TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 WITH 
 
 RHYMES OF THE RAIL 
 
TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 WITH 
 
 of tije ISail 
 
 BY 
 
 CY WARMAN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 1896 
 
Copyright, 1895, 
 BY CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS. 
 
 *** These tales are republished, by permission, from 
 McClure s Magazine, the Engineering Magazine, and 
 the Youth" 1 s Companion. The rhymes are mostly from 
 the New York Sun. 
 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 
 
TO THE GREAT ARMY OF 
 
 THE SILENT HEROES WHO STAND ALONE AND 
 
 BORE HOLES IN THE NIGHT AT THE 
 
 RATE OF A MILE A MINUTE, 
 
 THESE TALES ARE DEDICATED. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 
756 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE ON THE ENGINE OF 
 
 A "FLYER" 3 
 
 THE DEATH RUN 49 
 
 FLYING THROUGH FLAMES 65 
 
 A NOVEL BATTLE 73 
 
 ON BOARD AN OCEAN FLYER 89 
 
 ON AN IRON STEED 107 
 
 OVER AN EARTHQUAKE 125 
 
 THROUGH THE DARDANELLES 143 
 
 JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 159 
 
 RELATIONS OF THE EMPLOYEE TO THE RAIL 
 ROAD J 79 
 
 FROM THE CORNFIELD TO THE CAB .... 199 
 RHYMES OF THE RAIL: 
 
 The Flight of the Flyer 213 
 
 From Budapest to Belgrade 215 
 
 At the Engineer s Grave 218 
 
 The Freight Train 220 
 
 Chipeta 222 
 
 Our Heroes 22 4 
 
 t 
 
Vlll CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Tramp s Last Ride 226 
 
 The Nellie Ely 227 
 
 Nobody Knows 229 
 
 The Open Switch 230 
 
 The Orient Express 232 
 
 The Fellows Up Ahead 234 
 
 An Old Story 236 
 
 Dead 238 
 
 The Country Editor 239 
 
 Standing his Hand 241 
 
 The Old Engineer 243 
 
 When You are Gone 244 
 
 Loch Ivanhoe 245 
 
GOD, WHO MADE THE MAN. 
 
 I hear the whistle sounding, 
 The moving air I feel ; 
 
 The train goes by me, bounding 
 O V/" throbbing threads of steeL 
 
 My mind it doth bewilder 
 
 These wondrous things to scan; 
 
 Awed, not by man, the builder, 
 But God, who made the man. 
 
tjou$an&4ptle Mtoe on fyt 
 of a 4i 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE ON THE 
 ENGINE OF A "FLYER" 
 
 A THOUSAND miles in a night in one 
 sleep, as the Indians say was what I 
 wanted to do ; and I wanted to do it on a loco 
 motive. I searched some days in vain for an 
 opportunity. Then I was introduced to Mr. H. 
 Walter Webb, third Vice -President of the New 
 York Central Railroad, told him my trouble, and 
 promptly received permission to ride the en 
 gine that pulled the "Exposition Flyer." The 
 artist who was to accompany me as promptly 
 received permission to occupy the attending 
 train. 
 
 When, on the afternoon of September the 
 26th, I went down to take my run out, one 
 hundred and one passengers were waiting in 
 the Grand Central Station with tickets for 
 
TA.LE? OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 Chicago by the "Flyer." It was 2.45, fifteen 
 minutes before leaving time. At 2.55 they were 
 all aboard. A little ahead of my turn, I showed 
 the gate-keeper an order signed by the Super 
 intendent of Motive Power, which gave the 
 engineer authority to carry me on the locomo 
 tive, and passed to the train. I found a little 
 wiry engineer standing right in under the boiler 
 of the 898, oiling her link motion. 
 
 A one-hundred-pound engineer and a one- 
 hundred-ton locomotive ! A little bird chas 
 ing an eagle across the sky ! Each seemed to 
 exaggerate the other. How different was this 
 mammoth machine from the mountain climbers 
 I had been used to built so near the ground 
 that to get under them the engineer must lie 
 flat down and crawl. 
 
 As the great clock in the despatcher s office 
 pointed to 2.55 the driver began to glance at 
 his watch. Then he climbed up into the cab, 
 exchanged oil cans, climbed down, and walked 
 around the locomotive, dropping a little oil here 
 and there giving her a last finishing touch. 
 Then he put his foot first against the main, 
 then the parallel rods, to see if they moved 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 
 
 easily on the pins. Already I had introduced 
 myself to the engineer, and was now on the 
 engine making friends with the fireman. At 
 2.59 we were all in the cab. The pointer stood 
 at one hundred and eighty pounds ; the fireman 
 leaned out of the window just behind me, look 
 ing toward the rear of the train. Glancing over 
 at the engineer, I noticed that he was looking 
 ahead, and that his left hand was on the throttle. 
 Just as I looked back, the conductor threw up 
 his right hand, the fireman shouted "All right," 
 the throttle flew open, and the first great ex 
 haust seemed to lift the roof from the shed. 
 The drivers are so large six feet six that 
 with each exhaust the train moves forward 
 nearly five feet, and with each revolution we are 
 nineteen and one-half feet nearer our journey s 
 end. 
 
 Whatever of anxiety I might have felt an 
 hour ago is gone ; and as the proud machine 
 sweeps over switches, through tunnels, under 
 bridges, and through suburban New York, and 
 finally around to the shores of the Hudson, all 
 thought of danger has vanished, and I know 
 that I shall enjoy the ride. Nearly a thousand 
 
TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 miles of rails reach out before us, but to me the 
 way seems short. I hear the click of the latch 
 as the engineer cuts the reverse-lever back, 
 shortening the valve stroke and increasing the 
 speed. As often as he does this he opens the 
 throttle a little wider, until the pressure in the 
 steam-chest is almost equal to the pressure in 
 the boiler. Every time he touches the throttle 
 the swift steed shoots forward as a smart road 
 ster responds to the touch of the whip. When 
 the lever is forward and the stroke is long, the 
 steam flows in at one end of the cylinder, and 
 pushes the piston head to the other end. When 
 this exhausts, another flow of steam enters the 
 other end of the cylinder to push the piston 
 back. The result of this is a continuous flow 
 of steam through the valves, and a useless waste 
 of water and fuel. When the stroke is short, 
 the valve moves quickly. With an open throttle 
 the steam darts from the steam-chest, where the 
 pressure is high, to the cylinder ; another quick 
 movement of the valve closes the port, and the 
 expanding steam does the rest. 
 
 The long, heavy stroke is necessary only in 
 starting trains and on heavy grades. 
 
THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 
 
 Absence, we are told, makes the heart grow 
 fonder. The pain of parting is all forgotten in 
 the joy of meeting; and now as we begin to 
 swing round the smooth curves, all the old-time 
 love for the locomotive comes back to me. 
 The world will never know how dear to the en 
 gineer is the engine. Julian Ralph says, "A 
 woman, a deer, and a locomotive." The en 
 gineer would say, "A woman, a locomotive, 
 and a deer." 
 
 Again I hear the click of the latch, and a 
 glance at the ground tells me that we are mak 
 ing forty miles an hour. The scene is impress 
 ive. The many threads of steel stretching 
 away in the twilight ; the river on one side, 
 on the other a rock wall, and above the wall 
 the vines and trees ; the gentle hills beyond the 
 Hudson where the leaves are turning with the 
 touch of time the end of summer at the death 
 of day ! 
 
 Now the people along the line begin to look 
 for us : every one seems to expect us, except 
 two Italian women who are walking near the 
 wall. They hear the whistle, look back, and 
 see the great engine bearing down upon them 
 
8 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 at a fearful rate. I glance at the engineer, 
 whose grim face wears a frown, and whose left 
 hand moves nervously to the air valve, then 
 back to the throttle. 
 
 Panic-stricken, the women start to run, but in 
 a moment we dash by them. The wind of the 
 train twists their clothes about them, pulls their 
 bonnets off, while their frightened faces are 
 whipped by their loosened hair. A step on one 
 of the sleepers strikes the basket on the arm of 
 one of the women, and a stream of red apples 
 rolls along the gutter, drawn by the draught of 
 the train. Now the smoke clears from the 
 stack, the engine begins to swing and sway as 
 the speed increases to forty-five or fifty miles 
 an hour. Here and there an east-bound train 
 brushes by us, and now the local which left New 
 York ten minutes ahead of us is forced to take 
 our smoke. The men in the signal towers, 
 which succeed one another at every mile of the 
 road, look for the " Flyer," and each, I fancy, 
 breathes easier when he has seen the swift train 
 sweep by beneath him. 
 
 Everything appears to exaggerate our speed, 
 which is now nearly a mile a minute. An ox- 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 
 
 team toiling up a little hill serves to show how 
 fast we go. As we sweep by a long freight 
 train, west-bound, it is hard to tell whether it is 
 running or standing still. In fact, we cannot 
 tell until we come up to the locomotive and 
 hear one loud exhaust, and we are gone. 
 
 When the whistle sounds, the fireman looks 
 ahead, and if the signals are right, he shouts to 
 the engineer. If the road is curving to the left, 
 it is not always easy for the engineer to see the 
 signal displayed. The fireman even tries the 
 water. Fifteen years ago that would have cost 
 him his job. " You keep her hot ; I 11 keep 
 her cool," the engineer would have said at that 
 time. And yet he should be glad to have some 
 one help him watch the water, for nothing brings 
 such lasting scandal to a runner as the burning 
 of an engine. He may run by his orders, but 
 if he drops his crown sheet he is disgraced for 
 life. 
 
 We are now fifty minutes out ; the throttle 
 is closed. A half mile ahead is the water 
 trough. When the engine reaches it, the fire 
 man drops a spout, and in thirty seconds the 
 big track trough is dry. When the tank is filled 
 
IO TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 the throttle is opened, the fireman returns to 
 his place at the furnace door, and in a few min 
 utes we are sailing along the line as fast as 
 before. The black smoke curling gracefully 
 above the splendid train reminds me of what 
 Meredith said of his sweetheart : 
 
 " Her flowing tresses blown behind, 
 Her shoulders in the merry wind." 
 
 We have lost a minute or a minute and a half 
 taking water, and now we are nearing a bad 
 bridge a bridge under repair, and over which 
 the engineer has been instructed, by a bulletin 
 posted in the round house at New York, to 
 pass at ten miles an hour. We are three min 
 utes late, when again we get them swinging 
 round the curves beyond the bridge ; for it 
 must be remembered that the Central s track 
 along the Hudson is far from straight, though 
 the road bed is so nearly perfect that passengers 
 in the coaches do not feel the curves. Every 
 one seems to know that we are three minutes 
 late. The old man with the long-handled 
 wrench, tightening up the bolts in the rails, re 
 proaches the engineer with a sort of " What s- 
 de-matter-wid-yez?" expression, as we pass by. 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE II 
 
 The man in the next tower is uneasy till we are 
 gone. 
 
 We are a hundred miles from New York now, 
 and although I carry a time-card, I am unable 
 to read the names on the stations. Holding 
 my watch in my left hand, I tap the case with 
 my right ; the engineer shakes his head slowly, 
 and holds up three fingers : we are three min 
 utes late. I cross over, take a seat behind 
 the driver, and, speaking loud at the back of 
 his neck, express the hope that we shall reach 
 Albany on time. 
 
 He says nothing. I cross back to the other 
 side, and as often as he whistles I ring the bell. 
 A minute later he turns to the fireman and 
 shouts : " Look out for her, Jack," at the 
 same time pulling the throttle wide open. Jack 
 knew his business and proceeded to look out 
 for her. Taking the clinker hook, he levelled 
 off the fire, shook the grates, and closed the 
 furnace door. The black smoke rolled thick 
 and fast from her stack, then cleared away, 
 showing that she was cutting her fire beauti 
 fully. Swinging the door open, the skilled fire 
 man threw in three or four shovels of coal, 
 
12 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 closed it, and leaned out of the window, watch 
 ing the stack. The trained fireman can tell by 
 the color of the smoke how the fire burns. 
 
 The few pounds of steam lost in fixing the 
 fire, and by reason of the throttle being thrown 
 wide open, are soon regained. The pointer 
 goes round to 190, and the white steam begins 
 to flutter from the relief valve at the top of the 
 dome. She must be cooled a little now, or she 
 will pop, and waste her energy. An extra flow 
 of cold water quenches her burning thirst, and 
 she quiets down. How like a woman when her 
 heart is hurt ! She must be soothed and petted, 
 or she will burst into tears and sob herself 
 away. 
 
 Now we turn into a long tangent, and are 
 clipping off a mile a minute. Our iron steed 
 trembles, shakes, and vibrates a little, but aside 
 from the fact that there is some dust, the cab is 
 not an uncomfortable place. The exhausts, that 
 began in the Grand Central station like the 
 explosion of a shotgun, come so fast, so close 
 together, that they sound like the drumming of 
 a pheasant s wings. 
 
 The sun sinks behind the big blue mountains, 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 13 
 
 the shadows creep across the valley, and up to 
 our window comes the faint perfume of the 
 fields the last scent of summer in the soft 
 September winds. Here and there we can see 
 the lamps lighted^ in the happy homes by the 
 Hudson, while the many colored signal-lamps 
 light up our way. 
 
 Not long ago I stood for the first time on the 
 deck of a steamer bounding over the billowy 
 bar at the mouth of the Columbia River, and 
 was filled with a reckless joy. Looking down 
 at the little woman who hung to the railing near 
 me, I beheld a face radiant with rapture. 
 "How is it?" I asked. "It s worth drown 
 ing for," was her answer ; and so I reckon now. 
 Taking into consideration all the risk, and the 
 fact that I must remain on this narrow seat for 
 twenty hours, yet I am forced to confess that 
 so grand a trip is but poorly paid for. 
 
 If I am at all uneasy it is only when turning 
 the slightly reversed curves where the way 
 changes from a two to a four track road, or 
 back. Plain curves are all well enough. But 
 it does not seem quite right to shoot her into 
 those kinks at a mile a minute. Yet after I 
 
14 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 have seen her take two or three of these, I 
 rather enjoy it. She sways to the right, to the 
 left ; then, with a smart shake of her head when 
 she finds the tangent, she speeds away like the 
 wind. 
 
 Every man in the employ of a great rail- 
 .-load company plays an important part. These 
 smooth curves, perfectly pitched, are the work 
 of an expert trackman. The outer rail must be 
 elevated according to the curve, and with full 
 knowledge of the speed of the trains that are to 
 use the track. I have seen a train on a heavy 
 grade, drawn by two strong locomotives, when 
 nearly stalled on a sharp curve, lift a sleeper 
 from the middle of the train and turn it over. 
 It was because the curve was too sharp, and 
 the elevation too great, for so slow a train. 
 
 The engineer looks across the cab and smiles, 
 and I know that he has taken my hint about 
 reaching Albany on time good-naturedly; we 
 understand each other. In his smile he asks : 
 " How do you like it? " and I answer by raising 
 my right hand with all save the first finger partly 
 closed, and with a slight turn of the wrist give 
 him that signal so well known to train and 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 
 
 engine men, which means "All right; let 
 her go." 
 
 We were due at Albany at 5.45, and at 5.40 
 the fireman stepped over and shouted in my 
 ear : " That big building at the end of the 
 stretch there is the capitol of the State ; " and 
 the " Exposition Flyer " rolled into Albany on 
 time. 
 
 An extra sleeper, well rilled with the good 
 people of the capital, was switched to our train. 
 Saying good-by to the old crew, I swung into 
 the cab of the 907. The engineer shook hands 
 warmly, said he expected me, introduced me 
 to his fireman, showed me a comfortable seat 
 directly behind him, and opened the throttle. 
 This locomotive was nearly new, black and 
 beautiful. 
 
 I noticed that we pulled out a few minutes 
 late. There is a heavy grade out of Albany, 
 and though we had a helper pushing us over 
 the hill, it seemed as if we should never get 
 them going; and when we did, we were six 
 minutes behind our card time. The fireman, 
 with whom I sympathized, worked hard, but he 
 was handicapped. The hard pounding up the 
 
I 6 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 hill had torn holes in his fire. His furnace door 
 worked badly it would not stay open ; and 
 to make a misstroke with a single shovel of coal 
 on such a train is not without its bad effect. 
 The gauge lamp bothered him. Twice he had 
 to climb to the top of the big boiler and re 
 light it. The additional car, too, told on the 
 locomotive, and it seemed impossible, though 
 the crew worked faithfully, to get a mile a min 
 ute out of her. When the engineer shut off to 
 slow for a station, running without steam, she 
 swept over the steel track as smoothly as a 
 woman rides on roller skates, making little 
 more noise than a coach. She was the smooth 
 est rider and the poorest " steamer " of the lot ; 
 but it does not follow that with all things work 
 ing well she would not steam, nor was her crew 
 at fault. But so important are the moments on 
 a train like this, that the least mishap is as fatal 
 as for a trotting-horse to slip in the start. 
 
 A number of little things, including a bad 
 stop at a water-spout, put us into Syracuse six 
 minutes late ; and the gentle and gentlemanly 
 engineer, for whom I was really sorry, showed 
 plainly his embarrassment. 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE I 7 
 
 A jolly-looking young man was the engineer 
 of the 896. This crew was a little remote, I 
 thought, at first. But when they had seen my 
 credentials they thawed out ; and although we 
 left eleven minutes late, the ride to Buffalo was 
 a delightful one. Just as we were pulling out, 
 one of the black boys from the " diner " came 
 to the engine with a splendid luncheon, sent 
 over by Conductor Rockwell. We were soon 
 going. Holding the plate on my lap, I began 
 to devour the eatables ; but as the train began 
 to roll about, I was obliged to throw the lunch 
 eon out of the window, almost losing the plate 
 as I did so. But I held to a half-gallon pail 
 which was nearly full of steaming coffee. I 
 asked my friends to join me, but they shook 
 their heads. The engine rolled more and 
 more, as did the coffee ; and the boys laughed 
 as I stood tiptoe, taking one long drink after 
 another. I passed the pail to the fireman, who 
 was about to dash it away ; but, catching scent 
 of the coffee, paused, and passed the pail up to 
 the engineer, who took a good drink. The 
 fireman then took a good drink too, and would 
 have emptied the pail ; but I touched him on 
 
I 8 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 the shoulder, and he passed it to me. I took 
 another drink, all hands smiled, and we settled 
 down to business. 
 
 I had been riding on the fireman s side for 
 half an hour when the jolly driver motioned me 
 over, and I took a seat behind him. This,, 
 locomotive was not very new, but she was a 
 splendid " steamer." The fireman appeared 
 to play with her all the while. The track was 
 straighter here, but not so good. This made 
 nojifference with the bold young man at the 
 throttle. 
 
 " How old are you? " said I. 
 
 " Twenty- five." 
 
 " How long have you been running? " 
 
 "Twenty-two years," he said. 
 
 I don t know whether he smiled or not, for I 
 saw only the back of his head. These men on 
 the " Flyer " seldom take their eyes from the 
 rail. I expressed anew a wish that we might 
 be able to make up the lost time. 
 
 " I think we shall," he said, and he pulled 
 the throttle lever back toward the tank. 
 
 It was nearly midnight now, and the frost on 
 the rail caused the swift steed to slip. When 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 19 
 
 we had reached the speed of a mile a minute, 
 and gone from that to sixty-five miles an hour, 
 I thought she would surely be satisfied; but 
 every few minutes her feet flew from under her, 
 and the wheels revolved at a rate that would 
 carry her through the air a hundred miles an 
 hour. The engineer stood up now, with one 
 hand on the throttle, the other on the sand 
 lever; for it is not quite safe to allow these 
 powerful engines to slip and revolve at such a 
 rate. 
 
 " We Ve got twenty-eight miles up-hill now," 
 said the engineer, as he unlatched the lever 
 and gave her another notch. The only effect 
 was a louder exhaust, and a greater strain on 
 the machinery. It seemed the harder he hit 
 her, the better she steamed ; and we went up 
 the hill at almost a fifty-mile gait. 
 
 "Now it is down hill to Buffalo," said the 
 driver; and, as the speed increased to sixty- 
 five, seventy, and then seventy-five miles an 
 hour, the sensation was delightful. 
 
 " We Ve got thirty-six miles now, and thirty 
 minutes to make it in," said the man at the 
 throttle. 
 
20 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 "And you Ve got your nerve also," said I in 
 a whisper. Orchards, fields, and farms sweep 
 by, and the very earth seems to tremble beneath 
 our feet. The engine fairly lifts herself from 
 the rail, and seems to fly through space. 
 
 We stopped at Buffalo at 11.39, just one 
 minute ahead of time, and this remarkable run 
 was made over the poorest piece of track on 
 the main line of the New York Central and 
 Hudson River Railroad. Eight hours and forty 
 minutes, and we are four hundred and forty- 
 four miles from New York. 
 
 The men who manned the 898 and the 907 
 are sound asleep, and this last crew will be so 
 within an hour. The flagman and brakeman 
 meet for the first time since they left New York, 
 come forward to ask how I like it, then drift 
 into the station, "jolly up" the girl at the 
 lunch counter, pay for their luncheon, " stand " 
 her "off" for a couple of cigars, and go out 
 into the night. These are the jolly sailors of 
 the rail. Perhaps they have worked together 
 for a dozen years, in sun and sleet, skating 
 over the icy tops of box-cars, and standing 
 on the bridge at midnight. For this they 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 21 
 
 have been promoted to the smoothest run on 
 the road. 
 
 The conductor swings his hand-grip, and whis 
 tles as he strolls into the station and registers. 
 "Train 41, on time." The wary watchman in 
 the despatcher s office, who can close his eyes 
 and see every train on his division at any 
 moment, lights his pipe, and puts his feet upon 
 the table, glad to know that the most important 
 train on the line has reached its destination. 
 Mr. H. Walter Webb, at the club, the play 
 house, or at home, glances at his watch, and 
 as he has received no notice of delay, knows 
 that his pet train the " Exposition Flyer " 
 has been delivered safely to the Lake Shore. 
 While this was being accomplished, the one 
 hundred and one passengers laughed, chatted, 
 ate dinner, and went to bed. 
 
 It might be of interest to pause a little in 
 our journey here, and give some account of 
 how a great railroad is operated each man 
 going about his business, and doing what he 
 has to do with so little noise. 
 
 The Superintendent of Motive Power and 
 
22 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 Machinery has full charge of the rolling-stock 
 
 the road s equipment. The officers imme 
 diately under him are the Division Master 
 Mechanics, who are assisted by a travelling 
 engineer, who goes about seeing that the men 
 as well as the locomotives do their work. He 
 is usually promoted from an engineer, and is 
 a valuable officer, seeing that engineers do not 
 abuse their engines or waste the supplies. 
 Often, upon the recommendation of the trav 
 elling engineer, firemen are promoted. 
 
 Every man reports to his immediate superior 
 
 the fireman to the engineer, the engineer to 
 the Division Master Mechanic, he to the Super 
 intendent of Motive Power. These officers 
 and men are in the Motive Power Department ; 
 they are in the Operating Department also. 
 
 At the head of the Operating Department is 
 the Division Superintendent. This officer ap 
 points the train-masters, yard-masters and sta 
 tion agents. It is usually with his indorsement 
 that brakemen are promoted to be freight con 
 ductors, and freight conductors to passenger runs. 
 The engineer, especially when on the road, is 
 responsible to the Division Superintendent. 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 2$ 
 
 Next in importance is the Traffic Depart 
 ment. If the road has a General Traffic Man 
 ager, the work will be in the hands of a Gen 
 eral Freight and a General Passenger Agent. 
 Neither the section boss, the local agent, nor 
 the conductor can issue transportation com- 
 plimentarily. 
 
 There are also the Engineering, the Auditing, 
 Track, and Medical Departments. There is 
 a Superintendent of Bridges and Buildings. 
 There is the General Store Keeper, in charge 
 of all building material and supplies. Every 
 pound of waste, every gallon of oil, every nut 
 or bolt, is charged to the locomotive for which 
 it is requested ; and at the end of the month 
 the Master Mechanic knows what each engine 
 has cost the company how many miles she 
 has made to the ton of coal, the pint of oil, 
 and the pound of waste. So, you see, there 
 are other records an engineer must make 
 besides a record for fast running. 
 
 The conductor is the captain of the train, 
 and as long as he is consistent his talk "goes." 
 In addition to his duties as collector of revenue, 
 he must, especially on a single-track road, read 
 
24 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 and check up the register, to see that all trains 
 due, and having rights over his train, are in. 
 If we except the despatcher, the conductor is 
 the best judge of orders in the service. By the 
 use of two carbon sheets, the operator receiving 
 an order for a train will make three copies : one 
 to file in the telegraph office, one for the 
 conductor, and one for the engineer. The 
 conductor will examine the order, and, if it is 
 correct and proper, sign his name and the 
 name of the engineer. He should go to the 
 head end and read the order to the engine-men. 
 If the brakemen hear it, so much the better. 
 It would be a good plan if all these men were 
 furnished with a copy of the order. The con 
 ductor now returns to the train. The engineer 
 does the running ; but if he should run contrary 
 to orders, the conductor may pull the automatic 
 air valve and stop the train. 
 
 The writer of a recent article says : " It may 
 be possible to make such mechanical improve 
 ments as will permit a rate of one hundred 
 miles an hour ; but where are the men who will 
 run these trains of the future when they are 
 built?" 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 
 
 2 5 
 
 This reminds me of a conversation which 
 took place in my hearing thirteen years ago, in 
 the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. The men 
 talking were a train crew, waiting on a side 
 track for the Leadville express, which had just 
 begun to operate between the carbonate camp 
 and Colorado s capital. 
 
 11 They are going to build a line over Marshall 
 Pass to Salt Lake," said the conductor; "but 
 I 11 husk punkins fore I 11 run a train there." 
 
 " You think you would," said the long, lank 
 brakeman, taking the stem of a black clay pipe 
 from between his teeth. "I want t tell you 
 that if they build a road to Pike s Peak, they 11 
 be men just fool nough to go there and rail 
 road." 
 
