Chapter I: DROVE over from the works to Kenvil under the escort of a red-nosed (1)

man who discoursed on local matters, particularly on the prospects of his youngest son, who was eighteen years old and earned three dollars a day.

"What does he do?" I asked.

"He's a packer," said the red-nosed man.

"What does he pack?"

"Dynamite. Guess there ain't no other stuff he c'd pack an' get them wages. Jest the same, I wish he'd quit, specially sence the big blow-up t' other day."

"Why, what blew up?" I inquired.

"Freezing-house did with an all-fired big lot of nitroglycerin. Nobody knows what set her off. Reg'lar miracle there wa'n't a lot killed. Man in charge, feller named Ball, he went out to look at a water-pipe. Hadn't been out the door a minute when off she went. Say, you'd oughter seen the boys run! They tell me some of 'em jumped clean through the winders, sashes an' all. If ye want to know more about it, there's my boy now; he was right near the house when it happened."

We drew up at the Kenvil hotel, where a young man was sitting. Here was the modern dynamite-worker, and not at all as I had pictured him. He looked like a summer boarder who liked to take things easy and wear good clothes. Wondering much, I sat down and talked to this young man, a skilful dynamite-packer, it appears, who happened at the time to be taking a day off.

"They put me at machine-packing a few days ago," he said, "and it's made my wrist lame. Going to rest until Monday."

After some preliminaries I asked him about the process of packing dynamite, and he explained how the freshly mixed explosive is delivered at the various packing-houses in little tubs, a hundred pounds to a tub, and how they dig into it with shovels, and mold it into shape on the benches like so much butter, and ram it into funnels, and finally, with the busy tamping of rubber-shod sticks, squeeze it down into the paper shells that form the cartridges. One would say they play with concentrated death as children play with sawdust dolls, but he declared it safe enough.

"How large are the cartridges?" I asked.

"Oh, different sizes. The smallest are about eight inches long, and the largest thirty. And they vary from one inch thick up to two and a half. I know a man who carried a thirty-inch cartridge all the way to Morristown in an ordinary passenger-car. He had it wrapped in a newspaper, under his arm like a big loaf of bread. But say, he took chances, all right."

At this another man informed us that people often carry nitroglycerin about with them, and take no risk, by simply pouring it into a big bottle of alcohol. Then it can do no harm; and when they want to use the explosive, they have only to evaporate the alcohol.

The talk turned to precautions taken against accidents. In all powder-mills the workmen are required to change their clothes before entering the buildings, and to put on rubber-soled shoes. There must be no bit of metal about a man's person, no iron nail or buckle, nothing that could strike fire; and of course the workman who would bring a match on the premises would be counted worse than an assassin.

"Just the same, though, matches get into the works once in a while," remarked the young packer. "I found a piece of a match one day in a tub of dynamite; it had the head on, too. Say, it's bad enough to find buttons and pebbles, but when I saw that match-head--well, it made me weak in the knees."

This brought back the old question, When does dynamite explode, and when does it not explode? I mentioned the red-spark theory.

"I think that's correct," agreed the packer. "I've watched 'em burn old dynamite-boxes, and if there are iron nails in the boxes they explode as soon as the nails get red-hot; if there are no nails, they don't explode."

"You mean empty boxes?" I asked.

"Certainly; but there's nitroglycerin in the wood, lots of it. It oozes out of the dynamite, especially on a hot day, and soaks into everything. Why, I suppose there's enough nitroglycerin in the overalls I wear to blow a man into--well, I wouldn't want to lay 'em on an anvil and give 'em a whack with a sledge."

There was a certain novelty to me in the thought of a pair of old overalls exploding; but I was soon to hear of stranger things. By this time other workmen had drawn up chairs, and were ready now with modest contributions from their own experience.

"Tell ye a queer thing," said one man. "In that explosion the other day,--I mean the freezing-house,--a car loaded with powder [dynamite] had just passed, not a minute before the explosion. Lucky for the three men with the car, wasn't it? But what gets me is how the blast, when it came, blew the harness off the horse. Yes, sir; that's what it did--clean off; and away he went galloping after the men as hard as he could leg it. Nobody touched a buckle or a strap. It was dynamite unhitched that animal."

"Dynamite did another trick that day," put in a tall man. "It caught a bird on the wing. Dunno whether 'twas a robin or a swaller, but 'twas a bird, all right. Caught it in a sheet of tin blowed off the roof, an' jest twisted that little bird all up as it sailed along, and when it struck the ground, there was the bird fast in a cage made in the air out of a tin roof. Alive? Yes, sir, alive; and that shows how fast dynamite does business."

So the talk ran on, with many little details of explosions. The expert explained that the air waves of a great concussion move along with crests and troughs like water waves, and the shattering effect comes only at the crests, so that all the windows might be broken in a house, say, half a mile from an explosion, and no windows be broken in a house two hundred yards nearer. The first house would have been smitten by a destructive wave crest, the second passed over by a harmless wave trough. And, by the way, when windows are broken by these blasts of concussion, it appears that they are usually broken _outward_, not inward, and that the fragments are found on the ground outside the house, not on the floors inside. The reason of this is that the concussion waves leave behind them a partial vacuum, and windows are broken by the air _inside_ houses rushing out.

