LOCO AND MOTOR.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16750, 17 March 1926, Page 4

LOCO AND MOTOR.

»'A DANGER AND A TERROR." STRAIN ON ENGINE-DRIVERS. The Canadian National Railway Magazine lias nn article on the levelcrossing accident as an incident in the life of the locomotive engine-driver, or "engineer," as he is called in North America. The article was written by Gregory Clark, for the Toronto Star, in order to prcscnl the matter to the public from the engineer's standpoint.. Fifty-eight miles, fifty-nine, sixty miles an hour J The gigantic engine leaps and sways like a racing automobile multiplied a thousandfold. It fecis as if it were hurling itself The din is soundless, an ear-blocking din. Heat whirls in the grey steelfilled cab. Past narrow windows the world streams dizzily past. His gaunllcted left arm resting shakenly on the huge throttle, his squinted eyes glued to the narrow ribbon of steel-shot way ahead, the engineer drives the International Limited thundering through. Sixty miles, sixty-one miles an hour I

Through narrowed eyes lie strains his sight ahead on that swift-rushing path ahead of him, swift-rushing towards him, like a river, a rapids, a furious torrent of road.

For he is coming to a level crossing that is a provincial highway. Soon he will sec it. He reaches up, never moving his eyes from the path, and hauls "heavily on a cord. Faintly in the din he hears his fierce whistle blow, long, long, short, short. Then ho sees far ahead the highway. Little black objects are scultering across. Motors.

His giant Six Thousand leaps on. Oh, how the flickering, dimly-seen roadbed is swept up. The little black objects ahead seem to swell, larger, larger. The engineer again reaches up, hauls the cord and the llereo whistle hoots. Of course, the highway crossing is protected. There arc bells and wigwags on it. It is broad daylight. It is a still afternoon, and his wild whistle can be heard miles. Yet The crossing is clear. The International is two swift train-lengths away from it. A low-hung touring car, grey, speeding, appears back in the' highway racing for the crossing. Two hundred yards back! The engineer crouches. The gauntlctcd arm clamps against the huge throttle. A wild thrill of horror seizes him, enfolds him. He snatches the whistle cord and hauls hard.

Sixty-one. He watches with half-closed eyes the point he will pass like a thunderboll in three —two —one second. The speeding motor-car comes lo a sudden stop twenty feet from the crossing. The man at the steeringwheel is looking up with a grin and waves to the engineer. It was a little joke he was having. . . . His passengers—women —are huddled terrified in the back seat. The engineer, clammy from head to foot, wipes his gauntlet over his forehead and turns his eyes again on the wheeling road before him, his road. For a mile and a quarter ahead is another level crossing. "Alone!" He is alone. This leaping, thrusting threc-lnindrcd-ton monster of black steel and white fire is his to make go and his to stop. Behind him, attached to him, in his care, are ten eighty-foot cars carrying three hundred and fifty men, women and little children. They are sitting unconcernedly, watching the country flying by, reading, playing, chatting as in a draw-ing-room. The engineer is alone, and all this is in his keeping. His mate, the fireman, sits across the cab, watching out the other window, his hand on the levers that control the automatic coalfeed of the ravenous engine. But the two lone men in the front of this milc-a-minute train are separated by an impenetrable, invisible wall of tumult. You and I, in a hundred and fifty miles of motor travel, will cross perhaps four, five level crossings. We come to them as each of us sees fit, some of us cheerfully and recklessly, some of us cautiously. Four or Ave of them in a day's long travel. ' This engineer, travelling at tremendous speed, a speed demanded by tho public as a whole,- you and me included, a modern, twentieth century rale of speed, with neither power nor the right to stop at crossings, this engineer has to cross not four or five, but one hundred and forty level crossings in a hundred and forty miles of headlong, hurtling race. One crossing to the mile is the average in the older settled portions of the province.; Many of them arc highwavs protected by hells, automatic wig-wag signals, or gates. But most of them arc just open crossings with only the while cross sign. To you and me, they arc incidental risks of the day's run. To the engineer in the cab of your train they are the ever-recur-ring, permanent, hair-raising hazards and terrors of a life of service.