 In less than three years these very men were 
 running over the mountain, and in less than ten 
 years we saw a railroad to Pike s Peak. It 
 makes no difference to these fearless fellows 
 where the road runs up a tree or down a well 
 so long as there are two rails. Bring on your 
 thunder birds ; never yet in the history of rail 
 roading has an engineer asked for more time. 
 When the running time between New York and 
 
26 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 Chicago is fifteen hours, the engine-men will 
 work harder for promotion than they do now. 
 We have now not only the men to run these 
 trains, but we have the motive power. With a 
 track as nearly perfect as engine 999, for ex 
 ample, herself is, she will make her one hundred 
 miles an hour. This locomotive is the plain 
 single-cylinder, eight-wheel type of engine, 
 which has been a favorite with engine-men for 
 the past fifteen years. Manifestly, Mr. Buchanan 
 has very little faith in the newer compound loco 
 motives which have been claiming the attention 
 of managers of late. The Rio Grande Western, 
 one of the swiftest little lines in the West, has 
 been making a thorough test of the compound 
 engine. It finds that with an ordinary train 
 they show no saving of fuel, but with a heavy 
 train they perform beautifully. 
 
 When the next new ocean-steamer is placed 
 upon the Atlantic, she will probably shorten the 
 time from Queenstown to New York to five days. 
 That would be six days to Chicago, and seven 
 days from Queenstown to the summit of Pike s 
 Peak. There is no excuse for squandering five 
 days in a journey from New York to San Fran- 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 2>J 
 
 cisco. This would make a comfortable time- 
 card : 
 
 New York to Chicago ... 19 hours 
 
 Chicago to Denver .... 23 hours 
 
 Denver to Ogden 19 hours 
 
 Ogden to San Francisco . . 23 hours 
 
 Total, eighty- four hours, or three days and a 
 half, from New York to the Pacific Coast. The 
 same time can be made going east ; for actual 
 running time is reckoned, no allowance being 
 made for difference in time. A sleeping-car 
 attached to the Union Pacific fast mail leaves 
 Omaha every evening at 6.30, and arrives in 
 Denver at 7.30 the next morning, five hun 
 dred and sixty-five miles. This run is made 
 across the plains, where the traffic does not 
 justify the expenditure of a very considerable 
 amount of money on track. There is never a 
 night that this train does not reach the speed 
 of a mile a minute. Every day this fast mail- 
 train makes the run from Chicago to Denver in 
 a little over twenty- four hours. 
 
 Either the Rio Grande or the Santa Fe", in 
 connection with the Rio Grande Western, can 
 take you from the Queen City of the Plains to 
 
28 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 Ogden in nineteen hours. The Southern Pacific 
 has a very good track and splendid equipment, 
 and they should be ashamed to take thirty-six 
 hours of a short life to run a little over nine 
 hundred miles. They can make the run in 
 twenty- three hours, and do it easily. What we 
 want is better track. The locomotive of to-day 
 will do for some time. 
 
 ^Ve want, also, a high regard for the lives of 
 passengers on the part of railroad officials and 
 employees. Much as I would like to, I am un 
 able to offer a reasonable excuse for some of 
 the collisions which have cost so many lives. 
 It was not to be expected that the railroads 
 could handle the multitudes to and from the 
 World s Fair without injuring a number of 
 people, and without some loss of life. But 
 if every section of a train had been kept ten 
 minutes behind the section it followed, there 
 could have been no rear-end collisions such 
 as we have heard of recently. Every train 
 should have proceeded upon the theory that 
 it was followed closely by a special, and the 
 flagman should have been instructed to flag 
 without ceasing. Better be in Chicago ten 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 29 
 
 minutes late than in eternity ten years ahead 
 of time. 
 
 A locomotive should never cross the turn 
 table without a box of sand, and the driver 
 should see that the pipes are open. Enough 
 sand to fill the sailor hat of a summer girl will 
 often save a whole train. 
 
 Of course there will always be wrecks as long 
 as mortal men- tend the switches and hold the 
 throttles, for it is human to err ; but the mind 
 should be on the work at all times. No man 
 should be compelled, or even allowed, to remain 
 on duty more than twelve hours, or eighteen at 
 the most. After twenty-four hours the eyes 
 become tired ; after thirty- six hours the brain is 
 benumbed. 
 
 I have been on a locomotive forty hours, and 
 all desire to sleep had left me ; but I felt that I 
 was dreaming with my eyes wide open. The 
 fireman had to speak twice to get my attention, 
 I was not asleep, but my mind was away, and 
 when called to note a signal it returned reluc 
 tantly. The brain seems to feel the injustice 
 of such abuse, and simply quits walks out. 
 Of course, it can be compelled to work, but it 
 
30 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 will not work cheerfully or well. Just as any 
 other striker may be forced to submit to a de 
 crease in wages or an increase of hours, so it 
 may work, but will " soldier " enough to put its 
 employer on the losing side. 
 
 After such a strain I have gone to bed at 
 eight in the evening, and have rolled and tossed 
 and beat about until midnight, unable to sleep. 
 Once I dozed for a few minutes, and then sat 
 up in bed, pulled my watch from under my pil 
 low, held it to the open window where the full 
 moon fell upon its face, and said, so loud that I 
 was wakened by my own voice : " Nine fifty- 
 five ; No. lois due here at 10.1." Half asleep, 
 I had dreamed that I was on the side track at 
 Chester, waiting for the east-bound express. 
 How forcibly the time-card rules are photo 
 graphed upon the brain ! Even in my sleep I 
 was " in to clear " six minutes before the oppos 
 ing train was due. 
 
 It so happened that the night-train from 
 Leadville was due in Salida at about that time. 
 I could hear it roaring down through Brown s 
 Canon, and then I heard the long, wild wail 
 of the whistle echoing along the sides of the 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 3! 
 
 Sangre de Cristo range. I saw the head brake - 
 man open the switch, dropped out on the main 
 line, saw the signal from the rear-end when the 
 switch was closed, and drifted away down the 
 valley of the Gunnison to the vale of sleep. 
 A yard engine screamed for brakes that 
 short, sharp shriek that tells of danger and 
 hints of death. I looked out of the window, 
 and saw the great white quivering head-light 
 bearing down upon me. Twice in reality I 
 have stood in the shadow of death, and I know 
 that at such times the mind sweeps over a 
 quarter of a century in a second or two. We 
 were on the side track ; our train was stand 
 ing. Some one had left the switch open, and 
 the express was heading in upon us. There 
 was nothing to do but to leap for life. As 
 I threw my feet out of the window to jump, 
 the cold air awakened me, and I saw before 
 me, not a head-light, but the big bright moon 
 that was just about disappearing behind the 
 mountains. 
 
 And this is the way I slept until 6.30, when 
 the caller came. I signed the book, and at 
 7.30 was on the road again. 
 
32 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 Where there are no regular runs, and the 
 men run " first in, first out," it is almost im 
 possible to always have just work enough to 
 go round. T t he men are as much to blame as 
 the management for the overwork of engineers. 
 They are paid on these mountain roads four 
 dollars per day. Days are not measured _by 
 hours, but by miles. Forty- four mountain, or 
 eighty-five valley miles is a day on freight. On 
 passenger service one hundred and five valley 
 miles is a day s work. The point between 
 valley and mountain mileage is passed when 
 the grade exceeds two hundred feet to the 
 mile. Men have made sixty days in a month 
 on these mountains, and they have earned the 
 two hundred and forty dollars ; but they should 
 not have been allowed to do it. 
 
 One young man, Hyatt by name, used to 
 threaten to put himself into a receiver s hands 
 when he made less than forty days a month. 
 Fifty days was fair business, but sixty suited 
 him better. He kept it up for three years, 
 collapsed, and had to be hurried out of the 
 country. I don t know that he ever wholly 
 recovered. He was a fine fellow physically, 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 33 
 
 sober and strong, or he would have collapsed 
 sooner. I am afraid the older engineers are a 
 V little selfish. When the management proposes 
 to employ more men, or promote some fire 
 man, there is usually a protest from the older 
 runners. 
 
 In the general instructions printed in the 
 New York Central time-card, we find the fol 
 lowing : " The use of intoxicating drink on the 
 road, or about the premises of the corporation, 
 is strictly forbidden. No one will be employed, 
 or continued in employment, who is known to 
 be in the habit of drinking intoxicating liquor." 
 They might have added " on or off duty," 
 just to make it plain and strong. A man who 
 was drunk last night is not fit to run a train or 
 engine to-day. Men who never drink should 
 be encouraged, and promoted ahead of those 
 who do. I have always opposed the idea of 
 promoting men strictly in accordance with the 
 length of time they have served in any capacity. 
 If all firemen knew that they would be pro 
 moted when they had fired a certain number 
 of years, there would be nothing to strive for. 
 They would be about as ambitious as a herd of 
 3 
 
34 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 steers who are to be kept until they are three 
 years old, and then shipped. 
 
 The best engine-man has been a fireman; 
 the best conductors are made of brakemen ; 
 the best officials are promoted from the ranks. 
 Mr. John M. Toucey, General Manager of the 
 New York Central, was once a trainman. Pres 
 ident Newell, of the Lake Shore, used to carry 
 a chain in an engineering corps on the Illinois 
 Central. President Clark, of the Mobile and 
 Ohio, was a section man ; afterwards a fireman. 
 Another man who drove grade stakes is Presi 
 dent Blockstand, of the Alton. Allen Manvill, 
 the late president of " the longest road on 
 earth," was a storehouse clerk. President Van 
 Home (Sir William now), of the Canadian 
 Pacific, kept time on the Illinois Central. A 
 man named Towne, who used to twist brake- 
 wheels on the Burlington, is now Vice- President 
 Towne, of the Southern Pacific. President 
 Smith, of the Louisville and Nashville, was a 
 telegraph operator. Marvin Hughitt, of the 
 Chicago and Northwestern, began as a telegraph 
 messenger-boy. President Clark, of the Union 
 Pacific, used to check freight and push a truck 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 35 
 
 on the "Omaha platform." The Illinois Cen 
 tral, I believe, has turned out more great men 
 than any other road. President Jeffrey, of the 
 Denver and Rio Grande, began in the Central 
 shops, at forty-five cents a day. General Super 
 intendent Sample, of the same Company, began 
 at Baldwins at $1.50 a week. 
 
 But this has been a long detour, and my 
 wait at Buffalo was really a very short one. 
 The 896 gave place to the 293, and in a few 
 minutes we were under way again. 
 
 The locomotives used by the New York Cen 
 tral were designed by Mr. Buchanan, Superin 
 tendent of Motive Power. They consume a 
 tank of coal over each division, and drink up 
 thirty-six hundred gallons of water an hour, or 
 nearly a gallon a second. A number ten moni 
 tor injector forces the water from the tank into 
 the boiler. When I stepped from the Central s 
 magnificent hundred-ton locomotive to the 
 Lake Shore s little McQueen, with her five-foot- 
 ten wheel, the latter looked like a toy. 
 
 I had not heard so much of the Lake Shore 
 and Michigan Southern, over whose line we 
 
36 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 were now to travel, and was agreeably surprised 
 to find such splendid track. The 293 put a 
 mile a minute behind her with a grace and ease 
 really remarkable. The lamps have all been 
 blown out in the farmhouses, and the world 
 has gone to sleep. The big white moon, that 
 came up from the Atlantic as we were leaving 
 the metropolis, is dropping down in the west. 
 
 The Lake Shore is remarkable for its short 
 divisions and long tangents. " That s the east- 
 bound Flyer, " said the fireman, as a bright 
 head-light showed up in front of us ; and in a 
 minute she dashed by. I had just begun to 
 get used to the bell when we stopped at Erie 
 on time. 
 
 A flat-topped Brooks locomotive, number 559, 
 with a big, roomy cab, a youthful driver, a six- 
 foot wheel, and an enthusiastic fireman who 
 knew his business (as they must on this run), 
 backed up to our train. " You 11 have this 
 class of engine all the way to Chicago," said 
 the engineer. "They were built for these 
 trains." They are but little heavier than the 
 McQueen, but splendid " steamers," good riders, 
 and run like a coyote. The fireman found 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 37 
 
 time to show me the home of the dear dead 
 Garfield, and made me shudder when he pointed 
 to the Ashtabula bridge, where so many lives 
 were lost some years ago. I was glad to think 
 that wooden bridges and poor roadways were 
 things of the past. 
 
 We are making a mile a minute. What 
 would the driver do if he saw before him a 
 burning bridge, or the red lights of a standing 
 train ? His left hand is on the throttle ; he 
 would close it. Almost in the same second his 
 right hand would grasp the sand lever, and 
 with his left he would apply the brakes. With 
 both hands, in about the third second, he would 
 reverse the engine. Perhaps he has heard that 
 old story that to reverse a locomotive is to 
 increase her speed that a bird will fly faster 
 with folded wings : he may pretend to believe 
 it ; but he will reverse her just the same. If 
 she has room she will stop. Even without the 
 aid of the air-brake she will stop the train, if 
 the rail holds out. I ought to say that, the 
 instant he reverses the engine, he will kick the 
 cylinder cocks open otherwise he may blow 
 off a steam-chest or a cylinder head. 
 
38 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 engineer will risk his life to save his 
 train. Of this the travelling public may rest 
 assured. Even though he may be, or may 
 have been, the greatest coward living, a man 
 who has run a locomotive for a number of 
 years will do, in the face of a great danger, 
 just what I have described. To say that he 
 does this mechanically is not to accuse him 
 of cowardice. It is harder to enlist than to 
 march to the music and keep up with the crowd 
 when the battle is on. He does not, mechani 
 cally, say good-by to loved ones, and step into 
 the cab knowing that he must face danger, even 
 death. The mother seeing her child fall in 
 front of a cable-car, without stopping to reason 
 what is best to do, or taking thought of the 
 risk, springs to the rescue. The engineer, see 
 ing an open switch, reasons no more, but does 
 that which human instinct tells him to do. It 
 was my business, for a number of years, to read 
 and write about railroad people ; and if_an, 
 engineer ever left the cab without first making 
 an effort to save his train, I have failed to hear 
 of it. 
 
 Having met and passed the east-bound 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 39 
 
 "Flyer," we have absolute right of track to 
 Chicago. All north or east bound trains have 
 rights of track over trains of the same or in 
 ferior class going in the opposite direction. The 
 terms passenger or freight are descriptive, and 
 do not refer to class. All trains are designated 
 as regular or extra. The regular trains are 
 those on the time-cards ; the extras are run 
 by special telegraphic orders, and always carry 
 white flags or white lights on the locomotive. 
 An extra train composed of passenger cars 
 is usually called a " special ; " of freight cars 
 an " extra ; " and they must always be kept off 
 the time of regular trains of whatever class. 
 
 " And this is Cleveland," said I, as I looked 
 from the roomy cab of another Brooks, " the 
 home of the Grand Old Chief? " I had hoped, 
 by showing that I knew Mr. Arthur, to put 
 myself in touch with the driver ; but a prophet 
 is never appreciated at home, and the only 
 reply was a good-natured grunt and a sarcastic 
 smile. 
 
 It is hard pounding out of Cleveland, and 
 I wonder that a yard-engine does not give 
 us a little start. It is almost morning now. 
 
40 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 Just the time for a wreck. More collisions, 
 I believe, occur between the hours of two and 
 six A. M. than in the other twenty hours of the 
 day. Now for the first time I feel just a little 
 tired. Just once I closed my eyes, and it 
 seemed to rest them so that I kept them closed 
 for a moment, until I felt myself swaying on 
 the seat. Then I opened them wide, for we 
 were making more than a mile a minute, and 
 to sleep was to run the risk of falling out of 
 the open window at my left. That was the only 
 time on the whole trip that I felt the least incli 
 nation to sleep. 
 
 At Toledo we changed engines and train 
 crews, and in the gray dawn of morning pulled 
 out for Elkhart, Indiana. The 94 had seen 
 considerable service ; she was not very beauti 
 ful, and, having a flat spot on one of her wheels, 
 was a little lame. The hostler " slid " her, the 
 fireman said ; but when the serious-looking 
 engineer got her headed down the sixty-eight 
 mile tangent, the flat spot and the little limp 
 gave us no more trouble. The speed was so 
 great that she touched only the high places, 
 and the ride down the long stretch of straight 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 41 
 
 track was a delightful one. The sun, that I 
 had seen drop down behind the Catskills, as 
 it seemed, but a few hours ago, swung up 
 from the Atlantic, and shone on the Hoosier 
 hills, " where the frost was on the punkin, and 
 the fodder in the shock." The trainmaster, 
 from Toledo, came over to ride with me, and 
 showed me where the daring train robbers held 
 the train up in an open prairie, on a straight 
 track. We held our watches on the 94, and 
 found that she made ten miles in eight minutes, 
 and eleven miles in eight and one half minutes. 
 Old and lame as she is, she manages to limp 
 over eight thousand miles a month, at an 
 average rate of a mile a minute.. 
 
 The 94 reminded me of a jack rabbit. When 
 he gets up he is so stiff and lame that a well- 
 trained greyhound is ashamed to chase him. 
 He will wabble about, stumble and fall, put 
 down three and carry one, until the dog is 
 ready to eat him. Then he lays his ears down 
 along his spine, and skims over the sage-brush 
 with the speed of the wind. 
 
 At Elkhart the 160 backed on to our train. 
 The conductor came running forward with a 
 
42 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 manifold order, and, handing a copy to the 
 engineer, they both began to read. " Put up 
 green signals," said the driver; and the fire 
 man planted a small green flag on either side 
 of the front end of the locomotive, and we were 
 off for Chicago. These flags did not affect 
 us or our train ; they only showed that some 
 thing was following us with the same rights 
 that we enjoyed. As often as we passed a train 
 or switch-engine, the engineer sounded two 
 long and two short blasts of the whistle, and 
 the other engineers answered with two short, 
 sharp whistles, saying that they understood the 
 signals. 
 
 The 1 60 was an easy rider, and as she slipped 
 down the smooth steel track, the run over the 
 last division was no whit less glorious than was 
 our midnight ride on the Central. 
 
 The cheerful driver appeared to regard his 
 day s work as a pleasant morning ride down 
 to Chicago, one hundred and one miles, in two 
 hours. When we were acquainted, and he had 
 seen my old worn license as a locomotive 
 engineer, he called me over to his side. Find 
 ing myself, for the first time in my life, at the 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 43 
 
 throttle of a locomotive making a mile a minute, 
 I was almost dizzy with delight. Fields and 
 farms flew by, and the mile-posts began to get 
 together like telegraph poles. A prairie hawk 
 flying down the track became bewildered, and 
 barely saved his life by a quick swerve as the 
 front end of the locomotive was about to strike 
 him ; his wing brushed the signal lamp on my 
 side. Little brown birds, flying in front of us, 
 dashed against the cab windows, fluttered from 
 the running board, and dropped to the ground 
 dead. 
 
 While she was making her mile in fifty to 
 fifty-five seconds, the train inspector came over 
 the tank, bearing a tray which held a steaming 
 breakfast for the " dead-head," in the cab. 
 " Put it on the boiler head," shouted the engi 
 neer ; and then I learned what the flat top was 
 intended for. Placing the tray on top of the 
 boiler, I stood up in the corner of the cab and 
 ate my breakast, and enjoyed it at the rate of a 
 mile a minute and a dollar a meal. 
 
 Looking back along the side of this remark 
 able train, I was surprised to note that the 
 heavy Wagner cars, owing to hydraulic buffer 
 
44 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 equipment, swayed not to exceed two inches 
 out of a straight line when we were making 
 seventy-five miles an hour. I have never trav 
 elled in the cars of this swift train ; but, judging 
 from the way the locomotives ride, the coaches 
 must be as easy as a sleigh. We placed the 
 coffee cup outside the tray on the jacket, which 
 is almost as smooth as glass, and it rode there 
 for a half hour, when the inspector took it off. 
 
 Nobody ever heard of a person drowning on 
 air, and yet I believe it is possible. When we 
 were running at the rate of seventy-five or 
 eighty miles an hour, I closed my mouth and 
 leaned out of the window. The force of the 
 air was so great that it actually strangled me ; 
 I tried it again and again, with the same result. 
 The air drove into my nostrils with such force 
 that I invariably opened my mouth to breathe ; 
 and then the air drove down my throat, and 
 compelled me to draw back into the cab. Now, 
 when we breathe water into the nostrils, we 
 always throw open the mouth, only to take in 
 more water and strangle the worse. If, when 
 you had put your head out of a locomotive cab 
 moving at seventy-five or eighty miles an hour, 
 
A THOUSAND-MILE RIDE 45 
 
 a strong hand seized it and held it there, you 
 would, I believe, actually drown. 
 
 In California they do not say the oldest mis 
 sion, the largest orchard, the biggest tree " in 
 the State" or "in the Union," but "in the 
 world." I shall say this is the swiftest and 
 safest long distance train on earth. That it is 
 the swiftest, the time-card proves. It is the 
 safest, for the reason that, from the moment 
 the " Exposition Flyer " leaves New York, 
 every man in the employ of the New York 
 Central and the Lake Shore railroads, including 
 Dr. Depew and Mr. John Newell, look out for 
 her until she whistles into Chicago. If the 
 "Flyer" loses over five minutes, the fact as 
 well as the cause of the delay is wired at once 
 to Mr. Edgar Van Etten, the General Superin 
 tendent. Everything is out of the way, and 
 switches set for her ten minutes before she is 
 due. Ordinarily, when a passenger train is 
 late, her danger is correspondingly increased. 
 Not so with the " Exposition Flyer ; " she has 
 the right to the rail until she is able to use it, 
 or until she becomes twelve hours late. When 
 she is one minute late, all who are watching 
 
46 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 and waiting for her know it, and their anxiety 
 increases until she is heard from. No train on 
 the road runs closer to her time-card than the 
 " Flyer." Nearly all the ugly wrecks are rear- 
 end collisions ; but there is no danger from that 
 source to this train. Nothing short of a thunder 
 bolt can catch her. 
 
 But, behold, here in full view are the glisten 
 ing domes of the White City and the mammoth, 
 high-mounted Ferris wheel ! The last of nearly 
 a thousand miles of steel has slipped from under 
 our faithful steed, and at precisely ten o clock 
 A.M. we stop at the Chicago station on time. 
 It has taken twenty hours, eight engines, and 
 sixteen engine-men to bring us through, and it 
 has been a glorious trip the best of my life. 
 
Mun 
 
THE DEATH RUN 
 
 A LONG in the early eighties, when the Den- 
 "^ ver and Rio Grande was a narrow gauge 
 road, and the main line lay across the great 
 divide at Marshall Pass, there was a wreck in 
 the Black Canon, and of that wreck I write. 
 
 So rough and impenetrable was this canon 
 that the men sent out to blaze the trail were 
 unable to get through. Engineers, with their 
 instruments, were let down from the top of the 
 canon wall, hundreds of feet, by long ropes; 
 and to this day, if you look up when the train 
 goes round " Dead Man s Curve," you will see 
 a frayed-out rope whipping the gray rocks, five 
 hundred feet above the river and the rail. 
 
 By the breaking of this rope a human life 
 
 was lost : the first of many lives that have been 
 
 lost in this wild canon. In the rush and hurry 
 
 to complete the road, little attention was given 
 
 4 
 
50 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 to sloping the cuts or making it safe for the 
 men who ride ahead. So, when spring came, 
 and the snow began to melt on the mountains 
 and moisten the earth, great pieces of " scenery " 
 would loose their hold upon the steep hill, and 
 sweep down the side of the canon, carrying 
 rails, road-bed, in fact everything but the right 
 of way, across the river, where the land-slide 
 was often landed high and dry on the opposite 
 shore. 
 
 So often was the " scenery " shifted during 
 the first twelve months that the night run 
 through the Black Canon, so wildly beautiful 
 by day, so grand and awful by night, came to 
 be called the "Death Run." 
 
 It was engineer Peasley s run out that night ; 
 but he had just returned from the stony little 
 graveyard that had been staked out on the 
 banks of the Gunnison, where they had buried 
 his baby. He was a delicate-looking man, and 
 when he came into the round-house that after 
 noon to register off, he wore his soft hat far 
 down over his inflamed eyes, as if he would 
 hide from the world any trace of that sacred 
 grief. Kipp, his fireman, saw him, and was 
 
THE DEATH RUN 51 
 
 sorry, for he knew how dearly the driver had 
 loved the little one now lost to him. Sliding 
 from the pilot, where he had been scouring the 
 number-plate, Kipp went to the book and 
 registered off also. 
 
 And so it happened that, when Number 
 Seven left Gunnison at 9.15 Jack Welsh held 
 the seat, and fireman McConnell handled the 
 scoop. The sharp exhausts from the straight 
 stack sent up a solid stream of fire, as they 
 hurried out through the yards, that fell like hail 
 among the crippled cars on the " rep" track. 
 
 The brisk bark of the bounding engine 
 dwindled down to a faint pant, and was drowned 
 in the roar of the wheels, as the long train 
 hurried away down the valley, and was swal 
 lowed up in the Black Canon. The run was 
 regarded as a difficult one ; but the extra crew 
 were equal to it, and at every station up to 
 11.30 the operator wired the despatcher, the 
 despatcher the train- master, and he the super 
 intendent : " Number Seven on time." 
 
 Although he had no regular run, McConnell 
 was really an old fireman. He had but recently 
 returned to the road after a year s absence. 
 
52 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 At the earnest solicitation of his good mother, 
 he had left the rail to return to his father s farm 
 near Salina, Kansas. He was a good and duti 
 ful son, and he loved his mother as only such 
 a son can love ; but he could not help the long 
 ing within him to return to the road. That 
 summer the Missouri Pacific opened a new line 
 right through his father s farm, and every day 
 he heard the snort of the iron horse, saw the 
 trains go to and fro, saw the engine-men throw 
 ing kisses to the girls on the farm, and he 
 wanted to return to the Rockies. More than 
 once every day he looked away to the west, 
 where he knew the trains were going up and 
 down ; where the snow lay in great drifts on 
 one side of the track, and the flowers bloomed 
 by the other. Who can say how the heart of 
 the engine-man longs for the engine? 
 
 <? i ? -^-~: " 
 
 He loves the locomotive 
 
 As the flowers love the lea, 
 As the song-birds love the sunlight, 
 As the sailor loves the sea. 
 
 When the harvest had been cut and the 
 golden grain garnered, the restless youth bade 
 his parents adieu, and set his face toward the 
 
THE DEATH RUN 53 
 
 sunset. He had been a faithful fireman, and 
 found no trouble in re-establishing himself in 
 the service of the "Scenic" Line. 
 
