A very humble class of railroad men, a class that gets poorer pay in proportion to the work they do and the dangers they run than any other upon a road, are the brakemen. Though perhaps less responsibility rests upon them, they are placed in the most dangerous position on the train; they are expected to be at their posts at all times, and to flinch from no contingency which may arise. The managers of a railroad expect and demand the brakemen to be as prompt in answering the signals of the engineer as the throttle-valve is obedient to his touch.
Reader, were you ever on a train of cars moving with the wings of the wind, skimming over the ground as rapidly as a bird flies, darting by tree and house, through cuttings and over embankments? and did you ever feel asudden jar that almost jerked you from your seat? At the same time did you hear a sharp, sudden blast of the whistle, ringing out as if the hand that pulled it was nerved by the presence of danger, braced by a terrible anxiety to avoid destruction? It frightened you, did it not? But did you notice the brakeman then? He rushed madly out of the cars as if he thought the train was going to destruction surely, and he wished, before the crash came, to be out of it. No, that was not his object. He caught hold of the brakes and, with all the force and energy he was capable of exerting, applied them to the swift-revolving wheels, and when you felt the gradual reduction of the speed under the pressure of the brakes, you began to feel easier. But what thought the brakeman all the time? Did he think that, if the danger ahead was any one of a thousand which might happen? if another train was coming towards them, and they should strike it? if a disabled engine was on the track, and a fool, to whom the task was intrusted, had neglected to give your train the signal? if the driving rain had raised some little stream, or a spark of fire had lodged in a bridge and the bridge was gone? if some loosened rock had rolled down upon the track; or if the track had slid;or if some wretch, wearing a human form over a hellish soul, had lifted a rail, placed a tie on the track, to hurl engine and car therefrom?—if any of these things were ahead and the speed of your train be too great to stop, and go plunging into it, did he realize that he was the first man to be caught; that those two cars between which he stood, straining every nerve to do his share to avert the catastrophe, would come together and crush him, as he would crush a worm beneath his tread? If he did, he was doing his duty in that dangerous place, risking his life at a pretty cheap rate—a dollar a day—wasn't he? And still these men do this every day for the same price and at the same risk, while the passengers regard them as necessary evils, whowillbe continually banging the doors. So they pass them by, never giving them a kind word, scarcely ever thanking them for the many little services which they unhesitatingly demand of them, and, if the passenger has ridden long, and the jolting and jarring, the want of rest, or wearisome monotony of the long ride has made him peevish, how sure he is to vent his spite on the brakeman, because he thinks him the most humble, and therefore the most unprotected man on the train. And the brakeman endures it all; for if he answers backa word, if he asserts his manhood—which many seem to think he has sold for his paltry thirty dollars a month—why, he is reported at the office, a garbled version of the affair is given, and the brakeman is discharged.
But have a care, O! most chivalrous passenger, you who fly into such a passion if your dignity is offended by a short answer. You may quarrel with a man having a soul in him beside which yours would look most pitifully insignificant; one who, were the dread signal to sound, would rush out into the danger, and, throwing himself into the chasm, die for you, amid all the appalling scenes of the chaotic wreck of that train of cars, as coolly, as determinately, as unselfishly as the Stuart queen barred the door with her own fair arm, that her liege lord might escape. And then, methinks, you would feel sad when you saw his form stretched there dead, all life crushed out of it—once so comely, now so mangled and unsightly—and thought that, with that poor handful of dust from which the soul took flight so nobly, you had just been picking a petty quarrel.
If you have read the accounts of railroad accidents as carefully and with such thrilling interest as I have, you will remember many incidents where brakemen werekilled while at their post, discharging their duty. Several have come under my immediate observation. On the H. R. R. one night I was going over the road, "extra," that is, I was not running the engine, but riding in the car. I heard a sharp whistle, but thought it was not of much consequence, for I knew the engineer's long avowed intention, to never call the brakemen to their posts when the danger could be avoided; he said he would give them a little chance, not call them where they had none. The brakemen all sprang to their posts; the one in the car where I was I saw putting on his brake; the next instant, with a shock that shook every thing loose and piled the seats, passengers, stove, and pieces of the roof all into a mass in the forward end of the car, the engine struck a rock, the cars were all piled together, and I was pitched into the alley up close to the end which was all stove in. I felt blood trickling on my hands, but thought it was from a wound I had received on my head. I soon found that it was from Charley McLoughlin, the brakeman with whom I had just been talking, and whom I saw go to his post at the first signal of danger. The whole lower part of his body was crushed, but he yet lived. We got him out as soon as possible and laid himbeside the track on a door, then went to get the rest of the dead and wounded. We found one of the brakemen dead, his head mashed flat; the other one, Joe Barnard, was hurt just as Charley was, and as they were inseparable companions, we laid them together. I took their heads in my lap—we did not try to move them, as the physicians said they could not live—and there for four long hours I sat and talked with those men whose lives were surely, but slowly ebbing away. In life they were as brothers, and death did not separate them, for they departed within fifteen minutes of each other. But notice this fact—the brakeman who was found dead, still held in his hand the shattered brake-wheel, and Joe Barnard was crushed with both hands still grasping his. Yet these men were "only brakemen!"
A DREAM IN THE "CABOOSE."
A first thought of the life of an engineer would be that it was a life peculiarly exhilarating; that in the mind of an engineer the rush and flow of strong feeling and emotion would constantly be felt; that the every-day incidents of his life would keep his nerves continually on the stretch, and that lassitude would never overtake him. But such is not the case. I know of no life that a man could live which would more certainly produce stagnation than it. Every day, in sunshine or storm, cold or heat, light or darkness, he goes through the same scenes, bearing the same burdens of care and responsibility, facing the same dangers, braving grim death ever and all the time until he loses fear, and the novelty of the at first exhilarating effort to conquer space and distance, and make time of no account, wears away, till danger becomes monotonous, andonly an occasional scene of horror checkers the unchanging current of his every-day life. He knows every tie on the road; he knows that here is a bad curve, there a weak bridge, from either of which he may at any time, by the most probable of possibilities, be hurled to his death; and still every day he rides his "iron horse," of fiery heart and demon pulse, over the weak places and the strong, posted at the very front of the procession, which any one of a thousand contingencies would make a funeral train. He passes the same stations, blows his whistle at the same point, sees the same men at work in the same fields, with the same horses that they used last year and the year before. Two lines of iron stretch before him, to demand and receive his earnest scrutiny every day, precisely as they have every day for years.
