The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1893-10-03
rHE ENoINEEa Avn ans posr.
The Fastest Train Ina the World an
IN Men Who Manage it.

f"O BAOH WIN Vha0a&c IL. fR
The average New Yorker who rides
to Chicago in twenty hours, on the
Worlds Fair flyer, does an easy days
work, in fact, does no work at all.
He rests comfortably at night, enjoys
well-served meals, and reaches his
destination almost before he knows 1t,
Having paid the price, such is the
arrogance of money, he takes all that
Is done for him quite as q matter of
course. and knows no more of the work.
ings OF this wonderful train than o
schoOlboy, while he cares rather less.
An engine pulls the cars, steam works
the engine, and as for the engineer,
the New-YOrker never thinks of him
except to, growl at him when he train is
late, and to advocate hanging him IL
tqere is an accident.
Meantime, what is the engineer of
this fastest train in the world doing
for the passenger? In the first place,
the Chicago flyer is not driven by one
but by many engineers. In order to
the nine hundred and sixty-four
miles between the two cities in twenty
hours, including nine stops, there are
required seven huge engines in relays,
driven by seven grimy heroes. A run
OF less than one hundred and fifty miles
Is the limit per day for each engine,
while three hours Of the plunging
rush wears out tle strongest engineer.
Sixty, seventy, eighty miles an hour
what does that to the man at the
throttle? 1t mean that the six and q
half feet drivers turn five times every
second and advance one hundred feet.
Ilc-tic-tic, and the train has run the
length of New York's highest steeple.
The engineer turns his head for five
econds to look at the gauges, and in
that time the terrible iron creature,
putting forth the strength of q thou
sand horses, may have shot past q red
signal with it's danger warning five
hundred feet away. Ten seconds, and
N thousand feet are left behind
one-fifth of u mile. Who knows what
horrors may lie within hat thousand
feet There may be death lurking
round q curve, death spreading its
arms in a tunnel, and the engineer
must see and be responsible for evory-
thing. Not only must he note'instantly
all that is before him, the signals,
switches, bridges, the passing trains,
and the condition of the rails,
but he must act at the same moment,
working throttle, air-brakes, or
ASfSt hoo 90 HulSh do
thought, but quicker, for there is no
time to think. His muscles must do
the right thing automatically under
circumstances where q second is
an age. In the three hours of his vigil
there are ten thousand eight hundred
seconds, during each one of which he
must watch with the mental alertness
of an athlete springing for q flying
trapeze from the roof of an amphi-
theater, with the courageous self-pos-
session OF a matador awaiting the
deadly rush of a maddened bull; and
far more depends upon the engineers
watching we'll, because, If he fails by q
hairs breadth in GOODNESS or precision
of judgment, there may come destruc-
ton, not only to himself, but to hun
dreds of passengers, who, while he
stands guard, are perhaps grumbling at
the walters in the d~ining-car or telling
funny stories in the smoker.
In addition to this constant mental
tension, the engineer on this hurting
train has to endure material discom.
fort, often bodily suffering. The air
sweeps back in his face with the breath
OF q hurricane, blowing smoke ana
cinders into his eyes. Most people
know the intense pain a cinder causes
in a mans eye, particularly a hot Gin
oOi. iC lhB II iiloS uuDCdI-
able and yet, suffering or no suffering,
the engineer who gets a cinder in his
eye can have no relief until the end of
his relay. They shut their lips, these
unlinching men, keep looking ahead,
and bear it.. Long after they leave
the cab the burning sensation in their
eyes and eyelids continues, and even
persists after hours of sleep. sit
seems as if nothing would rest my eyes,
sir" said one of the new men after his
first week on the flyer. No wonder
the eyesight of engineers fails rapidly;
no wonder many of them are removed
from their positions every year because
the examining doctors find them unable
to distinguish the signals. The
engineer suffers also from the plung-
ing and tossing of the monster locomo
tive, which bruises his whole bod
with it's violent rocking, and causes
sharp pains in the back, particularly
where there is any tendency to kidney
trouble. One has only to watch these
strong men as they stumble down from
their engines at the end Of a relay,
has only to observe their white faces
and unsteady gait, and see the, con-
dition Of physical collapse which fol-
lows, to understand what it costs in
vitality and grit to give the ease
loving public this Incompatible train
service.
Thus it is that, while the New
Yorker gets to Chicago with scarcely
more discomfort than If he had remain
ed at home, the same journey wears
out seven engineers, all picked men
for many of them who have seen years
OF service on trains running forty miles
an hour, break down entirely when
put upon the flyer. So exhausted are
these engineers by their com
paratively short relays, that they are
obliged to lay off entirely during the
following day, to recover from the
shock. They do not even take the
Opposite-bound flyer back over their
stretch, but return with their engines
to their respective starting-points,
drawing slower trains. Thus, seven
strong men do two days work every
time the flyer runs from New York
to Chicago, and seven other men do two
days work every time it run back.
Each engineer works three hours on
the flyer, returns home on an easy
train, and then rests forty hours before
his muscles and nerve and brain are
in condition to repeat the operation.
So it results that twenty-eight en-
gineers, one at Il time, are required to
run this wonderful train from New
York to Chicago and back again.
Fourteen veterans drive the great
engines n way. and fourteen brother
veterans drive them the other.
Twenty-eight men for asingle complete
trip of a single train, and they the
flower of American engineers,--splen-
did fellows, every one OF them,-with
nNnl hna1o ofo,.nnh haoYf. nnl fhn 90