The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-12-13

is tne very soul of the entire train. The
safety of every passenger depends on him.
He must have constant watchfulness and
presence of mind. The train runs on sched-
ule time, but If that time is passed it de-
ponds on the engineers nerve whether the
schedule is kept or not. There is as much
difference between engineers as there is
between engines, and that is saying a
great deal. Some men have the faculty
of sitting in a cab with the engine flying
along the irons at the rate of a mile
minute or more. without a tremor or ex.
element of any sort. Another man in
the same place and under the same condi,
tons will lose his nerve entirely, get rat
tied for some unaccountable reason, ana
fail most miserably in the most import
ant duty of an engineer
My experience teaches me that 1t Is
with engines in many respects just as il
is with men. There are engines and en-
gines, and then there are engineers and
engineers. A crank engine and a first
class engineer make as bad a combination
as good engine and poor driver. There
are crank engines just the same as there
are cranky men, and sometimes they cause
deal more trouble. If necessary, we can
lock a cranky human being up but a
cranky engine is the bane of a railroad
T. ans life. 1t is no exaggeration to say
that an engineer becomes acquainted
with an engine just as a man becomes
accustomed to a horse Some men cs.h
drive an engine much faster than othe,s.
That Is owing, in some instances. to the
fact that the man has not nerve enough to
crowd her. Sometimes it is also due 10
the fact that he does not know the good
points or the machine he is handling.
when I'm in my cab and on run
there is constantly with me the realiza-
ton of responsibility, and l am always
on the lookout. 1t is not exactly right
to say that 1 look for danger. but 1 am
constantly watching out to see that there
is nothing that is going to wreck the
train right in front of me. have had the
good fortune never to have met with an
accident, but that does not make me less
careful when / am on a run. l tell you,
II makes me feel Queerer than l can de-
scribe to see a real or a fancied obstruc-
ton on the track along which / am NOV
ing. 1 find it particularly necessary to
exercise unusual care in running through
a thickly wooded district after a storm.
Say | am not frightened at such times,
but always feel as if something was like
ly to happen every minute. l don't get
nervous, but have that feeling just the
same.
There is another thing that may seem
queer. The moonlight casts strange shad-
oWS on the tracks sometimes and often
makes man feel as if his heart was in his
throat as he sees what he believes to be
an obstruction on the line ahead of him
especially when he is running a the rate
Of mile minute. 1 tell you it is a won
derful sense of relief when he finds out
that 1t is only moonlight
The fastest run / ever made was at the
rate OF sixty miles an hour for thirty
miles, when 1 was running to make up
tlIhe. was forty miles north of New
YORK and made thirty of the FORTY miles
in Twenty-Five minutes. You can bet
watched the machinery pretty closely and
mad my eye out every minute There is
no Iun IN running passenger train at
hlgh speed. Talk about care Say, care
IS beside You every minute"
Inc engineer who runs what is called
the night express from Jersey City to Phil
adelphla travels over as good a piece of
track as there is anywhere. He runs one
or what are called the "swell' trains ON
the. pennsylvania system, and his respon-
slolllty is very great indeed Edward
Simpson is the name of the man who holds
the throttle of the engine that pulls this
train, and he is an old-timer. 81 alyvav
feel sense of freedom and exhilaration."
ne said. when going at full speed over
the line and l am perfectly happy when
IN the cab. You sec, when once a man
comes to know his engine he knows lust
how to handle her and how to get the best
work out of her. Sometimes an engine
seems to take a freak and will not work
as well as at other times, and then we call
her cranky. 1t generally turns out that
there Is no apparent reason for it, and as
a rule the crankiness disappears as sud
denly as it came. Nobody knows how to
account for this, but it is a fact well known
to all railroad men. When 1 am on a run
l have only two thoughts; one is to keep
on schedule time and the other to keep an
| eye out Tor signals. An engineer who does
not constantly keep a lookout for danger
is not fit for his position, and the same
statement applies to man who loses his
| nerve"
The greatest place around a railroad to
| hear yarns spun is the round-house pro-
vided one says nothing and listens. They
| tell an interesting story over in the round
house of the Pennsylvania in Jersey City
of an engineer named Briggs. He used to
run on the Philadelphia line but now
| keeps an oyster house in Jersey City. This
was case of a man and an accident. His
| engine collided with another, and al
| though nobody was killed, and he himself
| escaped Uninjured, ne was worthless as
an engineer ever afterward. He tried to
keep in the business, but his nerve had
| left him, and he was totally unable to
| force his engine to make time. Finally lie
gave up the task and stopped railroading
altogether. One of the old-timers of the
Pennsylvania is Ned Perkins, who, in ad-
dition to his other virtues, acknowledges
| hoNAAlS bGNiA III oil dCCAutHl. guess lndL
nine-tenths of all the railroad men in the
country have been mixed up in some sort
of an accident in the course of their exper-
ience," said he. II had one once which
took me as near death as 1 care to go, I'M
til the actual end comes was running
local out Of Philadelphia on the western
division, and had a good fireman but
poor engine. She was craky machine, If
ever there was one, and the menl in the
round-house were always joking me about
the mule as she was called
II had been pretty lucky, and was con-
graduating myself upon avoiding acct
dents, when one day my turn came. 1 was
little behind time, and had just got fair
ly started on my run. / was going along
at a 40-mile speed, when we came in sight
of a side track. have been over that
switch hundreds of times, and gave it no
thought, until suddenly the engine gave
jump, and began to pitch and toss and
tear things UP generally. In second
knew we were off the rails. For an in
slant / seemed paralyzed, and was as IL
turned to stone l remember glancing
at my fireman, and his face was gray
Mechanically shut off the steam and put
on the air brake. ] had just called to the
fireman to jump, when over went the en-