TEN MILES IN SIX MINUTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 8842, 2 April 1892, Page 2 (Supplement)

TEN MILES IN SIX MINUTES.

An American correspondent writes:—" Locomotive running wild; clear the main track !" was a message sent alone the Pennsylvania and Poughkeepsie Railway the other day. The truant locomotive had been standing on the main line at Blairstown, when a goods train, coming up behind, ran into it. The throttler was thrown wide open by the shock, and before anyone could leap on board the engine it was tearing down the track at a rate of a mile a minute. The small knots of people at the various stations heard a rushing roar and saw a flash of burnished brass as the engine flew by. A passenger train from New York, on the Susquehanna and Western road, was almost due at Portland, and everyone expected ucollision on the tracks, which are used jointly by the two roads ; but the runaway reached the Poughkeepsie Road crossing, and was switched on to that road two minutes before the Susquehanna train came along. The switch was turned half a minute before the engine reached it, otherwise nothing would have saved the passenger train. The truant engine dashed along the long bridge at Portland at the rate of 75 miles an hour. Steam began failing on the heavy gradient of the bridge, the engine slackened its speed, and a man leaped on board from another engine, climbed over the coal to the throttle, arid stopped the runaway. The run from Blairstown to Portland, ten miles, had been made in six minutes.