 The Death Run was a long one : one hundred 
 and thirty-five miles over mountains and through 
 canons. They had crossed Cero summit, and 
 were now roaring along the canon, by the banks 
 of the beautiful river. 
 
 The night grew warmer as they drifted down 
 toward the valley of the Grande. The engineer 
 sat silently in his place, trying the water, whist 
 ling for stations, and watching the way. The 
 fireman, having little to do now, lounged in the 
 open window and looked out on the rippling 
 river where the moonlight lay. It was almost 
 midnight when the operator at Roubideau was 
 awakened by the wild wail of the west-bound 
 express. As the long train rattled over the 
 bridge beyond the little station, the operator 
 reached for the key and made the wire say : 
 " Number Seven on time." 
 
 Beyond the bridge there was a bit of a tan 
 gent, a few hundred yards; and when they 
 turned into it, the fireman got down from his 
 comfortable seat to fix the fire. 
 
54 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 The driver released the brakes at the bridge, 
 and the train was now increasing her speed at 
 every turn of the wheels. Looking ahead, the 
 engineer saw the open mouth of Roubideau 
 tunnel, which, being on the shadow side of the 
 hill, looked like a great hole in the night. 
 Nearer the engine he saw a number of dark 
 objects scattered about. In another second he 
 discerned what these were, and realized an 
 awful danger. As he reversed the engine and 
 applied the air, he shouted to the fireman to 
 jump. He might have jumped himself, for he ^j 
 saw the danger first ; but no such thought came 
 to him. In another second the pilot was plough 
 ing through a herd of cattle that were sleeping 
 on the track. If they had all been standing, 
 he would have opened the throttle and sent 
 them flying into the river, with less risk to his 
 train. But they were lying down ; and as they 
 rolled under the wheels, they lifted the great 
 engine from the rails and threw her down the 
 dump at the very edge of the river. So well 
 had the faithful engineer performed his work 
 that the train was stopped without wrecking a 
 car. Many of the passengers were not awakened. 
 
THE DEATH RUN 55 
 
 x- The trainmen came forward and found the 
 engineer. He was able to speak to them ; he $ 
 knew what had happened, and knew that he 
 had but a few minutes to live. These brave, 
 \ rough men of the rail never hide anything from 
 each other, and when he asked for his fireman, 
 they told him the fireman was dead. 
 
 As he lay there in the moonlight, with his 
 head resting in the conductor s lap, while the 
 brakeman brought a cup from the mail-car and 
 gave him a drink of water, he told them where 
 he wanted to be buried, back East some 
 where ; spoke of his insurance policy ; left a 
 loving message for his wife ; and then, as if he 
 had nothing more to say or do, closed his eyes, 
 folded his hands over his brave heart, and with 
 out a murmur apparently without pain 
 died. 
 
 It was many hours before they found the fire 
 man. When the crash came, he was standing 
 in front of the furnace door. The tank doubled 
 forward and forced him up against the boiler- 
 head, where, if he had not been killed instantly, 
 he must have been slowly roasted. He lay in 
 the wreck so long that, when they got him out, 
 
56 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 there was a deep and ugly groove across his 
 face, where he had lain against the narrow edge 
 of the throttle lever. Save this deep furrow, 
 there were no marks upon his face. But that 
 one mark remained, even after the body was 
 embalmed. 
 
 The writer was, at that time, employed by 
 the same company, and was sent out to the 
 wreck to take charge of the body of the fire 
 man, bring it to Denver, and then take it back 
 to the farm at Salina. The travelling engineer 
 went out with a special engine and the superin 
 tendent s private car, and I went with him. 
 
 It is not a pleasant task to deliver the dead 
 to bereaved relatives; but it is the least that 
 can be done, and some one must do it. The 
 engine left the track precisely at midnight, 
 Friday night, and it was not until the after 
 noon of the following Tuesday that I reached 
 Salina. 
 
 There had been six children in this happy 
 family, three boys and three girls. The eldest 
 son was a locomotive engineer, but he had left 
 the road for good, and was now with the family 
 at the Kansas farm. 
 
THE DEATH RUN 57 
 
 "How does he look?" asked the engineer, 
 when we had taken seats in the farm carriage. 
 "Can mother see him?" 
 
 " He looks very well," said I ; and then^ 
 remembering that ugly furrow in his face, " but 
 would it not be better for all of you to remem 
 ber him just as he left home? " 
 
 " I shall leave that all to you," he said, while 
 the hot tears fairly rained down upon the lap- 
 robe that covered our knees. 
 
 When we reached the McConnell place, and 
 I went into the house where the family were all 
 assembled in the large, plain parlor, there was 
 no need of an introduction. They all knew 
 me, and knew why I had come, and when they 
 crowded about me, all weeping so bitterly, I 
 felt that I could not hold out much longer my 
 self. I did better than I had expected, however, 
 until I attempted to talk, when the tears came 
 up in my throat and choked me. So, with a 
 little brother on one knee, a little sister on the 
 other, while the two young ladies were sobbing 
 by the window, and the brave young engineer 
 was trying between his tears to calm his mother, 
 I gave way, and wept with the rest. 
 
58 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 When we had all gained the little relief that 
 always comes with a shower of tears, the mother 
 began to talk to me and ask questions. To 
 begin with, she asked me if I could tell her 
 exactly when her boy was killed. 
 "Last Friday night," I said. 
 "What time?" she asked, glancing at her 
 two daughters, who had turned from the window, 
 and were trying to dry their eyes. 
 
 "Almost exactly at midnight," was my reply. 
 "Ah!" she said, bursting into tears again, 
 " I knew it ! I knew it ! " 
 
 " He was killed instantly," said I ; "he never 
 knew what happened." 
 
 I said this with the hope of their deriving a 
 shade of comfort from the fact that the dear, 
 brave boy was not roasted alive, as so many 
 engine-men are. 
 
 " Not quite instantly," said the weeping 
 mother. " He called me twice : Mother ! 
 Mother ! and I saw him standing before me 
 with a great deep furrow across his face." 
 
 Then she placed the edge of her hand against 
 her face to show me where the scar was ; and 
 when I saw her mark the very angle of the ugly 
 
THE DEATH RUN 59 
 
 groove, I felt a strange tingling sensation at the 
 roots of my hair. 
 
 " Has any one written you the particulars of 
 the wreck? " I said. 
 
 "No," she answered, "we have had but two 
 telegrams : one from the superintendent, telling 
 of his death, and the one from you when you 
 left Denver." 
 
 What she said so affected me that I excused 
 myself and walked out to the barn, where I 
 could think. I was not long in arriving at the 
 conclusion that when the 177 left the track, in 
 that infinitesimal fragment of time, the boy saw 
 that he was in the shadow of death, and his first 
 and only thought was of his mother. His whole 
 soul went out to her so swiftly and so surely 
 that she not only heard him call her, but saw 
 him, just as he was. 
 
 At the barn I found the dead boy s father, 
 who had insisted upon his son s going in with 
 me, upon our arrival at the house, while he 
 " put up " the team. I thought his the saddest 
 face I had ever seen, as he moved about in his 
 tearless and silent sorrow. 
 
 " Plow did it happen ? " asked the farmer, 
 
60 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 when he had finished his chores, and we were 
 walking back toward the house together. 
 
 " Hit a bunch of cattle," said I. 
 
 "In the night?" 
 
 "Yes," was my answer, "just about mid 
 night." 
 
 "What night?" 
 
 " Last Friday." 
 
 "Stop," said the farmer, touching my arm. 
 " I want to tell you something that happened 
 here last Friday night and I remember that 
 it was just about midnight." 
 
 Then he told me how his wife had screamed 
 and wakened him, and how she had wept bit 
 terly, and insisted that Johnny had been killed. 
 He had been struck by somebody or something, 
 she insisted, and she could see a great deep, 
 ugly scar on his face. 
 
 I don t know why I did not ; but I remem 
 ber distinctly that I did not tell them not 
 even the engineer, who was accustomed to see 
 ing such things that the scar was there, on 
 Jack s face, just as his mother had seen it that 
 Friday night. We did not open the coffin at 
 the church, nor at the grave. 
 
THE DEATH RUN 6 1 
 
 I remained with the family at the farmhouse 
 that night, and with them, on the following day, 
 went to the little church in town, where the 
 good priest talked a great deal longer than was 
 necessary, I thought, for he had it not in his 
 power to do John McConnelt any good by 
 talking. In a pleasant place, on a gentle slope 
 that tipped to the west, his grave was made ; 
 and while we were weeping there, another 
 grave, in another place, was being filled, hiding 
 from the eyes of the world the body of the 
 brave engineer. 
 
ljrougl) 
 
FLYING THROUGH FLAMES 
 
 "POOREST fires had been raging in the moun 
 tains for more than a month. The pas 
 sengers were peering from the car-windows, 
 watching the red lights leap from tree to tree, 
 leaving the erstwhile green-garbed hills a bleak 
 and blackened waste. 
 
 The travelling passenger agent had held the 
 maiden from Normal out on the rear platform 
 all the way up the mountain, soothing her fears, 
 and showing her the sights and scenes along 
 the line. "Over there," he said, "is the 
 sunny San Luis Valley, and those high hills 
 that snowy range when seen in the golden 
 glow of sunset was called by the Spaniards 
 Sangre de Cristo, the blood of Christ. Far 
 ther to the south and a little west is the great 
 silver camp of Creede, where it is always after 
 noon. 
 
 " Looking far down the vale you can see the 
 5 
 
66 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 moon-kissed crest of the Spanish range, below 
 whose lofty peaks the archaic cliff-dwellers had 
 their homes. Here to the north, where you 
 see the fire flying from the throbbing throat of 
 a locomotive, is the line that leads to Lead- 
 ville, whose wondrous wealth is known to all 
 the English-speaking people ; yes, even as far 
 south as Texas they have come to talk of Lead- 
 ville and the mines. 
 
 " Now we have reached the crest of the con 
 tinent, where " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I have seen it ! " chimed in the 
 maiden. " It s by Ernest Ingersoll, is it not? " 
 
 "No," he replied, "this one is by the 
 Builder of the universe, and, as I was about to 
 say, the water flows this way to the Atlantic, 
 and that way to the Pacific Ocean." 
 
 " Why, how very, very funny," said the 
 " schoolmarm ; " but the railroad man has 
 never been able to see where the laugh came 
 in. He was making no attempt to be funny ; 
 and, turning the tourist over to the porter, after 
 assuring her, for the one-hundredth time, that 
 accidents were never heard of on Marshall 
 Pass, he said good-night. 
 
FLYING THROUGH FLAMES 67 
 
 The conductor came out from the smoky 
 station, lifted his white light a time or two, the 
 big bell sounded, and the long train began to 
 find and wind its way over the smooth steel 
 track that should lead from the hoary heights 
 to the verdant vale. And the gentle curves 
 made cradles of the cars, and the happy maiden 
 in high Five dreamed she was at home in her 
 hammock, while the man of the road went 
 peacefully to sleep in upper Six, feeling that 
 he had shown all the wonders of the West 
 to at least one passenger in that train-load of 
 people. 
 
 The engineer reached for the rope, and the 
 long, low "toooo toooo-too toot " went out 
 upon the midnight air ; and the women folks 
 whispered a little prayer for the weary watcher 
 in the engine cab, placed their precious lives 
 in his left hand, and went to sleep again. 
 The long train creaked and cracked on the 
 sharp corners, and as the last echo of the 
 steam-whistle died away in the distant hills, 
 slid swiftly from the short tangent, and was 
 swallowed up by a snowshed. 
 
 At that moment the fire leaped from a clump 
 
68 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 of pinions, and the sun-dried snowshed flashed 
 aflame like a bunch of grass in a prairie fire. 
 
 It had required the united efforts of three 
 locomotives to haul the train up the hill, and 
 the engineer knew that to stop was to perish in 
 the fire, as he was utterly unable to back out of 
 the burning building. 
 
 That is why it appeared to the passengers 
 that all at once every tie that bound this 
 human-burdened train to the track parted, and 
 the mad train began to fall down the moun 
 tain. Away they went like the wind. On 
 they went through the fiery furnace like a 
 frightened spirit flying from the hearth of hell. 
 The engine-men were almost suffocated in the 
 cab,whlle the paint was peeled from the Pull 
 man cars as a light snow is swallowed by the 
 burning sun on a sandy desert. 
 
 At last the light is gone ; they dash out into 
 the night, out into the pure mountain air ; 
 the brakes are applied, the speed is slackened, 
 the women are still frightened ; but the con 
 ductor assures them that the danger is past. 
 
 Now they can look back and see the burning 
 sheds falling. The " schoolmarm " shudders 
 
FLYING THROUGH FLAMES 
 
 69 
 
 as she climbs back to her berth, and an hour 
 later they are all asleep. At Gunnison they 
 get another locomotive, a fresh crew, and the 
 train winds on toward the Pacific slope. 
 
 The engine is stabled in her stall at the 
 round-house. The driver walks about her, pats 
 her on the neck, and talks to her as he would 
 to a human being : " Well, old girl, we got 
 through, didn r t we? But it was a close call." 
 
 i^M M 
 
 
# ofcel Battle 
 
A NOVEL BATTLE 
 
 ONOW-BUCKING with a pilot plough is 
 dangerous business. However, there is very 
 little of it to do in these days. Now a road 
 that is able to accumulate a snow-drift is 
 able to own a rotary plough or snow excavator. 
 These machines are as large as a coach and as 
 heavy as a locomotive. The front end is funnel- 
 shaped ; and instead of throwing the snow away 
 it swallows it, and then spurts it out in a great 
 stream like water from a hose at a fire. Inside 
 the house, or car, there is a boiler as large as 
 a locomotive boiler, with two big cylinders to 
 furnish power to revolve a wheel in the funnel- 
 shaped front end. This wheel is like the wheel 
 of a windmill, except that the fans or blades are 
 made of steel and are quite sharp. As the 
 plough is driven through the drifted snow by a 
 
74 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 locomotive, sometimes by two or three of 
 them, the rapidly revolving wheel slices the 
 snow from the hard bank, draws it into the 
 steel chest, where the same rotary motion drives 
 it out through a sheet-iron spout. 
 
 Once at Alpine Pass, on a summer branch of 
 the Union Pacific, I saw one of these machines 
 working in six feet of snow that had been 
 there six months, and was so hard that men 
 walked over it without snowshoes. It was about 
 the middle of May; the weather was almost 
 warm at midday, but freezing at night. A 
 number of railroad and newspaper men had 
 gone up there, eleven thousand feet above the 
 sea, to witness a battle between two rival exca 
 vators. The trial was an exciting one, and 
 lasted three days. Master Mechanic Egan, 
 whose guest I was, was director-general, and a 
 very impartial director, I thought. The two 
 machines were very similar in appearance ; but 
 instead of a wheel with knives, one had a great 
 auger in front, the purpose of which was to 
 bore into the snow-drift and draw the snow into 
 the machine, as the chips are drawn from an 
 auger hole by the revolving of the screw. The 
 
A NOVEL BATTLE 75 
 
 discharging apparatus was similar in the two, 
 and like that already described. 
 
 There was a formidable array of rolling stock 
 on the two sidings at the foot of the mountain 
 where we had our car and where we camped 
 nights. On one side track stands one of the 
 machines, with three engines behind her ; on 
 another, the other, with the same number of 
 locomotives. You could tell the men of the 
 one from those of the other, for the two armies 
 dwelt apart, just as the Denver police kept clear 
 of the State militia in Governor Wake s war. 
 
 It was perfecd^_jnatural for the men on the 
 different machines to be loyal to their respec 
 tive employers, and a little bit jealous of the 
 rival crew ; but I was surprised to see how 
 quickly that feeling extended to the crews of 
 the half-dozen locomotives, all working for the 
 same railroad company, and in no way interested 
 in the outcome. 
 
 On the morning of the first day of the trial, 
 when the six engines came down the track 
 from the coal-yards, a trainman stood at the 
 three-throw switch, and gave a locomotive to 
 each of the two machines alternately. They 
 
76 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 all knew where they belonged, and they kept 
 the same place, each of them, until the battle 
 was over. 
 
 There was no betting, but there was a dis 
 tinct "favorite" from the start; and when the 
 iron horses were all hooked up, the men on the 
 " favorite " began, good-naturedly enough, to 
 "josh" the other crew. 
 
 Mr. Egan decided that one of the machines 
 should go forward ; and when it stuck, stalled, 
 or stopped, for any reason, it should at once 
 back down, take the siding, and give the other 
 a chance. 
 
 It was nearly noon when the railway officers 
 and pencil-pushers climbed to the storm deck 
 of the first machine, and the commander gave 
 a signal to start. The whistle " off brakes " 
 was answered by the six locomotives, and the 
 little engine that brought up the rear with the 
 special train. The hungry machine gathered 
 up the light drifts which we encountered in the 
 first few miles, and breathed them out over the 
 tops of the telegraph-poles. At a sharp curve, 
 where there was a deep drift, the snow plough 
 left the track, and we were forced to stop and 
 
A NOVEL BATTLE 77 
 
 back out. The engineers looked sullen as they 
 backed down to let the other crew pass, and 
 the fresh men laughed at them. The snow was 
 lighter now, so that instead of boring into it, 
 the second plough only pushed it and piled 
 it up in front of her, until the whole house was 
 buried, when she chocked up and lay down. 
 Now the frowns were transferred to the faces of 
 the second crew, and the smiles to the other. 
 
 For two days we see -sawed in this way, and 
 every hour the men grew more sullen. The 
 mad locomotives seemed to enter into the spirit 
 of the fight ; at least, it was easy to imagine that 
 they did, as they snorted, puffed, and panted in 
 the great drifts. Ah, t was a goodly sight to 
 see them, each sending an endless stream of 
 black smoke to the very heavens, and to hear 
 them scream to one another when about to 
 stall, and to note with what reluctance they 
 returned to the side-track. 
 
 In the little town at the foot of the hill the 
 rival crews camped at separate boarding-houses. 
 This was fortunate, for it would not have been 
 safe for them to live together. Even the 
 engine-men by the end of the second day were 
 
7 8 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 hardly on speaking terms. Bob Stoute said 
 that somebody had remarked that the 265 
 would n t make steam enough to ring the bell. 
 He did not know who had said it, but he did 
 know that he could lick him. After supper 
 that evening, when the " scrappy " engineer 
 came out of Red Woods saloon, he broadened 
 the statement so as to include " any Rotary 
 man on the job, see?" 
 
 When we went into the field on the morning 
 of the third day, not more than seven miles of 
 snow remained between us and the mouth of 
 the Alpine tunnel, where the race would end, 
 for the tunnel was full of snow. All the fore 
 noon the hot engines steamed and snorted and 
 banged away at the great sea of snow that grew 
 deeper and harder as we climbed. The track 
 was so crooked that the ploughs were off the 
 rail half the time ; so that when we stopped for 
 luncheon we had made less than three miles. 
 
 The least-promising of the two machines was 
 out first after dinner; and as the snow was 
 harder up here, she bid fair to win great credit. 
 She rounded the last of the sharp curves that 
 had given us so much trouble successfully. 
 
A NOVEL BATTLE 79 
 
 But as the snow grew deeper she smothered, 
 choked up, and stalled. Then even her friends 
 had to admit that, " she was not quite right," 
 and tne engine-men looked blacker than ever 
 as they backed down and took the siding. 
 
 Up came the rival, every engine blowing off 
 steam, the three firemen at the furnace-doors, 
 the engineers smiling, and eager for the fray. 
 As she turned into the tangent where the other 
 had stalled, the leading locomotive screamed 
 " off brakes," and every throttle flew wide open. 
 Down, down went the reverse levers, until every 
 engine in the train was working at her full 
 capacity. While waiting in the siding, the en 
 gineers had screwed their " pops," or relief 
 valves, down so that each of the engines carried 
 twenty pounds more steam than usual. There 
 were no drifts now, but the hard snow lay level 
 six feet deep. The track was as good as 
 straight, just one long curve; and the pilots 
 would touch timber line at the mouth of the 
 tunnel. The road here lay along the side of 
 the mountain through a heavy growth of ,pine. 
 The snow was granulated, and consequently 
 very heavy. By the time they had gone a 
 
80 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 hundred yards, a great stream of snow was flow 
 ing from the spout out over the telegraph 
 wires, over the tops of the tall spruces and 
 pines, crashing down through their branches 
 until the white beneath them was covered with 
 a green carpet of tree-twigs. On and on, up 
 and up, the monster moguls pushed the plough. 
 Higher and higher rose the black smoke ; and 
 when the smoke and the snow came between 
 the spectators and the sun, which was just now 
 sinking behind the hill, the effect was marvel 
 lously beautiful. Still, on they went through the 
 stainless waste, nor stopped nor stalled until 
 the snow plough touched the tunnel-shed. 
 
 The commander gave a signal to " back up ; " 
 and with faces wreathed in smiles, and with 
 their machine covered with cinders, snow, and 
 glory, the little army drifted down the hill. 
 The three days fight was at an end, and the 
 Rotary was the victor. 
 
 But I started to write about pilot ploughs and 
 old-time snow- bucking, when we used to take 
 out an extra insurance policy and say good-by 
 to our friends when we signed the call-book. 
 On a mountain division of a Western road, 
 
A NOVEL BATTLE 8 1 
 
 some ten years ago, I had my first experience 
 in snow-bucking. For twenty-four hours a 
 pilot-plough and flanger had been racing over 
 the thirty miles of mountain, up one side and 
 down the other. As often as they reached the 
 foot of the hill they received orders to " double 
 the road." 
 
 It was Sunday afternoon when the caller came 
 for me. Another engine had been ordered out 
 to help push the snow-plough through the great 
 drifts, that were getting deeper and deeper 
 every hour. Ten miles out from the division 
 station, at the foot of the mountain proper, we 
 side-tracked to wait the return of the snow- 
 plough. 
 
 The hours went by, the night wasted away. 
 Monday dawned, and no news of the snow 
 brigade. All we could learn at the telegraph 
 office was that they were somewhere between 
 Shawano and the top of the hill, presumably 
 stuck in the snow. All day and all night they 
 worked and puffed, pushed and panted, but 
 to no purpose. Now, when they gave up all 
 hope of getting through, they attempted to 
 back down ; but that was equally impossible. 
 6 
 
82 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 The heavy drifts in the deep cuts were not 
 to be bucked away with the rear end of an 
 engine. 
 
 Tuesday came, and found us still watching 
 and waiting for the snow plough. Other engines 
 came up from the division station with a work 
 train, and a great army of trackmen with wide 
 shovels. A number of railroad officers came, 
 and everybody shovelled. We had no plough 
 on our side of the hill, and had to buck with 
 naked engines. First we tried one, then two? 
 then three coupled together. The shovellers 
 would clear off a few hundred yards of track, 
 over which we would drive at full speed. As 
 our engine came in contact with a great drift, 
 all the way from eight to eighteen feet deep, 
 she would tremble and shake as though she was 
 about to be crushed to pieces. 
 
 Often when we came to a stop only the top 
 of the stack of the front engine was visible. 
 The front windows of the cabs were all boarded 
 up to prevent the glass from being smashed. 
 For three or four days the track was kept clear 
 behind us, so that we could back out and tie 
 up at night where there was coal and water. 
 
A NOVEL BATTLE 83 
 
 All this time the snow kept coming down, day 
 and night, until the only sign of a railroad 
 across the range was the tops of the telegraph 
 poles. Toward the last of the week we en 
 countered a terrific storm, almost a blizzard. 
 This closed the trail behind us, and that night 
 we were forced to camp on the mountain side. 
 We had an abundance of coal, but the water 
 in the tanks was very low; but by shovelling 
 snow into them when we were stuck in the 
 deep drifts, we managed to keep them wet. 
 
 For three or four days sometimes in the 
 dead hours of the night we had heard a 
 mournful whistle away up on the mountain 
 side, crying in the waste like a lost sheep. 
 This was a light engine, as we learned after 
 ward, that had started down the hill, but got 
 stuck in the storm. For four days and nights 
 the crews were imprisoned in the drifts. They 
 had only a few pieces of hard bread, which 
 they soaked in snow water and ate. More than 
 once during the fourth day they had looked 
 into the tallow bucket, and wondered if they 
 could eat the tallow. 
 
 On Sunday morning, just a week from the 
 
84 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 day on which I had signed the call- book, the 
 sun shone clear and bright. The crew with 
 the big pilot plough had reached the summit ; 
 and now a new danger confronted the lone 
 engine, whose cry had gone out in the night 
 like the wail of a lost soul. The big plough was 
 coming down the hill with two locomotives 
 behind her ; and if this crew remained on the 
 main line, they would be scooped into eternity. 
 When the storm cleared away, they found that 
 they were within a few feet of the switch target. 
 If they could shovel out the snow and throw 
 the switch, it would let them on to a spur. 
 Hungry and weak as they were, they began 
 with the fireman s scoop to clear the switch and 
 shovel away from the wheels so that the engine 
 could start herself. All the time they could 
 hear the whistles of the three engines, now 
 whistling down brakes, back up, and go ahead, 
 as they hammered away at the deep drifts. 
 At last the switch was forced open, the engine 
 was in to clear ; but not a moment too soon, 
 for now came the great plough fairly falling 
 down the mountain, sending a shower of snow 
 over the lone engine on the spur. 
 
A NOVEL BATTLE 85 
 
 We, too, had heard and seen them coming, 
 and had found a safe siding. When the three 
 half-starved and almost desperate engineers 
 came to the clear track we had made, the great 
 engines, till now held in check by the heavy 
 snow, bounded forward down the steep grade 
 at a rate that made us sick at heart. Each of 
 the locomotives on the side track whistled ; but 
 the wheels were covered with ice and snow, 
 and when they reversed their engines they 
 seemed to slide as fast. Fortunately, at the 
 next curve, there was a heavy drift, so deep 
 that the snow-train drove right through it, 
 making a complete tunnel arched over with 
 snow. Thus, after eight days, the road was 
 opened, and eight sections of the passenger 
 train came slowly and carefully down the moun 
 tain and passed under the arch. 
 
an <cean 
 
ON BOARD AN OCEAN FLYER. 
 