He meets the same men on other trains at the same places, and bids them "hail" and "good-bye" with the same uncertainty of ever seeing them again that he has always felt, and which has grown so sadly wearisome.
He alone knows and appreciates the chances against him, but his daily bread depends upon his running them, so with a resolute will that soon gets to be the merest trusting to luck, he goes ahead, controlled by the samerules, which always have the same dreary penalties attached to them when violated,—a maimed and disfigured body for the balance of his days, or a sudden and inglorious death.
If one of his intimate companions gets killed, he can only bestow a passing thought upon it, for he has not been unexpectant of it, and he knows full well that the same accident may at the same place make it his turn next, as he passes over the same road every day, running the same chances, as did his friend just gone.
I had, while I was on the H—— road, a particular friend, an engineer. We were inseparable, and were both of us, alike, given to fits of despondency, at which times we would, with choking dread, bid each other farewell, and "hang around" the telegraph office to hear the welcome "O K" from the various stations, signifying that our trains had passed "on time" and "all right."
One Saturday night, when my engine was to "lay over" for the Sunday at the upper end of the road, I determined to go back to N——. The only train down that night, was the one o'clock "night freight," which Charley, my friend, was to tow with the "Cumberland," a heavy, clumsy "coal-burner." I went to the engine-house, andsat down with Charley, to smoke and talk till his "leaving time" came. He had the blues that night, and after we had talked awhile, I had them too. So we sat there slowly puffing our pipes, recalling gloomy tales of our own, and of others' experience; telling of unlucky engines (a favorite superstition with many engineers), and of unlucky men, and of bad places on the road, weak bridges, loose rails, shelving rocks, and bad curves, until we had got ourselves into the belief that nothing short of a miracle could possibly enable even a hand-car to pass over the road in any thing like safety. Had any of the passengers who daily passed over the road, in the comparative safety of its sumptuous coaches, been there and heard our description of the road, I guess they would have taken lodgings at the nearest hotel, sooner than have ridden over the road that night, towed by that engine, which Charley had more than once characterized as a "deathtrap" and "man-killer," and proven her right to the name by alluding to the four men she had killed. At length the hours had dragged themselves along, and the "Cumberland" was coupled to the train. As I started for the "Caboose," Charley said to me, "The 'Cumberland' always was and always will be an unluckyengine, and blamed if I know but she will kill me to-night, so let's shake hands, and good-bye." We shook hands, and I clambered into the "Caboose," having, it must be confessed, a sneaking kind of good feeling to think that I was at the rear instead of the front end of those forty cars, especially as the engine was one that, despite my reason and better judgment, I more than half-believed was "cursed" with "ill-luck;" by which I mean, she was peculiarly liable to fatal accidents. Well, I curled myself up on one of the seats and prepared for sleep; not, though, in just the frame of mind I would choose in order to secure "pleasant slumbers" and "sweet dreams." At first my sleep was fitful; the opening of the door, as the hands frequently went out or came in; the cessation of the jar and rumble when the train stopped; the changing of position as I tossed about in my fitful sleep—these all would wake me. At last, however, I dropped to sleep, and slept long and soundly. Strange dreams, fraught with terror, filled with wild and fantastic objects, danced over and controlled my mind. I was placed in positions of the most awful dread; I was on engines of inconceivable power, powerless to control them, and they ran withthe velocity of light into long trains laden with smiling women and romping children, whose shrieks mingled with the curses of their husbands and fathers, who said it was my fault, and cursed me to lingering tortures. Then the scene would change. I would be on a long straight track, mounted on an engine which seemed a devil broken loose, and bent on a mission of death which I could not stir to stop; while away in the distance was another engine, coming towards me, and I felt, by intuition, that it was Charley, and then I would see his white and pallid face, clammy with the sweat of terror, and his long black hair swept back from his forehead, while agony, despair, and the miserable, hopeless fear of instant and horrible death shone with lurid, fierce, unnatural fire from his dark blue eye, and I seemed to know that every one I held dear was on his train; that my sisters were there looking out of the window, gaily laughing and watching for the next station, where my train was to meet theirs, and my mother sat smilingly by, looking on, while other friends that I loved were saying kind words of me, who, in another instant, would be upon them with a fiendish, fiery engine of death. I would shut my eyes, and thescene would change again. I would be skirting the edges of deep, dark precipices, and while I looked, shuddering, down into the dark and sombre depths, my whole train would go over the bank and down, down—still farther down it plunged—till I seemed to have gone far enough for the nether depths. A sudden tremendous jar woke me, and I sprang to my feet from the floor to which I had been hurled, and found myself in utter darkness. For an instant I did not know where I was, but I soon recalled myself and started out of the "Caboose," fully convinced that some awful calamity had happened to the train, and bound to know, in the shortest possible time, whether Charley or any of the rest of the hands were hurt. I soon saw a light, and hallooed to know what was the matter. "Nothing," answered Charley's well-known voice. "Well," says I, "you make a deuce of a fuss doing nothing." I told him how I was awakened, and we started back to see what was the matter. We found that, in throwing the "Caboose" in upon the branch track, he had given it too much headway, and there being no brakeman on it to check its speed, it had hit the tie laid across the rail with sufficient force to throw me from the seatand put out the only lamp in the car. So we went home, laughing heartily; but I never prepared myself for another midnight ride in the "Caboose" of a freight train by telling horrid stories just before I started.
AN UNMITIGATED VILLAIN.
