades and level stretches and bridges he notches the throttle up or down as the need is. Watch his big, strong grip on the polished handles! Think of the hours he spends here all alone, this man who holds life and death in his quick, sure judgment!

Now he catches the window-frame and slides it open. A blast sweeps in like an arctic hurricane. Bullard leans out into the night and seems to listen. "Try it," he cries, but his voice is faint. I put my head out, and come into a rush of air billows that strangle like breakers.

"Greggs--Hill--three--miles--long. Let--her--go--soon." He closes the window. And now, as we clear the grade, begins a burst of speed that makes the rest of small account. Faster and faster we go, until the very iron seems alive and straining underneath us. I am tossed about in hard pitches. The glow of the furnace lights up continuously. There is no sense of fear any longer. It is too splendid, what we are doing. Of course it means instant death if anything breaks. Let the massive side rod that holds the two drivers snap, and a half--ton knife sweeping seventy miles an hour will slice off our cab and us with it like a cut of cheese. Did not an engineer go to his death that way only last week on the Union Pacific run? After all, why not this death as well as any other? Have we not valves and tubes in our bodies that may snap at any moment!

"How--fast?" I call out.

"Eighty--miles--an--hour," says Bullard, close to my ear, and a moment later pulls the rope for a grade crossing. "Ooooo--ooooo--oo--oo," answers the deep iron voice, two long and two short calls, as the code requires. "Year--ago--killed--two--men--here," he shouts as we whiz over the road. "Struck--buggy--threw--men--sixty--feet." I wonder how far we would throw them now.

In the two hundred and six miles' run to the Mississippi we stop only twice--for water, at Mendota and at Galesburg--nine minutes wasted for the two, and the gale blowing harder. Our schedule makes allowance for no stops; every moment from our actual going is so much "dead time" that must be fought for, second by second, and made up. Drive her as he will, with all the cunning of his hand, Bullard can score but small gains against the wind. And some of these he loses. At Mendota we have made up seven minutes, but we pull out thirteen minutes late. At Princeton we are fifteen minutes late, at Galva fourteen minutes, at Galesburg eight minutes, but we pull out twelve minutes late. Then we make the last forty-three miles, including bridges, towns, grades, and curves, in forty-four minutes, and draw into Burlington at 1.22 A.M.--on time to the dot. This because Bullard had sworn to do it; also because the road beyond Galesburg runs west instead of southwest, and it is easier for a train to bore straight through a gale, head on, than to take it from the quarter.

We took the big, steady curve at Princeton, a down-grade helping us, at a hundred miles an hour--so Bullard declares and what he says about engine-driving I believe. Indeed, these great bursts can be measured only by the subtle senses of an expert, since no registering instrument has been devised to make reliable record. Across the twin high bridges that span the Bureau creeks we shot with a rush that left the reverberations far back in the night like two short barks. And just as we rounded a curve before these bridges I saw a black face peering down from the boiler-top, while a voice called out: "Wahr--wahr--wahr--wahr!" To which startling apparition Bullard, undisturbed, replied: "Wahr--wahr--wahr--wahr!" Then the head disappeared. Dan, from his side, was telling Bullard that he had seen the safety-light for the bridges, and Bullard was answering something about hitting it up harder. How these men understand each other in such tumult is a mystery to one with ordinary hearing, but somehow they manage it.

Half way between Kewanee and Galva a white light came suddenly into view far ahead. I knew it for the headlight of a locomotive coming toward us on the parallel track. Already we had met two or three trains, and swept past them with a smashing of sound and air. But this headlight seemed different from the others, paler in its luster, not so steady in its glare. The ordinary locomotive comes at you with a calm, staring yellow eye that grows until it gets to be a huge full moon. But it comes gradually, without much jumping or wavering. This light danced and flashed like a great white diamond. I watched it with a certain fascination, and as it came nearer and nearer, realized that here was a train of different kind from the others, coming down on us at terrific speed. And Bullard shouted: "Number--8--with--the--mail." Then added, as the train passed like the gleam of a knife: "She's--going--too."

II

WE PICK UP SOME ENGINE LORE AND HEAR ABOUT THE DEATH OF GIDDINGS

THE next day, with comfortable rocking-chairs to sit in and a row of hotel windows before us, Bullard and I found time for engine chat, and I was well content. First I asked him about putting his head out of the cab window there at Greggs Hill and elsewhere. "Was it to see better?" said I.

"No," said Bullard; "it was to hear better and to smell better."

"Hear what? Smell what?"

"Hear the noises of the engine. If any little thing was working wrong, I'd hear it. If there was any wear on the bearings, I'd hear it. Why, if a mouse squeaked somewhere inside of 590, I guess I'd hear it."

Then he went on to explain that the ordinary roar of the engine, which drowned everything for me, was to him an unimportant background of sound that made little impression, and left his ears free for other sounds.

"I get so accustomed to listening to an engine," he added, "that often up home, talking with my wife and child, I find myself trying to hear sounds from the round-house. And, after a run, I talk to people as if they were deaf."

"You spoke about smelling better."

"That's right. I can smell a hot box in a minute, or oil burning. All engineers can. Why, there was--"

This led to the story of poor Giddings, killed on 590 three years before through this very necessity of putting his head out of the cab window. Giddings had Bullard's place, and was one of the most trusted men in the Burlington employ.

