New Ulm weekly review., 1885-07-01
4 RACE WITH FIRE.


The Story Of Q Railroad Ride Related by
Dying Engineer. Eighty Miles an Hour
Over Crooked Track, Pursued by
Flames.
Il don't expect to live much longer,
and after I am dead I want you to put
in the papers the story of that ride I
had from Prospect to Brocton in 1869"
The speaker was Duff Brown, an old
locomotive engineer, who was lying at
his home in Portland, n. Y, dying
with consumption. This was several
months ago. On the 7th inst. he died.
BE was nearly sixty years old, and one
of the oldest engineers in the United
States. His story Of the awful ride is
this:
I'm 1869 I was running train
on the Buffalo, Cory and Erie
Railroad. The track from Pros
pect, or Mayville Summit, to Brocton
Junction is so crooked, that while the
distance is actually only ten miles, the
curves make it by rail fourteen. The
grade for the whole distance is over
seventy feet to the mile. About 9
o'clock on the night of August II, 1869,
we reached the Summit with train of
two passenger six oil-cars, and
box car. The latter contained two val.
liable trotting- horses and their keepers
with them, on their way, I believe to
Chicago. There were fifty or sixty
passengers in the two cars. I got the
signal from the conductor to start and
pulled out. We had got under consid-
cradle headway, when looking back, l
saw an oil car in the middle of the
train was on fire. I reversed the engine
and whistled for brakes. The conduc-
tor and brakemen jumped off, They
uncoupled the passenger cars and set
the brakes upon them and brought them
to stop. Supposing that the brakes
on the burning oil cars would also be
put on, I called to brakeman on the
box car to draw the coupling pin be-
tween that car and the head oil tank,
backing so that he could do it, intend
ing to run far enough to save the box
car and the locomotive. AS ran down
the hill after the pin had been drawn,
what was my horror to see that the
burning cars were following me at
speed that was rapidly increasing. The
men had not succeeded in putting on
the brakes. I saw that the only thing
that could be done was to run for it to
Brocton, and the chances were that we
would never reach there at the speed
which we would be obliged to make
around those sharp reverse curves
where we had never run over twenty
miles an hour. When I saw the fam
ing cars-for the whole six were on fire
by this time-plunging after me, and
only few feet. away, I pulled the throt-
tie open. The oil cars caught me,
though, before I got away. They came
with full force against the rear of the
box-car, smashing in one end and knock
ing the horses and their keepers fiat on
the floor. The heat was almost unen-
durable, and do my best couldn't put
more than thirty feet between the pur-
SUNG fire and ourselves. By the light
from the furnace, as the fireman opened
the door to pile in the coal, I caught
sight of the face of one of the horsemen,
he having crawled up to the grated
opening in the end. It was pale as death.
and he begged me for Gods sake to
give her more steam. was giving her
then all the steam she could carry, and
the grade itself was sufficient to carry
us down at the rate of fifty miles an
hour. We went so fast that the en-
gine refused to pump. Every time we
struck one of those curves the old
girl would run on almost one set of
wheels, and why in the world she did not
topple over is something never could
understand. She seemed to know that
it was race Of life or death, and work
ed as if she were alive. The night was
dark, and the road ran through deep
woods, deep rock cuts, and along high
embankments. We were laundering
along at Lightning speed, and only
few PAGES behind us that fiery demon in
full pursuit. There were fifty thou
sand gallons of oil in those tanks at
least, and it was all in flames, making a
flying avalanche Of five hundred feet
long. The flames leaped into the air
nearly one hundred feet. The roar was
like that of some great cataract. Now
and then tank would explode with
noise like cannon, when volume of
flame and ptchy smoke would rise high
above the body of flame and showers of
burning oil would be scattered about in
the woods. The whole country was
lighted up for miles around. Well, it
wasn't long going at the rate we made,
before the lights of Brocton came in
sight down the valley. The relief I
felt when these came in view was short
lived, for I remembered that train s on
the Lake Shore would be at the juno
tion about the time we would reach it.
Eight was the Cincinnati express. Our
only hope all along the race had been
that the switchman at the junction
would think far enough to open the
switch there connecting the cross-cut
track with the Lake Shore track, and
let us run in on the latter, where the
grade would be against us, # ANYTHING.