A PRACTICAL TEST.

Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 80, 1 October 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

A PRACTICAL TEST.

The Emperor Dom Pedro of Brazil lately gave audience to a young engineer who came to show him a new appliance for stopping railway engines. The Emperor was pleased with the thing, and said, " We will put it at once to a practical test. The day after to-morrow have your engiue ready ; we will have it coupled to my saloon carriage, and then fire away. When going at full speed I will unexpectedly give the signal to stop, and then "we shall see how the apparatus works." At the appointed time the Emperor entered his carriage and the engineer mounted his engiue, and on they went for a considerable distance ; indeed, the young inventor began to suspect that the Emperor had fallen asleep, when the train suddenly came to a sharp curve round the edge of a cliff, on turning which the driver saw to his horror an immense boulder lying on the rails. Ho had just sufficient presence of mind to turn the crank of his brake and pull up the engine within a couple of yards of the fatal block. Here the Emperor put his head, out of the window and asked what they -were stopping for. They pointed to the piece of rock, on seeing which Dom Pedro burst into a merry laugh. " Push the thing on one side ! " he called out to the engineer, who had jumped down from the locomotive ; and when the latter, in his confusion, blindly obeyed, and kicked the stone with his foot, it crumbled into dust. It was a block of starch that Dom Pedro had ordered to be placed on the rails the night bofore. — El Dia.