"How about thunder-storms?" I asked.

"There is always danger," said the expert, "and all hands hurry out of the works as soon as the lightning begins to play. If a bolt struck a lot of dynamite it would set it off."

Then he explained that the policy of dynamite manufacturers is to handle explosives in small quantities, say a ton at a time, each lot being finished and hauled away in wagons before another lot is started. This is possible because of the short time occupied in making dynamite. He assured me, for instance, that if there were only raw materials at the works on a certain morning when the seven-o'clock whistle blew, it would be perfectly possible to have a ton of dynamite-cartridges finished, packed in boxes, and loaded on freight-cars by nine o'clock.

After this some one told of a thrilling happening in the mixing-house, by the great vat, wherein nitroglycerin is mixed with porous earth, called dope, and becomes dynamite. Over this vat four men work continually, two with rakes, two with hoes, kneading half a ton or more of explosive dough to the proper consistency.

One day a powder-car loaded with heavy stone got loose on its track a quarter of a mile up the slope, and started down the steep grade. The tracks ran straight into the mixing-house. The switch was open, and the first thing these men knew, there was an angry clang at the switch, and then a swift, heavy car was plunging toward the open door, with every chance that it would set off twelve hundred pounds of dynamite there. Workmen outside shouted, and then stared in horror. Not a man in the mixing-house moved. All four kept their places around the vat, held tight to their rakes and hoes, while the car, just missing the dynamite, hurled its mass of two tons through the back wall of the building, and spent its force against a tree-trunk. There was no explosion, and nothing happened, which was something of a miracle; but what impressed me was that these four men stood still, not from courage, but because they were frozen with fear!

While there is danger in every step of dynamite manufacture, it appears that the center of peril is in the nitrating-house, where the fresh glycerin is mixed with nitric acid, or, more correctly, is nitrated by it. This operation takes place in a great covered vat about which are many pipes and stop-cocks. A man stands here like an engineer at the throttle, watching his thermometer and letting in fresh glycerin. These are his two duties, and upon the right performance of them depends the safety of the works. Every hour he must let in some seven hundred pounds of glycerin upon the deadly acid, and every hour he must draw off some fifteen hundred pounds of nitroglycerin and let it go splashing away in a yellowish stream down the long, uncovered trough that leads to the separating-house yonder. From this separating-house runs another trough to the freezing-house, and a third to the distant mixing-house. These three troughs inclose an oblong space, at the corners of which stand the nitrating-house, the separating-house, and the freezing-house. In each one of these, at any hour of the day, is a wagon-load of pure nitroglycerin, while in the three troughs are little rivers of nitroglycerin always flowing.

The arrangement of buildings in this part of the works makes clearer what was done at the nitrating-house by a certain Joshua Plumstead in the recent explosion. Joshua is a veteran at dynamite-making. He has worked at the nitrating-vat for twenty-five years, and has probably made more nitroglycerin than any one man in the world. He has been through all the great explosions; he has seen many men killed; he has stood by time and again when his own nitrating-vat has taken fire; and yet he always comes through safely. They say there is no man like Joshua for nerve and judgment when the demons of gas and fire begin to play.

This explosion took place at the freezing-house, which is the one place in all the works where dynamite is never expected to explode. Yet it _did_ explode now, with a smashing of air and a horrible grinding underfoot that stifled all things in men but a mad desire to flee.

Joshua Plumstead was in the nitrating-house alone. His helper had fled. The roof timbers were crashing down about him. He heard the hiss of fire and the shouts of workmen running. He knew that a second explosion might come at any moment. There was danger from fire-brands and flying masses of stone and iron, danger from the open troughs, danger from the near-by houses. A shock, a spark anywhere here might mean the end.

Plumstead kept his eyes on the long thermometer that reached up from the furious smoking mass of oil and acid. The mercury had crept up from eighty-five to ninety, and was rising still. At ninety-five he knew the nitroglycerin would take fire, probably explode, and nothing could save it. The vat was seething with a full charge. Ninety-one! He shut off the inflow of glycerin. Ninety-two! Something might be wrong with the coils of ice-cold water that chill the vat down to safety. He opened the cocks full. Crash! came a beam from overhead, and narrowly missed the gearing of the agitating-blades. Were they to stop but for a single second, the nitroglycerin would explode. He eased the bearings, turned on compressed air, watched the thermometer--and waited.

There was no other man but Plumstead who _did_ wait that day; there was none but he whose waiting could avail anything. _He_ had to fight it out alone with that ton of nitroglycerin, or run and let an explosion come far worse than the other. He fought it out; he waited, and he won. Gradually the thermometer dropped to eighty-five, to eighty, and the danger was passed.

But--well, even the superintendent admitted that Joshua did a rather fine thing here, while the workmen themselves and the people of Kenvil shake their heads solemnly and vow that he saved the works.

THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER

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--