"You saw last night," said Bullard, "how the boiler in 590 shuts off the engineer from the fireman. And prob'ly you noticed those posts along the road that hold the tell-tale strings. They're to warn crews on freight-car tops when it is time to duck for bridges. Well, Giddings was coming along one night between Biggsville and Gladstone--that's about ten miles before you get to the Mississippi. He was driving her fast to make up time, sixty miles an hour easy, and he put his head out to hear and to smell, the way I've explained it.

"There must have been a post set too near the track, and anyway 590's cab is extra wide, so the first thing he knew--and he didn't know that--his head was knocked clean off, or as good as that, and there was 590, her throttle wide open, tearing along, with a fireman stoking for all he was worth and a dead engineer hanging out the window.

"So they ran for eight miles, and Billy Maine--he was firing--never suspected anything wrong--for of course he couldn't see--until they struck the Mississippi bridge at full speed. You remember crossing the bridge just before we pulled in here. It's twenty-two hundred feet long, and we always give a long whistle before we get to it, and then slow down. That's the law," he added, smiling, "and, besides, there's a draw to look out for. When he heard no whistle this time, Billy Maine jumped around quick to where Giddings was, and then he saw he had a corpse for a partner."

Another question I asked was about stopping a train at great speed for an emergency--how quickly could they do it? "I've stopped," said Bullard, "in nine hundred and fifty feet, pulling five cars that were making about sixty-two miles an hour. I don't know what I could do with this new train, only three cars, and going eighty or ninety miles an hour. That's a hard proposition."

"Would you reverse her?"

"No, sir. All engineers who know their business will agree on that. I'd shut the throttle off, and put the brakes on full. But I wouldn't reverse her. If I did, the wheels would lock in a second, and the whole business would skate ahead as if you'd put her on ice."

Then we talked about the nerve it takes to run an engine, and how a man can lose his nerve. It's like a lion-tamer who wakes up some morning and finds that he's afraid. Then his time has come to quit taming lions, for the beasts will know it if he doesn't, and kill him. There are men who can stand these high-speed runs for ten years, but few go beyond that term, or past the forty-five-year point. Slow-going passenger trains will do for them after that. Others break down after five years. Many engineers--skilled men, too--would rather throw up their jobs than take the run Bullard makes. Not that they feel the danger to be so much greater in pushing the speed up to seventy, eighty, or ninety miles an hour, but they simply cannot stand the strain of doing the thing.

"This doubling up is what breaks my heart," said Bullard. "Since they've put on their new schedule I have to divide 590 with another fellow. John Kelly takes her on the fast run East while I wait here and rest. And so I've lost my sweetheart, and I don't feel near as much interest in her as I did. You see, she ain't mine any more. And, between you and me," he added, confidentially, "I don't think 590 likes it much herself; you see, engines are a good deal like girls, after all."

The next night, in workman's garb again, I made my way to a gloomy round-house, ready for the run to Omaha. I was to ride the second relay, as far as Creston, on locomotive 1201, with Jake Myers in the cab, so I had been informed. Being hours ahead of time, I saw something of round-house life.

First, I followed a gaunt, black-faced Swede, with stubby beard, through his duties as locomotive hostler; saw him take the tired engines in hand, as they came in one after another from hard runs, and care for them as stable hostlers care for horses. There were fires to be dropped in the clinker-pit, coal and wood to be loaded in from the chutes, water-tanks to be filled, sand-boxes looked after, and, finally, there was the hitching fast of the weary monsters in empty stalls, whither they were led from the lumbering turn-table with the last head of steam left over dead fire-boxes. And now spoke the Swede:

"Dem big passenger-engines can werry easy climb over dem blocks and go through the brick wall," and he pointed to a great semicircle of cold engine-noses, ranged along not two feet from the round-house wall.

Later on, in the dimly lighted locker-room, I listened to round-house men swapping yarns about accidents, and to threats of a fireman touching a certain yardmaster set apart by general consent for a licking.

Finally an Irishman came in, James Byron, and for all his good-natured face he seemed in ill humor. It turned out that he had just received a hurry order to take 1201 out in Myers's place.

"Jake is sick," he said, "and they've sent for me. But I'm sick, too. Was in bed with the grip. Just took ten grains of quinine. Say, I ain't any more fit to run an engine than I am to run a Sunday-school."

Then he began pulling on his overalls, while the others laughed at him, told him he was "scared" of the fast run, and said good-by with mock seriousness.

But Byron showed himself a good soldier, and soon was working over 1201 with a will, inspecting every inch of her, torch in hand, and he assured me he would take her through all right, grip or no grip.

And take her through he did. At 1.16 A.M. my old friend, locomotive 590, brought the flier up from Chicago, six minutes ahead of the schedule. Kelly had done himself proud this time. And six minutes later, on time to the minute, we drew out behind 1201, with Byron handling her and seventy tons of mail following after.

Our fireman was named Bellamy. He wore isinglass goggles against the heat, and, in his way, he was a humorist, as I discovered presently, when he came close to me (we were running at a sixty-mile gait), and, grinning like a Dante demon, remarked slowly: "Say--if--we--go--in--the--ditch--will--you--come--along?"

