Waterbury evening Democrat., 1892-12-15

t=szz=155ES- =155ES=-@SE lected there
 railr O ding stories are sure to follow. l have lis ! tened for hours to good yarns there. One day in the San Francisco round- l house of the Southern Pacific company l mention was made of a recent accident which had been caused by the break ing apart of freight train. This served as a reminder to the engineer from Arizona. Taking a seat on the side-rod of a locomotive he began:
 II think the liveliest ride and the worst scare l ever had was while l was running out of Los Angeles to Yuma in the spring of 50. The company was building the road across Arizona then and we were hauling material to the front
 I've left Los Angeles one afternoon with twenty six cars and caboose. We went out a double-header with two ten-w he cl engines. was running 112 in advance, and Billy Stewartson, with the 10S, was coupled in behind me.
 Next to the engines were some long bridge timbers, eXten ded over three flat cars from which the brake staffs had to be taken. Then there were six cars loaded with redwood ties; then thirteen cars of steel rails, twenty tons to the car These cars were all flats, of course. Then came four box cars loaded with giant powder, to be used in some heavy work at the front.
 Its stiff pull most of the way from Los Angeles to COlton, and from there to San GOrgOniO it's an up grade of hundred and twenty feet to the mile. They gave us third engine from Col ton to the top of the hill: and it was all the three ten-wheelers could do to take that train up there.
 i've stopped at San Gorgonio and cut out the helper engine; and then when everybody was ready we started down the hill
 ''From San Gorgonio it is nearly all down-gradc to Indio, sixty miles, and for the first thirty miles the grade runs from one hundred and twenty-five feet | to seventy feet to the mile.
 "We had half-Spanish boy called | Kid Vallejo braking ahead. He was good one-as smart as steel trap. The middle brakeman was rather light, and the hind man was big, thick-headed brute, who had no 'savvy,' and never would know anything. The conductor was slow, ca sy-going chap.
 "Therc weren't any air-brakes on freight trains then; nothing but hand | brakes. But we had air-brakes on the | tenders and steam-brake on the loco | motive drivers.
 | ''It was about half-past nine on a bright moonlight night when we start | ed down the grade. About mile out l felt the train jerk, and then we shot ahead lively. As I looked back, Billy | %<~1 ,.lr steam I saw the two brakemen | swinging their lights and signaling to l go ahead
 Ut was so light that I could see that the caboose and the four cars of pow der had broken off, and were about ten car-lengths behind the rest of the train. The chuckle-headed hind brakeman had slapped up the caboose brake and snapped the train apart, and we were running down that grade ip two pieces.
 "If ever that loose rear section struck the forward one the concussion would be sure to explode the giant powder, ! and then there would be an explosion that would shake the earth, and send the whole of us to kingdom come.
 We pulled out to get away from it, and whistled and whistled for the ca boose man to get out on the box cars and set some brakes; but he didn't show up, and in less than a mile we were running fifty miles an hour, to , keep out of the way of the rear section. and increasing rapidly every second.
 ''I realized at once that we had got to check up soon or the train would get away with us and land everybody and everything down in the canyon, a thousand feet below. But what chance were we going to get to check up?
 "Just then w0 saw light come up on the box cars, and knew that the caboose brakeman had got out at last. Then we felt sure that he would stor that section and the thing for us to dc was to stop ourselves, l set my tender and driving brakes and started the sand running, and Billy did the same with his engine.
 Setting up all those powerful brakes at once on the forward end just acted like pumping post. The slack came up against the engines with {
 bang, and shifted the steel rails ahead so that they jammed every brake or
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