 A T midnight seventy-two fires were lighted 
 "^ under the nine big boilers of the " Bis 
 marck," and shortly after a cloud of yellow 
 smoke, rolling from the huge stacks, was float 
 ing over the bosom of the bay. 
 
 In their various homes and hotels a thousand 
 prospective travellers slept and dreamed of their 
 voyage on the morrow. 
 
 By daybreak the water evaporating into steam 
 fluttered through the indicators, and as early as 
 6 A. M. people were seen collecting about the 
 docks, while a fussy little hoisting engine worked 
 away, lifting freight from the pier. At seven a 
 few eager passengers came to the ship s side, 
 anxiously inspecting her, and an hour later were 
 going aboard. 
 
 Officers in uniform paced the decks, guarded 
 the gangways to keep intruders back, and others 
 of the crew, in citizens clothes, mingled freely 
 
TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 in the crowd, having a sharp eye for suspicious 
 characters. 
 
 Finally, the steam-gauge pointer advances to 
 the hundred mark. Noise and confusion wax 
 wilder. The ship s crew is busy, from captain 
 to meanest sailor, until at ten o clock, thirty 
 minutes before sailing, the sound of hurrying 
 feet is lost in a deafening hum of human voices. 
 All visitors are now refused admittance, except 
 perhaps a messenger with belated letters, pack 
 ages, or flowers for people on board. 
 
 The little hoister fairly flies about in a heroic 
 effort to lift everything that is loose at one end 
 and store it away in the ship s hold. The pier 
 is invisible, buried beneath a multitude of peer 
 ing people. 
 
 All being ready, the captain is notified, and 
 at his signal the first engineer pulls the lever 
 and starts the little engine whose work it is to 
 open the throttle, the steam shoots out from 
 the big boilers into the great cylinders, screws 
 begin to revolve, and the ocean-liner, with one 
 thousand passengers, two thousand tons of coal, 
 and three thousand pounds of ice cream, leaves 
 the landing. 
 
ON BOARD AN OCEAN FLYER 91 
 
 Hundreds of handkerchiefs flutter, and hun 
 dreds of people say good-bye, with eager, up 
 turned faces that try to smile through tears. 
 Some are sad with the pain of parting, while 
 others, like Byron, are sad " because they leave 
 behind no thing that claims a tear." 
 
 Thirty-six stokers take their places before the 
 furnace-doors, each with two fire-boxes to feed. 
 There are three stoke-holes, twelve men in each, 
 and twelve buckets of cold water, with a bottle 
 of red wine in every bucket. As the speed in 
 creases, the great ship begins to rise and fall ; 
 not with the swell of the sea, for there is no 
 swell and no sea, but with her own powerful 
 exertion. 
 
 When the ventilators catch the ocean breeze 
 and begin to drink in the salt air, there is rejoi 
 cing in the stoke-room. Unfortunately for the 
 stokers, the increased draught increases also the 
 appetite of the furnaces, that seem famishing for 
 fuel. 
 
 After four hours in the heat, semi-darkness, 
 and dust of the furnace-room, the stokers come 
 out, and fresh men with fresh bottles take their 
 places. Gradually the speed of the boat in- 
 
92 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 creases. The fires are fanned by the ever- 
 increasing breeze, the furnaces fairly roar, and 
 the second shift work harder than the first. 
 
 If there is no wind, instead of allowing the 
 stokers to drop dead, the engineer on watch 
 simply turns a lever and starts the twelve large 
 steam fans, and saves the firemen just before 
 the bone buttons are melted from their overalls. 
 
 The steamship stoker is inferior mentally to 
 the locomotive fireman, but physically he is the 
 better man. The amount of skill required to 
 stoke is nothing compared to that of firing a 
 railway engine. The locomotive fireman must 
 use his own judgment at all times as to how, 
 when, and where to put in a fire. The ocean 
 stoker simply waits for a whistle from the gang- 
 boss, when he opens his furnace-door, hooks, 
 rakes, and replenishes his fire, and at another 
 signal closes the doors, the same whistle being 
 a signal to his brother stoker at the other end 
 of the boiler to fix his fire. 
 
 The white glare of the furnaces when the 
 fires are being raked is so intense that the place 
 seems dark when the doors are closed. And 
 through that darkness comes the noise of the 
 
ON BOARD AN OCEAN FLYER 93 
 
 rattling clinker-hooks, the roar of the fires, the 
 squeak of the steering- engine, and the awful 
 sound of the billows breaking on the ship. 
 Once above all this din I heard a stoker sing : 
 
 " Oh, what care we, 
 When on the sea, 
 
 For weather fair or fine ? 
 For toil we must 
 In smoke and dust 
 
 Below the water-line." 
 
 Then came the sharp whistle, and the song 
 was cut short as the stoker bent to his work, 
 and again the twenty- four furnaces threw their 
 blinding glare into our faces. 
 
 With all the apparatus for cooling the stoke- 
 room, it is still a first-class submarine hell. 
 
 One night, when the sea was wicked, rolling 
 high and fast from the banks of Newfoundland ; 
 when the mast swung to and fro like a great 
 pendulum upside down, I climbed down to the 
 engine-room. When the ship shot downward 
 and the screws went out of the water, the mighty 
 engines flew like dynamos, making the huge 
 boat with her hundreds of tons tremble till the 
 screws went down into the water again. 
 
 In the stoke-rooms the boilers lie crosswise 
 
94 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 of the ship ; so when she rolls it is with the 
 greatest difficulty that the stoker prevents him 
 self from being shot head first into one of the 
 furnaces. Here I watched these grim toilers 
 this wild night, and it seemed the more she 
 rolled, pitched, and plunged, the more furiously 
 they fed the furnaces. What with the speed of 
 the ship and the speed of the wind, the draught 
 was terrific, and the fire boxes seemed capable 
 of consuming any amount of coal that could be 
 thrown into their red throats. Though abso 
 lutely safe, the stoke-room on a night like this 
 is an awful place for one unused to such scenes ; 
 so terrible that a young German, working his 
 way from New York to Hamburg, was driven 
 insane. 
 
 As the sea began to break heavily on the 
 sides of the boat and make her rock like a frail 
 leaf in an autumn wind, the man was seen to 
 try to make his escape from the stoke-hole. 
 For an hour he worked in the same nervous 
 way, always looking for a chance of escape. 
 At last the ship gave a roll that caused the 
 furnace-door to fly open, and with the yell of a 
 demon the green stoker sprang up the steps 
 
ON BOARD AN OCEAN FLYER 95 
 
 leading to the engine-rooms. Here one of the 
 engineers, seeing the man was insane, blocked 
 the way. The poor fellow paused for a moment, 
 and stood shaking like an aspen, while the cold 
 perspiration rolled down his face. Two or three 
 men tried to hold him, but, without the slight 
 est effort, apparently, he cast them off, and, 
 running out on the steerage deck, jumped into 
 the sea. 
 
 All through the night, above the roar of the 
 ocean, at regular intervals, came the sharp 
 whistle of the head stoker, and at longer inter 
 vals the cry from above: "All s well." On 
 Sunday morning when we awoke, the waves still 
 washing up the steerage deck and the great 
 ship rolling from side to side, we could hear 
 from the stoke-room the same shrill whistle, and 
 the same cry outside of "All s well." Then, 
 like a flood of sunlight, came the sweet strains 
 of the anthem, which the band always plays on 
 Sunday mornings ; and again the sea came up 
 and closed our windows and shut out the light 
 of day, and the sound of the sea drowned all 
 other sounds, and seemed to suggest " Nearer 
 My God To Thee." The waves rolled back, 
 
96 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 the sun shone in through the window, and the 
 hymn was heard again. 
 
 When the reckoning was taken, we were all 
 surprised to learn that on such a tempestuous 
 sea this wonderful ship had made a mile more 
 than on the previous day on a summer sea. 
 
 " Look away," said the captain, as we passed 
 an ocean steamer that seemed to be standing 
 still. 
 
 "Is she at anchor? " I asked. 
 
 " No," said the captain, " she *s making twelve 
 knots an hour ; and only a few years ago she 
 was one of the ocean greyhounds." 
 
 Within the last decade the time between 
 New York and Southampton has been reduced 
 by nearly two days ; but those who look for a 
 like reduction within the next ten years will 
 surely be disappointed. The Lucania, with 
 thirty thousand horse-power, is able to make 
 only a little over a mile an hour more than 
 the Fiirst Bismarck, with sixteen thousand. If 
 by nearly doubling the horse-power, and with 
 twenty-five per cent more firemen, we can 
 shorten the time but half a day, then indeed 
 does the problem become a difficult one. 
 
ON BOARD AN OCEAN FLYER 97 
 
 The Fiirst Bismarck is 502 feet long, 27 feet 
 wide, and 60 feet deep, from her hurricane deck 
 to her keel. There are nine huge boilers, 15 
 feet 7 inches in diameter, and 19 feet long. It 
 requires 130 stokers and trimmers, and 300 tons 
 of coal a day to keep them hot. They boil 
 down 100 tons of water every 24 hours. There 
 are, all told, 55 engines on board the ship. 
 The steam that drives the boat passes through 
 three pairs of cylinders. The first are 43 inches 
 in diameter, and work at a pressure equal to 
 eleven atmospheres. The next, 67 inches, 
 working at four atmospheres. The third are 
 the low pressure cylinders, 106 inches in diam 
 eter, with one atmosphere pressure, and a 
 vacuum equal in working power to an atmos 
 phere. 
 
 There are two main shafts, one to each screw, 
 or propeller, 20 inches in diameter, each 142 
 feet long, and weighing a ton for every foot of 
 steel. 
 
 There are twelve engineers and twelve assis 
 tants. Over all these men there is a chief engi 
 neer, whose duties are similar to those of a master 
 mechanic on a railway. His office is a little 
 7 
 
98 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 palace, finished in beautiful Hungarian ash, 
 supplied with easy-chairs and soft couches. 
 There is an indicator which shows at all times 
 the pressure under which the various engines 
 are working and the speed of the boat. 
 
 When we were ready to go below, the chief 
 engineer pressed a button, which, he explained 
 to us, was a signal to the engineer in charge to 
 open the doors and allow us to pass from one 
 room to another ; for there are water-tight doors 
 between the engines. There are in all thirteen 
 air-tight compartments, so that if a man-of-war 
 were to stave a hole in one side of the Bismarck, 
 that compartment would simply fill with water, 
 but would do no serious damage. In fact, a 
 half-dozen holes might be stove in, and she 
 would continue to ride the waves. 
 
 If the Bismarck were to strike a rock and 
 cave in six feet of her bottom or keel, a solid 
 plate or false bottom would then be reached 
 that would stand almost any pressure. 
 
 When a boat with a single propeller loses her 
 steering apparatus, she is in great danger ; but 
 with a twin screw ship there is absolutely no 
 danger. By simply reversing one screw, the 
 
ON BOARD AN OCEAN FLYER 99 
 
 ship may be steered as a row-boat is guided, by 
 holding one oar still, and moving the other. 
 
 The electric-light plant alone is of interest. 
 There are four dynamos, and they supply a cur 
 rent for eighteen hundred lamps. In addition 
 to the lamps in the saloons and state-rooms, all 
 the signal-lights are electric, as well as the lights 
 used in the steerage and in the supply rooms. 
 
 The chief steward has been with the com 
 pany twenty- seven years, and will probably 
 be there as long as he cares to remain. There 
 are eighty-four other stewards, who report di 
 rectly or indirectly to him. The passengers 
 are divided into three classes, first cabin, 
 second cabin, and steerage ; so that three sep 
 arate and complete kitchens and dining-rooms 
 are kept up. The food furnished for the steer 
 age passengers is better than one would expect 
 when we consider that the company carries 
 them from New York to Hamburg and keeps 
 them on board seven days for $10. 
 
 The food and service in the second cabin are 
 better than at the average $3 a day American 
 hotel. In the first cabin saloon they are per 
 fect. The stewards file in in regular order, and 
 
IOO TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 when a change is made they all march out, 
 keeping time to the band, and making, with 
 their neat uniforms and snow-white gloves, a 
 goodly sight to see. 
 
 Each table has its own table steward, and at 
 the elbow of each passenger stands a white- 
 gloved under-steward who seems capable of 
 anticipating your very thoughts. If a drop of 
 coffee is spilled over your cup before you 
 have time to realize it yourself both cup and 
 saucer are exchanged for one in perfect trim. 
 
 The regular dinner consists of from seven to 
 ten courses, and is fit for the Emperor. The 
 wines and ales are excellent, and are forty per 
 cent cheaper than in New York. 
 
 In addition to the regular meals, at eight 
 o clock every evening they serve tea in the main 
 saloon to all who care to indulge in that stimu 
 lant. After that, at nine o clock, the band 
 gives a concert in the second cabin saloon, 
 which is always attended by many of the first 
 cabin passengers. There, the people sit about 
 the tables and eat the daintiest little sand 
 wiches, and some of them drink the delightful 
 Hamburg beer, while the band plays. 
 
ON BOARD AN OCE^N FLYER TO I 
 
 If you are ill and remain in your berth, the 
 room steward will call a half-dozen times a day 
 to ask you what you want to eat. If you 
 remain on deck, the deck steward will bring you 
 an excellent dinner without any extra charge. 
 
 It was the day after the rough sea when we 
 were shown through the steerage ; the women 
 and children were still huddled in their gloomy 
 bunk-rooms, recovering slowly from the sea 
 sickness of the previous day. 
 
 Cheerless as their surroundings were, they 
 had the satisfaction of knowing that the count 
 ess at the top was as sick, when she was sick, 
 as they. 
 
 Forward, where the ship s side walls are close 
 together, the sailors sleep. Here, when the 
 sea is rough, one may experience the sensation 
 of riding in the elevator of a sixteen story 
 building, and, as the bow descends, the sensa 
 tion of falling. The occupants of this rough 
 quarter are a rough-looking lot, but apparently 
 as happy as cowboys. Every sailor has his 
 regular ration of rum, while the stokers, in 
 addition to the red wine they have in the stoke 
 room, have kiimmel four times a day. 
 
102 TALES OF A N ENGINEER 
 
 Just back of the sailors are the stores. In 
 the cold room, where the meats are kept, all 
 the pipes are covered with frost. The large 
 ships all have ice -machines, and make their own 
 ice. There are also two large evaporators, so 
 that if the supply of drinking water should 
 become unfit for use, drinking water could be 
 made from the sea. The same evaporators 
 could easily supply water in the same way for 
 the boilers, should the supply run short. 
 
 Two things I should like to change : the tons 
 of wholesome food, delicious meats, and delicate 
 sweets that are carried from the tables and 
 thrown into the sea, I would give to the poor 
 steeragers. Every day at dinner, when the 
 lamps made the saloon a glare of light, I could 
 see these poor people peeping in at the windows, 
 where the tables were freighted with good things, 
 and it made me sad. Sometimes a mother would 
 hold her poor, pinch-faced baby up to the win 
 dow; and I could not help wondering what 
 answer that mother would make if the baby 
 were to ask why they did n t go in and eat. 
 
 After making the steerage happy, I should 
 like to rig a governor to the main shafts, so 
 
ON BOARD AN OCEAN FLYER 103 
 
 that the screws would not " cut up " so when 
 out of water. I mentioned this to Mr. Jones. 
 He looked at me steadily for a moment, then, 
 as he allowed his head to dip slightly to the 
 starboard, a sunny smile broke over his kindly 
 face, and he replied, "Well, somebody has 
 tried that already." 
 
an 
 
ON AN IRON STEED 
 
 TTUNDREDS of hansom cabs, countless car 
 riages, and myriads of omnibuses came 
 out of the fog and filled the ample grounds in 
 front of Victoria Station. A solid stream of 
 men, women, and children was pouring in at 
 the gates to the platforms where the trains 
 stand. Long lines of people were waiting in 
 front of the windows in the booking office. 
 Trunks, bags, and boxes fairly rained into the 
 luggage-room ; but the porters (short, stout fel 
 lows) picked them up and bore them away, as 
 red ants run away with crumbs at a picnic. 
 
 To the train, titled people came in carriages, 
 behind splendid horses, with coachmen in high 
 hats, and footmen in yellow trousers. American 
 millionnaires came also in coaches and tally-hos, 
 and mingled with the plain English nobility. 
 
 You can tell the American women by their 
 smart dresses, and the English by their heavy 
 
108 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 boots, red cheeks, and heaps of hair. You can 
 tell the London swell from the New Yorker, for 
 tliere is something the matter with one of his 
 eyes. And you can pick out the duke and the 
 lord, for they are, in most cases, plain and 
 modest men. There is a noticeable absence of 
 poor people ; for the train is not going to the 
 hop-fields of Kent, but to Paris and the Riviera. 
 The American representative of the London, 
 Chatham, and Dover Railway, in a shining silk 
 hat, a snow-white cravat, and blood-red bou- 
 tonniere, and the station-master, are busy assign 
 ing small parties of Americans to compartments, 
 and larger parties to saloons. The Englishman 
 travelling in his native land makes little trouble 
 for any one. He usually has his luggage aboard 
 and his porter dismissed with a scowl and a 
 threepence, while the foreigner with a smile 
 and a shilling awaits his turn. All the English 
 man asks is to be let alone ; and surely that is 
 not too much. 
 
 The faded carriages that stretch away in a 
 long line towards the locomotive look singularly 
 small to those who are accustomed to seeing 
 the heavy trains of America. 
 
ON AN IRON STEED 109 
 
 And now we come to the locomotive. The 
 stoker touched his cap when I stepped aboard, 
 and I noticed that he did this every time he 
 addressed me. If I asked a simple question 
 he invariably touched his cap before he an 
 swered. 
 
 The absence of a pilot, or "cow-catcher," as 
 it is sometimes called, makes the English loco 
 motive look awkward and unfinished to an 
 American. There are no cylinders, cross-heads, 
 or main rods in sight, and at a first glance she 
 reminds one of a well-made stationary engine. 
 Even her beautiful high wheels are half covered 
 with steel. Like a well-dressed Englishman, 
 the English locomotive looks best from her 
 knees up. 
 
 Above her running-board she is scrupulously 
 clean, bright, and interesting. But even here 
 
 she has a vacant look. There is but one steam 
 *Q 
 
 dome and no sand box or bell ; she looks as 
 
 though she had been driven under a low bridge 
 and had her back swept bare, and then had 
 nothing rebuilt but one dome and the stack. 
 
 In the cab, where ought to be comfortable 
 seats for the driver and stoker, there are high 
 
IIO TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 boxes that come nearly to the window sills. 
 No matter how long he remains on duty, the 
 driver must stand up ; nor has the stoker, who 
 in descending a long bank might get a mo 
 ment s rest, any place to sit, but must stand 
 the whole way on his weary feet. This is 
 simply disgraceful. The precious lives.. oL 
 
 sands of people are placed in the hands of the 
 engine-driver, and yet no thought is given to 
 his comfort. I read, with considerable amuse 
 ment, an article in an English journal urging 
 the Board of Trade to provide medals as a 
 reward to engine-drivers " for duty ably done." 
 I would suggest better wages, and seats in cabs. 
 Medals are all right as a mark, but even 
 titles are no good when we are dead. Think 
 of a man spending years in learning a trade, 
 and then doubling the road between London 
 and Dover, a hundred and sixty miles, for seven 
 shillings, $1.75, or ninety miles for a dollar," 
 just $3 less than an engineer gets for cover 
 ing the same distance on a mountain road in 
 the United States. The risk is about the same, 
 for an English driver runs four times as fast as 
 the mountaineer. 
 
ON AN IRON STEED III 
 
 Out through the ragged edge of London, 
 over the Thames, and down the rail our steel 
 steed whirled us at a rapid rate. The English 
 driver does not run "with his hand on the 
 
 throttle, and his eye on the road," as we are 
 wont to picture a locomotive engineer ; for the 
 throttle is at the top of the boiler head, and 
 
 t* ^^-- .^^*^** "******** ** "^ *""**^* n^^ * 1 ^^^*^ m " * J ^** 
 
 must be sought out by the driver before he can 
 shut off steam, no matter how great the emer 
 gency. It does not require a practised rail 
 roader to understand that if the driver had his 
 hand on the lever, he could shut off without 
 taking his eyes from the rail, and in less than 
 a quarter of a second. 
 
 Five miles out we stopped at a small station, 
 and picked up four more carriages. Our train 
 was equipped with the matchless " Westing- 
 house " air-brakes ; and they do the work de 
 lightfully on these light cars. So perfectly were 
 they adjusted, and so smoothly did the quiet 
 old seven-shilling-a-day driver apply them, that 
 the train came o a dead stop with as little jolt 
 as would attend the stopping of a baby carriage. 
 
 Already I had learned to like our locomotive ; 
 but when we got a signal to go, and the driver 
 
112 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 gave her steam, the fifteen carriages refused to 
 start. Here I witnessed, for the second time 
 " \p in my life, the working of the slowest, clumsiest 
 piece of machinery in use to-day in any civilized 
 country, the " reversing wheel." I had seen 
 it once before, when the London and North- 
 Western s prize engine was leaving Chicago. 
 When the locomotive fails to start her train, it 
 is always necessary to reverse her to get what 
 there is of slack between the cars. In this way 
 the engine starts a car at a time, so that by the 
 time the last car is started, the locomotive has 
 made a quarter of a turn or more, and the front 
 part of the train is in motion. With a quick- 
 working reverse lever this is accomplished 
 easily ; but with a wheel that must be given 
 from seven to eleven revolutions to reverse the 
 machinery, the process is painfully slow, with 
 out the saving grace of being sure. As the 
 wheel revolves, the locomotive creeps forward, 
 stealing the slack from car after car, so that 
 by the time the machinery is in the forward 
 motion the slack is gone, and you are just 
 where you were before you began to reverse. 
 There was a serious collision on the Great 
 
ON AN IRON STEED 
 
 IT 3 
 
 Northern not long ago ; a double-head express 
 train dashed into a goods train that was being 
 shunted ; and if the locomotive had " wheels," 
 the wonder is that more people were not killed. 
 From Herne Hill, where we got the last four 
 carnages, it is seventy-five miles to Dover ; and 
 we were to make the run without a stop. Just 
 about the time our steed got them going, she 
 dashed into a tunnel half a mile long. The 
 great drivers hammering the rails, and the 
 rattle of the carriages, made a deafening roar, 
 and, to add to the torture, the driver pulled the 
 
 iA 
 
 whistle. The English locomotive whistle is 
 the^shrillest, sharpest, most ear-splitting in- . 
 
 strnmpnt nf tnrtnrp pver Vipnrrl Tt i<5 aHrmf- 
 
 ,jV> 
 
 s v trument of torture ever heard. It is about 
 as musical as a Chinese fiddle accompanied 
 by a lawn-mower. 
 
 As the smoke of London began to grow dim 
 in the distance, a beautiful panorama of fields 
 and farms opened up before us. As far as 
 the eye could reach on either side were rolling 
 meadows and brown fields, dotted with thatch- 
 roofed stacks. If the speed slackened as we 
 ascended a long "bank," these rural pictures 
 claimed my attention and made me forget for 
 
114 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 the moment that we were at the front of the 
 Paris express. But when we had reached the 
 summit, and the world began to slip beneath 
 us till the keen air cut our faces, we were made 
 to realize that we were not losing any time. 
 Now we were rolling along the top of a high 
 hill, from whose flat summit we looked down 
 the chimney-pots in the village houses ; and 
 now dashing into a deep cut, where flocks of 
 frightened quail rose up and beat the bank, 
 or, caught by the eddying wind, were dashed 
 against the sides of the flying train, as a man 
 standing near the track and grown dizzy throws 
 himself beneath the wheels. 
 
 A sharp curve throws our train out on the 
 brow of a gentle hill. Below, through a green 
 valley, winds a lazy looking river the Med- 
 way. This is the old town of Rochester, the 
 land of Dickens, and beyond the river stands 
 the old Norman castle. 
 
 And this is what Mr. Jingle said when he 
 saw it : 
 
 " A fine old place a glorious pile frown 
 ing walls tottering arches dark nooks 
 crumbling staircases old cathedral, too 
 
ON AN IRON STEED 115 
 
 earthy smell pilgrims feet wore away the 
 old steps little Saxon doors confessionals, 
 like money- takers boxes at theatres queer 
 customers, those monks popes, and lord treas 
 urers, and all sorts of old fellows with great red 
 faces and broken noses turning up every day 
 buff jerkins, too matchlocks sarcophagus 
 fine place old legends strange stories." 
 
 The red vines that cling to the shoulders 
 of this rare old ruin glow warmly in the autumn 
 sun. Only a flash, and we turn another corner, 
 and the old castle is lost in the dreary blond 
 brick houses of Rochester. Now and then, 
 as the train whirls through the city, the tower 
 ing spires of the cathedral are seen. 
 
 Away, away, the engine flies, and the dull 
 town is left for the sunny fields. We are now 
 entering the great hop fields of Kent, one 
 of the fairest counties in all England, I am 
 told. Ours is not the only locomotive abroad, 
 for almost every moment we can see another 
 train flying across the country, always crossing 
 either above or below our track. Out in the 
 fields are other engines, great awkward machines 
 pulling ploughs, and sometimes trains of wagons, 
 
Il6 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 through village streets. At the end of a long 
 curve, around which we swing at a mile a 
 minute, rise the great spires of the cathedral 
 of Canterbury. 
 
 Here, too, are clinging vines and crumbling 
 walls, old legends and strange stories. Here 
 are stone steps worn away by pilgrims knees, 
 the steps that lead from the musty crypt to 
 Becket s shrine. Here sleep the murdered 
 Bishop and the King. But there is no time 
 to dream, for we are now whirling away towards 
 the water-edge. At last the driver shuts off 
 steam, the stoker washes the deck with a water- 
 hose connected with the injector pipe, and 
 remarks that his work is done. His labor, 
 like his salary, is light ; for although we have 
 been on the road nearly two hours, he has not 
 burned a half-ton of coal. The trains, of 
 course, are light, and that makes light work 
 for the engine-men. It is all down hill now, 
 and we fairly fall through the tunnels and deep 
 cuts, till all at once the " silver streak," as they 
 call it here, is seen ; and this is the end of the 
 first heat. 
 