Everybody knows mean men. Everybody knows people that they think are capable of any mean act, who would, did opportunity present itself, steal, lie, cheat, swear falsely, or do any other act which is vicious. But do any of my readers think that they know any one who would be guilty of deliberately placing an obstruction on a railroad track, over which he knew that a train, laden with human passengers, must soon pass? Yet such men are plenty. Such acts are frequently done, and often with the sole view of stealing from the train during the excitement which must necessarily ensue after such an accident. Sometimes such deeds are done from pure revenge, because the man who does it imagines that the railroad company has done him some injury, and he thinks that by so doing he willreap a rich harvest of vengeance. What kind of a soul can such a man have? The man who desires to steal, wishes to get a chance to do so when people's minds are so occupied with some other idea that their property is not thought of. So he goes to the railroad track and lifts up a rail, places a tie or a T rail across the track, or does something that he thinks will throw the train from the track; and then lies in wait for the accident to happen, calmly and with deliberate purpose awaiting the event; expecting, amid the carnage which will probably follow, to reap his reward; calculating, when it comes, to fill his pockets with the money thus obtained; and when it does happen, and the heavy train, in which, resting in security, are hundreds of passengers, goes off the track, is wrecked, and lies there with every car shattered, and out of their ruins are creeping the mangled victims, who rend the air with their horrid shrieks and moans of agony; when the dead and the mangled are mixed up amidst the appalling wreck; when little children, scarce able to go alone, are so torn to pieces that they linger only for a few moments on earth; when families, that a few moments before were unbroken and happy, are separated forever by the death of the father who lies in sight of the remaining ones, acrushed and bleeding mass, or by the loss of the mother, who, caught by some portion of the wreck, is held, and there, in awful agony, slowly frets her life away, right in sight of all that are dear to her; or, maybe, a husband, who is hurrying home to his dear one lying at the point of death, and anxiously awaiting his coming, that, before she dies, she may bid him good-bye, he is caught and mangled so that he cannot move farther, and the wife dies alone. Maybe a child, long time absent, is hastening home to meet the aged mother or father, and bid them good-bye ere the long running sands are run out entirely; but here he is caught, and his last breath of life goes out with a heart-rending, horrible scream of agony, and only his mangled corpse can go home. All ties may be rudely sundered. The infant at its mother's breast may be killed, and its mother clasp its tiny, bleeding form to her bosom, but it shall smile on her nevermore; its cooing voice shall not welcome her care again on earth. The mother too may be killed, and the moaning child may sob and sigh for the accustomed kiss, but all in vain. The mother, mangled and slain, only holds the child in the stiff embrace of death. The author of it all—where is he? he that did the deed? Is he rummaging the baggage or the pocketsof the dead to find spoil? If he is, surely every cent he gets will blister his fingers through all time and in hell. The wail of the dying and the last gasp of the dead will, through all time, surely ring in his ears with horrible distinctness, and with a sound ominous of eternal torture. The horrible sight of the mangled, bleeding bodies, the set eyes, and jaws locked from excessive torture, will surely fasten on his eye forever, and blister his sight. Horrid dreams, wherein jibing fiends shall mock at him and the wail of the damned ring forever in his ears, shall surely visit his pillow and haunt him every night. Each voice that he hears amid the carnage shall seem, in after-time, to be the voice of an accusing angel telling him of his guilt.
So we would think, and yet men do it. Some in order to have a chance to steal, others as revenge for some petty injury; and they live, and, if detected, are sent for ten or twenty years to the penitentiary, as if that were punishment enough! It may be that I feel too strongly on the subject, but it seems to me that an eternity in hell would scarce be more than sufficient punishment for such a damnable deed. I think I could coolly and without compunction tread the drop to launch such a being to eternity; for surely no good influence that earth affords would besufficient to reclaim such a man from the damnable depravity of his nature. Surely a man capable of such a deed, is a born fiend fit only for the abiding place of the accursed of God, whose voice should ever be heard howling in sleepless, eternal agony in the sulphurous chambers of the devil's home. I do feel strongly on this subject, for I have stood by and seen many a horrid death of this kind; I have held the hands of dear friends and felt their last convulsive pressure amid such scenes, whose deaths were caused by the diabolical malignity of some devil, who, for the nonce, had assumed human shape, and in revenge for the death of a cow, or for the unpaid occupation of land, or to get a chance to rob, had placed something on the track and thrown the cars therefrom. I have seen things placed on the track, rails torn up, and other traps, the ingenuity of whose arrangement could only have been begotten by the devil; and I have shut my eyes and thought that I had taken my last look at earth and all its glories; but I have escaped. I never caught one of these wretches, and I never want to; for if I should, I am afraid I would become an instrument for ridding the earth of a being who had secured good title (and could not lose it) to an abode in the nethermost hell.
A PROPOSED RACEBETWEENSTEAM AND LIGHTNING.
Old Wash. S—— is known by almost every railroad engineer, at least by reputation. A better engineer, one who could make better time, draw heavier loads, or keep his engine in better repair, I never knew. But Wash. had one failing, he would drink; and if he was particularly elated with any good fortune, or was expecting to make a fast run, he was sure to get full of whiskey; and though in that state never known to transgress the rules of the road by running on another train's time, or any thing of that sort, still he showed the thing which controlled him by running at a terrible rate of speed. At one time they purchased a couple of engines for the E. road, on which Wash. was running. These engines were very large, and were intended to be very fast, being putup on seven feet wheels. From the circumstance of their being planked between the spokes of their "drivers," that is, having a piece of plank set in between the spokes, the "boys" used to call them the "plank-roaders." They were tried, and though generally considered capable of making "fast time" under favorable circumstances, they didn't suit that road; so they were condemned to "the gravel-pit," until they could receive an overhauling, and be "cut down" a foot or two. Wash. had always considered that these engines were much abused, and had never received fair treatment; so he obtained permission of the Superintendent to take one of them into the shop and repair it. At it he went, giving the engine a thorough overhauling, fixing her valves for the express purpose of running fast, and making many alterations in minor portions of her machinery. At last he had the job completed, and took her out on the road. After running one or two trips on freight trains to smooth her brasses, and try her working, he was "chalked" for the fastest train on the road, the B. Express. All the "boys" on the road were anxious for the result, for it was expected that "Old Wash." and the "plank-roader" would"astonish the natives," that trip. Wash. imbibed rather freely, and was somewhat under the influence of liquor when the leaving time of his train came, though not enough to be noticed; but as minute after minute passed, and the train with which it connected did not make its appearance, Wash., who kept drinking all the time, grew tighter and tighter, till at last, when it did come in, an hour and a half "behind time," Wash. was pretty comfortably drunk; so much so that some of the men who had to go on the train with him looked rather "skeery," for they knew that they might expect to be "towed" as fast as the engine could run. How fast that was no one knew, but her seven feet wheels promised a near approach to flying.