The first feature of this run was some trouble with a feed-pipe from the tank, which brought us to a sudden standstill in the open night with a great hissing of steam.

"What is it?" I asked of Bellamy, while Byron, grumbling maledictions, hammered under the truck.

"Check-valve stuck; water can't get into the boiler."

"How did he know it?"

"Water-gage."

"What if he hadn't noticed it?"

Bellamy smiled in half contempt. "Say, if he hadn't noticed it for fifteen minutes, we'd have been sailing over them trees about this time--in pieces. She'd have bust her boiler."

Five minutes lost here, and we were off again, running presently into a thick fog, then into rain, and, finally, into a snow-storm. Never shall I forget the illusion, due to our great speed, that the flakes were rushing at us horizontally, shooting upward in sharp curves over the engine's headlight. And, as we swept on, the shadow of 1201 advanced beside us on the stretch of white snow as smoothly and silently as the tail of an eclipse. The engine itself was a noisy, hurrying affair, but the engine's shadow was as calm and quiet as a cloud. And I recall that the swiftness of our rush this night caused in me neither fear nor any particular emotion, although this was practically the same experience that had stirred me so the night before on 590. And I realized that riding on a swift locomotive may become a matter of course like other strange things.

III

SOME MEMORIES OF THE GREAT RECORD-BREAKING RUN FROM CHICAGO TO BUFFALO

THERE is a place in New York--the very last place one would think of--where stories without end may be heard about locomotives and the men who drive them; it is not a place of grime and steam, but a quiet and luxurious club spreading over the top floor of a very tall building on Forty-second Street, and here every day at luncheon-time railroad officials gather: superintendents, managers, and various heads of departments, men who may have grown prosperous and portly, but are always proud to talk about the boys at the throttle, and recall experiences of their own in certain exciting runs.

In the wide hall near the entrance of this Transportation Club is a driving-wheel, green painted, from the De Witt Clinton, the first locomotive that drew a passenger train in the State of New York. It is scarcely larger than a wagon-wheel, though made of iron, and an inscription sets forth how it made the historic run from Albany to Schenectady on August 9, 1831. The walls show many pictures, famous locomotives, scenes of accidents, and there are thrilling memories here in abundance if one have with him some veteran of the road to recall them.

"It's not always the most serious accidents that frighten a man most," remarked a high official on the New York Central, one day, while the rest of us listened. "One of the worst scares I ever had was on a freight train when there really wasn't anything to be scared about. We had just pulled out of Ottumwa, Iowa, one dark night, with a caboose full of passengers, when rump--ump--bang--rip! You never heard such a racket. First one end of the car was lifted up off the rails and slammed down again, and then the other end was treated the same way; up and down we went, bump, bump, bump! and smash went the window, and out went the lights. Now, what do you suppose it was?"

"Hog under the wheels?" suggested one of the group.

"More likely a mule," said another. "There's nothing so tough as the hind leg of a mule. Isn't a car-wheel made that'll cut through one."

"It wasn't a mule or a hog, and it wasn't anything alive, but it got us into a panic, all right. We waved a lantern like fury to the engineer ahead, but he didn't see it for a good while, and we just bumped along, expecting every second to be split into kindling-wood. We stopped at last, and found it was a beer-keg; yes, sir, an empty beer-keg that had got caught under the caboose between the rear axle and the bolster of the truck, and had rolled along over the ties with the car balanced on it like a man riding a rail. Wasn't broken, either; no, sir, not a bit; and we had to chisel through every blamed hoop before we could get it out. Talk about making things strong--that beer-keg was a wonder!"

"I had a more exciting experience than that," said another official--he was in the freight-handling department. "It was a long time ago--yes, back in '63. I remember getting out at a station near Cincinnati to look at some soldiers, and before I knew it the train started. I was up by the engine, and as the drivers began to turn I jumped on the cow-catcher. You see, I had often ridden there, being a railroad-man, and the engineer knew me.

"Everything went well for a few miles, and I sat on the bumper enjoying the rush of air, for it was a hot summer's day; but presently, as we swung around a curve, the engine gave a fearful shriek, and just ahead I saw a farmer's wagon crossing the track. There were two old men on the seat and an old white horse in the shafts. The men were so busy talking they never heard the whistle, or perhaps they were deaf. Anyhow, we were right on them before they looked up, and then they were too dazed to do anything. One of them made a grab for the reins, but I saw it was too late, and I drew my legs up off the bumper and leaned back against the end of the boiler (I must have made a picture as I crouched there); and the next second--"

"Well?" said somebody.

"Well--I guess you wouldn't care to hear how things looked the next second. We struck the white horse just back of his forelegs, and I had him on my lap for a hundred yards or so. No, it didn't hurt me, but it wasn't pleasant. The two old men? I don't think they felt anything, it was so sudden; they just--passed out. No, I didn't see them; but I can tell you this, I've never ridden on the cow-catcher of a locomotive since that day."

There followed some talk about fast runs, and all agreed that for out-and-out excitement there is nothing in railroading to equal a man's sensations in one of those mad bursts of speed that are ventured upon now and then by locomotives in record-breaking trials. The heart never pounds with apprehension in a real accident as it does through imminent fear of an accident. And so great is the nerve-strain and brain-strain upon the men who drive our ordinary fliers, that three hours at a stretch is as much as the stanchest engineer can endure running at fifty or sixty miles an hour.

