HIS NERVE GIVING WAY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXII, Issue 103, 2 May 1891, Page 2 (Supplement)

HIS NERVE GIVING WAY.

Wny a Record-breaking Engineer Wants a Slow Train.

William Aten, who is known to every railroad man in New Jersey as plain Bill Aten, has given up running fast express trains. For years he has been running the fast early morning trains from Philadalpnia on the New Jersey Central. A few days ago he wont to the road officials at Jersey Ciby and asked to be put on a slow train. Three years ago he made a similar request, bub ho was induced by a very material increase in his salary to stick to his line of work.

This time he persisted in his request bo be relieved, and he was assigned bo engine 95, which carries oab only local brains. Aten gave as his reasons for wishing to be changed that he could no longer stand the strain of fast running. He said his nerves wero beginning to break up ; he was grow-: ing apprehensive of danger, and he thought he should be relieved before any accident of a serious nature should be attributed to him in any way.

He has been on the Central for twenty years. He is a sturdy-looking fellow, with a keen grey eye. His hair, is of grizzly iron grey, and there is always the cheeriest sorb of a smile on his face. He has run the fastest trains on the New Jersey Central, and of bhe Philadelphia and Reading and Baltimore and Ohio service for years wibh engine No. 169, in the cab of which ho sat for many years. He has made the fastest time for short distances ever made in this country or probably in the world. With four loaded passenger cars the miles between Plainfield and Elizabeth have been reeled off many and many a bimo ab 52, 50, 47 and 45 seconds to the mile, and Aten himself said he made the mile, though cramped once on a dead level brack, in 42 seconds.

Everyone on the line of the Central believes this to be true, for Aten has the reputation for exact truthfulness, as well as for wonderful nerve. The great speed of tbe fast train made its engineer well known all along the road, and he never passed a station or through a town that waving hats and handkerchiefs did nob greeb him. Passengers along the road always seemed to have a feeling of security when ' Bill's' hand was on the throttle, no matter what the speed might be. A nervous old woman once appealed to a veteran commuter when Bill's train was making up lost time one day, who replied to her": •We are going fast, to be sure, but Bill Aten's in the cab; it's all right.'—'Pbila-. delphia Times '