At last they started, and I freely confess that I never took as fast a ride in my life. (Wash. had got me to fire for him.) Keeping time was out of the question as far as I was concerned, for I had my hands full to keep the "fire-box" full, and hold my hat on. We had not run more than ten miles, before the brakemen, ordered by the conductor, put on the brakes, impeding our speed somewhat, but not stopping us, for we were on aheavy down grade, and Wash. had her "wide open," and working steam at full stroke. At last the conductor came over and begged Wash. not to run so fast, for the passengers were half scared out of their senses. Wash. simply pointed to the directions to use all "due exertion" to make up time, and never shut off a bit. So on we flew to B., forty miles from where we started, and the first stopping place for the train. Here the conductor came to Wash. again and told him if he did not run slower, the passengers were going to leave. Wash. said, "Let them leave," and gave no promises. Some of them did leave, so also did one of the brakemen, and the baggageman, but away we went without them to O., where a message from head-quarters was awaiting us, telling them to take Wash. from the engine and put another man on in his place. I told him of the message, and picking up his coat, he got off and staggered to a bench on the stoop of the depot, where he laid down, seemingly to sleep. I started back to the engine, but Wash. called after me, and asked me "how we got the orders to take him off?" I told him "by telegraph." "Humph," said he, rolling over, "wish I'd known that, the confounded dispatch never should have passed me!"
Wash. of course was not reinstated, but the "plank-roader" never made the running time of any of the fast trains with any other man on the "foot-board."
AN ABRUPT "CALL."
"Hi White," as he was familiarly called, was an engineer on the same road with me. He has been running there for over ten years, and, although Hi is one of those mad wags who are never so happy as when "running a rig" on some of their cronies, he was universally acknowledged to be one of the most competent and careful men that ever "pulled a plug" on a locomotive.
In Hi's long career as a runner, he, of course, has met with innumerable hair-breadth 'scapes; some of them terribly tragic in their accessories; others irresistibly comic in their termination, although commencing with fair prospect for a fearful end. Of this latter kind was an adventure of his, which he used to call "making a morning call under difficulties." Hi used to run theMorning Express, or, as it was called, the "Shanghæ run," which left the Southern terminus of the road at 6 o'clockA.M.It was a "fast run," making the length of the road (one hundred and forty-one miles) in three and a half hours. Hi ran the engine Columbia, a fast "machine," with seven feet driving wheels, and a strong inclination to mount the rail and leave the track on the slightest provocation. About midway of the road there was a large brick house, standing but a rod or two from the track and on the outside of a sharp curve. As Hi was passing the curve one day, running at full speed, some slight obstruction caused the Columbia to leave the track, breaking the coupling between it and the train, thus leaving the cars on the track. Away went the Columbia, making the gravel fly until she met with an obstruction in the shape of this very brick house, which the engine struck square in the broad-side, and, with characteristic contempt of slight obstacles, crashed its way through the wall and on to the parlor floor, which, being made for lighter tread, gave way and precipitated the engine into the cellar beneath, leaving only the hind end of the tender sticking out of the breach in the wall. Hi, who had jumped off at the first symptom of this furiousonslaught, looked to see if there were any dead or wounded on the field of this "charge of his heavy brigade." Seeing that he and his fireman were both safe, he turned his attention to the Columbia, which he found "slightly injured but safely housed," lying coolly among pork barrels, apple bins and potato heaps, evidently with no present probability of continuing its course. By this time the people of the house, who were at breakfast in the farther part of the building when the furious incursion upon their domestic economy took place, came rushing out, not knowing whether to prepare to meet friend or rebel foe. Very naturally the first question put to Hi (who was renewing vegetable matter for present rumination, i. e. taking a new chew of tobacco), was, "What's the matter?" This question was screamed to Hi, with the different intonations of the various members of the family. Hi coolly surveyed the frightened group and replied, "Matter—nothing is the matter. I only thought I would call on you this morning, and pray," said he, with the most winning politeness, "don't put yourself to any trouble on my account."
THE GOOD LUCK OF BEING OBSTINATE.
I think people generally look upon railroad men as a distinct species of thegenus homo. They seem to regard them as a class who have the most utter disregard for human life, as perfectly careless of trusts imposed upon them, and as being capable of distinctly understanding rules the most obscure, and circumstances the most complicated. They seem to think a railroad man is bound to make time any way, in the face of every difficulty, and to hold him absolutely criminal if he meets with any accident, or fails to see his way safe out of any trouble into which their urging may force him. My impression is that they are wrong, that railroad men have but human courage, but human foresight, and should be spared themost of the indiscriminate censure heaped upon them when an accident happens.
If one were to judge from the words of the press and the finding of coroners' juries, he would infer that a pure accident, one unavoidable by human foresight, was a thing unknown; but if he will only think, for a moment, of all the circumstances, consider the enormous velocity at which trains move, the tremendous strain thus thrown upon every portion of the road-bed and the machinery, I think the wonder will be why there are not more accidents. Think, for a moment, of one or two hundred tons' weight impelled through the air at a velocity of from one hundred to two hundred and forty feet per second, and tell me if you do not consider that the chances for damage are pretty numerous.
