[COMPLETE STORY.] REAGAN’S FAST RUN

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10, 11 March 1905, Page 12

[COMPLETE STORY.] REAGAN’S FAST RUN

By

Frank W. Mack

MATTY REAGAN an old “898” pulled out of New Y<*tk City the first train tnat ever ate up the thousand miles to Chicago in twenty-four hours- Il was a sunshiny Sunday, and everybody was willing that the engineer who started the train should act proud, end even a. little cocky. Reagan, however, didn’t Beein even to feel big about it. But when the officials came out and stood round the engine, there were throttlelinen on waiting locals, and expresses too, who’d have gievn their boots and •babies to have been in Matty’s place—leaning there against the tender bulkhead while Chauncey Depew made an address to him. And some of them were willing silently to bet with themselves that they would have appeared snore jaunty than Reagan did, that they’d have dressed and acted the brave-engineer part better than he. It was 2.55 p.m. “Matthew Reagan!” spoke President Depew, up to the grimy man heeding down from the shadow of his cab. “Matthew Reagan,” said the high official to the engineer, “within five minutes you will have started the fastest train in the world. You are about to open a new era in history. You are about to move wheels that will go a thousand miles faster than any that have ever turned roun —” The brown-faced engineer, glancing at his watch, moved a bit impatiently. Depew noted the act. “1 must not detain you.’’ ho added, longer than to wish you good luck and schedule time.” “1 am much obleeged to you.” returned Reagan half over Ids shoulder, while he tossed back an awkward salute with tt wave of his left arm. “He needn’t fret about the skeed’l,” he half grinned, half growled as he crossed the cab. An instant later he was “testing air,” his face half amused, half impatient at the palaver. There was the whistling sound with a wheezy sigh at the end, the fireman with alert face leaned out for the signal: the writer who, in behalf of The Associated Press, was to make the entire trip in the engine-cabs was mounted on the engineer's shiny leather Beat. Reagan stood, one hand braced on the reversing bar, the other graspng the throttle, eyes straight ahead. Inside the greasy cap a torch of splendid bravery was lighted. Reagan was etub-and-twist, grimy man was gone. The silent figure waiting there at the throttle seemed now to tower in the dusky cab. The easy air of a 200- pound man had fled away, and the lines of his Unconscious pose mutely announced ekill, steady nerve, caution, dogged will, dare-devil courage, calm readiness, utter command. It was three o’clock and they were losing precious seconds. Suddenly the fireman pulled in his head. “Ixit ’er go!” he cried. There was no yanking at the bar — scarcely a muscular effort. Rather, a nervous impulse, and then a sense of strain, a tightening of slack in the train

behind us, definite moving, a sharp, cough-like blast from the short stack, the first sound of wheel-rumble, another sharp cough-blast—a third and fourth, and the big drivers had turned once around. The twenty hours had begun. So had the race. Human mechanism was now pitted against the flight of Earth’s profound shadow, in a 1,000-mile contest. And so true the touch, so steady the pull of the greasy throttle-hand, that folks in the train now rattling over the yardswitches had felt no tug at the starting. When the engine plunged under the tunnel-spans at Fifty-second Street the speed exceeded any I had ever known there, and I had "done” the tunnel twice a day for years. But this was no commuter’s trip, this no common journey. Wheels and rods and bars had never before attempted what “898” had now squared away to do. If you ride only in cars you know not what knolls and swales lie in the tunnel between Fifty-second and Ninety-sixth Streets. The entering reach was a down slope that lent thus the aid of natural law. The running giant accepted the aid, but made no heel tracks; steam was crowding the pistons. Down to the floor of a gentle valley, up and over a rise ns a ship rides an ocean heave. She was footing over fifty miles an hour in the dark bore beneath the city. There was a dull-yellowish light ahead; it brightened, stone arched above—the engine bounded into the daylight, starting just a trifle as she did, like a mettled horse at a whip-touch. The (hairy hand on the throttle-bar had clutched anew. Chimneys seemed dancing left and right, and side-streets flitted by like spokes of a whirling wheel. We were skittering along the viaduct, and the drivers were unwinding trail at sixty miles or more per hour. Reagan had not broken his pose at starting. You might have believed him stark and stiff at his post, save for a swift glance now and then at fireman, clock, or steam-gauge. He knew in what time he must make each Individual mile, despite grade or curve, from New York to Albany. Inside the greasy cap cool, steady head-work was doing. And I believe the great engine had a brain which knew the impossibility of a thouhand miles for one machine at such a pace—a brain which knew that even then miles away the fires were lighting in some giant comrade that should speed the westward flight. She hissed fretfully at the dome as Reagan eased her over Harlem Bridge and around the curve at Mott Haven Yards —over five miles from start, in six minutes’ time. With screaming steam she looped the loops around Kingsbridge and Spuyten Duyvil, and straightened out along the Hudson

River. The steam eeased its screaming then. Reagan had no other use for it, and he set a gait that left the treelimbs first trailing and then waving after- the train.

