The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-05-28

MICH Ah t5tS eubs
 In a reminiscent mood, the older ones
 among the visiting locomotive engineers are full of story and incident. They get together to tell their hair-breadth es- capeS, of their hoodooed engines and
 ghosts, for every railroad has it's ghosts, of "logy engines" of lazy engines, and
 tired locomotiyes'' to their hearts con tent. Many of these stories make inter-
 estng reading, says a writer in the Milwaukee Sentinel.
 Would you believe" asked an old timer of the rail that engines need rest, that they absolutely get tired?
 Tt is a fact !" continued he, "I have known engines to get absolutely tired out in my experience. l remember seV- eral years ago on Pittsburs, Fort Wayne and Chicago, at a station called Nevada, I was making a pretty sharp run to clear No. 8, the fast mail and was getting pretty close to her time We went into Nevada on a heavy grade when I signaled for the switch, and the station tender came down and opened the switch. Just as we reached the opening I discovered that the engine was going to lay down between eX- hausts. I could hear the express rum bling down the hill behind. l was lit tie nervous as the engine went on to frog, on the sharp curve to the siding. As I feared, she quit, lay down like steer in the corn. l had but a small train not more than two-thirds of her load. I looked at the steam gauge. She had one hundred and twenty pounds all we were allowed to carry; there was ab- solutely no excuse for her refusing to pull that train, except that she was tired.
 Tn my disgust 1 turned to the fire man without shutting off the throttle, and said: Well, the old jade is played out
 Knowing that it was impossible to back up and take another run at the
 bill, there was nothing to do but wait and flag the express, and have them push us in on to the siding. The throt- tie was still wide open mind you, all this time, and the lever was down in the corner. I presume for one minute the engine was dead to the world. This minute seemed to me like an hour My disgust and contempt was nearly ready to break out when from the safety valve came a pop, followed by a groan from the engine, and what do you think-that engine picked up that train and went on in the side-track at ten-mile clip"
 "Once,'' spoke up another old-timer, q was a brakeman on the old Detroit and Milwaukee road, now part of the Grand Trunk system. I was out on what they called the night express, which was combination of freight and passenger Between Davisburg and Fentonville the train broke in twain I went down and made the coupling and eignaled the engineer ahead In those days all freight trains carried a bell rope; when I coupled up the rope and got back to the caboose it seemed to me that there was a sight of slack in the bell rope. reeled and reeled, but made nothing more than the casual mention of it to the conductor, whose name was Thomas Rock At Fentonville l was given the numbers of two cars to 'shunt' out l looked the train over and over, and no such cars were in the train. I reported the matter to the conductor.
 He said was blind, called me an id tot. He said they were there when we left Detroit, for he personally took the number of the train; so he started out bigger than life to make me believe I was an idiot He went the full length of the train one way, but did not discov- CT the cars; then walked back to the en- zine again and counted the cars. He was two cars short None had been side-tracked since leaving Detroit. The result was that the matter was reported at the office and the next morning the Fentonville accommodation was or dered to look out for those stray cars They found them where the train broke in two, on either side of the track, one fully ten feet in the clear and the other down the bank upside down.
 Stories like this are common, yet the majority will not believe them and will l regard this as a pipe story The idea l of train breaking in two and two cars | breaking out and the rest of the train | running on without jolt or jar sufficient | to aarm the train crew may be regard ed as f1ehy. but it is history no less"
 Here a third man put in his oar and said: Say, Joe, on the old Western Union road, or later what was called | the Racine and Missippi, I knew an en- zine to leave the track, go down the bank and the passengers in the cars looked at the engine as the balance of the train went past, and everybody was innocent of the fact that they were rid ing on an engineless train until it began to slacken speed. At another time on the same road, if I remember rightly, Frank Black, while running wild through the station of Rock Run on d sharp curve, discovered a freight car standing across the track. The wind had blown it off from the siding each side of the track, the trucks stood squarely in the clear of the rails. Black said he had not time to stop; so he opened the throttle and he and his fire man got down behind the boiler head and waited for the crash. It came; they split that car into splinters, tore the and bell frame from the en- zine. ripped half the jacket off and made kindling wood of the cab but the engine Staid on the track Black had to fix up smo6estack out of boards set down into the smoke arch around the nozZles and he went into Racine with his own steam and boasted that he had never been lowed in yet. This story is history, although I am not person ally known to the facts. But it is one of the stories that old timers relate who knew Wisconsin in the day when Alex ! n Ci1hart |