I remember once being detained at a way-station with the Up Express, waiting for the Down Express to pass me. We were both, owing to snow and ice on the rails, sadly behind time, and I had concluded just to wait where I was, until we heard from the other train, though a liberal construction of the rules gave me the right to proceed "with due caution;" but I was afraid that, if any thingdidhappen, there would be two opinions as to what"due caution" meant, so I held still. The passengers were all uneasy, as they always are, and stormed and fretted up and down, now coming to me and demanding, in just about such tones as we would imagine a newly caught she-bear to use, whether we intended "to keep them there all night?" whether I supposed "the traveling public would tamely submit to such outrages?" if I thought they "had no rights in the premises?" etc. These and similar questions were put to me, some peevishly, some in a lordly manner, evidently with the intention of bullying me into a start. I generally maintained the dirty but independent dignity of my position of "runner of that kettle;" but these latter Sir Oracles, I told that I was too well used to dealing with fire, water, steam and rock to be scared by a little "wind." After a while there came a telegraphic dispatch, unsigned, undated, but saying, "Come ahead;" this raised a terrible "hillabaloo." The passengers crowded into the cars and looked for an immediate start. The conductor came to me and said that he thought we had better start. I told him "No;" that I infinitely preferred to run on good solid rails rather than telegraph wires, at all times, and more especially when the wires brought such lame orders as these "Verywell," says he, "I don't know but you are right, but I shall leave you toconsolethese passengers—I'm off to hide," and away he went. Pretty soon out they came by twos, threes, dozens and scores; and I declare they needed consolation, for a madder set I never saw. Pshaw! talk about "hornets" and "bob-tailed bulls in fly-time;" they ain't a circumstance to a passenger on a railroad train which is an hour behind time. Well, they blustered and stormed, shook their fists at me, and about twenty took down my name with the murderous intent of "reporting" me at head-quarters, and "seeing about this thing" generally. At last some individual, bursting with wrath, called for an indignation meeting. The call was answered with alacrity. I attended as a disinterested spectator, of course; a President and Secretary were appointed, several speeches were made, overflowing with eloquence, and all aimed at me, but carrying a few shots for every body on the train, even to the boy that sold papers. This much had been done, and the committee on "resolutions which should be utterly annihilating," had just retired, when a whistle was heard up the track, and down came an extra engine, running as fast as she could, carrying no light, but bringing news that the "downtrain" was off the track eleven miles above, and bringing a requisition for all the doctors in town to care for the wounded, who were numerous. The "resolution committee" adjournedsine die. I was never reported, for they all saw that, had I done as they wished me to, I would have met this extra engine and rendered a few more doctors necessary for my own train. The blunder of the telegraph was never explained, but blunder it was, and the more firm was I never to obey a telegraphic dispatch without it was clear and distinct, "signed, sealed and delivered."
HUMAN LIVESVS.THE DOLLAR.
Cattle and horses on the track are a continual source of annoyance to engineers, and have been the occasion of many serious accidents. On the W. & S. Railroad, not many years since, an accident occurred, with the circumstances of which I was familiar, and which I will relate.
George Dean was one of the most accomplished and thorough engineers that I ever knew. He was running the Night Express, a fast run; while I was running the through freight, and met him at C—— station. I arrived there one night "on time," but George was considerably behind; so I had to wait for him. Just before George arrived at the station, he had to cross a bridge ofabout 200 feet span; it was a covered bridge, and the rails were some 30 feet from the water below.
I had been there waiting for him to pass, for over half an hour, when I heard his whistle sound at a "blind crossing" about a mile distant; so I knew he was coming; and as George was a pretty fast runner, I thought I would stand out on the track and see him come, as the track was straight, there, for nearly a mile.
I saw the glimmer of his head-light when he first turned the curve and entered upon the straight track, and pulled out my watch to time him to the station, through which he was to pass without stopping. The light grew brighter and brighter as he advanced with the speed of the wind, and he was within sixty feet of the bridge, when I saw an animal of some kind, I then knew not what it was, but it proved to be a horse, dart out on the track, right in front of the engine. George saw it, I know, for he gave the whistle for brakes, and a series of short puffs to scare the horse from the track; but it was of no use; the horse kept right on and ran towards the bridge. Arrived there, instead of turning to one side, it gave a jump right on to the bridge, and fell down between the ties, and there, of course, he hung. On came George's ponderous engine,and striking the horse, was thrown from the track into the floor timbers of the bridge, which gave way beneath the weight and the tremendous concussion, and down went the engine standing upon its front, the tender dropped in behind it, and the baggage car and one passenger car were heaped together on top of them both. I saw them drop, heard the crash, and at once, with the other men of my train, started to relieve any that might be caught in the wreck. Leaping down the embankment forming the approach of the bridge, I waded through the stream to where the engine stood, my fireman following close behind me. Looking up, we saw George caught on the head of the boiler. He was able to speak to us, and told us that he was not much hurt, but his legs were caught so that he could not move, and from the heat of the boiler he was literally roasting to death. We climbed up to where he was caught, to see if we could move him or get him out; but alas! he could not be helped. His legs lay right across the front of the boiler, and on them were resting some timbers of the broken baggage car, while the passenger car was so wedged into the bridge that there was no prospect of lifting it so as to get George out for many hours. I went and got him some water, and withit bathed his forehead and cooled his parching lips; he talking to me all the time and sending word to his wife and children. For a few minutes, he bore up under the pain most manfully; but at last, it grew too intolerable for any human being to bear, and George, than whom a braver soul never existed, shrieked and screamed in his agony. He begged and prayed to die. He entreated us to kill him, and put an end to his sufferings—he even cursed us for not doing it, asking us how we could stand and see him roast to death, knowing, too, as we did and he did, that he could not be saved. He begged for a knife to kill himself with, as he would rather die by his own hand at once than to linger in such protracted, awful agony. Oh! it was terrible, to stand there and see the convulsive twitchings of his muscles, to hear him pray for death, to watch him as his eyes set with pain, and hear his agonized entreaties for death any way, no matter how, so it was quick. At last it was ended, the horrible drama closed, and he died; but his shrieks will never die out from the memory of those who heard them. The next day, when we got him out, we found his legs were literally jammed to pieces and then baked to a cinder. The fireman we found caught between the trucks of thetender and the driving-wheel of the engine, and apparently not a bone left whole in his body; he was utterly smashed to pieces. You could not have told, only from his clothing, which hung in bloody fragments to his corpse, that he had ever been a human being. We got them out at last and buried them. Sadly and solemnly we followed them to the grave, and thought, with much dread, of when it would be our turn. They lie together, a plain stone marking their resting-place, and no railroad man ever visits their graves without a tear in tribute to their memory.
Thus they died, and thus all that knew them still mourn them. But the noise of the accident had scarcely ceased echoing amidst the adjoining hills, ere the owner of the horse was on the ground wishing to know if any one was there who was authorized to pay for his horse; this, too, in the face of the fact, afterward proven, that he himself had turned the horse upon the track, there to filch the feed.