"So you see," said one of the officials, "the problem of higher speeds than we have at present involves more than boiler power and strength of machinery and the swiftness of turning wheels--it involves the question of human endurance. We can build engines that will run a hundred and fifty miles an hour, but where shall we find the men to drive them? Already we have nearly reached the limit of what eyes and nerves can endure. I guess we'll have to find a new race of men to handle these 'locomotives of the future' that they talk so much about."

He went on to consider the chance of color-blindness in an engineer, and told how the men's eyes are regularly tested by experts, who put before them skeins of various-colored yarns, and make them pick out green from red, and so on. It is not pleasant to think what might happen if an engineer's eyes should suddenly fail him, and he should mistake the danger light for safety and go ahead at some critical moment instead of stopping. Nor does one like to fancy what might happen if an engineer should go mad at his post.

"I know one case where an engineer did go mad," remarked a superintendent. "He was one of our most experienced men, and had held the throttle for years on the fastest trains. Then, one Sunday, for no reason at all, he went to the round-house, got out the 'pony' locomotive--that's the one fixed up with a little parlor over the boiler, and easy-chairs and polished wood--it makes a pretty observation-car for big officials. Well, he got her out and started lickety-split up the main line, running wild and without orders. He stopped at Mott Haven, and told the men he wanted the 'pony' rebuilt and silver-plated--crazy as a loon, you see. Yes, he's in the asylum now, poor fellow; that was his last run."

After this one of the group gave his memories of the famous speed trial on the Lake Shore road, when five locomotives in relays, driven by picked men, set out to beat all records in a run of 510 miles from Chicago to Buffalo. This was in October, 1895, and I suppose such elaborate preparations for a dash over the rails were never made. All traffic was suspended for the passage of this racing special; every railroad crossing between Chicago and Buffalo was patrolled by a section-man--that alone meant thirteen hundred guards; and every switch was spiked half an hour before the train was due. The chief officials of the Lake Shore road proposed to ride this race in person, and, if possible, smash the New York Central's then recent world's record of 63.61 miles an hour, including all stops, over the 4361/2 miles between New York and Buffalo. They had before them a longer run than that, and hoped to score a greater average speed per mile; but they wished to come through alive, and were taking no chances.

It was half-past three in the morning, and frosty weather, when the train started from Chicago, with Mark Floyd at the throttle, and various important people--general managers, superintendents, editors, etc.--on the cars behind. There were two parlor-coaches, weighing 92,500 pounds each, and a millionaire's private car, one of the finest and heaviest in the country, weighing 119,500 pounds, which made a total load, counting engine and train, of something over two hundred tons.

The first relay was 87 miles to Elkhart, Indiana, and the schedule they hoped to follow required that they cover this distance in 78 minutes, including nine "slow-downs." Eighty-seven miles in 78 minutes was well enough; but the superintendent of the Western Division had set his heart on doing it in 75 minutes, and had promised Mark Floyd two hundred good cigars for every quarter of a minute he could cut under that time. But alas for human plans! Between up grades and the darkness they pulled into Elkhart at five minutes to five, which was 85 minutes for the 87 miles--not bad going, but it left them seven minutes behind the schedule, and left Mark to console himself with his old clay pipe.

One hundred and thirty-one seconds were lost at Elkhart in changing locomotives, and it was three minutes to five when big 599, with Dave Luce in the cab, turned her nose toward the dawning day and started for Toledo, 133 miles away. Great things were expected in this relay, for about half of it was straight as a bird's flight and down grade, too, so that hopes were high of making up lost time, especially as Luce had the reputation of stopping at nothing when it was a question of "getting there." He certainly did wonders, and five minutes after the start he had the train at a 62-mile gait, and ten minutes later at a 67-mile gait. Then they struck frost on the rails and the speed dropped, while the time-takers studied their stopwatches with serious faces.

At ten minutes to six they reached Waterloo and the long, straight stretch. As they whizzed past the station, Dave pulled open his throttle to the last notch and yelled to his fireman. Here was where they had to do things. Butler was 71/2 miles away, the first town in the down grade, and they made it in 6 minutes and 40 seconds, nearly 68 miles an hour. In the next 7 miles Dave pushed her up to 70 an hour, then to 721/2, and let her out in a great burst which made the passengers sit up, and showed for several miles a top-notch rate of 87 miles an hour. Nevertheless, taking account of frost and slow-downs, they barely finished the relay on schedule time, so that for the whole run they were still seven minutes behind time; the schedule they had set themselves called for such tremendous speed that it seemed almost impossible to make up a single lost minute.

The third relay was 108 miles to Cleveland, and they did it in 104 minutes, including many slow-downs and a heart-breaking loss of four minutes when a section-hand red-flagged the train and brought it to a dead stop from a 70-mile gait because he had found a broken rail. The officials were in such a state of tension that they would almost have preferred chancing it on the rail to losing those four minutes. There is a point of eagerness in railroad racing where it seems nothing to risk one's life!

