A TERRIBLE RACE FOR LIFE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 493, 15 December 1869, Page 3

A TERRIBLE RACE FOR LIFE.

A correspondent of the Grand Rapids\ Eagle, an American paper, contains the following story :— The Buffalo, Corry, and Pittsburg Road intersects the Lake Shore Road. The station at the junction is named Brockton, and from this point to Mayville, at the head of Chantuaqua Lake (a distance only of about ten miles), a train is carried over an elevation of 700 ft. From the station to the summit the grade is about 80ft. to the mile, with curves which increase the distance by four miles. It is over this road that the immense quantities of petroleum are brought. On Tuesday evening a train, consisting of six oil cars and two passenger cars, reached the summit on its way to the junction. Here, by some cause, one of the oil tanks took fire. The passenger cars were at once detached, and the brakes stopped them. Next the oil cars were cut off, and the locomotive, tender, and a box car, containing two valuable horses and two men, passed down the road, the engineer supposing that the brakesmen on the oil cars would arrest the course of those, but what was his horror, on looking back, to see the six cars in pursuit of him down the grade, enveloped in flames. They not only pursued but overtook him, striking the box car with inconceivable force, knocking the horses and men flat upon the floor, and yet almost miraculously not throwing the engine from the track. It was now with the engineer a race for life, and he gave the engine every ounce of steam. Looking south from the place of my residence at that terrible juncture, one of the most magnificent spectacles was witnessed that a man sees in a lifetime. A sheet of intensely bright flame sixty feet high was seen coming down that southern slope, apparently with the speed of a meteor, and really very nearly the speed of a hurricane (80 miles an hour) ; for pursued and pursuer flew over the course, or rather down it, and around the curves, at the rate of more than 70 miles an hour, as the engineer declares, ■ and as everybody can believe who witnessed the spectacle. The whole heavens were , illuminated, and the landscape was lit up as by the noonday light. Onward and down- : ward flew the engine ; and behind it thundered the huge fiery demon. Twice its i prodigious weight was driven against the ■ fugitive as if instinct with a purpose to drive it from the track. It seemed as if to the heroic engineer and fireman there was a perfect environment of peril. The speed of the i engine was such that it ceased to pump ; . then again the Cincinnati express was due at ; the junction at this time. The engineer of i the oil train whistled 'open switch,' and > shaking hands with the fireman, they bade . each other farewell, knowing that their lives , depended on the opening of the Lake Shore Bwitch by their friends below, and this was i to imperil the express train coming down i from the west with its human freight. The • engineer who was on this train saw the fire i when it first broke out at the summit, and 1 supposing he could clear the junction before : the flaming terror reached it, he, too, put his engine to the utmost speed on a level grade. A mile short of the junction he saw that the . effort was a vain one, for the flying confla--1 gration had rushed out upon the Lake Shore track, and was roaring onward in the direction of Dunkirk. He checked the headlong < rush of his own train and brought it to a standstill. The case took in another danger, and it was imminent. A heavy freight train was coming up the Lake Shore road. All I will say of the escape of this is, that it did escape to the side track, and only by the last minute .of possibility. Running on to a safe distance from the depo r , the engineer of the oil train detached his engine and left the six cars to consume. He says the situation was fully realised by him. He expected to lose his life. At every moment he expected the engine to leave the track. He saw that he was going at a perilous rate of speed ; but there was no help for it. The demon was behind him ; and he declares that it looked like a demon. With that fondness, or real affection for his engine, which these men display, he said, " I thought everything of my engine, and was determined to stay by it to the last." The fireman made one attempt to escape by jumping from the tender, but the engineer restrained him. Altogether the occurrence was a very remarkable one, and in part remarkable for this, that no lives were lost. The brakesmen on the oil cars had gone back to the passenger cars, when the oil cars started. It was well they did, for unless those rear cars had been detached and stopped, their inmates would inevitably have been burned to death.