FORTY-TWO MILES PER HOUR.
Nearly every person that we hear speak of travel by rail, thinks that he has, on numerous occasions, traveled at the rate of sixty miles an hour; but among engineers this is known to be an extremely rare occurrence. I myself have run some pretty fast machines, and never had much fear as to "letting them out," and I never attained that speed for more than a mile or two on a down grade, and with a light train, excepting on one or two occasions. Supposing, however, reader, that we look a little into what an engine has to do in order to run a mile in a minute, or more time. Say we go down to the depot, and take a ride on this Morning Express, which goes to Columbus in one hour and thirty-five minutes, making two stops. We will get aboard of the Deshler, one of the smartestengines on the road, originally built by Moore & Richardson, but since then thoroughly overhauled, and in fact rejuvenated, by that prince ofmaster-mechanics, "Dick Bromley." And you may be sure she is in good trim for good work, as it is a habit with Dick to have his engines all so. She is run by that little fellow you see there, always looking good-natured, but getting around his engine pretty fast. That is "Johnny Andrews," and you can warrant that if Dick Bromley builds an engine, and Johnny runs her, and you ride behind her, you will have a pretty fast ride if the time demands it. The train is seven minutes behind time to-day, reducing the time to Columbus—55 miles—to one hour and twenty-eight minutes, and that with this heavy train of ten cars, all fully loaded. After deducting nine minutes more, that will undoubtedly be lost in making two stops, this will demand a speed of forty-two miles per hour; which I rather guess will satisfy you. You see the tender is piled full of wood, enough to last your kitchen fire for quite a while; but that has got to be filled again; for, ere we reach Columbus, we shall need two cords and a half. Look into the tank; you see it is full of water; but we shall have to take some more; for between here and Columbus, 1558 gallonsof water must be flashed into steam, and sent traveling through the cylinders.
But we are off; you see this hill is before us; and looking behind, you will see that another engine is helping us. Notwithstanding that help, let us see what the Deshler is doing, and how Johnny manages her. She is carrying a head of steam which exerts on every square inch of the internal surface of the boiler, a pressure of 120 pounds. Take a glance at the size of the boiler; it is 17 feet 6 inches long, and 40 inches in diameter. Inside of it there is the fire-box, 48 inches long, 62 inches deep, and 36 across. From this to the front of the engine, you see a lot of flues running. There are 112 of these, 10 feet 6 inches long, and two inches in diameter; and of the inner surface of all this, every square inch is subjected to the aforesaid pressure, which amounts to a pressure of 95,005 pounds on each flue. Don't you think, if there is a weak place anywhere in this boiler, it will be mighty apt to give out? And if it does, and this enormous power is let loose at once, where will you and I go to? Don't be afraid, though; forthisboiler is built strongly; every plate is right and sound. Open that fire-door. Do you hear that enormously loud cough? That is the noisemade by the escape, through an opening of 31 square inches only, of the steam which has been at work in the cylinder. You can feel how it shakes the whole engine. And see how it stirs up the fire. Whew! isn't that rather a hot-looking hole? The heat there is about 2800° Centigrade scale. But we begin to go faster. Listen! try if you can count the sounds made by the escaping steam, which we call the "exhaust." No, you cannot; but at every one of those sounds, two solid feet of steam has been taken from the boilers, used in the cylinder, where it exerted on the piston, which is fourteen inches in diameter, a pressure of nine tons, and then let out into the air, making, in so doing, that noise. There are four of those "exhausts" to every revolution of the driving-wheels, during which revolution we advance only 172⁄3feet. Now we are up to our speed, making 208 revolutions, changing 331⁄3gallons of water into steam every minute we run, and burning eight solid feet of wood.
We are now running a mile in one minute and twenty-six seconds; the driving-wheels are revolving a little more than 3½ times in each second; and steam is admitted into, and escapes from, the cylinders fifteen times in a second,exerting each time a force of nearly nine tons on the pistons. We advance 61 feet per second. Our engine weighs 22 tons; our tender about 17 tons; and each car in the train with passengers, about 17 tons; so that our whole train weighs, at a rough calculation, 209 tons, and should we strike an object sufficiently heavy to resist us, we would exert upon it a momentum of 12,749 tons—a force hard to resist!
Look out at the driving-wheels; see how swiftly they revolve. Those parallel rods, that connect the drivers, each weighing nearly 150 pounds, are slung around at the rate of 210 times a minute. Don't you think that enough is required of an engine to run 42 miles per hour, without making it gain 18 miles in that time? Those tender-wheels, too, have been turning pretty lively meanwhile—no less than 600 times per minute. Each piston has, in each minute we have traveled, moved about 700 feet. So you see that, all around, we have traveled pretty fast, and here we are in Columbus, "on time;" and I take it you are satisfied with 42 miles per hour, and will never hereafter ask for 60.
Let us sum up, and then bid good-bye to the Deshler and her accommodating runner, Johnny Andrews. Thedrivers have revolved 16,830 times. Steam has entered and been ejected from the cylinders 67,320 times. Each piston has traveled 47,766 feet, and we have run only 55 miles, at the rate of 42 miles per hour.
USED UP AT LAST.
The old proverb, that "the pitcher which goes often to the well returns broken at last," receives, in the lives of railroad men, frequent confirmation. I have known some men who have run engines for fifteen or twenty years and met with no accident worthy of note to themselves, their trains, or to any of the passengers under their charge; but if they continue running, the iron hand of fate will surely reach them.
Old Stephen Hanford, or "Old Steve," as he is called by everybody who knows him, had been running engines for twenty-five years, with an exemption from the calamities, the smash-ups and break-downs, collisions, etc., that usually checker the life of an engineer, that was considered by everybody most remarkable. Night and day,in rain, snow and mist, he has driven his engine on over flood and field, and landed his passengers safely at their journey's end, always. No matter how hard the storm blew, with sharp forked lightnings, with muttering thunders, and the pitiless, driving rain, Old Steve's engine, which from its belching smoke and eating fire seemed the demon of the storm, came in safe, and the old man, whose eye never faltered, whose vigil never relaxed, got off from his engine, and after seeing it safely housed, went to his home, not to dream of the terrors and miseries of collisions, of the shrieks and groans of victims whom his engine had trodden down and crushed with tread as resistless as the rush of mountain torrents. No; all these saddening reflections were spared him, for he had never had charge of an engine when any fatal accident happened. Old Steve was one of the most careful men on an engine that I ever saw. He was always on the watch, and was active as a cat. Nothing escaped his watchful glance, and in any emergency his presence of mind never forsook him; he went at once to doing the right thing, and did it quickly.