The train drew out of Cleveland 19 minutes behind the time they should have made for a world's record. Every man had done his best, every locomotive had worked its hardest, but fate seemed against them and hopes of beating the Central's fast run were fading rapidly. The fourth relay was to Erie, 951/2 miles, and some said that Jake Gardner with 598 might pull them out of the hole, but the others shook their heads. At any rate, Jake did better than those who had preceded him, and he danced that train along at 75, 80, 84 miles an hour, so the watches said, and averaged 67 miles an hour for the whole relay.

"It's the kind of thing that makes you taste your heart, and packs a week into ten minutes," said the superintendent, telling about it. "You may take one ride smashing around curves at 80 miles an hour, but you'll never take another."

Still, in spite of these brave efforts, they pulled out of Erie 15 minutes late, and started on the last relay with gloomy faces. It was 86 miles to Buffalo, the end of the race, and they must be there by eleven thirty-one to win, which called for an average speed of over 70 miles an hour, including slow-downs. No train in the world had ever approached such an average, and their own racing average since leaving Chicago was much below it. So what hope was there?

There was hope in a tall, sparely built man named Bill Tunkey, whom nobody knew much about except that he was a good engineer with a rather clumsy ten-wheel locomotive not considered very desirable in a race. All the other locomotives had been eight-wheelers. Still, the new engine had one advantage, that she carried water enough in her tank for the whole run, and need not slow up to refill, as the others had done. She had another advantage--that she carried Tunkey, one of those men who rise up in sudden emergencies and do things, whether they are possible or not. It was not possible, everybody vowed, to reach Buffalo Creek by eleven thirty-one. "All right," said Tunkey, quietly, and then--

Within forty rods of the start he had his engine going 30 miles an hour, and he pressed her harder and harder until 11 miles out of Erie she struck an 80-mile pace, and held it as far as Brockton, when she put forth all her strength and did a burst of 5 miles in 31/2 minutes, one of these miles at the rate of 921/4 miles an hour, as the watches showed. "And I never want any more of that in mine," said the superintendent.

The next town was Dunkirk, where a local ordinance put a 10-mile limit on the speed of trains. Tunkey smiled as they roared past the station at more than 80. A crowd lined the tracks here, for the telegraph had carried ahead the news of a hair-raising run. That crowd was only a blur to staring, frightened eyes at the car-windows. The officials were beginning to realize what kind of an engineer they had ahead this time. Whizzzzz! How they did run! Wahr! Wahr! barked the little bridges and were left behind! H-o-o-o! bellowed a tunnel. And rip, whrrr! as they slammed around a double reverse curve with a vicious swing that made the bolts rattle in the last car. Men put their mouths to other men's ears and tried to say that perhaps Mr. Tunkey was getting a little overzealous. Much good that did! Mr. Tunkey had the bit in his teeth now and was playing the game alone.

At eleven-six they swept past Silver Creek with 29 miles to go and 25 minutes to make it in. Hurrah! They had made up time enough to save them!

At eleven-twenty they passed Lake View.

"Twelve miles more, and 11 minutes," yelled somebody, waving his hat.

"Toboggan-slide all the way," yelled somebody else. "We'll do it easy. Hooray!"

They passed Athol Springs at eleven-twenty-four, all mad with excitement. They had 7 minutes left for 8 miles, and were cheering already.

"We'll make it with half a minute to spare," said the only man in the private car who was reasonably cool. He was six seconds out of the way, for they crossed the line twenty-six seconds before eleven thirty-one, and won the race by less than half a minute, beating the New York Central's record per mile on the whole run by the fraction of a second, and beating the whole world's record in the last relay by several minutes, the figures standing--Tunkey's figures--86 miles from Erie to Buffalo in 70 minutes and 46 seconds, or an average speed of 72.91 miles an hour.

"Do?" said the official. "What did we do? Why, we--we--" He paused helplessly, and then added, with a grin: "Well, we didn't do a thing to Tunkey!"

IV

WE HEAR SOME THRILLING STORIES AT A ROUNDHOUSE AND REACH THE END OF THE BOOK

IT was in the round-house at Forty-fifth Street, a place of drip and steam and oil smears, that I listened to Bronson and Lewis, two good men at the throttle, as they held forth on the subject of killing people with an engine.

"After all, it's an easy death," said Bronson.

"I know," said Lewis; "but I don't like it, just the same--I mean killing 'em."

"Last one I killed," observed Bronson, "was a woman, wife of a congressman, they said, all done up in furs. 'Member her?"

"Up by New Rochelle?"

"Yes, sir, there at the platform end, where they've made a path over the tracks. Too lazy to follow the road, those folks are. Take a short cut and get killed. Well, this congressman's wife, she sauntered across just as I came through with the express. Never turned her head. Never heard the whistle. Queer about women, ain't it?"

Lewis nodded.

"Had four minutes to make up, and we were going good--fifty-five an hour easy. Slammed the brakes on, but--pshaw! Congressman's wife she stopped the last second, and that settled it. If she'd taken one more step I'd have scraped by her, but she stopped. Had to kill her. What's a man to do?"

"Why did she stop?" I asked.

"Oh, some idea. Prob'ly forgot where she was. Nice lady. Makes a man sick."

"Tell ye what I think," said Lewis. "I think there's women start across a track to take a chance. If they get hit it's all right, and if they don't it's all right. Same as girls pull leaves off a flower to see if some fellow loves 'em. There was--"

"She didn't do that," put in Bronson.