Each suburb town had a group or a throng to see the first run of the Exposition Flyer. Every trackman, every switchman, every flagman, and operator ahead had made ready for the fastest run the division had ever known. And Reagan, flying northward with a hundred lives in his care, had faith in each unseen comrade; knew that each spike and brace and rod wore true, that each hand and brain had made safe the path.

Clear of the suburb towns in the open on an arrowy reach, Reagan for the first time loosened the tension upon himself. He Jet go his bracing hold on the reversing bar, but the grimy left hand kept its clutch at the throat of the black, running beast. With one hand thus on the throttle, he swung half around to see if his guest was still aboard. His face slightly smiled, but the eyes of the man—they half awed me with a sort of far vision shadowed there. They were focussed to a twentyhour schedule, charged with responsibility for human life.

I slid down from the shiny leather seat, stood steadied by grip on the reverse-bar against the'engine’s roll and. lurch, and shouted in Reagan’s ear: ’’You walked her out of New York at a good clip!”

“Yes, fair,” answered Reagan. his face half turned and with eyes slanted ahead to the tracks.

“Mott Haven Junction in six minutes is more than fair,” I yelled—“ordinary trains use ten minutes from Harlem Bridge to Forty-second street.” A flicker of smile again came to his face, and he nodded.

“Are you going to make any record time before you cut off at Albany?” With his right hand on my shoulder, still holding the throttle with his left, he pushed me past the reversing, bar to the front of the cab, so that he could speak audibly and yet see the tracks gleaming ahead. Then he resumed: ou see, there’s no end of her runnin’; she can run jus’ as fast as she wants to, she can. But the sked’l’s a little slow.for ’er, an’ so she’s jus’ ajoggin’ along easy like.”

For an instant and without answer I peered into the man’s face to determine if he. were jesting, and I recall a flitting sense of apprehension lest Reagan should decide to get out of her what he might regard as speed.

“How fast are we running now?” “ "Bout sixty or slxty-two where there’s straight goin’.” Then he tested some valves, peered down into the furnace, where the fireman was poking

with an iron rod, and I slid baek on to tlie leather seat behind him. I thought: “What in Heaven’s .name might ba •peed, if this was ‘jus’ ajoggin’ ’ along easy-like?’” Clinging then to the cabframe to hold my seat, I determined not to incite Reagan to any stunts of speed. This view was enforced by some involuntary impressions. I was conscious of a quickened impetus that instantly followed a nudge I saw Reagan give to the throttle-lever. The roaring bulk had just rounded a bend’, into a straight level of three or four miles near Poughkeepsie. The rails and ties were flowing swiftly towards us and beneath us. A rocky headland. with glistening rails bending oufi of sight around its base, came rushing upon us. Closeby the bend the water Japped and slapped on the sea-wall, as though trying the distance to ths tracks, and beyond was open river. Surely he'd ease her for that curve, and I watched to see his hand give a push on the bar. Not so, and we were too close now to save being hurled off that glistening bend of rails. W» were -upon it. With stopped breath and sitting not more than four pounds’ weight upon the leather seat, I leaned in an impulse to balance tilings. The maniac machine suddenly hunched her left shoulder, swerved with a dastardly lurch to the right, groaned, rounded, levelled, and straightened a.way. I let out pent-up breath and settled baek, weighing a ton on the leather seat. I was glad Matty-Rea-gan turned for an instant to see how I took it, even though he smiled. It was a recognition of a strenuous situation, and helped to restore my selfrespect. Tlie swaying brute plunged througH Poughkeepsie, and half an hour latep I found myself giving birth to a wish that Reagan might make a record per 1 - formance. So do we “rise by the •things that are under our feet,” grow brave by the hazards we have passed. Scanning the official train-schedule used by employees, I hunted for some even figure distance between stations. Ah,'here was a stretch upon which time could be made, and I knew it was arrowy straight and a- shade downgrade going north. Again I slid down to the foot-board, and, clinging to the reversebar, put my face to Reagan’S ear, which he inclined toward me. “If you wanted to shove her some, here’s a good strip between Stuyvesant and Castleton!” I yelled; “10.02 miles, and I think it is a straight easy slide.” He made no reply, faced squarely front again, and gave me no further attention. A moment I waited, scanning the kindly face now hardened to iron. “I have a stop-watch and could catch the time!” I yelled again, with explanatory inflection. Again no response, and I slid baek to my perch with a sense of being rebuked as a meddler. Ha must wonder what I wanted, with the clattering engine and the trailing train spurning the track at sixty-five to