 Many things bear the name of " the widow 
 
ON AN IRON STEED 1 1 7 
 
 at Windsor," and I was not surprised to find 
 the Victoria rocking restlessly by the dock 
 at Dover. It is surprising to an American to 
 see how quickly fourteen English carriages can 
 be emptied. I should say that in two minutes 
 from the time our train stopped, we were all 
 aboard. In eight minutes the baggage was 
 transferred from the train to the boat, and in 
 ten minutes we were leaving the dock. 
 
 The Channel has not the reputation of being 
 particularly pacific, and this was one of her busy 
 days. In ten minutes after the whistle sounded, 
 the Victoria was capering out towards the 
 coast of France just as an untamed broncho 
 capers with a cowboy across a corral. To the 
 disgrace of the London, Chatham, and Dover 
 Railway Company, she is a side-wheeler. Ex 
 cept the reversing-wheel and the seatless cab 
 of the 117, this is the only disgraceful thing 
 I found on the Dover route. 
 
 There are in the Victoria a number of state 
 rooms, a splendid lounging saloon, a ladies 
 cabin, and a " public house." Better than all 
 these things, there are the ever-ready stewards, 
 who watch the women ; and just at the moment 
 
Il8 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 when life loses its glitter, and the unhappy 
 tourist ceases to care, come quietly, wearing 
 the while a look of deepest sympathy, leave 
 a small regretting basin by her chair, and move 
 away. 
 
 I made a short study of a lord going over. 
 He was not what you would call distinguished 
 looking, in his large soft hat and rain coat, but 
 he looked respectable at least. We had not 
 gone very far when he began to turn his head 
 from side to side as if he had lost something. 
 Then he would close his eye for a spell, and 
 try to think. He was the homeliest man I 
 have seen in Europe; and he was constantly 
 doing "stunts" with his good eye in order 
 to keep the glass in the other. I don t know 
 whether he died or not, for a sort of mala 
 rial feeling came over me, and I lost interest 
 in everything except the French coast. 
 
 In spite of the rough sea, we made the run 
 from Dover to Calais, twenty-five miles, in a 
 few minutes over an hour. 
 
 "Chemin de Fer du Nord " is the first 
 French sign seen by the voyager from England. 
 It is the name of the railway or " road of 
 
ON AN IRON STEED 119 
 
 iron," as the French put it over which we 
 are to pass to Paris. 
 
 The captain of the Victoria had given me 
 a letter which contained a pass, a " permis 
 de monter sur les machines," and this pass 
 went on to say that I would be "permitted 
 to circulate or promenade on the machine 
 drawing the quick express during one voyage 
 between Calais and Paris." 
 
 Sliding back into my engine clothes, I went 
 forward to where the locomotive stood steaming 
 and sizzling, ready to be off. 
 
 Just as I reached her, the driver began to 
 whirl the reversing wheel ; for he had heard the 
 signal- bell, and the long train moved away. 
 I showed my pass. The driver smiled, and 
 
 waved me out of the fireman s way. The cab 
 
 J tJAjA*" 
 
 was the same wretched, comfortless cavity that 
 
 I hacT seen on the Dover, only not so clean. 
 The tank, or tender, where the coal is carried, 
 was filled with slack and dust. As fast as he 
 shovelled into the heap where the slack was 
 dry, the fireman turned the hose on it, until 
 it was a puddle of mush ; and, to my surprise, 
 he shovelled this slop into the firebox, and kept 
 
120 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 the locomotive howling hot. It would be im 
 possible, of course, to fire an American express 
 locomotive with such fuel ; for there the engines 
 are worked so much harder to draw heavy 
 trains. When we had whipped around a few 
 curves I saw that the best place for me was 
 behind the driver, and I stepped over to his 
 side. 
 
 There existed between the engine, the engine- 
 men, and me a feeling of estrangement that 
 was almost melancholy. 
 
 I missed the sleepy panting of the air-pump, 
 and the click of the latch on the reverse lever. 
 There was no bell to relieve the monotony of 
 the rasping, phthisicky whistle. I wondered if 
 we could ever understand each other, if she 
 would respond to my touch ; for the driver 
 talked to her in a strange tongue. 
 
 The engine-men wore no gloves, and handled 
 the door-chain and hot levers as though they 
 were wood. The driver held a piece of burn 
 ing waste in his hand to furnish fire for his 
 cigarettes. I dicl, not repxoach him or blame 
 hini for smoking cigarettes ; it was the " wheel," 
 no doubt, that drove him to it. 
 
ON AN IRON STEED 121 
 
 If cabs had seats, running a locomotive would 
 be much easier in Europe than in America. 
 The ways are all walled or fenced in, and there 
 is no necessity for the constant straining of the 
 eyes and nerves, from which American drivers 
 suffer so much. 
 
 The first stop is at Amiens, eighty miles out. 
 There I saw what I had never seen before, 
 women working the switches in a signal-tower. 
 There were two of them, and they appeared to 
 have the station quite to themselves. I make 
 no doubt that they find their work very agree 
 able and interesting, that they are faithful, that 
 their homes are happy, and that they consider 
 themselves very superior, and refuse to exchange 
 calls with their sister, the " bull whacker." 
 
 At Amiens we met Night on her way to the 
 west, and I gave up the engine for the more 
 comfortable carriage. This compartment was 
 very like the one assigned our party on the 
 Chatham and Dover, except that it was a trifle 
 wider, and done in tan instead of blue. 
 
 Here, as in England, the stations are ample, 
 with all the tracks under cover. The trains 
 stop but five minutes; but the European car- 
 
122 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 riages soon discharge their passengers, the 
 first-class into the buffet, the second, as a rule, 
 into the buvette. A brass-hulled yard engine 
 was hustling about, uttering shrill shrieks in the 
 great sheds. The yard-men worked without 
 lamps, and wore horns over their shoulders, 
 through which they " conched " signals to the 
 engineers. The locomotives have no head 
 lights in Europe, sucrf as are used in the States, 
 but there was a hand-lamp, or a lightning-bug, 
 chained fast to the pilot of the " shunter " at 
 Amiens. 
 
 After trembling away in the twilight for an 
 hour, and an hour into the night, the street- 
 lamps began to thicken by the way, and in a 
 few minutes we stopped in the great station 
 of the Nord, and were in Paris. 
 
an dBartijquafee 
 
OVER AN EARTHQUAKE 
 
 R more than twenty minutes the cab rat 
 tled through the narrow, stony streets of 
 Paris, crossed the Seine, always interesting, but 
 weirdly beautiful at night, with its many bridges 
 and countless lamps of every color, and finally 
 stopped at the Gare de 1 Est. 
 
 " Orient Express, Monsieur? " asked the por 
 ter, as he balanced my box on the scales. 
 
 "Oui," said I ; and then he cried the weight, 
 fifty kilos. " Twenty-one francs, if you 
 please," said the man in the baggage-office, and 
 I flashed up my transportation. 
 
 "Twenty-one francs," the money-taker re 
 peated, and I showed my sleeping-car ticket, 
 thinking I had him on the hip this time sure. 
 
 " For the baggage, for the baggage," he said, 
 in French, growing impatient ; and I gave him 
 the money. Manifestly there was no free bag- 
 
126 
 
 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 
 gage on the Orient Express ; and the rate of 
 twenty-one francs, 173-. 10^., or $4.20 for one 
 hundred pounds, eight hundred miles, was a 
 stiff one. 
 
 To the porter who freighted my trunk I gave 
 some sous, and saw him drop them into a 
 locked box at the door of the baggage-room. 
 In England the porters keep what they get, and 
 it has a good effect. It makes the individual 
 porter look out for baggage ; for the more peo 
 ple he serves, the more he will receive. In 
 France each porter waits for the other, knowing 
 the division will be equal at night ; and so there 
 is nothing to work for. It kills competition, 
 this French arrangement, and makes the man 
 almost worthless. The moment you relinquish 
 the "pourboire," the porter s interest in you 
 ceases. He simply heads you in on the main 
 platform, where you must work out your own 
 salvation. I fancy this rule does not apply at 
 all stations, but it certainly does at the Gare de 
 1 Est, with a very bad result. 
 
 The train which I was preparing to board 
 this bleak November night consisted of a 
 smart-looking locomotive and five cars. Next 
 
OVER AN EARTHQUAKE 
 
 the engine there was a sort of combination ex 
 press, baggage, and commissary car, where the 
 stores were kept. Then came the dining-car, 
 one-third of which was made into a beautiful 
 smoking saloon, with great easy-chairs put up 
 in dark leather. Back of the diner there were 
 three sleeping-cars, Mann boudoirs, and run 
 ning along under the roof, above the tops of 
 the high windows, in bold gold letters, was the 
 name of the company unabridged, " The Inter 
 national Bed- Wagons Company and the Grand 
 European Express ; " only it was in French, and 
 ran like this : " Compagnie Internationale des 
 Wagons-Lits et des Grands Express Europeans." 
 The outward appearance of this company s 
 trains is similar to the trains run on the Ameri 
 can continent. The cars are long, and rest on 
 eight wheels. You enter the car at or near the 
 end, and pass through a narrow corridor, from 
 which you enter the compartments. A com 
 partment holds two or four people, and often, 
 with the judicious expenditure of a few francs, 
 the voyager can secure a small compartment all 
 to himself, and he is quite as secluded and com 
 fortable as he would be in the state-room of a 
 
128 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 Pullman or Wagner. There are certainly many 
 advantages in a compartment sleeper. A man 
 travelling with his wife has only to provide him 
 self with two tickets and secure a compartment 
 all to themselves. Two ladies travelling together 
 would have the same advantage. 
 
 There is no rush or excitement, no one ap 
 pears to be in any hurry. Three or four por 
 ters come along, leisurely rolling a little iron 
 car containing a small canvas travelling-bag. 
 Other porters not in uniform come with 
 hot-water cans, long flat cans which they 
 slide into the compartments of ordinary Euro 
 pean coaches; but the Orient is heated by 
 steam. Now comes a truck with a great many 
 mail- bags, which are put into the rear car. The 
 mails are an important item to the railways, and 
 as this train leaves Paris but twice a week, they 
 are usually heavy. In half an hour the splendid 
 train is trembling away in the night. It is 
 seven o clock, and the dining-car is filled with 
 people, men and women from every corner 
 of the earth. If a Russian speaks to an Italian, 
 or a German to a Spaniard, it is almost invaria 
 bly in French. 
 
OVER AN EARTHQUAKE 129 
 
 All the reading matter belonging to the train 
 is printed in three languages ; but only French 
 is spoken, save when another language is abso 
 lutely necessary. The cards posted in the cars 
 have these headings: "AVIS," " NOTIZ," 
 "NOTICE." 
 
 The dining-car service is equal to the best in 
 any country, and the rates are reasonable. The 
 first-breakfast is the regulation European bill, 
 bread, butter, and coffee, with fruit if you want \ 1 - 
 it, for i/. 75/ (is. 5//., or 35 cents). 
 
 At eleven o clock they serve a good dejeuner 
 for five francs, a dollar, and at evening a 
 splendid dinner for six francs; so you have 
 three good meals for $2.55, which in America, 
 in the average dining-car, would cost three 
 dollars. 
 
 When dinner is over, the men lounge in the 
 smoking-room for a couple of hours, and then 
 go to their boudoirs. 
 
 In a few hours we were rolling away toward 
 the selvage of France over a smooth track. 
 Shortly after midnight I was awakened by a 
 commotion at my door, opened my eyes, and 
 beheld an officer in the corridor. He was 
 9 
 
130 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 grand beyond description. With every move 
 ment of the train he flashed back to me the 
 flickering light that went out of my compart 
 ment to his plated person. In addition to the 
 cord on his cap and his brilliant buttons, he 
 wore festooned about his breast enough gold 
 cable to rope a steer; and I knew then that 
 we were in Germany. This awe-inspiring indi 
 vidual stood without, while his assistant, a less 
 imposing personage, inspected my ticket and 
 hand-luggage. 
 
 We left Paris at 6.50 p. M., and at noon the 
 next day we were at Munich. Half-way between 
 noon and night we were rolling along the banks 
 of a beautiful river, near the edge of Austria. 
 It was a clear, sparkling stream such as run 
 rapidly down from the hills, and far to the 
 south we could see the mountains wearing 
 their first white robe of winter, and stabbing 
 the blue sky with their polished peaks. 
 
 When the train stops at a station of any 
 importance, an officer with a large book, fol 
 lowed by two or three assistants, goes to the 
 locomotive, secures the autograph of the engi 
 neer, and gives him a lot of vocal instructions. 
 
OVER AN EARTHQUAKE 131 
 
 They all talk at once, " kracking " their s till 
 one is reminded of a skating party breaking 
 through the ice. Finally peace is declared, 
 they all salute, and the train moves on. Every 
 thing has a military air about it. The old 
 woman sweeping a crossing brings her broom 
 to her shoulder, and the one-legged watchman 
 comes to the proper position, with a red flag 
 for a musket, as the train goes by. 
 
 Twenty-four hours takes the traveller to 
 Vienna, 1,402 kilometres, over 800 miles, 
 which is very good speed. 
 
 The locomotives used in Austria are more 
 like American machines than those of England 
 and France, and the day-cars are the best I 
 have seen on the Continent. They are heavier 
 than the ordinary European railway carriage, 
 and rest on eight large wheels. First-class 
 carriages are heavily padded with beautiful 
 Russian leather, clean, cool, and comfortable. 
 You enter these cars, not at the side nor at 
 the end, but at the corner; the compartments 
 open into a corridor. 
 
 Leaving Vienna, you pass through a great 
 valley, or prairie, where farmers follow bull- 
 
132 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 teams down the dark furrows that seem never 
 to end, but disappear at the edge of the horizon. 
 The vastness of the fields, and the houses so far 
 apart, give the land an air of desolation. 
 
 At midnight we were at Budapest, the beau 
 tiful capital of Hungary, with a splendid king s 
 palace on the Danube ; but there is no king 
 there : the king is the Emperor of Austria, and 
 lives at Vienna. Here are more strange-looking 
 people, and the signs and notices are printed 
 in four tongues. Twenty minutes for another 
 language. 
 
 Dropping down the Danube for six or seven 
 hours, we see the sun rise in Servia, and the 
 first stop on the following day is at Belgrade. 
 
 Farther to the south, it is warmer here ; the 
 earth is dry, and the sky clear. Here the 
 voyager begins to feel that he is in a new world, 
 with strange people. Here are evidences of 
 dress reform. The pantaloon is merging into 
 the gown, or the gown into the pantaloon, per 
 haps, as it is in America. Each succeeding 
 hour takes the traveller farther into this desolate 
 country, so old and yet so new, with so little 
 of what are now regarded as signs of civilization. 
 
OVER AN EARTHQUAKE 133 
 
 Here prosperity and poverty appear to meet 
 and pass. A wild-looking shepherd, in his coat 
 of wool, gazing at the train, reminds me of the 
 lone wolf as I have seen him stand in my native 
 land, watching the train with nothing near him 
 but solitude and God. 
 
 In the low, stone-fenced corrals are stacks of 
 fine oak-brush, cut from the gentle hills, evi 
 dently in summer when the leaves were green ; 
 and this brush is to be given to the frail horses, 
 cows, and donkeys for hay. These stacks of 
 bushes tell more than enough of the poverty of 
 the country. When we have travelled through 
 it, we wonder how the International Sleeping- 
 Car Company can afford to run a train even 
 twice a week through such a land. 
 
 At noon we met and passed the west-bound 
 train. It may be that we had passed other 
 trains ; but this was the first passenger train I 
 had seen for forty hours. 
 
 I carried with me a permit to ride on the 
 locomotive of the Orient Express when I wished 
 to do so, and now I slipped into my engine 
 clothes and mounted the machine. The engi 
 neer was a native j and about all we could say to 
 each other was " Yes " and " No " in French. 
 
TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 Nearly, if not all, the railroads here are oper 
 ated by the Governments of the various countries 
 through which they pass. The Orient express, 
 however, is operated solely By the Sleeping-Car 
 Company. This company s conductor, who goes 
 all the way from Paris to Constantinople, is the 
 captain of the train ; only the Government in 
 spectors of the different countries come aboard 
 to inspect baggage and look after the interest 
 of the Government. The railway fare from Paris 
 to Constantinople by the Orient Express, a train 
 de luxe, is sixty-nine dollars ; the sleeping-car 
 ticket is eighteen dollars. 
 
 The track was only fair, but the locomotive 
 was in good condition. The time is slow, not 
 more than twenty or thirty miles an hour. 
 
 At the first road crossing outside the town 
 we found a long line of wagons drawn by small 
 cattle, waiting at the closed gate. Behind these 
 wagons, reaching far out to the hills, miles 
 away, were strings of pack animals loaded with 
 corn on the stalk. Evidently this was an im 
 portant market for the surrounding country. 
 
 It was a beautiful afternoon, soft as Septem 
 ber in Paris or New York. The road here ran 
 
OVER AN EARTHQUAKE 135 
 
 up a broad vale, which, however, grew narrower 
 as we ascended the waterless stream. On either 
 side the wash, the country grew rough ; the hills 
 in the distance would be called mountains in 
 the Holy Land. The wagon road lay parallel 
 with the railway, and in half an hour we passed 
 hundreds of ox teams bringing wood down from 
 the hills. Some women and children were 
 driving a flock of turkeys, a man was leading a 
 sheep, and others were carrying jars of some 
 thing honey perhaps on their heads. 
 
 All at once the air grew still ; an oppressive 
 silence seemed to hang on vale and hill, and 
 all the people stopped short. It seemed to me 
 that we had run into a bad piece of track, or 
 that our train had suddenly quickened its pace. 
 I saw a Servian woman, with a little child 
 on her arm, stagger, stop, take the water-jug 
 from her head, and hug her frightened babe to 
 her naked breast. Hundreds of yoked cattle 
 were lowing, burros were braying, and whole 
 flocks of sheep were crying on the distant 
 downs. Meantime the curves seemed to in 
 crease ; and although we were not making more 
 than forty miles an hour, we appeared to fairly 
 
136 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 fly. Men stood still and stared at the heavens. 
 A Mohammedan slid down from a pack-mule, 
 spread his prayer-rug, set his face toward Mecca, 
 and prayed. Christians crossed themselves, and 
 as often as I stole a glance at the driver I found 
 him looking at me. Till now, I had attributed 
 the action of these wild people to childish 
 wonder at seeing the train sweep by ; but when 
 I looked at the almost pale face of the sun- 
 browned driver, I was bewildered. The things 
 I beheld were all so unnatural that I felt my 
 head swimming. Glancing ahead, I saw the 
 straight track take on curves and shake them 
 out again, resembling a running snake. The 
 valley had become a narrow gulch, and from 
 the near hills arose great clouds of smoke, as 
 from a quarry when the shots go off. The fire 
 man, who had been busy at the furnace-door, 
 stood up now and gazed at the driver, who 
 pressed his left hand hard over his eyes, then 
 took it off and tried to see, but made no attempt 
 to check the speed of the flying train. As a 
 drunken cowboy dashing down a straight street 
 sways in his saddle, as a wounded bird reels 
 through the air, did this mad monster of a 
 
OVER AN EARTHQUAKE 137 
 
 locomotive swing and swim o er the writhing 
 rail. 
 
 Suddenly a great curve appeared in front of 
 us. This time the stoker, who had left off 
 firing, saw it, and made the sign of the cross. 
 Again the driver hid his eyes, and again I felt 
 my brain grow dizzy trying to understand. We 
 could hear and feel the engine wheels rise and 
 fall on the twisting rail with a deafening sound. 
 At last she settled down, and began to glide 
 away as a boat glides down a running stream. 
 
 " What is it? " I asked of the French fireman. 
 
 "Tremblement de terre," he said, shaking 
 himself violently, and pointing to the ground ; 
 and then I understood that we had been riding 
 over an earthquake. The driver was either too 
 proud and brave to stop, or too frightened to 
 be able to shut off steam ; I don t know which. 
 
 Passing out of Servia, we clip off a corner of 
 Bulgaria, calling at the capital, Sofia. 
 
 The next place of importance is Adrianople, 
 the old capital of the Turks. It was here that 
 young Mohammed caused the great cannon to 
 be cast with which he battered the walls of 
 Constantinople, and conquered Constantine, the 
 
138 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 last Christian emperor of Byzantium, while the 
 fat priests plotted against each other, and 
 the poor ignorant Christians laid down their 
 arms to cross themselves. 
 
 It is Wednesday morning, and we are rolling 
 slowly along over a dreary, desolate-looking 
 country. All things European are rapidly dis 
 appearing. The old familiar battle-cry of the 
 beggars of France, "pourboire," is changed to 
 "baksheesh." 
 
 Instead of section men with picks and shovels, 
 we see by the side of the track dark Turks in 
 bicycle trousers, carrying rusty muskets on their 
 shoulders. 
 
 Here and there, far apart, we find bands of 
 dusky, sooty laborers burning oak-brush, from 
 the sticks of which they make charcoal. 
 
 While we are at dejeuner, the train toils up 
 a long grade, and finally reaches the summit of 
 a sort of tableland from which we look down 
 into the quiet Sea of Marmora, sleeping silently 
 between Europe and Asia. It looks more like 
 a great lake than a sea, with its sloping shores 
 and marshy margin, fringed with flags and 
 swamp- grass. 
 
OVER AN EARTHQUAKE 139 
 
 Now we are entering a city that seems very 
 old. The train rolls along among the houses 
 behind a rain-stained wall ; and when we stop, 
 we find the platform crowded with red caps, 
 the cabmen are having a spirited argument, 
 hotel-runners, guides and dragomans are push 
 ing each other, a long line of hammels t or 
 porters, are waiting at the customs office, and 
 beyond them a line of miserable beggars, and 
 this is Constantinople. 
 
2E>artranelle 
 
THROUGH THE DARDANELLES 
 
 /CONSTANTINOPLE may be considered as 
 ^"^ the end of the railway system of the earth. 
 Here, if you wish to see more of the Orient, 
 you must take to the sea. There is, to be 
 sure, a projected railway out of the Sultan s 
 city into the interior, but only completed to 
 Angora, three hundred and sixty-five miles. 
 
 The intention of the projectors was to con 
 tinue the road on down to Bagdad, on the River 
 Tigris, through which they could reach the 
 Persian Gulf. 
 
 I had arranged to go to Angora, but found 
 a ten days quarantine five miles out of Con 
 stantinople, and backed into town. I then 
 made an effort to secure from the office of 
 the titled German who stands for the railway 
 company some idea of the road, its pros 
 pects, probable cost, and estimated earnings ; 
 but my letters returned without a line. 
 
144 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 To show that I was acting in good faith and 
 willing to pay for what I got, I went with 
 Vincent the guide, the only good guide I ever 
 knew, and asked them for some printed 
 matter, or photographs, or anything that would 
 throw a little light along the line of their 
 plague-stricken railway ; but they still refused 
 to talk. 
 
 No wonder it has taken these dreamers ten \ 
 years to build three hundred and sixty miles 
 of very cheap railroad ! 
 
 It was my misfortune to fall into a little old 
 Austrian- Lloyd steamer, called the Daphne. 
 Before we lifted anchor in the Golden Horn, 
 I learned that her boilers had not been over 
 hauled for ten years ; and before we reached 
 the Dardanelles, I concluded that the sand had 
 not been changed in the pillows for a quarter 
 of a century. I have slept in the American 
 desert for a period of thirty nights, between the 
 earth and the heavens, and found a better bed 
 than was made by the ossified mattress and 
 petrified pillows of the Daphne. 
 
 It was bad enough to breathe the foul air that 
 came up from the camping pilgrims on the 
 
THROUGH THE DARDANELLES 145 
 
 main deck; but the first day out we learned 
 that these ugly ^Armenians, greasy Greeks, | 
 and filthy Bedouins would be allowed to come 
 upon the promenade deck and mingle with 
 those who had paid for first-class passage. 
 
 Poorly clad, half-starved, poverty-stricken 
 people headed for the Holy Land came and 
 rubbed elbows with American and European 
 women and children. Of course, one sympa 
 thizes with these poor miserable people ; but 
 one does not want their secrets. These facts 
 are not put here to injure the steamship 
 company, but that other voyagers may fight 
 shy of these little old rattle-traps of coast 
 steamers, that ought to be run up a canal for 
 the sea-birds to rest on. This company has 
 many excellent steamers, and ought to be 
 ashamed to put first-class passengers into a 
 cattle-ship and charge first-class rates. 
 
 We left the Bosphorus at twilight, crossed 
 the Sea of Marmora during the night, and the 
 next morning were at Gallipoli, where the bird 
 seeds come from. 
 
 The day broke beautifully, and the little sea 
 was as calm as a summer lake. By ten o clock 
 
146 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 we were drifting down the Dardanelles, which 
 resembles a great river j for the land is always 
 near on either side. 
 
 The ship s doctor, who was my guide at 
 every landing-place, kindly pointed out the 
 many places of interest. 
 
 "Those pyramids over there," he would say, 
 " were erected by the Turks to commemorate 
 a victory. Here is where Byron swam the sea 
 from Europe to Asia ; and over there is where 
 King Midas lived, whose touch turned piastres 
 to napoleons, and flounders to gold fish. Here, 
 to the left, on that little hill, stood ancient 
 Troy." 
 
 All things seemed to work together to make 
 the day a most enjoyable one, and just at night 
 fall the doctor came to me and said, 
 
 " See that island over there ? That was the 
 home of Sappho." 
 
 And there she sang, 
 
 " T was like unto the hyacinth 
 
 That purpled on the hills, 
 That the careless shepherd, passing, 
 Tramples underfoot and kills." 
 
 An hour later, we anchored in a little natural 
 harbor, and five of us went ashore. 
 
THROUGH THE DARDANELLES 147 
 
 Beside the ship s doctor, whose uniform 
 was a sufficient passport for all, there were 
 in our party a Pole and a Frenchman (both 
 inspectors of revenue for the Turkish Govern 
 ment, and splendid fellows) , a Belgian, and the 
 writer. We entered a cafe"-concert, where one 
 man and five or six girls sat in a sort of balcony 
 at one end of the building and played at 
 " fiddle." The main hall was filled with small 
 tables, at which were Greeks, Catholics, Arme 
 nians, Turks, and negroes as black as a hole 
 in the night. Between acts, the girls were 
 expected to come down, distribute themselves 
 about, and help consume beer and other fluid 
 at the expense of the frequenters. 
 