"I don't say she did, but some might. There was a woman up at Larchmont walked across in front of me the other day. Had a baby, too, in her arms. Now, why should a woman start over four tracks just as I was coming, and walk slow, if she didn't want to take a chance? Mind you, I was on the far side, and she had to cross three tracks before she got to mine. And all the time I had the whistle wide open. Why, a dog would have heard that whistle and got out o' the way."

"Did you--" I began.

"Hit her? I didn't know at the time, it was such a close call. Thought I had, but I found out afterward she got past--by the skin of her teeth. Bet you she'd had some trouble. Thought she might as well quit the game and take the baby along. Then, mebbe, she was glad when she got across safe."

"Can't tell," reflected Bronson.

"I b'lieve there's such a thing as people getting drawn to a train. I don't mean by the suction, but drawn by the idea of its going so blamed fast and being so strong, especially people sick or down on their luck. Now, last year I was coming through Rye one morning, and as I struck the bridge after that reverse curve I saw two young fellows running along the No. 3 track away from me. I was on No. 1 track, so they were all right, but as I came up they both swung over to No. 1, and I cut 'em all to bits. Turned out they were a couple of lads that had tramped it down from Boston, goin' to enlist. They were weak and hungry, and I think they just gave up to the train because they couldn't help it."

"Might be," said Bronson.

"Tell ye who was the nerviest man I ever killed," went on Lewis. "Fellow in West Haven. Say, but we were coming that night! Northampton express, ye know, and a down grade over the salt meadows. First thing I knew a man was standing at the side of the track, fairly close, but not where he'd get hit. I thought he was some friend of mine in West Haven trying to make me whistle. But when I got near him, say a hundred feet away, he stepped out between the rails and stood there a few seconds with his arms lifted and a smile on his face--quite a pretty smile. Then, just as I was on him he turned and knelt between the rails. I got the brakes on quick as I could, emergency and everything, but I couldn't stop her in less than a length and a half, and--well, I guess you don't want to know what that engine looked like when I went over her."

"I know," said Bronson, "they scatter something terrible. Say, I've noticed that sort of pleasant look in their faces, too. Once I was waiting on a siding, and a man came up and spoke to me very polite, and wanted to know if I'd please give him a drink of water. I told him the water in my tank was too warm to drink, but I let him have my cup and showed him where there was a spring right near. He thanked me and walked over to it, and I watched him bend down and take two good drinks, then he brought the cup back and thanked me again.

"'Any train along here soon?' he asked.

"'Which way?' said I.

"'Don't matter which way,' said he.

"'There's an up train due now,' said I; 'she's the one I'm waiting for.'

"'Is she a fast train?' he asked.

"'Fair,' said I; ''bout fifty an hour along here.'

"'That's good,' said he, and I wondered what he meant. He seemed like a nice man.

"Pretty soon along came the up train, and I saw him run down the track to meet her. Then he stopped, faced sideways, and let himself fall square across the rails. Say, I was mighty glad I'd fixed it so he had that drink of water. That was his last drink."

"Queer how they like to be hit by a fast express," reflected Lewis, "when a slow freight would do just as well. Now, that man at West Haven, the one who took it kneeling down, he'd waited around the tracks all day--the section-gang saw him--and he wasn't doing a thing but picking out a train fast enough for him. He'd stand ready for one, but when she'd turn out to be an accommodation or something slow he'd step away. Didn't propose to shake hands with anything under fifty an hour. Mine was the first one suited him."

"Do you ever think of their faces?" I asked; "ever see them at night--the way they looked when you struck them!"

"No," said Bronson; "can't say I ever do."

Neither did Lewis. And I judge that engine-drivers are not deeply affected by these sad occurrences. Which is fortunate, for few escape them. Indeed, in going about from engine to engine I found the following dialogue repeated over and over again:

"Ever in a collision?"

"No, sir."

"Ever go off the track?"

"No, sir."

"Ever kill anybody?"

"Oh, yes. Why, only last week I struck a--" Then would follow a story of sudden death. And they all spoke in a kindly but matter-of-fact way, as if these swift executions were part of their business. And I have it from a veteran that any engine-driver would sooner hit a man than a hog, for a hog is very apt to wreck the train; a hog is worse than a horse, whereas a man makes no trouble; he simply gets killed.

Near the roaring round-house at Mott Haven is another interesting place--the "Young Men's Christian Association Car," which is not a car at all, but a dingy shed built of four cars, and serving as lunch-room, wash-room, reading-room, and sleeping-room for men of the trains. This is a homely refuge spot, where any morning we may meet engineers resting after a hard night's run or making ready to go out again. Let us drop in and join one of the groups.

Here is a man telling about the mad run "Big Arthur" made the other night down from Albany. We get just the tail of the story: "So the superintendent he ripped around about how they were twenty-seven minutes late, and Big Arthur he sat in the cab and never said a word. 'Now,' says the superintendent, rather sarcastic, 'I suppose you know this is the Empire State Express you're running?' 'Yep,' says Big Arthur. 'Well, do you know what time she's supposed to pull into the Grand Central?' 'Yep,' says Big Arthur again, and that's all he did say; but, holy smoke! how they went! Had those porters on the private car scared green! A hundred miles an hour some o' the way, and they came in on time to the dot. Oh, you can't beat these new engines with the fire-box over the trailer; but say, wasn't that great when Big Arthur snapped out 'Yep' to the old man?"