seventy mile* per hour. I concluded I jras a frenzied fool, and sealed my mouth. I looked across the cab to see if the fireman had witnessed the repulse. I was, however, epared that. Leaning in the cab-window, he was ringing the bell as we pounded over the clattering switches of Hudson. Abreast the brick-yards above the town, I noticed Reagan glance toward the sootfaced fellow at the bell-cord.

‘‘Hey, there!” shouted the engineer, And the fireman quickly turned a halfstartled face, letting the bell die out as he sprang across to Reagan’s side. “Break up yer crust!” I heard the latter bawling. “Get ’er mellow an’ warm, fer I’m goin’ to cut ’er loose somewheres around Coxsackie.”

A grin that made him look like a cheerful Imp flashed over the fireman’s soot-smudged face. The chain rattled as the furnace-door was yanked open, the heaving bulk bellowed with the indraught, the blackened hands seized the long, iron prod, the red and freckled arms plunged it into the glowing maw of the retching beast. The panting hell was dug and ripped and lifted and jammed; then mouthfuls of coal from the ringing scoop, a plume of black smoke from the stack, more chain rattle, partly closed door, more artful feeding from the ringing scoop, a clatering slam of the furnace-door, another belch of smoke above the trailing train. The gleeful Imp, remounting his perch, swiftly scanned valve, tube and gauge. The switch-rods at Stockport still quivered from the awful pounding, when a wild sputter of steam from the dome made Reagan glance swiftly at the gauge, and then over at the Imp, whose Sooted face had sweat,-worn channels of clean skin. One nodded grimly in satisfaction, the other wagged his head as men do when a gallant deed is done.

Surplus power! Old “898” was getting “mellow” and "warm.” We felt a sudden new impetus—the stoker and I, and he glanced up to where I clung on the slippery leather and winked. The sputter at the dome subsided. We knew Matty had drawn on that surplus. He had begun to “cut ’er loose,”

All sense of apprehension had fled. There was a clear sense of all the possibilities —- that a spreading rail or a broken rod might at any moment “close the incident,” but no fear. Where I had “sat light” with anxiety, I now leaned to the pommel” to relieve her to weight, to lend her speed. The fireman stood now at his place, face eager, eyes ahead, bell-rope in band. No more yvinking. No more ‘mugging." Business was on —a. race within a race. His allegiance now was to that stirless man with a set, hard face and a clutch on the throttle so tense as to whiten his knuckles through tue grime. Once more ho tried he Valves, leaned for an instant to scan the gauge finger that trembled above » mark denoting ferocious pressure. Suppose she were to burst now! What mattered it? We would scarcely be conscious of it.

She heeled around a sweeping curve that in its effect was reduced by our flight to the arc of a turn-table, so it seemed. The wicked, black beast appeared not to be moving parallel with the tracks, but, rather, to be leaping sheer into the air at a low angle. She righted, however, and with a lurch that was devilish. Suppose the clinging flange had been pared off on that curve! But it wasn't. I heard Reagan’s voice and leaped to his shoulder.

That’s Stuyvesant — on the right, ahead there; get your watch ready!” ‘Ay, ay!” I yelled back to him. Suddenly my chin again went up with another forward impulse. Great God, would she endure it? Reagan was again gruelling the glistening brute. He had “cut her loose.”