 The girls were nearly all Germans, plain, 
 honest, tired-looking creatures, who seemed 
 half embarrassed at seeing what they call 
 " Europeans." One very pretty girl, with 
 peachy cheeks, who, as we learned, had for 
 several evenings been in the habit of drinking 
 beer with a Greek, sat, this evening, with a 
 dark Egyptian, almost jet black. The Greek 
 a hollow-chested, long-haired loafer came 
 in ; and the moment he saw the girl with the 
 
148 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 chalk- eyed man, turned red, then white, and 
 then, whipping out a gun, levelled it at the girl. 
 Nearly all the lights went out, and the girl 
 dropped from the chair. When the smoke 
 and excitement cleared away, it was found that 
 the bullet had only parted the girl s hair, and 
 she was able to take her fiddle and beer when 
 time was called. 
 
 At midnight we were rowed back to the boat, 
 with all the poetry knocked out of the isle 
 of Sappho, hoisted anchor, and steamed away. 
 On the whole, however, the day had been a 
 most delightful one. To me there are no fairer 
 stretches of water for a glorious day s sail than 
 the Dardanelles. 
 
 When we dropped anchor again, ten hours 
 later, it was at Smyrna, the garden of Asia 
 Minor. Here I went ashore with my faithful 
 guide, the doctor, and found a real railway. 
 The Ottoman Railway, whose headquarters 
 are at Smyrna, was the first in Asia Minor, 
 and was begun by the English company, which 
 continues to do business, thirty-six years ago. 
 Mr. William Shotton, the Locomotive Superin 
 tendent, showed us through the shops and build- 
 
THROUGH THE DARDANELLES 149 
 
 ings. One does not need to be told that this 
 propertyTs managed t^ttn English company, 
 I saw here the neatest shops and yards 
 that I have ever seen in any country. There 
 were in the car-shops some carriages just com 
 pleted, designed and built by native workmen 
 who had learned the business with the company ; 
 and I have not seen such artistic cars in Eng 
 land or in France. 
 
 Mr. Shotton explained to me that they found 
 it necessary to ask an applicant his religion 
 before employing him, so as to keep the Greeks 
 and Catholics about equally divided ; otherwise 
 the faction in the majority would lord it over 
 the weaker band, to the detriment of the 
 service. An occasional Mohammedan made 
 no difference ; but the Greeks and Catholics 
 have it in for each other, as they do at Beth 
 lehem, just as they had in the dark days of 
 the gentle Constantine, and just as they will 
 have till the end of the chapter. 
 
 The Ottoman Railway Company has three 
 hundred and fifty miles of good railroad, and 
 Tibpe s some day to be able to continue across to 
 Bagdad, though it is hinted by people not 
 
150 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 interested that the Sultan s Government favors 
 the sleepy German Company, to the embarrass 
 ment of the Smyrna people, who have done so 
 much for the development of this marvellously 
 blessed section. 
 
 We spent a pleasant day at Smyrna, with its 
 water-melons, Turkish coffee, and camels ; and 
 twenty-four hours later we were at the Isle of 
 Rhodes, where the great Colossus was. It was 
 a dark, dreary, windy night, and the Turks 
 fought hard for the ship s ladder. We had 
 on board a wise old priest from Paris, with a 
 string of six or eight young priests, who were to 
 unload at Rhodes. Despite the cold, raw wind 
 and rain, men came aboard with canes, beads, 
 and slippers made of native wood, for there 
 is a prison here, and offered them for sale at 
 very low prices. 
 
 For the next forty-eight hours our little old 
 ship was wallopped about in a boisterous sea, 
 and when we stopped again it was at Mersina, 
 where a little railroad runs up to Tarsus, where 
 Saul used to live. As we arrived at this place 
 after sunset, which ends the Turkish day, 
 we were obliged to lie here twenty-four hours, 
 to get landing. 
 
THROUGH THE DARDANELLES 151 
 
 On the morning of the second day, after our 
 arrival at this struggling little port, our anchor 
 touched bottom in the beautiful Bay of Alex- 
 andretta. Here they show you the quiet nook 
 where the whale shook Jonas. That was a sad 
 and lasting lesson for the whale ; for not one of 
 his kind has been seen in the Mediterranean 
 since. All day we watched them hoist crying 
 sheep and mild-eyed cattle, with a derrick from 
 row-boats, up over the deck and drop them 
 down into the ship, just as carelessly as a 
 boy would drop a string of squirrels from his 
 hand to the ground. 
 
 The next morning we rode into the only har 
 bor on the Syrian coast, and anchored in front 
 of the beautiful city of " Bayroot," I believe 
 that is the correct spelling ; it is the only way 
 it has not been spelled ! 
 
 It would take too long to describe this place, 
 even if I had the power, to tell of the road to 
 Damascus, the drives to the hills of Lebanon, 
 through the silk- farms, the genial and obliging 
 American Consul, the American College : but 
 here, after nine days and nights, we said good-by 
 to the obliging crew of the poor old Daphne. 
 
152 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 It was Christmas Eve when we learned that 
 the sea had quieted sufficiently to allow ships 
 to land at Jaffa ; and as early as 3 p. M. Cook s 
 comedian came and hustled us aboard. The 
 ship did not leave until 7.30, and we had to 
 pay a dollar each for our dinners. For nearly a 
 week the steamers had been passing Jaffa with 
 out landing, and the result was that Beyroot and 
 Port Said were filled with passengers and pil 
 grims for the Holy Land. All day the Russian 
 steamer which we were to take had been load 
 ing with deck or steerage passengers, poorer 
 and sicker and hungrier, if possible, than those 
 on the Daphne were. It was dark when they 
 had finished, and when we steamed out of 
 the harbor we had seven hundred patches of 
 poverty piled up on the deck. It began to 
 rain shortly, that cold damp rain that seems 
 to go with a rough sea, just as naturally as red 
 liquor goes with crime. For a week or more, 
 these miserable, misguided beggars had been 
 carried by Jaffa, from Beyroot to Port Said, then 
 from Port Said to Beyroot, unable to land. And 
 this was Christmas Eve. Not a passenger nor 
 a pilgrim in all that vast shipload but had hoped 
 
THROUGH THE DARDANELLES 153 
 
 and prayed and planned to be at Bethlehem 
 to-night. The good captain caused a canvas to 
 be stretched over the shivering, suffering mob 
 that covered the deck; but the pitiless rain 
 beat in, and the wind moaned in the rigging, 
 and the ship rolled and pitched and ploughed 
 through the black sea, and the poor pilgrims 
 regretted the trip in each other s laps. All 
 night and till nearly noon the next day they 
 lay there, more dead than alive ; and the hard 
 est part of their pilgrimage was yet before them. 
 If you have ever seen a flock of hungry gulls 
 round a floating biscuit, you can form a very 
 faint idea of a mob of native boatmen storming 
 a ship at Jaffa. Of course the ladders are filled 
 first ; then those who have missed the ladders 
 drive bang against the ship, grab a rope, or 
 cable, or anything they can grasp, and run up 
 the iron, slippery side of the ship, as a squirrel 
 runs up a tree. 
 
 From the top of the ship they began to fire 
 the bags, bundles, and boxes of the deck pas 
 sengers down into the broad boats that lie so 
 thick at the ship s side as to hide the sea 
 entirely. When they had thrown everything 
 
154 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 overboard that was loose at one end, they 
 began on the poor pilgrims. 
 
 Women, old and young, who were scarcely 
 able to stand up were dragged to the ladders 
 and down to the last step. Here they were 
 supposed to "lay" for the boat into which the 
 Arabs were preparing to pitch them ; for the 
 sea was still very rough. Now the bottom step 
 of the ladder was in the water, now six feet 
 above ; but what did these poor ignorant Rus 
 sians know about gymnastics? When the roll 
 ing sea brought the row-boats up, the pilgrims 
 usually hesitated, while the bare-armed and 
 bare-legged boatmen yelled and wrenched their 
 hands from the chain. By the time the Moham 
 medans had shaken a woman loose, and the 
 victim had crossed herself, the ladder was six or 
 eight feet from the small boat ; but it was too 
 late to stay her now, even if the Arabs had 
 wished to, but they did not. When she 
 made the sign of the cross, that decided them, 
 and they let her drop. Some waiting Turks 
 made a feeble attempt to catch the sprawling 
 woman, but not much. Sometimes, before one 
 could rise, another woman for they were 
 
THROUGH THE DARDANELLES 155 
 
 nearly all women would drop on to her bent 
 back. Sometimes, when the first boat was filled, 
 an Arab would catch the pilgrim on his neck, 
 and she could then be seen riding him away as 
 a woman rides a bicycle. From one boat to 
 another he would leap, with his helpless victim, 
 and finally pitch her forward over his own head 
 into an empty boat, where she would lie limp 
 and helpless, and regret it some more. 
 
 I saw one poor girl, with great heavy boots 
 on her feet, with hobnails in the heels, fall 
 into the bottom of a boat ; and before she could 
 get up, three large women were dropped into 
 her lap. Just then the boat, being full, pulled 
 off, and I saw her faint, and her head fall back ; 
 and her death-like face showed how she had 
 suffered. It was rare sport for the Moham 
 medans. 
 
 "Jump ! " they would say to the Christians. 
 "Don t be afraid ; Christ will save you ! " 
 
 It was 4 P. M. when the last of these miserable 
 people, who ought to have been at home hoe 
 ing potatoes, left the ship. An hour later, a 
 long dark line of smoke was stretching out 
 across the plain of Sharon, behind a locomotive 
 
156 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 drawing a train of stock cars. These cars held 
 the seven hundred pilgrims bound for Jerusa 
 lem. It will be midnight when they arrive at 
 the Holy City, and they will have no money 
 and no place to sleep in. Ah, I forgot ; they 
 will go to the Russian Hospice, where they will 
 find free board and lodging. It is kind and 
 thoughtful in the Russian Church people to 
 care for these poor pilgrims, now that they are 
 here ; but it is not right nor kind to encourage 
 them to come. It will be strangely interest 
 ing to them at first; but when they hava 
 seen it all, there will be nothing for them but 
 idleness ; nothing to do but walk, walk, up 
 the Valley of Jehosaphat, and down the road 
 to Bethlehem. 
 
3|affa to 
 
JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 
 
 JAFFA was the home of Simon the Tanner, 
 whose house still stands, and is now for 
 rent. It was the shipping station of Jonas ; the 
 port where Solomon landed the cedars of Leba 
 non, with which he built his extravagant harem ; 
 and out of the wreck-strewn reef that frowns in 
 front of the custom-house, rises the rock of 
 Andromeda. It was here the poor lady was 
 chained; but it was not the sea monster she 
 feared, but a change in the wind. If the wind 
 had blown from shore, and brought to her the 
 faintest whiff of Jaffa, she could not have lived 
 to tell her tale. When you land here, which 
 you can accomplish only when the sea is calm, 
 you find yourself in a narrow, mean, muddy 
 street, filled with freighted camels, hamals, and 
 burros, through which you are marched for a 
 quarter of a mile before you come to a road 
 
160 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 wide enough to hold a carriage ; then you look 
 across the street, see Howard s Hotel, dismiss 
 the carriage for which you have paid a tourist 
 agency a dollar, and walk to your stopping 
 place. 
 
 We landed at 10.30, and by 10.45 we had 
 become tired of the sights and scent of the 
 city. Securing a guide, I waited upon the chief 
 of the Jaffa and Jerusalem Railway. 
 
 It was Saturday; the manager whom I 
 could not see said he was very busy, but if I 
 would come in to-morrow, he would be glad to 
 give me any information I desired. I went 
 straight to the station, caught the 12.15 express, 
 -and entered the only first-class carriage in the 
 train, with a ticket for Jerusalem. The road is 
 a three-foot gauge, the cars are narrow, and 
 only half of one little pine coach is set apart 
 for first-class passengers. This space is cut by 
 a partition making two boxes, six by seven feet, 
 for tourists. 
 
 / The train is made up of all kinds of cars. 
 The grass is green between the ties, and the 
 scale that is crumbling from the sandstone 
 cornice of the station is allowed to remain 
 
JAFFA TO JERUSALEM l6l 
 
 where it falls, to be crushed under the feet 
 of the travellers. The management is French, 
 with a strong Turkish flavor^ The pompous, .al 
 most military-looking manager, and the brightly 
 umfoTmetr^chef de gare," or station-master, 
 seem strangely out of place, when you glance at 
 the wretchedness that surrounds them. Here 
 is a queer mixture of the frivolity of France 
 with the filth of the Orient. From the time 
 you get the first glimpse of the Jaffa gare till 
 you reach Jerusalem, the whole show has about 
 it an air of neglect like a widow s farm. They 
 ^ appear to know as much about railroading as 
 tKe^average Arab knows about the Young Men s 
 --, Christian Association. 
 
 The time was up, and we were fifteen minutes 
 over-due to leave, when I asked Howard, the 
 hotel man, what the matter was. 
 
 "Waiting for le directeur de la compagnie" 
 said he, with a smile ; for he knew how absurd 
 it was to hold the only daily train the road runs 
 for the General Manager. 
 
 Another quarter of an hour went by, and still 
 another. 
 
 Suddenly there was a bustling among the 
 ii 
 
162 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 station-hands, the bell jingled, the whistle the 
 deep-voiced North American Baldwin whistle 
 sounded, and we moved away. At the last 
 moment I saw the handsome station-master 
 hurry a well-dressed gentleman to our car, put 
 him in, and then swing gracefully into the 
 second-class carriage immediately behind ours. 
 A couple of officers of an English war-ship 
 which was anchored off Jaffa occupied one of 
 the first-class compartments, and now the new 
 comer came in where I was. 
 
 The train started slowly, and seemed to be 
 running over a track made of short pieces of 
 rails; but I soon found that the one wheel at 
 my corner had three flat spots on it, and that 
 the"two rear wheels had but one. This gave 
 the car an uncertain sort of movement, two 
 short hops and a long one. I looked at my 
 companion and tried to look pleased. He 
 frowned. I raised the window and tried to see 
 what made the car caper about so, and my 
 travelling companion burnt a cigarette. 
 
 "Little rough," I said as a feeler; and my 
 friend blew such a fog into my face that I was 
 obliged to take to the window again. 
 
JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 163 
 
 "Window too cool for you? " I asked, ven 
 turing another flyer at the Frenchman, and he 
 scowled. 
 
 Growing accustomed to the pounding and 
 bucking of the carriage, I began to looITaf the 
 strange~sc"enes along the line. On one side 
 there was an orange orchard, whose trees were 
 laden with golden fruit. On the other was an 
 olive orchard, and here and there tall date-palms 
 flung their banners to the breeze. In a field 
 near by, a native was ploughing with two little 
 thin-legged blond cows, followed by another 
 team which was a strange combination, a 
 burro and a bull ; and just behind that a tall 
 camel came swimming slowly through the peace 
 ful air, drawing a wooden plough which had but 
 one handle. This is a beautiful valley, called 
 the Plain of Sharon ; and if it was farmed as 
 France or England is farmed, it would be a 
 veritable garden. Forty-five minutes out we 
 stopped at Lydda, twenty kilometres from Jaffa. 
 Here my friend got out, walked up towards the 
 engine, scowled, and returned to the car. The 
 red-fezzed station-master from Jaffa came from 
 his carriage, just as the station-master of Lydda 
 
1 64 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 came out of the station. Their eyes met ; they 
 stopped, clasped their hands, and you could see 
 in a minute that they belonged to the same 
 lodge. The Lyddian tilted his head slightly, 
 as a hen does when she sees a hawk high above 
 her; then they unplatted their fingers, and 
 rushed into each other s arms. When they had 
 embraced, the chef from Jaffa held the Lyddian 
 off at arm s length, and looked calmly into his 
 eyes, as if to say : " Hast thou been faithful to 
 thy trust ? Lie not ; for behold the breath of 
 the high chef des gares is upon thee and will 
 wither thee if thou speakest not the truth." 
 
 The Lyddian nodded his head three times 
 very slowly, and the chef kissed him on the 
 right and then on the left cheek. Another deep 
 blast from the Philadelphia whistle, and my car 
 riage began to scamper away like a wounded 
 hare in the stubble. Another quarter of an 
 hour brought us to Ramleh old Arimathsea. 
 One hour from Jaffa, and this Syrian cyclone, 
 this Jerusalem jerk- water, has covered nearly 
 eighteen miles. I dropped off as the train was 
 coming in, and made a picture of the pretty 
 little station. Ramleh is an old town, in fact, 
 
JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 165 
 
 everything is old here. The railway, which was 
 opened only two years ago, is old, and only a 
 few people came to see the train go by. It has 
 always been a place of importance, for here the 
 old caravan road from Damascus to Egypt 
 crosses the trail trod by the Crusaders from Jaffa 
 to Jerusalem. At Lydda I fancied I smelt a hot- 
 box ; then I laughed at the idea, a hot-box 
 at eighteen miles an hour ! It was only the 
 odor of the Orient, I reasoned, and forgot. But 
 now, as the train stopped at Ramleh, two clouds 
 of beautiful blue smoke came up from a coal 
 car near the locomotive, and floated away across 
 the rolling plain. The doctor of the battle-ship 
 and his friend the lieutenant were contemplating 
 one of these boxes, when I came up and offered 
 to bet a B. & S. that my side would blaze first. 
 
 " Taken ! " said the game doctor ; and while 
 we were amusing ourselves thus, my French 
 friend came forward, saw the hot-box, and made 
 a bee-line for the station. 
 
 The next moment he was out again with the 
 conductor. You could see that the box was 
 not the only thing hot on the J. & J. The 
 distinguished traveller was beating his hands 
 
I 66 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 together, pushing his nose sideways with his 
 front finger, and telling the conductor things 
 that would burn the paper if we printed them. 
 When he stopped to breathe, the station-master 
 of Ramleh, who had already been hugged 
 and kissed by the station-master from Jaffa, 
 pulled the bell, and the train started. My trav 
 elling companion then turned on the poor 
 station-master for having started the train while 
 he was busy roasting the conductor. He raised 
 both hands above his head and rolled off a 
 succotash of French and Arabic for a whole 
 minute ; and when he turned, the rear end of 
 the train was just disappearing over a little hill 
 beyond the switch, and the General Manager 
 le directeur de la compagnie was left 
 behind. 
 
 I believe he must have been glad of it, for 
 he knew enough English to know that English 
 officers were making jokes of his railroad, and 
 that I was not over-pleased with the flat wheels. 
 
 The land was still beautiful. A little way 
 to the south was the broad valley of Ajalon, 
 where Pharaoh conquered a king, and gave 
 the ranch to Solomon, together with his 
 
JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 167 
 
 daughter ; for it was plain to Pharaoh that 
 Solomon was wasting a fortune trying to create 
 a boom on Mount Moriah, which is in Jerusa 
 lem, the only place where they suffer from 
 drought and mosquitos at the same time. 
 
 " Sun, stand thou still on Gibeon, and thou, 
 moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun 
 stood still, and the moon stayed, and there was 
 no day like that before it or after it." So it is 
 written of the valley of Ajalon; and now the 
 sound of a locomotive whistle floats o er the 
 plain, and echoes in the hills of Judaea. 
 
 "I win ! " said the Doctor, presently, pulling 
 his head in from the open window. " Mine s 
 burning beautifully." 
 
 Leaving the plain, we enter a canon about 
 six hundred feet above the sea, .up which we 
 toil at a snail s pace. The country grows more 
 desolate, the hills are barren wastes of gray 
 rock, with not enough vegetation to pasture a 
 tarantula. When we had arrived at Beir Aban, 
 thirty-one miles out, time two hours and fifteen 
 minutes, and the station-master from Jaffa had 
 embraced and kissed the station-master at Beir 
 Aban, first on the right cheek, and then on the 
 
1 68 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 left, the cloud of smoke that arose from the 
 two hot boxes hid the locomotive entirely. For 
 a half-hour the train crew carried water from 
 the tank and flooded the hot boxes. The same 
 was repeated at Bittir, even to the kissing 
 and embracing, and we were off on the home 
 stretch for Jerusalem, which is twenty-six hun 
 dred feet above the Mediterranean. The canon 
 grows narrower as we ascend, and still there is 
 no earth in sight, nothing but rock, rock, 
 everywhere. Sometimes we can see on the 
 sides of the terraced hills a few rows of olive- 
 trees, which, like the scrub cedars in the moun 
 tains of America, seem to spring from the very 
 
 Vs^ J 
 
 stones. 
 
 The conductor the slouchy, careless, polite 
 conductor came through the car for the last 
 time, and every one was glad we were nearing 
 the Holy City. The train-men are all French, 
 and, like most French people one is compelled 
 to rub up against in the churches, theatres, and 
 shops of the Republic, especially in Paris, 
 they appear never to use water, except the little 
 they put in their claret. There are more foun 
 tains than bath-tubs in Paris. French people 
 
JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 169 
 
 in the lower walks of life remind one of the 
 Mohammedan making a pilgrimage to Mecca, 
 who obstinately refuses to bathe until he gets 
 there, only these people seem never to get 
 there ! There s the sea at Jaffa ; but these 
 fellows never think of using it, any more than 
 the natives do. 
 
 The conductor is in keeping, however, with 
 other things pertaining to the road. Their 
 " cabinets de toilet," supposed to be built for 
 the use of the public, are absolutely unapproach 
 able. They are as far below those of France in 
 the way of cleanliness as the latter are below 
 those found in England. I have never seen 
 such inexcusable filthiness in any country. 
 Even the Arabs notice it. 
 
 The distance from Jaffa to Jerusalem, accord 
 ing to Howard s " Guide to Palestine," is thirty- 
 two miles as the raven makes it, and thirty-six 
 by wagon -road. No guide-book has been per 
 petrated since the opening of the railway ; but 
 none is necessary, as the time is about the 
 same. In fact, " White Sheik " Howard s 
 Arabian steed beats the train as often as he 
 is ridden down from Jerusalem. 
 
170 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 The distance by rail is eighty-seven kilo 
 metres (about fifty-four miles), according to 
 the time-card ; and the same makes the running 
 time four hours and ten minutes : but we lost 
 an hour to-day. 
 
 The fare, first-class, is $3.00, second-class 
 $2.00, and third-class $1.25. The road has 
 never earned operating expenses, I am told, 
 and never will, I am led to believe. The loco 
 motives are the best mountain locomotives 
 made ; and that is about the only thing they 
 have to speak of. 
 
 I think there must be something in the 
 Brotherhood of Station-Masters prohibiting the 
 sweeping of floors in stations, as they are all 
 covered with sand, dirt, and scraps of paper, 
 and things. 
 
 I travelled over a little lumber road in Texas 
 once, whose initials were T. & S., and the train 
 men called it the " Trouble and Sorrow," and 
 sometimes " Timber and Sand." I rode on 
 the locomotive, for it was the first wood-burner 
 I had ever seen. The train was carded at 
 twelve miles an hour, and we were losing time ; 
 but it was the only time I was ever frightened 
 
JAFFA TO JERUSALEM I 7 I 
 
 on an engine. The road was so rough, and the 
 engine rolled so, that the hazel-splitter hogs 
 would scamper out of the ditches beside the 
 track. In places the track was so sunken that 
 the ties hung to the underside of the rail ; and 
 when the engine struck a place like that, and 
 drove the ties down, the mud and water would 
 shoot out over the face of the earth, and fresco 
 everything inside the right of way. The pas 
 sengers, if they had not been too frightened, 
 could have picked flowers from the windows of 
 the rolling coaches almost. Till now, the 
 T. & S. has been to me the rockiest road on 
 earth ; but now it s all changed. 
 
 Now the whistle sounds deep and long, the 
 train has reached the top of the canon, the end 
 of the gulch, and here before us, nestled in the 
 very top of a group of little mountains, is Jeru 
 salem. The sun is just going down in the hills 
 through which we came, and away to the east, 
 beyond the Dead Sea, the hills of Moab are 
 taking on the wonderful tints they wear at 
 sunset. They are unlike any other mountains, 
 in that the crest-line is as straight as the line of 
 the horizon on a level plain. 
 
172 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 How strange it all seems ! There is nothing 
 but rocks, and scrubby olive-trees, and dead- 
 looking grape-vines, and not many of them. 
 The people are strange, too. On the way to 
 the hotel, we pass all kinds of people of the 
 Orient, Bedouins on high horses, with their 
 knees cocked up; plains-men on thin-legged 
 Arabian steeds ; all manner of men on donkeys 
 and on foot, beggars, and even lepers, and 
 poor Jews ; Jews with cork-screw curls hanging 
 down in front of their ears, and idle pilgrims 
 who do nothing on earth but walk, walk up the 
 valley of Jehosaphat and down the road to 
 Bethlehem. 
 
 The moment you have seen it all, Jerusalem 
 becomes to you the most melancholy locality 
 on the face of the earth. It was so with us, I 
 know; and when the time came to leave, not 
 one of our party missed the train. 
 
 When the Syrian cyclone begins to descend 
 from Mount Zion to the sea, you are led to 
 believe that you will reach Jaffa in about an 
 hour ; but when the train has gone a quarter of 
 a mile the careful driver reverses the engine, 
 opens the cylinder- cocks, and you think by the 
 
JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 173 
 
 swish, swish, of the escaping steam that there is 
 an open switch just ahead ; but you are always 
 wrong. The truth is, they have no air-brakes, 
 and the driver is obliged to hold the train with 
 the engine in the back motion until it is brought 
 down to a reasonable pace. When you have 
 nearly stopped you go ahead again, just as you 
 did before, and go on repeating the perform 
 ance to the bottom of the hill, twenty-five miles, 
 and two thousand feet below Jerusalem. The 
 balance of the journey over the Plain of Sharon 
 is^less hazardous. The engine-driver is a 
 Frenchman, and extremely careful and compe 
 tent. He never allowed the train to get beyond 
 his control foFa^smgle moment, and he riavon 
 the whole, about as difficult a run as there is 
 east of Pike s Peak. 
 
 At Jaffa, as at Constantinople, you must take 
 to the sea again, for there are no more railroads 
 here. 
 