I asked if I might see Big Arthur, and one of the engineers said he'd be along pretty soon, and in the meantime he told me about the individuality of locomotives: how one is good-tempered and willing, while another is cranky; how the same locomotive will act differently at different times, just as people have whims, and how some locomotives are fated to ill luck, so that nobody wants to drive them.

"Take these ten new engines the company's just put on. They're the finest and strongest made, a whole lot better than the ones we've thought were wonders on the Empire State. They're beauties, and all exactly alike, measurements all the same; but every one of 'em has its own points, good and bad. One will go faster than another with just the same steam. One will pull a heavier load with less coal. And very likely there'll be some kind of a hoodoo on one of 'em. Takes time, though, to find out these things. It's like getting acquainted with a man."

Other men came in now, and the talk changed to accidents. I asked if an engineer plans ahead what he will do in a collision. It seemed reasonable that a man always under such menace would have settled his mind on some prospective action. But they laughed at the idea, and declared that an engineer can no more tell how he will act in an emergency than the ordinary citizen can say what he would do in a fire, or how he would meet a burglar. One engineer would jump, another would stick to his throttle, and the chances of being killed were as good one way as the other.

The mention of a burglar led one of the new-comers to tell of William Powell's adventure with some Sing Sing convicts. Powell was the oldest engineer on the New York Central. He died a year ago, and this thing happened back in the seventies. It seems there was a trestle over the track about half a mile below the Sing Sing station, and on this trestle some convicts working in the quarry used to run little cars loaded with stone and dump them into the larger cars underneath. Of course, they worked under the surveillance of well-armed guards.

On one occasion, however, four or five convicts out-witted the guards by dropping from the trestle upon the tender of a moving locomotive, and the first thing the engineer knew he was set upon by a band of desperate men, who covered him and his fireman with revolvers. At the same moment half a dozen shots rang out, and bullets came crashing through the cab sides from the guards firing at random after the fleeing engine. Altogether it was quite the reverse of pleasant for William Powell.

"Out you go now, quick!" said the convicts; "we'll run this engine ourselves."

The engine was No. 105, Powell's pride and pet, and he could not bear to have unregenerate hands laid upon her, so he spoke up very politely: "Let me run her for you, gentlemen; I'll go wherever you say."

They agreed to this, and some distance down the line left the engine and departed into the woods.

"And the joke of it was," concluded the narrator, "that the revolvers those convicts had were made of wood painted black, and couldn't shoot any more than the end of a broom! It was a big bluff, but it worked."

"Wasn't any bluff when Denny Cassin got held up at Sing Sing," said another engineer. "Convicts had revolvers all right that trip, and Denny threw up his hands same as any man would. That was twenty years ago, on old engine 89. It was right at the Sing Sing station, and three of 'em jumped into the cab all of a sudden and told Denny to open her up, and you bet he did. Then they told him to jump, and he jumped; but first he managed to fix her tank-valves so she'd pump herself full of water and stop before she'd gone far. That was Denny's great scheme, and he walked along laughing to think how mad those convicts would be in a few minutes.

"It turned out, though, that Denny spoiled a nice trap they'd laid up at Tarrytown to catch those fellows when they got there. You see, the telegraph operator wired up the line that a runaway locomotive was coming with three escaped convicts on her, and the train despatcher at Tarrytown just set the switch so the locomotive would sail plump over a twelve-foot stone embankment down into the Hudson River. That's what would have happened to those convicts if Denny had left his tank-valves alone, but, of course, 89 got water-logged long before she reached Tarrytown; she just kicked out her cylinder-ends a few miles up the track and stopped. Then the convicts climbed down and skipped away. Two of 'em got caught afterward, but there was one they never caught."

Presently somebody reported that Big Arthur was out in the round-house, getting 2994 ready to take out the Empire State. It was clear enough that Big Arthur was an important figure in the eyes of these begrimed men, and, setting forth across the yards, I came upon him presently, torch in hand, looking over his deep, purring locomotive against the dangers of the run. Another engineer by the fire-box was discussing a theory of some of the boys, that a man can run his locomotive by his sense of time as well as by a watch.

"Denny Cassin says he'd agree to take the Empire State from Albany to New York and keep her right on the dot all the way, and bring her in on the minute, just by feeling. What d' ye think of that?"

"That's possible," said Big Arthur. "A man can feel how fast he's going. He's got to judge big speed by feeling, for there ain't any speed-recorder that's much good, say above ninety miles an hour."

At the first opportunity I explained to Big Arthur and his friend that I would very much like to draw upon their experience for some thrilling incidents in engine-driving.

"Tell him about the time you went in the river," suggested Big Arthur.

"That was 'way back in '69," said the other, "when I was firing for 'Boney' Cassin, the brother of Denny. It was in winter, a bitter cold day, and the Hudson was so gorged with ice that part of the jam had squeezed over the bank and torn away our tracks. So pretty soon, when we came along with twenty-three cars of a train of merchandise, why in we went, and the old engine 'Troy' just skated ahead on her side into the river, smash through the ice, down to the bottom, and pulled thirteen cars after her.