A little yellow structure gleamed out of the green hillside away down ahead or us. It was Stuyvesant Depot, where the stop-watch should be started. More than a dozen miles is arrowy line and slightly downgrade, the tracks reached away to an inverted V in the distance, iho afternoon sun lent them glistening high lights which the big drivers soon would smite to momentary darkness. The little yellow depot grew up o x iew as though under a focussing glass. Matty lifted his right hand as though to renew his warning l . All right!” I shouted. The station flashed past. On the instant a pressure set the little watch wheels moving- How tiny they seemed, along with

tlioa* seven-foot drivers that were spurning th* road-bed beneath us at a rat* no human thing had ever before flown, purposely. The avalanche of steam and steel now and again shot through a shadowy aisle of trees that shut in upon us the diabolism of crashing sounds. The glistening barrel of the clanging giant grew to be alive, the short stack a foretop, and the iron frontlet rolled and lurched until we were clinging to the flank of a maddened devil that would kill us if he could. Wind at the speed we were flying is classified, hurricane. This flight, too, had th* rush and crash and hurtle of a tempest. Iron was rolling upon iron no more: the down-beat of the tyres was a pounding cannonade upon the railjoints. The monster’s hell-charged bowels were vibrating with every blast from the cylinders. And the sharp, clean exhaust of the splendid creature was so quick that the puffing at the stack was a continuous volley, like when a lad runs at full speed with a stick against a picket-fence. There was grim suggestion in the lateral ringing of the great connecting rods when she lurched. Far out along the line a glimmer of white in the trees. Another and another. The little huddle of Schodack Landing it was. They flashed forward to meet us, as the shadowy object grows up suddenly from the yellow film of the photographic plate. The sobered fireman again tugged at the bell-cord. I heard no sound. The tempest of air flowing behind us had snatched it away.

Four miles more to Castleton Station—and the ten and one-fiftieth miles would have romped beneath us. Calmly the little watch jogged its slender finger. It had no consciousness of the crashing, roaring delirum, whose results it was to measure. A sense of numbness crept upon my flesh, the result of jar and manifold vibrations. The fingers clutching the rail of the cab-window grew cold with the rush of the Mayday air upon them. People in the heavy parlour-cars behind us must be aware of great speed, but steadied by the train’s tension they were gliding along the rails all ignorant of how it felt in the engine-cab. Gripping my cap in one hand, I leaned from the window to watch the following train—■ only for an instant. Days afterwards there was tenderness where the hair had been whipped and pulled against the still air through which a tempest speed was whirling us. The fireman observed the incident and saw my caress of tho tender surface. He grimaced and shook his head. He knew better—kept his head inside.

Clinging grimly on the cab-seat with the diowing, clanging, gnashing, grinding Thing heaving under us; with patches of forest whisking past so quickly as to seem like flying brush; with telegraph. poles closing down upon us in swift ranks at lock-step either side; with the river bent to a cimeter-curve by our speed and flashing beside us; with the far mountains gliding against each other as though to a stately measure; with the noar-by hills whirling as though in a romp; with the immobile engineer' always with left arm extended to the steel bar and the wind “playing rat-tat” with a corner of the bandana; (With th* insistent!, onrushing plunge of the roaring bulk and its trailing train —with all these, and a sense of repose in utter impotence, I found the mind wondering if the Thing w'ould ever again be still. With deliberate interest I scanned the grim being there in front of me. With my intelligence I knew it was Matty Reagan, but to a new sense born of the situation he had become the apotheosis of this giantry, the incarnation of ferocious force, the personification of demoniac rush and clagner. I was speculating whether he could ever choke down this beast of steel thews, whether Satan had begat, here a commotion that man could never quell. Possibly not so! A signal that was human had come from Reagan. Moveless otherwise, he again lifted his right hand. It was his signal that the yellow speck ahead was Castleton—the end of tho fervid strife. Quickly we helmed down upon it, passed it; the watch was stopped and 1 held it clasped tight while we flew thundering on. Then a slight jolt of Reagan’s left shoulder, and with a curious interest I watched and felt for' obedience in the wild Thing. A slight curve was ahead. Another shoulder-jolt. Tho Thing steadied- Th* rhythm of it* tumult was

less furious. It swung around the bend at a speed that was yet terrific, but sanity was returning to the engine and, a little farther on, she came to be again “898”—a thing possible of designation in human terms. Again the Imp was doing something to the furnace, I knew not what.

Then, as though feeling back into a dream to identify something, I held up and examined the stop-watch. What was the record? At. first I must have read amiss. No, the mute story of that furious flight stood and proved at five minutes five and three-quarters seconds. By a worked-out table to which I referred, we had travelled the ten miles at tho rate of about one hundred and twenty miles per hour. Could it be correct? For tlie first time I doubted the little watch that had been for me the true historian of numberless events of moment and renown. I hesitated to speak to Reagan about it, for he must know that my watch was a liar. But he. easing her off a trifle more, half-turned and glanced at me inquiringly. “Well, Matty, I don’t dare to tell you what this watch says.” “Why not?” he called.