Expross Driver Speaks. Duncan Campbell, one of the engineers who drive Lhc International Limited across Quebec and Ontario into the United States, says: "Each and every one of these crossings is in itself a danger and a terror. Many of lliem are just little country dirt roads. But in this day and age, with the motor-car risen to such a place as it has in our lives, there is no road that has not its menace. Of course, an engineer, after many years back and forward on his division, every day of his life, comes to know each stick and stone of it, as a man knows his path home. Our orders arc to keep our eye on the road all the time. Care as we must for our engines, wc must keep our eye on the track ahead. We know every crossing as we come to it, we learn to sound our whistle without really seeing the whistle-post. Some crossings we learn to distrust more than others. All crossings, despite the fact that we pass them several times a week, All us with secret fear. "For you must understand wc run on a schedule of lime and of speed. The public demand it. But I can stop my train with the emergency brakes in about twice its length. "If my train is ten cars, ray train is about eight hundred feet long. Therefor I cannot slop in a short distance. The Dreaded Motorist. "The emergencies that arise at level crossings arise at far less than 1000 feet; they arise at 500 feet, 400 feel. It is the man who suddenly decides he can make it after all, the. man who has slowed up and then puts on speed to cross over, the man who is one hundred or two hundred feet from the crossing who breaks the hearts of engineers. "Kngineers are Irainrd to he experts in judging the interrelation of distance

and speed. That is our business, our skill. As I sit at my window watching the crossing ahead and suddenly sec a man start up to try and beat me to the crossing I know better than he that I am going lo be at that crossing before he possibly can be. "You would be surprised to know how many motorists strike trains in the second, and even the third, coach back in these attempts to beat us. If we bad tried to stop wc might have just succeeded in slowing enough so that our pilot would have struck and destroyed them instead of thorn striking us. You have only to recall the sudden way a train appears to rush into the station platform to know how deceiving a train's speed is. Yet coming into Hie station the train is actually slowing up, not speeding up. There is no trip that, we do not have at least one fright. We do not know that the car running to the crossing is really going lo slow up. We do not know the intentions of the driver. Wc do not even know if he has seen us. It happens all in a few seconds. To us it sometimes seems an eternity. Yet we never become accustomed to it. Sometimes the car will skip across so close in front of us that I am in doubt whether wc have hit them or not. But no: they got across and waved jokingly to my mate at the other window. "We are Helpless." "We are helpless. Once we have set the engine in motion and at a speed demanded by official schedule, we cannot stop save in emergency. If wc slowed up for every crossing, not only would it make travel impossible, with a stow-up every mile, but would only make the motoring public confident instead of otherwise with regard to crossings."

Who is to blame for the accidents? If the people of Canada paid out millions in taxes for gates at all crossings, as they arc in England, would it help? "The vast majority of our accidents and our scares," says Engineer Alexander Bond, who is one of the crack drivers of the International, "occur not at night, but in the daytime. Our great electric headlight seems to be sufficient warning at night. In the daytime nothing but caution will do. For it is the opinion of engineers generally that 75 per cent, of the people hit are fully aware of the approach of [he train, and are struck as the. result of misjudgment or carelessness or recklessness in the face of danger. Perhaps not even 25 per cent. were struck not knowing the train was upon them. Laughing Girls. "I recall one day an open car coming at a fair speed towards the crossing. 1 had blown my whistle, but because it appeared to be a oar load of girls 1 blew it again, for safety. Instead of slowing, the car put on speed. It was already too late for me to brake. We were hitting our top speed. All this happens, you must remember, in a flashing second or two. I was sick with the shock of it. I could scarcely look for fear. But as wc rushed past my frozen gaze beheld two or three vouug girls laughing below me and waving, having pulled their car up suddenly, as they had intended from the start, not fifteen feet from the train. "We get the shock, whether we hit or not."