The herald., 1895-02-11
Exciting Ride on the Engine of
the Cotton Flyer.
MILES AT CYCLONE SPEED
Saddiing an Iron Horse Against Time
and the Schedule.
How 1t Feels to Ride Seventy Miles an Hour
on Locomotive--The Details OF
Fast Ride.

Did you ever ride seventy miles an
hour on railway train? Possibly, but if
so it was very likely in comfortable
COACH and the high speed was only main
| tanned for few minutes and you did not
know of it; you did not realize just how
fast you were going.
But it is very different when you ride
seventy miles an hour on a locomotive
that is pulling train at that rate of
speed. The kissing steam, the whirring
wheels, the roll and bounce of the great
engine as it dashes around curves or
''along the straight'-all combine to
impress upon you that you are flying
along as fast as a cyclone travels. AS
you glance at objects along the road they
seem to shoot comet-like before your eyes
and are left far, far behind before you
have realized what they really were.
A Herald reporter had just such an ex
perience the other day when he rode on
the celebrated flyer, Engine 1862 that hauls
the Cotton flyer. The engine has a record
of run of DO miles in do minutes, in
Guiding the time lost in making five stops,
and again has for short distances even ex-
ceeded seventy miles an hour in speed.
The train from here to Cotton has long
been bother to Superintendent Muir
because no engine could be secured that
could haul it over the distance and make
the stops in schedule time, hence other
trains had to be held for it and thus
delayed while the passengers grumbl
and the train dispatchers swore. The
train very seldom leaves the station with
less than 200 passengers aboard and has
to make IL stops within the SO miles it
travels. The schedule time is an hour
and forty seven minutes including the
stops which take up fully fifty to fifty
five minutes of the time, leaving the
actual running time but fifty seven min
utes for the fifty-eght miles. 1t takes
rafting good engine to make mile
minute for an hour, and there are but few
locomotives that can do it. Add ten
miles an hour to this speed and the en-
CINE that makes the time may well be
called hummer.
The train on which the reporter rode
left the yards ten minutes late with 2l2
passengers aboard in care of Conductor
Fillmore. Engineer Dave Johnson was at
the throttle and the great machine he
controlled was painting and fretting as if
came, the start was made and the train
steamed slowly through the yards Once
clear of the maze of tracks and myriads of
cars that lined the switches of the yards, the
throttle was opened wider a little wider
and then pulled clear open so that every
pound of steam in the immense boiler
was pushing on the pistons that drove
the six great driving wheels.
How the train hew Grades were
mounted without loss of seconds
speed and curves were turned so swiftly
that the engine seemed to be riding on
the, wheels on one side. The stop watch
had twice checked off a mile in sixty
seconds and a third in tifty-four seconds,
when the first station at which the
train stopped came into view. Bang-and
the throttle was stuck hard and fast. Zizz-
~ went the air brakes on the car as the
power was applied, but the speed was so
great that the heavy track brakes had to
be applied TO the driving wheels in order
to keep the train from running past the
station. Amid a shower of sparks from
the track brakes as they ground and
pressed on the driving wheels, the train
came to stop. The passengers alighted
from the cars laughing and chatting, I'M
conscious of the fact that they had been
whirled home from Los Angeles at tornado
speed and went away without even as
much as Il glance at the wonderful mach
inc that had performed so great feat in
travel.
On again, but this time slower, only 55
miles an hour, the engineer preferring to
wait until he reached a point where there
was distance enough between two stations
to allow a fast run, and when he reached
that point he nodded to the fireman. The
furnace door was thrown open and Dante's
widest dream OF hades was but sugges-
ton OF the terrible, awful heat that surged
around about and through the boiler
tiues. More coal was piled into the already
superheated tirebox and the index hand
on the steam gauge climbed up twenty
pounds in a minute and then the engine
was given her will. Faster and faster it
flew, the train swaying behind it until
the car wheels seemed to scarcely touch
the rails and the stop-watch licked off the
seconds as the mile-posts flew by. When
ten miles had been covered at a rate of
fraction over seventy miles an hour the
engine was again slowed down and the
fast ride was over, for the train was in
Cotton just thirty seconds ahead of sched-
ule time.