 After the Jaffa and Jerusalem, the P. and I. 
 is good to look upon. This little railway 
 runs from Port Said to Isma ilia, less than a 
 hundred miles. The gauge is not even three 
 feet, which seems to be a sort of standard 
 
174 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 for narrow-gauged railways everywhere. It is 
 only thirty inches. The locomotives are like 
 toy engines, but good ones, and the carriages 
 are beautiful, perfect little palaces. < They 
 are not only neatly designed and artistically 
 constructed, but scrupulously clean and very 
 comfortable. They are narrow, of course, but 
 ample room is given to each passenger. They 
 are so arranged that the whole car may be 
 opened up, allowing one to pass through it 
 from end to end. I had no time to inform 
 myself regarding the road s history, but I was 
 told that it had been built and was being ope 
 rated by a French company. I hope so, for 
 the J. & J. has rather disgraced France. The 
 rail, which rests on metallic cross-ties, looks to 
 be about thirty pounds to the yard. The road 
 runs, for the greater part, along the Suez Canal, 
 with the sea on the other side ; and the ride 
 from Port Sai d, if the sand is not blowing, is an 
 interesting one. 
 
 In the shallow sea to the right are myriads of 
 sea-birds of every conceivable kind, and farther 
 out, hundreds of sleepy-looking little ships with 
 one sail, whose masts lean back like a slender 
 
JAFFA TO JERUSALEM 175 
 
 palm in a steady wind. To the left is the 
 canal, upon whose narrow waters one sees the 
 flag of almost every civilized country, save per 
 haps the Stars and Stripes, which, somehow, 
 one seldom sees at the Orient, or anywhere 
 else, for that matter. Even at Constantinople 
 the flag at the embassy flies only on high days 
 and holidays, and not very high then. 
 
 With all their enterprise, this company make 
 one serious mistake. They refuse to " paste " 
 baggage through from Port Said to Cairo, and 
 at Ismailia the traveller must hunt out his lug 
 gage, and have it re-weighed and re -registered. 
 The P. & O. s beautiful new steamer Caledonia, 
 bound for India, had unloaded an English 
 excursion party the day I went down, and it 
 took nearly two hours that night to re-weigh the 
 baggage where we left the smart little railway 
 and boarded the Egyptian line. 
 
 TJhe Egyptian state railways are not bad, nor 
 very good, but they answer the purpose. Their 
 locomotives are fair, their cars are of the usual 
 European style, short and light. They make 
 very good time, too, for such a slow country ; 
 but one must travel first-class always in Egypt, 
 
176 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 to avoid smoke, filth, and dirt of every kind, 
 tfeejELuick and the dead ! 
 
 If the reader has ever ridden on the rear- 
 end of an American railroad train, and is of an 
 observing turn, he has noticed that the moment 
 the train passes a gang of section-men, they all 
 fall to as vigorously as though they were repair 
 ing a wash-out, and were holding the President s 
 special. " Poor fellows," says the sympathetic 
 traveller, " how they work ! " He does not 
 observe that every Irish son of them has one 
 eye on the track, and the other on the rear-car 
 looking for the roadmaster. Well, they do that 
 here, and the Arabs did it on the Jaffa and 
 Jerusalem, just as the Chinamen do in Cali 
 fornia, and the negroes in Texas. Human 
 nature is much the same the world over. 
 
delations? of tlje C3;mplo^ee to 
 ivatlroao 
 
RELATIONS OF THE EMPLOYEE TO 
 THE RAILROAD 
 
 A S the shifting sands in the bed of a river 
 
 are constantly changing the channel, so 
 
 are the conditions of the country constantly 
 
 changing the relations of the railroad employee 
 
 to the railroad. 
 
 When the country is prosperous, and all the 
 railroads are running full-handed, employees 
 are apt to air their grievances and ask for a 
 raise in wages as often as a dividend is declared. 
 
 ^^ ^^*~~*^^^s***~** 1 **^ __^ -^^^ ^^ 
 
 When times are hard and hundreds of idle men 
 are abroad in the land, and locomotives are 
 rusting in the round-houses, railway managers 
 are "apt to ask the employees to submit to a 
 reduction in wages as often as a fresh batch of 
 men are discharged and sent adrift. These 
 facts may not be very complimentary to either 
 side, but they are facts, I fancy, all the same. 
 
I So TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 The railroad company proper is regarded by 
 the average employee as a mythical soulless 
 something, ever invisible and always out of 
 reach. "The struggle is really between the men 
 and the management, the employees and the 
 officials ; and as they are all employees, from 
 the president to the tie-tamper; from the mas 
 ter-mechanic to the poorly-paid wiper, we 
 must have a division to begin with. Out of 
 this great body we must find the fighting forces 
 for two armies, absurdly arrayed, one under 
 the flag of " Capital," the other bearing the 
 banner of " Labor." 
 
 This condition of things is all the more incon 
 sistent when we remember that the real fighters 
 are all laborers ; only, one side has succeeded, 
 the other is struggling to succeed. And how 
 1ire~we to know them? When does the "em 
 ployee " become an official? Ah, that s the 
 easiest thing in the world. For example, this 
 change in the life of a locomotive-engineer 
 comes the day he is promoted to be travelling 
 engineer or round-house foreman. It comes 
 to the conductor when he is made superintend 
 ent of a division ; to the telegrapher when he 
 
RELATIONS OF EMPLOYEE TO RAILROAD l8l 
 
 becomes a despatcher or train-master. The 
 other employees come in awkwardly, congratu 
 late the new official, and then go back to the 
 boarding-house and lock their trunks. Here is 
 a parting of ways. From this day the new 
 official walks on the other side of the street, 
 regarding the promotion (for which all are striv 
 ing) almost a misfortune. At the end of a 
 week his room-mate leaves him, and he goes 
 also, to live in a better place. At the end 
 of a fortnight he finds that he has, almost un 
 consciously, changed his mode of living and 
 his associates. 
 
 He sits no longer in the councils of em 
 ployees, for he stands for the company, for 
 Capital. In many cases he pays up his dues 
 and takes an honorary membership, or with 
 draws finally from the Brotherhood. He is so 
 different in his new place that sometimes he is 
 accused of being " stuck on himself." I put it 
 that way, for it is precisely as the " other fel 
 lows " will put it ; and I have dwelt upon this 
 point to show that there is no mistaking an em 
 ployee for the " company," which is simply the 
 management. It would not be just to say that 
 
1 82 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 the new-made officer deserves all the bad things 
 said of him, nor would it be right to say that 
 the unpromoted employees are wholly to blame. 
 They have simply all dropped down the wrong 
 leg of the " Y," and nobody has taken the 
 trouble to back them up and set them right. 
 Then |t is always so much easier to convince a 
 working-man that he is getting the worst of it 
 than to show him that he is prosperous and 
 ought to be happy. That s why the professional 
 agitator has such smooth sailing. Man is a 
 scrappy animal at best, and I think that the 
 constant strain under which the railroad em 
 ployee works tends to make him especially 
 irritable, as the constant watchfulness of his 
 nature tends to make him suspicious of signals 
 which are not perfectly plain to him. 
 
 The railroad manager at his office, dictating 
 letters, directing business, and hearing griev 
 ances, is a different man altogether when seen 
 attlre club, at the races, in Sunday-school, or 
 at home ; but the less-experienced employee is 
 always the same on and off duty. He has not 
 yet learned how to forget his work, to put it 
 aside, and rest his weary brain. He railroads, 
 
RELA TIONS OF EMPLOYEE TO RAILROAD 183 
 
 not only earnestly, but all the time : on the rail, 
 in the round-house, the barber-shop, and the 
 boarding-house. When he wants his plate 
 changed, he tells the waiter to " switch out the 
 empty, and throw in a load." 
 
 The little jealousies and animosities just 
 described exist among the employees as well as 
 between the man and the managers. For years 
 the bitterest hatred existed between the Brother 
 hood of Locomotive Engineers and the Brother 
 hood of Locomotive Firemen. Until lately a 
 member of the latter organization was not eligi 
 ble to membership in the former. In the West, 
 where promotion comes quick and easy, where 
 the fireman of to-day is the engineer of to-mor 
 row, where the world seems wider and ideas 
 broaden, these narrow views found little favor. 
 Indeed, it was the Western delegates in the 
 convention who caused these restrictions to 
 be removed. 
 
 There existed for years the bitterest hatred 
 between the members of the Order of Railway 
 Conductors and the Engineers Brotherhood. 
 So cordially did they hate each other that it 
 was almost impossible to get good service. 
 
184 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 Railway managers made no frantic effort to 
 bring about a reconciliation between these im 
 portant branches of the train service. On the 
 contrary, I am afraid some of them rejoiced in 
 the strife, knowing well that so long as labor 
 warred with labor, capital would have smooth 
 sailing. 
 
 When the Knights of Labor were in their 
 glory, many railroad employees turned to that 
 organization as the coming Moses. This led 
 up to a struggle between the Knights and the 
 Brotherhoods. 
 
 When Debs often wrong, but always honest 
 an<f earnest, I believe - conceived the idea of 
 bringmg"air railroad employees together in one 
 colossal Brotherhood, he found himself opposed 
 by all the older organizations, including the 
 Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, for whose 
 advancement he had spent the best years of his 
 life. Just as the different nations of the earth 
 train their cannons on the other shore, so do 
 the various labor organizations of the United 
 States "lay" for one another. 
 
 Happily, thoughtful men are beginning to 
 regard all this as quite unnecessary, as a great 
 
RELATIONS OF EMPLOYEE TO RAILROAD 185 
 
 waste of energy; and a change is coming. 
 Lopking back over the fields where labor and j 
 capital have fought, we see only waste, want, 
 desolation, and death. In struggles of this kind 
 capital gains nothing, and the_be_st labor can 
 get is the worst of it. The great strikes of the 
 past twenty years, including "the last bitter strug 
 gle ..of 1894, must prove plainly to the thought 
 ful, working- man that he must rely mainly upon 
 his own ability to make a place for himself in 
 the world and to hold it. 
 
 The struggle between the American Railway 
 Union and Mr. Pullman in the beginning, the 
 railway companies of the country in the end, 
 has proven two facts : to capital, that it is just 
 as well to treat fairly and deal honestly with 
 labor; to labor, that the country is not ready 
 for anarchy. Few people believe that the acts 
 of lawlessness committed at Chicago were the 
 doings of working-men. These outrages were 
 committed mainly by idle loafers and criminals , f 
 of every cast and irom every country, g oreigfa hAj-^^ 
 working-men, at best, appear to bring all their > - - 
 grievances, all their disrespect for law, in ^ Qk( jj^ 
 short, all they possess that is un-American, Jf)*^ 
 
1 86 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 tg^America. In nearly all the labor disturb 
 ances the finger-marks of the foreigner are V 
 plainly visible. The long and lawless struggle 
 at Cripple Creek was organized and officered 
 wholly by foreigners, and their energies were 
 directed mainly against one American, self- 
 made as far as his fortune is concerned, who, 
 in the panicky winter of 1893-4, advanced 
 nearly $100,000 to build a railroad to the great 
 gold camp, thereby providing work for hundreds 
 of men who were actually hungry. I find no 
 fault with a man because he is a foreigner ; only, 
 if he cares to live in the United States, he ought 
 to respect the laws of the country. But when 
 an American journal, or news-gathering associa 
 tion, will interview an Anarchist upon the mur 
 der of the president of a republic, allowing him 
 to rejoice in cold type over the death of a dis 
 tinguished citizen of another country; then, 
 when Americans allow such a man (a murderer 
 at heart) to live in the land, Uncle Sam becomes 
 an accessory, and by his tolerance encourages 
 Anarchy. 
 
 I have seen their emblems. Here, in Paris, 
 not more than a mile from where I write, there 
 
RELATIONS OF EMPLOYEE TO RAILROAD 187 
 
 is a corner in the graveyard set apart for these 
 miserable people. The walls are all ablaze 
 with red rings, a sort of bloody funeral harness, 
 and on their shields, red with rust, are engraved 
 the knife, the pistol, and the torch. It is not 
 good for the young republic of France, with a 
 new-made grave of a murdered president, to 
 allow these things to hang here, with their 
 breath of danger and hints of death. 
 
 It is not difficult for one, even slightly ac 
 quainted with the history of the railroads of the 
 United States, to pick out those that have been 
 most prosperous ; and it is gratifying to note 
 that those roads enjoying the greatest prosperity 
 are generally at peace with their employees. 
 
 We "Have seen the unpleasant side of the 
 employee, how, in the past, peace seemed to 
 trouble his mind, and now we shall see the 
 other side. 
 
 He is not only capable of appreciating hu 
 mane treatment, but is as loyal to the company 
 employing him, when properly handled, as the 
 highest officer can possibly be. Cross him, 
 and ~"h~eT will fight for his manager. Ask his 
 opinion, and he will show you how far the 
 
1 88 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 "Thunder-bird" of his line is ahead of the 
 wretched and rickety old " Night-hawk " run by 
 the opposition road. The enthusiasm of the 
 earnest and industrious passenger-agent and his 
 army of assistants seems to find its way down 
 the line to the humblest employee. 
 
 I don t pretend to say that such is always the 
 case. A great deal nearly everything, in 
 fact depends upon the character of the higher 
 officials. A railway manager, the fingers of 
 whose phone run down to the pool-rooms and 
 the gilded palaces of painted women, will have 
 a demoralizing influence upon the employees of 
 the road. Turning restlessly in his office-chair, 
 ever gazing out at the window to fields which 
 he fancies elysium, ever impatient and anxious 
 to get away from work, to return to play, he 
 cuts everything short, and you will find his sub 
 ordinates following in his footsteps. 
 
 Take the manager who is thoroughly in ear 
 nest, honest and loyal to the company, and his 
 influence will be felt. It is not difficult for a 
 manager to win and hold the respect of the 
 employees of a railway. If he but takes the 
 trouble, and has the happy faculty of imparting 
 
RELA TIONS OF EMPLOYEE TO RAILROAD 189 
 
 a little human kindness to every employee with 
 whom he comes in contact, he will soon win 
 the respect of all his subordinates. In doing 
 this he makes his own labors lighter, and at the 
 same time adds to the happiness of the em 
 ployees and the revenue of the road. The 
 best service can be had only when all work har 
 moniously and with a will. Railway employees 
 know when they are treated decently. They 
 know, too, that an impartial judge, commonly 
 known as " public opinion," will pass upon 
 their cause, and they are learning rapidly that 
 it is not good to kick unless they have a " kick 
 comin , as they express it. The best of them 
 are not great readers, but they manage to 
 acquire more knowledge of things in general, 
 and railroads in particular, than the average cit 
 izen does. Go and mingle with a band of yard 
 men who are loafing round a switch-engine, and 
 in a half hour you will get a good bit of the his 
 tory of American railroads, and much of the 
 personal history of the leading railway officials 
 of the country. You will find, too, that, if they 
 " roast " some of them vigorously, they praise 
 others enthusiastically. It is always pleasant to 
 
190 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 say nice things of other people. It is pleasant 
 to try to pick out the good things in the life of 
 a man whom the public has regarded as bad. 
 Jay Gould, for example. The employees of 
 railroads commonly known as the " Gould 
 Systems " were always sure of three things, 
 good wages, decent treatment, and a good 
 check for their money the moment they earned 
 it. This respectful consideration for his em 
 ployees, which was one of the noble traits in 
 Mt. Gould s character, has been imparted to 
 his assistants, and is distinguishable to this day. 
 Not long ago, during an inquiry by the Govern 
 ment into the matter of wages of employees, 
 the president of one of these roads was called 
 to the stand to testify. Wheri the venerable 
 railroader took his place and raised his hand to 
 be^sworn, his white hair falling like a halo about 
 his head, the United States judge looked at 
 him for a moment, and said : " You need n t 
 swear." Perhaps the judge remembered that 
 in that same city then a wild outpost of civ 
 ilization on the Western plains this man 
 had begun his railroad career as a Eurrible 
 empIoyee7~aTid that in all these years his 
 
RELATIONS OF EMPLOYEE TO RAILROAD 191 
 
 honesty had never been questioned, and that 
 was sufficient. 
 
 Perhaps it was not much to take his testi 
 mony without swearing him, but to me it seems 
 a delicate and touching compliment to this 
 great good man. I know it is customary to 
 preserve these little flowers for the grave, but I 
 prefer to put this one here. It may serve as a 
 "marker" to those who follow in his footsteps, 
 a something to strive for, " a consummation 
 devoutly to be wished." 
 
 I never knew Tom Potter, never saw him, 
 but I know he lived and died. I remember 
 that for a year after his death it was impossible 
 to open one of the many trade magazines, 
 printed and supported by railway employees, 
 without reading a line like this : " Send some 
 thing to the Potter Monument Fund." I do 
 not know that he ever got the monument, but 
 I know he got its equivalent, a monument of 
 devotion which can only be built on the foun 
 dation prepared for it in life. It proves that 
 in the average railroad employee there is a pay- 
 streak of gratitude ; and that ought to make up 
 for a multitude of short-comings. But it is not 
 
192 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 necessary to die in order to receive his respect. 
 During the hard times in the West, caused 
 mainly by the closing of the silver mines, a 
 very conscientious general manager called a 
 number of employees together to discuss the 
 matter of a reduction of wages. There were 
 present representatives from the various brother 
 hoods and labor organizations who had been 
 sent to head-quarters instructed to submit to 
 no reduction of wages. The manager made his 
 case so clear showing the delegates the utter 
 impossibility of keeping all the trains then on 
 the time-card running, and the folly of sup 
 posing that the owners of the road would retain 
 him as manager unless he made some effort to 
 reduce operating expenses to fit in a measure 
 the decrease and still decreasing earnings 
 that he at once won the respect of the dele 
 gation. When these poor fellows returned to 
 their several homes and made the result of 
 their deliberations known, there was a great 
 row. Some of the more ignorant and unscru 
 pulous employees openly accused the delegates 
 of selling their constituency to the railroad. 
 The manager heard all this in due time, and, 
 
RE LA TIONS OF EMPL O YEE TO RAILROAD 193 
 
 having faith in the justice of his cause and 
 the humanity of man, he submitted the ques 
 tion to a vote of all employees, with the 
 promise that wages should be restored at the 
 beginning of the following year. The men 
 voted to submit to the proposed reduction ; but 
 few of them ever knew what want and misery 
 they saved by so doing, for, if the manager 
 had been beaten, the force was to have been 
 reduced, and thus many of them would have 
 been thrown out of work entirely at the begin 
 ning of a hard winter, when all the railroads in 
 the country were discharging men. 
 
 A less thoughtful, a less humane manager, 
 would have ordered the reduction in wages 
 which circumstances certainly made necessary, 
 and created a strike, won in the end, at the 
 expense both of the employees and of the stock 
 holders. It is well to observe these things and 
 the way they work. They all show that a 
 straightforward, open, and honest policy will 
 often save money for the people who have been 
 enterprising enough to build railroads, and pre 
 vent the less-learned employees the fretful 
 children of the rail from running blindly into 
 danger. 
 I _*- 3 
 
 fJ^/VLP-v 
 
194 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 I happened to be in San Francisco when Mr. 
 Stanford died, and I want to say a word for 
 him. If you ask me how he managed to save 
 twenty millions in twenty years, I cannot an 
 swer ; but there was something good and gentle 
 in his nature. Poor Mr. Stanford ! Surrounded 
 as he was with his miserable millions, with all his 
 wretched riches, his going away was as peaceful 
 and pathetic as the death of a nun. He knew, 
 it seems, that he was going, and had selected 
 his pall-bearers. They were the six oldest loco 
 motive-engineers in the employ of the company. 
 Many times he had placed his life in their 
 hands, and now at the end he wanted these 
 strong, brave fellows to " handle his train " on 
 the last sad run. As usual, they did their work 
 well, walking upright with a firm step. Their 
 eyes were tearless, their faces calm ; but if you 
 looked closely, you would see them trying to 
 swallow something. It was that hurt in the 
 throat that comes to men unfortunate men 
 who are not weak enough to weep. 
 
 At the other end of the procession another 
 band of employees walked, with bowed heads 
 and tear-wet eyes, yellow men, whose homes 
 
RELATIONS OF EMPLOYEE TO RAILROAD 195 
 
 and gods were at the other end of the earth, 
 who found the paths at the Occident slippery 
 ways; but they had taken something of the 
 tenderness of their gentle master, and so walked 
 in his wake and wept. 
 
jfrom tty Comffela to tty Cab 
 
FROM THE CORNFIELD TO THE CAB 
 
 T^VERY boy, arrived at a certain age, wishes 
 to take part in the work of the world 
 which he sees going on about him. Many 
 desire to become locomotive-engineers, but few 
 of these understand how hard and long is the 
 way to gratification of that ambition. My ex 
 perience is like the experience of many a man 
 who has worked his way from the corn-field to 
 the cab of a locomotive. 
 
 My first railroading was in the humble capa 
 city of a water-carrier for the graders on the 
 Vandalia road, in Illinois, where my father had 
 a small contract. Finally, the grade was com 
 pleted, and the construction train came along 
 behind the first locomotive I had ever seen. 
 
 Of course I was deeply impressed with its 
 grandeur. Every boy gazes at a locomotive 
 with rapture, partly compounded of fear. If 
 
20O TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 boys playing football hear the whistle of an 
 engine, they will stop and look. A boy swim 
 ming, who is supposed to forget everything, 
 will turn and swim on his back and watch the 
 train go by. 
 
 Our farm lay near the railroad, just at the 
 end of a hard pull. From the field where I 
 worked during my youthful years I could see 
 the fireman at his furnace, while the great black 
 steed toiled slowly up the hill with a half a mile 
 of cars behind her. I never looked with envy 
 at the engineer. If I could be a fireman, 
 I thought, my cup of happiness would be 
 full. 
 
 It is not an easy matter, without influential 
 friends, to get employment on a railroad, espe 
 cially if the applicant happens to have hayseed 
 in his hair, or milk on his shoes. When the 
 brakeman, who is the paid elocutionist of the 
 train crew, wishes to humiliate a feiiow-work- 
 man, he invariably calls him a farmer. No 
 greater insult can be offered to a brakeman. 
 
 I had lived a quarter of a century, and failed 
 in half a dozen business ventures, when I de 
 cided to go railroading, being prepared to 
 
FROM THE CORNFIELD TO THE CAB 2OI 
 
 accept the humblest position, so long as it was 
 in the path that led to the throttle. 
 
 I presented some strong letters to the Master 
 Mechanic of the Denver and Rio Grande at 
 Salida, Colorado ; a clerk wrote my name and 
 address in a large book, saying that he would 
 call me when I was wanted. I began to think 
 I should not be wanted ; for I had waited a 
 month or more when the caller came one 
 evening and told me to report to the night 
 foreman. 
 
 First I joined the wipers, a gang of half a 
 dozen men, whose business it is to clean the 
 engines up when they come in from the road. 
 This gang is made up of three classes, old men 
 who are not strong enough to perform heavier 
 work ; young and delicate youths ; strong young 
 men who expect to become firemen when their 
 names are reached. 
 
 The wiper s work is not arduous, except for the 
 long and dreary hours, from six in the even 
 ing to six in the morning. But it is disagree 
 able work. You have to get down in the pit 
 under the locomotive reeking with oil, and wipe 
 the machinery clean and dry with bunches of 
 
 
2O2 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 waste. All this time you are obliged to inhale 
 the awful fumes of the torch you carry. 
 
 If you are faithful and patient, you may be 
 promoted to the day shift in six months. Here 
 you perform the same work, but without the 
 torch, and you sleep of nights. By and by you 
 are promoted again to the position of engine 
 watchman. 
 
 There are from twenty to fifty locomotives in 
 the round-house, and it is the watchman s duty 
 to keep water in the boilers, and enough steam 
 up to move the engines in case one is wanted 
 in a hurry. Before long the foreman, if he 
 thinks you deserve to be encouraged, will put 
 you on a yard- engine as fireman. This will 
 take you back to night-work, but it is one step 
 forward, and the work is light. 
 
 When there is a vacancy you will be given a 
 day engine, and again you feel thankful : you 
 see the sunlight ; it gives you courage ; you are 
 glad to be free of night-work. I do not know 
 of anything that will embitter a man s life and 
 sour his disposition so swiftly and surely as 
 working week after week through the hours of 
 darkness. 
 
FROM THE CORNFIELD TO THE CAB 203 
 
 From the day yard- engine you go out on the 
 road, and now you are a real fireman. You 
 are assigned a regular locomotive, and you are 
 expected to keep everything clean and in order ; 
 that is, everything above the running-board, 
 that board which you will see on all locomotives, 
 extending from the cab along the side of the 
 boiler to the front end. 
 
 On mountain roads, ten years ago, wipers, 
 watchmen, and all round-house helpers were 
 paid one dollar and seventy-five cents a day, 
 firemen on yard- engines two dollars, and engi 
 neers three. Firemen on road engines received 
 two dollars and forty cents a day, and engineers 
 four dollars; but Eastern roads do not pay 
 nearly so well. I know of a half-dozen railroad 
 presidents who began at less than fifty cents a 
 day. 
 
 Another great advantage the men of the West 
 had at that time was that they served, as a rule, 
 less than three years as firemen, though now on 
 Eastern roads men commonly fire from five to 
 ten years. But the West was- then developing 
 rapidly, and new roads were being built every 
 year. 
 
204 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 At the end, say, of three years, the fireman 
 may be promoted to be hostler. The hostler 
 takes the engines from the coal-track, side 
 track, or wherever the engineers leave them. 
 He has them coaled up, the fire cleaned, and 
 then runs them into the stalls in the round 
 house. In this work he becomes familiar with 
 each and every engine on the division, and if 
 he be observing, he will retain this knowledge 
 and use it when he becomes an engineer. 
 
 The next promotion takes the hostler back 
 to the night yard-engine : this time as engineer. 
 His pay is now three dollars a day, or ninety 
 dollars a month; but he was making over a 
 hundred dollars a month at two dollars and 
 forty cents a day as fireman. 
 
 Road engine-men are paid by the mile, 
 forty-four mountain miles or eighty-five valley 
 miles being a day s work. Thus, when busi 
 ness is good, the engine crew make forty and 
 fifty, and once in a while sixty, days in a month, 
 
 The man on the night yard-engine goes 
 through the same stages of promotion that the 
 fireman went through, until at last he finds him 
 self at the throttle of a road engine, with another 
 
FROM THE CORNFIELD TO THE CAB 205 
 
 increase in pay and a corresponding increase in 
 responsibility, but with less real hard work to 
 perform. 
 