"You couldn't see a piece of that engine above water as big as your hand, and how I got out alive is more than I know. Guess I must have jumped. Anyhow, there I was on the broken floe, and I could hear the old Troy grinding away in the river, churning up water and ice like a crazy sea-serpent. She struggled for nearly a minute before her steam was cold and her strength gone. Then she lay still, dead.

"I looked around for Boney; and at first I didn't see him. I thought he'd gone down sure, and so he had; but just as I was looking I saw a big black thing heave up through the ice, and I heard a queer cry. Well, that was Providence, sure! It seems the engine had ripped her cab clean off as she tore through the ice, and here was the cab coming up bottom side first, with Boney inside hanging on to a brace and almost dead. I hauled him out, and then we scrambled ashore over the wrecked cars. They were full of flour, and the barrels were all busted open, so by the time we reached the bank we looked like a twin Santa Claus made of paste, and three quarters drowned at that."

"But Boney stuck to his throttle," I remarked.

"Yes," said the other, "he stuck to his throttle. The boys generally do."

After this I asked Big Arthur for a story, but he assured me he couldn't think of anything special.

"Tell about that woman on Eleventh Avenue," said his friend.

"Yes," said I, "tell about her."

"Oh," said Big Arthur, "that wasn't much. I was pulling a freight train down Eleventh Avenue one day, going slow through the city, and at Thirty-fifth Street a woman turned down the track ahead of me. I whistled, but she never heard me. She was going marketing, and couldn't think of anything else. I saw I'd strike her sure--there wasn't time to stop--so I ran along the boiler-side to the pilot, and got there just as we were on her. Another second and she'd have been under the wheels. I braced myself and made a jump at the woman, and struck her back of the neck with a shove that sent her sprawling off the track, with me after her. You see, I had to jump hard or I'd have stayed on the track myself and gone under the engine."

"Did it end in a romance?" I asked.

"Romance nothing!" exclaimed Big Arthur. "That woman got up so mad--why, she called me names and clawed the skin off my face until--well, I couldn't get shaved for three weeks afterward. In about a minute, though, she cooled off, and somebody told her I'd saved her life--which I had--and then, sir, blamed if she didn't go down on her knees and try to kiss my feet, and pray I'd forgive her. Say, that's the only time I ever got prayed to."

Here Big Arthur's fireman whispered something to him, and the engineer nodded. "That's so, that's a good story," and then he told how an old lady of seventy-five saved a New York Central express some years ago at Underhill Cut, about a mile south of Garrisons.

"She's a relative of my fireman, so I know the thing's true; besides that, the company gave her three hundred dollars. You see, it all happened one winter night, and this Mrs. Groves--that's her name--was the only person near enough to do anything. She lived in a little house beside Underhill Cut, and about four o'clock in the morning she heard a frightful crash, and there was a freight train wrecked right in the cut, and cars piled up three or four deep over the tracks! She knew the express might come along any minute, and of course it was a case of everybody killed if they ever struck that smash-up. So what does she do, this little old lady, but grab up a red petticoat and a kerosene lamp, and run out as fast as she could in her bare feet,--yes, sir, and nothing on but her night-gown,--right through the snow. That's the kind of a woman she was.

"Well, she went down the track until she heard the express coming, and then she took her red petticoat and held it up in front of the lamp so as to make a red light. And, what's more, it worked! The engineer saw the danger signal, slammed on his brakes, and stopped the train a few car-lengths from the wreck. Yes, sir, only a few car-lengths!"

Big Arthur nodded thoughtfully, and climbed into the cab. It was time to go.

* * * * *

In ending this chapter now, and with it the present series, I venture the opinion that the men who follow these Careers of Danger and Daring--the divers, steeple-climbers, and the rest--are very little different from their fellow-men, except as they have developed certain faculties by their exercise, and established in themselves the habit of courage. They were not born with any longing to do these daring acts, nor with any particular aptitude for them. They have been guided nearly always by the drift of life and by opportunities that presented. As to fear, they have the same capacity for it that we all have, and are serene in their peril only because they feel themselves, by their patience and skill, well armed against it. The steeple-climber would be afraid to go down in a diving-suit, the lion-tamer would be afraid to go up in a balloon, the pilot would be afraid to swing on the flying-bars, and so on.

I will even go further, and say that the average good citizen who is sound of body has as great capacity for courage as any of these men. He could develop it if he cared to; he would develop it if he had to. That is the main point, after all: these men must be brave, they must conquer their fear, and the only trouble with the average man is that nothing ever occurs to show him and those who know him what fine things he could do if the pressure were put upon him. Yet any day the test may come to any one of us--pain to bear, losses to bear, bereavement to bear. And then the great test.

Well, perhaps these humble heroes whose lives we have glanced at may give us a bit of their spirit for our own lives, the brave and patient spirit that will keep us unflinchingly at the hard thing, whatever it be, until we have conquered it. And perhaps we too may feel impelled to cultivate the habit of courage. That would be a fine inspiration indeed, and I can only hope that my readers may feel it.

[THE END]
Cleveland Moffett's Book: Careers of Danger and Daring

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