The old man's activity never diminished in the least, but his eyesight grew weak, and he thought he would leavethe main line, and, like an old war-horse, in his latter days be rid of the hurry-skurry of the road. So he took a switch engine in the yard at Rochester and worked there, leaving the fast running in which he delighted to his younger comrades, many of whom received their first insight to the business from Old Steve. He had been there about a year at work, very well contented with his position, a little outside of the great whirling current of the road on which he had so long labored, and was one day standing beside his engine, almost as old a stager as himself, when with an awful crash the boiler exploded. Old Steve was not hurt by the explosion, but he started back so suddenly that he fell upon the other track, up which another engine was backing; the engineer of which, startled, no doubt, by the explosion, did not see the old man, until too late, and the wheels passed over him, crushing his leg off, just above the knee. They picked him up and carried him home; "the pitcher had been often to the well,"—it was broken at last. Owing to his vigorous constitution, the shock did not kill him; the leg was amputated, and now, should you ever be in the depot at Rochester, you will most likely see Old Steve there, hobbling around on one leg and a pair of crutches,maimed, indeed, but as cheerful as ever. He said to me, "I am used up, but what right had I to expect any thing else? In twenty-five years I have bidden good-bye to many a comrade, who, in the same business, met the stern fate which will most surely catch us all if we stick to the iron horse."
A VICTIM OF LOW WAGES.
During an absence from home of several weeks, in the past summer, I traveled in safety, upwards of three thousand miles, but it was not because the danger was not there, not because the liabilities for accidents were not as great as ever; it was because human foresight did not happen to err, and nature happened to be propitious. The strength of her materials was as much tried as ever, but they were in condition to resist the strain; so I and my fellow passengers passed safely over many a place which awoke in me thrilling memories; for in one place, the gates of death had been in former time apparently swung wide to ingulf me, but I escaped; at another, I remember to have shut my eyes and held my breath, while my heart beat short and heavily, as the ponderous engine,of which I had the control, crushed the bones and mangled the flesh of some poor wight caught upon the track, to save whom I had exercised every faculty I possessed, but all in vain; he was too near, and my train too heavy for me to stop in time to spare him. I met many of my old cronies during my absence, and, inquiring for others, heard the long-expected but saddening news, that they had gone; their running was over, the dangers they had so often faced overcame them at last, and now they sleep where "signal lights" and the shrill whistle denoting danger, which have so often called all their faculties into play to prevent destruction and save life, are no longer heard. Others I met, who, in some trying time, had been caught and crushed by the very engines they had so often held submissive to their will, and now, maimed and crippled, they must hobble along till the almost welcome voice of death bids them come and lay their bones beside their comrades in danger, who have gone before.
A little paragraph in the papers last winter, announced that a gravel train, of which Hartwell Stark was engineer, and James Burnham conductor, had collided with a freight train, on the N. Y. C. R. R.; that the fireman was killed, and the engineer so badly hurt that he was not expectedto live. Perhaps a fuller account of this catastrophe may be instructive in order to show the risks run by railroad men, the responsibility resting upon the most humble of them, and the enormous amount of suffering a man is capable of enduring and yet live. This gravel train "laid up" for the night at Clyde, and in the morning early, as soon as the freight trains bound west had passed, proceeded out upon the road to its work. It was the duty of the switchman to see that the trains had all passed, and report the same to the men in charge of the gravel train. This morning it was snowing very hard, the wind blew strong from the east, and take it altogether, it was a most unpleasant time, and one very likely to put all trains behind. Knowing this, the conductor and engineer both asked the switchman if the freights had all passed. He replied positively that they had. So, without hesitation, they proceeded to their work. They had left their train of gravel cars at a "gravel pit," some sixteen miles distant; so with the engine backing up and dragging the "caboose," in which were about thirty men, they started. They had got about ten miles on their way, the wind and snow still blowing in their faces, rendering it almost impossible for them to see any thing ahead, even in daylight—utterlyso in the darkness of that morning, just before day—when, out of the driving storm, looking a very demon of destruction, came thundering on at highest speed, the freight train, which the switchman had so confidently reported as having passed an hour before they left Clyde. The engineer of the freight train jumped, and said that before he struck the ground he heard the collision. Hart tried to reverse his engine, but had not time to do it; so he could not jump, but was caught in the close embrace of those huge monsters. The freight engine pushed the "tender" of his engine up on to the "foot-board." It divided; one part crushed the fireman up against the dome and broke in the "fire-door;" the wood piled over on top of him, and the flames rushing out of the broken door soon set it on fire, and there he lay till he was taken out, eighteen hours afterward, a shapeless cinder of humanity. The other part caught Hart's hips between it and the "run-board," and rolled him around for about six feet, breaking both thigh-bones; and to add to his sufferings a piece of the "hand-rail" was thrust clear through the flesh of both legs, and twisted about there till it made gashes six inches long. The steam pipe being broken off, the hissing steam prevented his feeble cries from beingheard, and as every man in the "caboose" was hurt, Hart began to think that iron rack of misery must surely be his death-bed. At last, however, some men saw him, but at first they were afraid to come near, being fearful of an explosion of the boiler. Soon, however, some more bold than the rest went to work, and procuring a T rail, they proceeded to pry the wreck apart, and release him from his horrible position. And so, after being thus suspended and crushed for over half an hour, he was taken down, put upon a hand-car, and taken to his home at Clyde, which place he reached in five hours after the accident. No one expected him to live. The physicians were for an immediate amputation of both limbs, but to this Hart stoutly objected. So they finally agreed to wait forty-eight hours and see. At the end of that time—owing to his strong constitution and temperate habits of life—the inflammation was so light they concluded to leave poor Hart with both his legs, and there he has lain ever since. For twelve weeks he was never moved from his position in the bed, his clothes were never changed, and he never stirred so much as an inch; and even to this day—May 20th—he is unable to turn in the bed, though he can sit up, and when I saw him, was sitting in the stoop cutting potatoes forplanting, and apparently as happy as a child, to think he could once more snuff fresh air.