 On some roads a man must, I believe, serve 
 a time in the shops as helper and machinist 
 before he can hope to be promoted to the posi 
 tion of engineer. This is not absolutely neces 
 sary, for the reason that the engineer is not 
 required to keep the engine in repair. Most 
 master mechanics will tell you that the machin 
 ist is not always the best " runner." 
 
 There is a book called the work-book, where 
 the engineer whose engine needs repair writes 
 its number, what he wants done, and his name. 
 If he is not quite sure about the disease, he 
 may make a report like this : " Examine right 
 steam-chest." The foreman will set a machinist 
 to work, who, nine times out of ten, will locate 
 the trouble in a very short time. 
 
 Even where promotion comes rapidly, it takes 
 from four to six years to work from the wiping 
 tHesTyears, are jiot wasted . 
 and every hour you become more 
 and more acquainted with the various parts of 
 the great iron horse, till at last the knowledge 
 
206 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 picked up in these years of toil serves to make 
 up the sum of your education as a locomotive 
 engineer. The years seem surprisingly short, 
 for there is always the hope that springs eternal 
 to lure you on. 
 
 The life of an engineer is fascinating, espe 
 cially where the road lies along the banks of a 
 beautiful stream, or over grand mountains. 
 Here at every curve a new picture is spread 
 before him. 
 
 To reach the summit of some high mountain 
 at sunrise ; to look down the winding trail 
 which he must travel, and see the blue-jay 
 cloud lying across the track ; to dash through 
 the cloud and out into the glad sunlight again, 
 the verdant valley stretching away below, the 
 high hills lifting their hoary crests above, is 
 apt to impress one with the awful grandeur of 
 God s world, so that he will carry that impres 
 sion through life. 
 
 A very small percentage of locomotive-en 
 gineers become railway officials. If promotion 
 comes to the engineer, he is usually promoted 
 to the office of travelling engineer^ The duty 
 of this officer is to go about over the road to 
 
FROM THE CORNFIELD TO THE CAB 207 
 
 see that the engines are made to work to their 
 full capacity, and to see that the engine-men do 
 not abuse the engines or waste the supplies. 
 
 The travelling engineer usually recommends 
 firemen for promotion. While railway rules 
 permit the promotion of firemen in accordance 
 with the length of time they have served in that 
 capacity, the rule is not always applied ; and it 
 should not be. One man will learn as much in 
 a year as another will in ten, and all men do 
 not make good engineers. Then, again, if a 
 man is given to dissipation, he is not, and 
 should not, be promoted in his turn. 
 
 There is a vast improvement from year to 
 year in railway employees as a class, morally 
 and intellectually. It is no longer considered 
 necessary for a man to be " real tough "to be 
 a good train or engine man. As a class, the 
 men who now enter the railway service are 
 more intelligent than those who sought such 
 employment fifteen or twenty years ago. 
 
 The travelling engineer is often promoted to 
 the position of master mechanic ; from that 
 place to superintendent of motive power ; and 
 sometimes he becomes superintendent of the 
 road, or general manager. 
 
208 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 Among the boys who read this, there may be 
 some who desire to become locomotive-engi 
 neers. To such I would offer one bit of advice, 
 do whatever you are assigned to do cheer 
 fully ; and do it well. 
 
 Never leave a piece of work half done. Try 
 to be the best wiper in the gang ; the best fire 
 man on the road ; but do not say you are so. 
 The officials will find it out, if you are really 
 deserving of recognition. 
 
 Do not rely upon a grievance committee to 
 hold your job ; take care of that yourself. 
 Remember that it is easy to "kick" yourself 
 out of a good place, but never into a better 
 one. The official who promotes you is in a 
 measure responsible for you ; see that he does 
 not have to apologize to his superior for your 
 failure. 
 
 The moment you become dissatisfied with 
 your position, quit. Think it over first, and see 
 whether you can better your condition ; but do 
 not drag others into your troubles ; learn to rely 
 upon yourself. 
 
 If you succeed in reaching the right-hand 
 side of a locomotive, you will then be in a posi- 
 
FROM THE CORNFIELD TO THE CAB 2 09 
 
 tion to show your fellow-workmen that a man 
 may be a smooth runner without the excessive 
 use of tobacco, liquor, or profanity. 
 
 By pursuing this course, you may be regarded 
 as a curiosity by some of the fraternity, but you 
 will be respected by the men and the manage 
 ment, you will live longer, and you will be hap 
 pier while you live. 
 
of rtje Hail 
 
 a tjje General passenger Igente 
 
 / dedicate these simple lays 
 To the jolly, joyous G. P. A?s 
 Of America, whose "paper-talk" 
 Has saved me many a weary walk. 
 
 CY WARMAN. 
 
THE FLIGHT OF THE FLYER 
 
 TVT EAR where the hill-girt Hudson lay, 
 
 Up the steel track the engineer 
 Reined his swift steed at close of day, 
 
 As, leaping like a frightened deer, 
 At each wild surge she seemed to say : 
 Away ! Away ! Away ! Away ! 
 
 The slow team toiling up the hill, 
 
 The light boat drifting with the breeze, 
 
 The swiftest trains seemed standing still ; 
 Red vines were twining round the trees, 
 
 Whose leaves, made golden by the frost, 
 
 Gained more of lustre than they lost. 
 
 The trackman, tamping up the rail, 
 Felt the perfume of dying flowers ; 
 
 The shadows lengthened in the vale, 
 
 And watchmen watched from out the towers 
 
 The little cloud of dust behind, 
 
 As we went whistling down the wind. 
 
214 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 Night s curtain falls ; and here and there 
 The housewife lights the evening lamp ; 
 
 And where the fields are cold and bare, 
 His fire is kindled by the tramp. 
 
 Down throught the midnight, dark and deep, 
 
 The world goes by us, fast asleep. 
 
 Up through the morning, on and on ! 
 
 The red sun, rising from the sea, 
 As we go quivering through the dawn, 
 
 Lights up the earth, reveals to me 
 In the first ruddy flush of morn, 
 The golden pumpkins in the corn. 
 
 From east to west, from shore to shore, 
 
 The black steed trembles through the night, 
 
 And with a mighty rush and roar 
 
 Breaks through the dawn ; and in their flight, 
 
 Wild birds, bewildered by the train, 
 
 Dash dead against the window pane. 
 
 "Be swift," I cried, "oh, matchless steed; 
 
 The world is watching, do your best ! " 
 With quick and ever-quickening speed, 
 
 The hot fire burning in her breast, 
 With flowing mane and proud neck bent, 
 She laughed across the continent. 
 
FROM BUDAPEST TO BELGRADE 
 
 "DOUND for the Orient, I strayed 
 
 Down by the Danube near Belgrade, 
 The Servian capital. 
 
 I had, 
 
 For guide that day, a Servian lad, 
 A rider ; but you d never guess 
 He rode the Orient Express 
 
 From Budapest to Belgrade, then, 
 From Belgrade back to Buda gain. 
 
 He had the softest, sunny hair ! 
 
 His eyes were like the Danube, blue ; 
 And, looking on him, one would swear 
 
 Whatever tale he told was true. 
 So young and fair, you d never guess 
 He rode the Orient Express 
 
 From Budapest to Belgrade, then, 
 
 From Belgrade back to Buda gain. 
 
2l6 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 His story was not new to me, 
 
 For strange things happen on the rail, 
 
 And we have heard a wilder tale, 
 Of sea-men rising from the sea 
 
 Who had been dead a week, whom men 
 
 Had not a hope to see again. 
 
 " See there, where treads the watchman s trail," 
 Said he. " One night, as I came down, 
 Just while I whistled for the town, 
 
 The head-light shimmered o er the rail 
 And showed a woman running there 
 
 Like some wild wingless bird of night, 
 
 And, rippling o er her robe of white, 
 A sable cataract of hair : 
 I thought a ghost was running there. 
 
 " She turned I saw her < God, Clairette ! 
 I gasped, reversed and set the air, 
 With naught of time nor space to spare. 
 
 I saw her death-white face, and let 
 The sand fall, threw the throttle wide, 
 And cried, O Heaven ! how I cried 
 
 To her. 
 
 " We stopped ; I saw her fall 
 
 Beneath the wheels. And when she fell 
 
RHYMES OF THE RAIL 2l*J 
 
 I sprang to rescue her, and well 
 She disappeared ; I tried to call 
 
 To her. 
 
 " Three times I called her name 
 And listened ; but no answer came, 
 
 Although I stood just where she fell. 
 
 " Remembering that her father s cot, 
 Beyond the bridge, was near the track, 
 
 I turned, and hurried toward the spot, 
 And saw the river running black 
 
 Just where I stopped and trembled on 
 
 The brink, for lo, the bridge was gone ! 
 
 " The Angel slept ; but love had found 
 
 A way to warn me in her sleep, 
 
 God bless her. 
 
 At another bound 
 
 I must have gone down in the deep 
 Dark Danube ; in that awful flood 
 Whose mere remembrance chills my blood." 
 
 The same man rides the night express ; 
 The self same man who rode it then, 
 
 Rides twice a week to Budapest, 
 From Budapest to Belgrade, then, 
 From Belgrade back to Buda gain. 
 
AT THE ENGINEER S GRAVE 
 
 T T OW often, at night, when I m rocked o er 
 ^ the rail, 
 
 When the little stars shine overhead, 
 My mind wanders back over memory s trail, 
 
 And I think of the days that are dead. 
 The red locomotives we had for our toys, 
 
 The coaches so gaudy and gay, 
 How we played together, Bill, when we were 
 
 boys, 
 
 And again I can hear you say : 
 " Chu-chu, chu-chu, here comes the railroad, 
 
 " You 11 be the brakeman and open the bars." 
 Big bell a-ringing, somebody singing, 
 
 " Chu-chu, chu-chu, here come the cars." 
 
 And now, where your sleep is so dreamless and 
 still, 
 
 In this silent city I stroll ; 
 Oh, send me some signal, or speak to me, Bill ; 
 
 How is it, old friend, with the soul ? 
 
RHYMES OF THE RAIL 219 
 
 How is it up there on your heavenly railroad? 
 The moon for a headlight, for white lights 
 
 the stars ; 
 
 Glad bells a-ringing, angels a-singing, 
 " Chu-chu, chu-chu, here come the cars." 
 
THE FREIGHT TRAIN 
 
 T T OW I love to watch the local winding up 
 
 around the hill, 
 In the sunrise of the morning, when the autumn 
 
 air is still, 
 And the smoke, like loosened tresses, floats away 
 
 above her back, 
 And to listen to the measured Choo-ka, Choo-ka, 
 
 of the stack. 
 
 The man who rides these mountains, whose 
 fiery steed of steel 
 
 Drinks of Nature s flowing fountains, must inev 
 itably feel 
 
 A divine and peerless painter spread the scenes 
 along the track 
 
 As he listens to the Choo-ka, Choo-ka, Choo-ka, 
 of the stack. 
 
RHYMES OF THE RAIL 221 
 
 111 the peaceful hush of midnight, when his 
 
 pilot ploughs the gloom, 
 From a hundred hills wild- roses send their subtle 
 
 sweet perfume 
 To the wary, weary watcher, whose lamps light 
 
 up the track, 
 And a hundred hills give back the Choo-ka, 
 
 Choo-ka, of the stack. 
 
 Ah, how I miss the music of the whistle and 
 
 the bell, 
 And the breathing of the air-pump, more than 
 
 any tongue can tell ; 
 And the mighty, massive Mogul seems to try to 
 
 call me back, 
 With her Choo-ka, Choo-ka, Choo-ka, Choo-ka, 
 
 Choo-ka of the stack. 
 
CHIPETA 
 
 "\7t 7 HEN Uncompahgre 1 s vale I view, 
 
 From mountains high and hoary, 
 I seem to dream love s dream anew, 
 
 And hear the old, old story. 
 Chipeta, blest queen of my breast, 
 
 When here mine eyes first saw you, 
 The Poncho perfumed wind caressed 
 Your sun-kissed Wahatoya. 
 
 O er Alamos a hills we strolled, 
 
 Whose shadows seemed to beg us 
 Pause where gentle Lomas rolled, 
 
 Above the Verdi Vegas. 
 The soft wind shook the Arboles, 
 
 And song-birds in La Jara 
 Make music dulce on the breeze 
 
 From Elko to Cuchara. 
 
 1 Italics are names of stations on the Denver and 
 Rio Grande Railway. 
 
RHYMES OF THE RAIL 22 3 
 
 Oft in these Cimarron ranges grand, 
 
 The walks of Escalante, 
 Have I caressed your sun-browned hand 
 
 With kisses Caliente. 
 Dear, good Alcalde, bring her back ; 
 
 No monte is Bonifa, 
 O er whose rough Piedras there s no track 
 
 Made by my lost Chip eta. 
 
 Or take me to Thee, Manitou, 
 
 My Santa Fe will guide me, 
 And some day I shall be with you, 
 
 And walk with her beside me 
 Upon that blest Hermosa shore, 
 
 So sunny zn&florida, 
 Mine anima shall mourn no more, 
 
 I see the soul s Salida. 
 
OUR HEROES 
 
 \7( 7 HEN we have scattered the flowers of May 
 Over the graves of the Blue and Gray, 
 Over the graves where the women weep, 
 Over the mounds where the heroes sleep, 
 Then let us turn to the graves of those 
 Who have lived and died in their over-clothes. 
 
 Are they not heroes? have they not died 
 Under their engines, side by side? 
 Have they not stood at the throttle and brake, 
 And gone down to death for their passengers 
 
 sake? 
 
 Calm, undisturbed, be the peaceful repose 
 Of the men who have died in their over-clothes. 
 
 I would not take from the soldier s grave 
 Not even the blades of grass that wave ; 
 Nor do I ask you to hand me down 
 A single star from the soldier s crown ; 
 
RHYMES OF THE RAIL 22$ 
 
 All honor to him : but forget not those 
 
 Who have lived and died in their over-clothes. 
 
 T would be sweet to know, when they re laid 
 
 to rest, 
 
 With hands folded silently over their breast, 
 That a woman would come to their graves once 
 
 a year, 
 
 Bringing wreaths of flowers ; that a woman s tear 
 Would dampen the dust on the graves of those 
 Who have lived and died in their over-clothes. 
 
THE TRAMP S LAST RIDE 
 
 E brakeman pulled his double-breasted 
 vest, and threw himself astride 
 The brake-wheel; then he said he guessed as 
 how the road warn t justified 
 
 In totin people on their gall 
 Who had no travellin card at all. 
 
 Then to the sunset, far away, the poor tramp 
 
 looked with tearful eyes ; 
 
 He viewed the distant dying day, turned to the 
 shack with some surprise : 
 
 "Then you won t tote me?" "No," he 
 
 said; 
 " I 11 never tote you, less you re dead." 
 
 The tramp was bound to have a ride ; and from 
 
 his torn and tattered coat 
 A flask of Leadville-suicide he pulled, and tipped 
 it down his throat ; 
 
 Then, to the brakeman turned, and said : 
 " Git ready, pard, I 11 soon be dead." 
 
THE NELLIE BLY 
 
 A MAIDEN to Chicago bound, 
 *^ Cried, " Bissell, do not tarry, 
 And I 11 give thee a golden crown 
 
 To fly me o er the prairie ! " 
 "And who be ye this trip would try, 
 
 And who s his jags, the flunkey? " 
 " Oh, I m the girdler, Nellie Ely, 
 
 And this, my Indian monkey." 
 
 " Then look well to thy wardrobe, lass, 
 
 There 11 be some lightning changes 
 From California s field of grass 
 
 To Raton s rocky ranges ; 
 From Glorietta s polished peaks 
 
 To th warm Arkansas valley, 
 We 11 do in days what once took weeks." 
 
 " I understand," said Nellie. 
 
 Then o er the track the special sped, 
 And o er the wire the warning ; 
 
 The mile-posts from her pathway fled, 
 Like dew-drops in the morning ; 
 
228 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 Across the hill and down the dell, 
 
 Past station after station, 
 The muffled music of the bell 
 
 Gave voice to each vibration. 
 
 Swift speeds the steed of steel and steam ; 
 
 And where the road lies level, 
 The train sweeps like a running stream, 
 
 Past palace and past hovel. 
 And o er the prairie, cold and gray, 
 
 There falls a flood of fire, 
 While orders flash for miles away : 
 
 "Take siding for the Flyer." 
 
 The engine seems to fairly float, 
 
 Her iron sinews quiver, 
 While swift, beneath her throbbing throat, 
 
 The rails rush like a river. 
 Upon the seat the engineer, 
 
 Who knows her speed and power, 
 Sits silently without a fear, 
 
 At sixty miles an hour. 
 
NOBODY KNOWS 
 
 XT OBODY knows when the song-birds sing, 
 
 In the first glad flush of the summer sun, 
 The want and the woe that time will bring, 
 When the season has changed, when the 
 
 summer is done ; 
 When the flowers and ferns sleep under the 
 
 snows, 
 What will the winter bring, nobody knows. 
 
 Nobody knows, when we say "good-by" 
 
 To our wives and our babies, and hurry away 
 
 O er the glistening rail, neath a sunny sky, 
 How we 11 return at the close of the day, 
 
 Hearty and hale, or shall we repose 
 Cold in a casket : nobody knows. 
 
THE OPEN SWITCH 
 
 A LL the summer, early and late, 
 
 And in the autumn drear, 
 A maiden stood at the orchard gate 
 
 And waved at the engineer. 
 He liked to look at her face so fair, 
 
 And her homely country dress j 
 
 She liked to look at the man up there 
 
 At the front of the fast express. 
 
 There s only a flash of the maiden s eye, 
 
 As the engine rocks and reels ; 
 And then she hears in the distance die 
 
 The clinkety-clink of wheels. 
 Clinkety-clink, so far apart 
 
 That nothing she can hear, 
 Save the clink of her happy heart 
 
 To the heart of the engineer. 
 
 Over the river and down the dell, 
 
 Beside the running stream, 
 She hears the sound of the engine-bell, 
 
 And the whistle s madd ning scream. 
 
RHYMES OF THE RAIL 231 
 
 Clinkety-clink ; there s an open switch, 
 
 Kind angels, hide her eyes ! 
 Clinkety-clink : they re in the ditch, 
 
 Oh, hear the moans and cries ! 
 
 Clinkety clink, and down the track 
 
 The train will dash to-day ; 
 But what are the ribbons of white and black 
 
 The engine wears away? 
 Clinkety-clink ! Oh, worlds apart, 
 
 The fireman hangs his head ; 
 There is no clink in the maiden s heart : 
 
 The engineer is dead. 
 
 ^ 
 
THE ORIENT EXPRESS 
 
 A BOLD Bulgarian shepherd-boy, who looked 
 
 so like a sheep, 
 
 So gentle, yet so sportive in his showy shep 
 herd s dress, 
 Lay down upon the railroad track and played he 
 
 was asleep, 
 
 To fool the engine-driver on the Orient Ex 
 press. 
 
 The driver, who disdained to slay the ram upon 
 
 the rail, 
 Put on the brakes, reversed the wheels, and 
 
 turned his face away. 
 The stoker stood beside him, for it seemed his 
 
 heart would fail, 
 
 Whereat the shepherd-boy stood up, and 
 laughed, and ran away. 
 
 Then came the Irish section Boss, the day the 
 
 train came back, 
 
 And poured about a barrel o tar between the 
 ties that day ; 
 
RHYMES OF THE RAIL 233 
 
 So, when the shepherd-boy lay down, the tar 
 
 upon the track 
 
 Trick d through the whiskers of his robe, 
 and held him where he lay. 
 
 The driver could not hear the cry that swept the 
 
 right of way, 
 The death-cry of the shepherd, and his 
 
 soul was filled with mirth. 
 He opened up the throttle-valve, and turned his 
 
 face away : 
 
 The train bore down upon the boy, and swept 
 him from he earth. 
 
THE FELLOWS UP AHEAD 
 
 T7ORTY miles an hour when you re sailing 
 
 through the air, 
 When you read the daily papers in a soft reclin- 
 
 ing-chair ; 
 Forty miles an hour when you slumber in your 
 
 bed: 
 Do you ever give a thought to the poor fellows 
 
 up ahead? 
 
 When the road is rough and saggy, and the 
 
 snow, and sleet, and rain 
 Falls, and freezes on the headlight, while their 
 
 eager eyes they strain 
 Just to catch a little glimmer of the trail the 
 
 wheels must tread, 
 While the storm beats on the faces of the fellows 
 
 up ahead ; 
 
 When the lightning leaps and flashes through 
 the spires and splintered crags, 
 
 
RHYMES OF THE RAIL 235 
 
 And the engine shrieks and dashes o er the hills 
 and through the sags, 
 
 When in secret with your conscience, your even 
 ing prayers you ve said, 
 
 Make a little requisition for the fellows up 
 ahead. 
 
AN OLD STORY 
 
 / T S HIS morning I read an old story, 
 
 I d read it before, long ago ; 
 T was one of those painfully hoary, 
 But touching old chestnuts, you know. 
 
 I knew when I read the first stanza, 
 
 When the " mad train was dashing along," 
 
 And the passengers " peered from the windows," 
 I knew then that something was wrong. 
 
 When the mile-posts, a million a minute, 
 
 Were flitting and fluttering by, 
 I knew that our poet was in it, 
 
 I knew he was going to lie. 
 
 When the stoker said, " Stay at your post, Jack," 
 And the sun sank away in the west ; 
 
 When "a grim face appeared on the pilot." 
 I anticipated the rest. 
 
RHYMES OF THE RAIL 237 
 
 Then the glad mother rolled in the rag-weeds, 
 " Me boy, oh, me baby ! " she cried, 
 
 And the train went away in the twilight, 
 And the creative poet had lied. 
 
DEAD 
 
 " IpvEAD ! my queen," said the engineer, 
 ^^^ And something stole silently over his 
 face, 
 
 And left in its travels the trace of a tear. 
 
 " Dead ! " he said, bending over her bier ; 
 " Dead ! and the world is an empty place. 
 
 I 
 
 te Only this morning she bounded away, 
 Radiant, beautiful, tossing the snow, 
 
 Brushing the drifts from her path away ; 
 
 It seemed so selfish in me to stay, 
 
 And slumber and say that I could n t go. 
 
 " Dead ! and oh, such a little while 
 
 Ago so bright ; " and he bowed his head, 
 And his face wore a sort of a bitter smile, 
 As he leaned o er the wreck in the old scrap 
 
 pile 
 
 And murmured : " My little McQueen is 
 dead ! " 
 
THE COUNTRY EDITOR 
 
 "PHE dear good country editor sits in his 
 dingy den, 
 
 And writes of needed railroad laws for the ben 
 efit of men 
 
 Who owe six years subscription to his patent 
 inside sheet, 
 
 Who shun the starving scribbler when they see 
 him on the street ; 
 
 Who sing their psalms in Sunday-school with 
 accent soft as silk, 
 
 Who mingle saw-dust with their bran, and water 
 with their milk ; 
 
 "What time s the 2.10 train depart," the edi 
 tor inquires, 
 
 Remembering that on New Year s eve his annual 
 expires. 
 
 He dons his silken bell-top tile, and takes him 
 
 to the town ; 
 He tints the city for a while, and then he 
 
 journeys down 
 
240 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 Among the great monopolies whose slaves op 
 press the poor, 
 
 And with a gall immaculate he pauses at the 
 door. 
 
 His faith now seems to falter, there s moisture 
 
 in his eye ; 
 But with a conscience ballasted with the Rock 
 
 that s in the Rye, 
 
 He enters and announces, as chipper as a lass, 
 " I m Boils, the Blue Creek Blubber man, 
 
 just please renew my pass." 
 
STANDING HIS HAND 
 
 A STEER stood on the railroad track, 
 ** Whence all but him had fled ; 
 The flames from out the engine stack 
 Shone round his curly head. 
 
 Yet beautiful and bright he stood, 
 And held the right of way, 
 
 A beast of royal Durham blood, 
 A terra-cotta bay. 
 
 " Ring off, ring off," the driver cried, 
 
 " You offspring of a gun ; " 
 And but the bounding wheels replied, 
 
 And fast the train rolled on. 
 
 The train rolled on, he would not go 
 And join the common^erd ; 
 
 The farmer heard the steam-cars blow, 
 The while the steer demurred. 
 16 
 
242 TALES OF AN ENGINEER 
 
 Then came the train at sixty miles. 
 
 The steer, oh, where s he gone ? 
 Ask of the section boss, who smiles, 
 
 And sips his beef bouillon. 
 
THE OLD ENGINEER 
 
 T T 7 HEN years after years are gone and for 
 gotten ; 
 
 When soft silvery ringlets your temples adorn, 
 And fall round your forehead like fragments of 
 
 cotton ; 
 
 When the last breath of youth s scented sum 
 mer is gone, 
 
 Keep this unpretentious poetic epistle j 
 
 Twill bring back the mem ry of days that 
 were dear; 
 
 Think of me kindly, then, list for my whistle, 
 And say, " Tis my friend the old engineer." 
 
WHEN YOU ARE GONE 
 To S. T. S. 
 
 T T OW strange the place will seem 
 
 When you are gone ; 
 When, doubting my ability to hide 
 
 My sincere sorrow, gazing on 
 The face of your successor, I shall chide 
 
 Me for the little good I ve done, 
 
 When you are gone. 
 
 Think not that I engage 
 
 Your manly mind 
 With worthless words and idle flattery ; 
 
 I d only have you know you leave behind 
 A faithful friend, whose swerveless constancy, 
 
 Esteem and loyalty live on 
 
 When you are gone. 
 
LOCH IVANHOE 
 
 T T P near the mountain s craggy crest, 
 
 The mighty moguls, strong and proud, 
 The snow-drifts beating gainst their breast, 
 
 With pointed pilots pierce the cloud. 
 High mountains, seeming little hills, 
 
 Emboss the spreading plain below, 
 And rivers look like laughing rills 
 
 As down the distant vale they flow. 
 
 Here in a weird cold wintry grave, 
 
 Wrapped in a marble shroud of snow, 
 With not a ripple, not a wave, 
 
 Calmly sleeps Loch Ivanhoe. 
 But with the coming of the spring 
 
 The little flowers will bud and blow, 
 And gladsome songs the birds will sing 
 
 Along the banks of Ivanhoe.