I should think that such accidents (and they are of frequent occurrence) would teach the managers of railroads that the policy of hiring men who can be hired for twenty-five dollars a month, and who have so little judgment as to sleep on their posts, and then make such reports as this switchman did, endangering not only the property of the company, but also jeopardizing the lives of brave and true men like Hart Stark, and subjecting them to these lingering tortures, is suicidal to their best interests. Would not an extra ten dollars a month to all switchmen be a good investment, if in the course of a year it saved the life of one poor fireman, who otherwise would die as this poor fellow did; or if it saved one cool and true man from the sufferings Hart Stark has for the past five months endured?
CORONERS' JURIESVS.RAILROAD MEN.
Coroner's juries are, beyond a doubt, a very good institution, and were established for a good purpose; they investigate sudden deaths, while the matter is still fresh, before the cause has become hidden or obscured by lapse of time, and in most cases they undoubtedly arrive at a just conclusion; but in cases of railroad accidents, I never yet knew one that was not unjust, to a greater or less degree, in its verdict against employees of the company on the train at the immediate time of the occurrence.
I know that in saying this I fly into the face of all the newspapers of the land, for they have a stereotyped sneer in these words, "Of coursenobody was to blame," at every coroner's jury that fails to censure somebody, or to adjudge some one guilty of wilful murder. Nevertheless I believeit, and unhesitatingly declare it. Most generally it is the engineer and conductor who are censured, sometimes the brakemen or switchmen; but rarely or never is it the right one who is branded and placed in the newspaper pillory as unfit to occupy any position of trust, and guilty of the death of those killed and the wounds of those wounded. As to an accident that could not be avoided by human forethought, that idea is scouted, and if a coroner's jury does ever so far forget what is expected of it by these editors—who are the self-elected bull-dogs of society, and must needs bark or lose their dignity—why no words are sufficiently sarcastic, no sentences sufficiently bitter, to express the contempt which they feel for that benighted coroner's jury. To be sure they know nothing, or next to nothing, of the circumstances, and the jury knowsallabout them. To be sure, iron will break and so will wood; the insidious frost will creep in where man cannot probe, and render as brittle as glass what should be tough as steel; watches will go wrong, and no hundred men can be found who will on all occasions give one interpretation to the same words. But what of that?
Why, the bare idea that any accident upon any road can happen, and some poor devil of an engineer,conductor, brakeman or switchman not be ready at hand, to be made into a pack-horse on whom to pile all the accumulated bile of these men who, many of them, have some private grudge to satisfy—the idea, I say, is preposterous to these men, and they fulminate their thunders against railroad men, until community gets into the belief that virtue, honesty, integrity or common dog sense are things of which a railroad man must necessarily be entirely destitute; and they are looked upon with distrust, they are driven to become clannish, and frequently, I must confess, any thing but polite to the traveling public, whose only greeting to them is gruff fault-finding, or an incessant string of foolish questions. But are they so much to blame for this? Would you, my reader, "cast your pearls before swine?" and can you particularly blame men for not being over warm to the traveling community which almost invariably treats them as machines, destitute of feeling, for whose use it pays so much a mile? Railroad men, though, are not impolite, nor short to everybody. Ask a jovial, good-natured man, who has a smile and a pleasant word for everybody, and I'll warrant he will tell you that he gets treated well enough on railroads; that the engineer answers his questions readily; that thebrakeman sees that he has a seat; that his baggage is not bursted open every trip he takes, and the conductor does not wake him up out of his sleep every five minutes to ask for his ticket. But ask a pursy, lordly individual, whose lack of brains is atoned for by the capacity of his stomach, who never asks for any thing, always orders it, and who always praises the last road he was on, and d—s the one he is now on; or ask a vinegar-looking, hatchet-faced old maid, who has eight bandboxes, a parasol, an umbrella, a loose pair of gloves, a work-bag and a poodle dog, who always has either such a cold that she knows she "shall die unless that window in front is put down," or else is certain that she "shall suffocate unless more air is let into the car," and who is continually asking whoever she sees with a badge on, whether the "biler is going to bust," or if "that last station ain't the one she bought her ticket for?"—ask either of these (and there are a great many travelers who, should they see this, would declare that I meant to be personal), and they will tell you that railroad men are "rascals, sir! scamps, sir! every one of them, sir! Why, only the other day I had a bran-new trunk, and I particularly cautioned the baggageman and conductor to be careful, and would you believe it,sir? when I got it, two—yes, sir! two—of the brass nails were jammed. Railroad men, from the dirty engineer to the stuck-up conductor, are bent on making the public as uncomfortable as they can, sir!" Reader, take my advice, and when you want any thing, go to the proper person and politely ask for it, and you will get it; but don't jump off and ask the engineer at every station how far it is to the next station? and how fast he ever did run? and if he ever knew John Smith of the Pontiac, and Buckwheat of the Sangamon and Pollywog road, one or the other, but really you forget which; but no matter, he must know him, for he looked so and so. Take care; while you are describing the venerable John Smith, that long oil-can may give an ugly flirt, and your wife have good cause for grumbling at your greasy cassimere inexpressibles; or a wink from the engineer to his funny fireman, may open that "pet cock," and your face get washed with rather nasty feeling water, and the shock might not be good for you. Don't bore the conductor with too many questions. If you ask civil questions, he will civilly answer you; but if you bore him too much by asking how fast "this ingine can run?" he may get cross, or he may tell how astonishingly fast the celebrated andmythical Thomas Pepper used to run the equally celebrated and mythical locomotive, "Blowhard." I started this article to tell a story illustrating my opinion of coroners' juries, but have turned it into a sort of homily on the grievances of railroad men. No matter; the story will keep, and the traveling people deserve a little talking to about the way they treat railroad men.
ADVENTURESOFAN IRISH RAILROAD MAN.