Because it must have skipped some time on that ten miles—it makes the run too fast.”

“Well, what do she say?” “Five minutes five and three-quarters seconds—-at the rate of about one hundred and twenty miles an hour, not quibabout fractions of miles or minutes.” Matty half smiled and turned again to his vigil. “Do you think it can lie right?” I asked, standing beside him at the reversebar.

He looked into my face squarely for’ the first time since the start in New York, and I stood for a moment loosaiawed at what 1 saw in the man’s face. His grisly beast had yielded to his dominance and was now running down to sixty-five, to sixty-two miles per- hour. But the master could not so quickly release himself from the awful tension. Ho was still keyed to the 120-miie point, and in the eyes of this grimy engineer there was still a something of daring, of command, of ultimate resolve, that I had never before seen. He still half awed me by the bigness of some spirit that, not having subsided, still shone from his eyes and stamped his face. “Well,” he spoke, “she was runnin’ very fast.” You call it fast, do you?” He smiled slightly. “Almighty fast!”—half musingly. “Not ‘jest a-joggin’ along easy-like,’ ” I asked, openly quoting his diction. “No, she wasn’t joggin’—she was runnin fer her life, she was.” I felt renewed confidence in my stop-watch. Suddenly we boomed through a hamlet where a group wjldly waved from a little cottage porch. It was Reagan’s home. Ha glanced to see it, but made no sign. We were thundering into the East Albany Lards, and the engineer would yield nothing to himself. But the Imp sfepped across and waved back a greeting. We clattered through the yards, slowed down to a rumble, strode with a tread of dignity over the big bridge at Albany, and the wheels were finally still five minutes ahead of the twenty-hour schedule on the Hudson Division.

Backing down the awkward steps from the cab, I swung Anally to the platform, and, while they loosed her couplings, I paused for a moment with childish awe to look her over. As though taking advantage of some monster while it slept, I touched the big steel arm all flecked with flying ud, and laid a hand on the drivers I had feared might never again be still. gave the word to go ahead, and 898 with stately leisure made way for the giant comrade which soon was coupled on to speed the westward flight. And as Reagan led her off on to a siding, he glanced backward and nodded mo goodbye.

We gathered at table, while we climbed the Albany hill westward —Daniels, Yager, and ‘ the master mechanic, Buchanan, A conservative citizen is Buchanan—a Scotchman of steady puls* and calm.

“Well,” said he, after hearing the story from tho cab—“l wouldn't be surprised at most anything I might hear these days; wo were running very fast down there.”

“And you believe, then, that the watch is right?” I exclaimed—so eagerly as to jolt the careful Scot into an even mora cautious attitude.

“No. I didn’t say the watch is right nr wrong. I soy I wouldn’t be surprised U

it were one or the other; but you ar* telling the story, and must tell it as*you Hunk best.” There was no confirmatory value in this. My face, I imagine, showed disappointment, for I heard Yager say encouragingly: “I timed miles below Poughkeepsie in forty-five seconds and less, and I never rode so fast in my life as just below Albany." This gave me comfort, but not conviction.

Temperamentallyanoptimist anda radical, the impulse was to abide by the watch, glorify Reagan, and myself enjoy a bit of distinction. But the more impulse tugged toward head line material, the more did reason demand a valid confirmation. Exact fact Is the creed and gospel of “The Associated Press.” It must be protected from error, and moat of all from errors of vehement assertion, aggressive affirmation, which flow so easily into sensation. It would be easier to apologise for being too slow Ilian to defend ourselves against charges of being too fast.

So, as the train flew on at the rate of fifty and even forty-five-second miles, the story was prepared. To its very face I impugned the integrity of my stopwatch. Before my vision came Reagan’s face in vain, with mute protest and appeal. Thought flashed to me also of the eager - faces in the engineer’s home by the railroad tracks away back there. I could by a pencil stroke make them very proud I know, and yet the record of that ten-mils rush was written in at six minutes and fractions, instead of five minutes.

Ah, but I was wrong! Clear through to Chicago the stop-watch was subjected to tests, and was proved by other timers, and never once made skip or hitch. In Chicago I found competent people with perfect facilities, who tested it with utter thoroughness. I told them something of the story, and the trial of the little stop-watch became the news of the shop during three days of careful experiment. And the man who returned it to my hand had a pleased face as he announced that the little wheels had proved their integrity. So now, I know - the stop-watch told the truth that May day afternoon, and in common honesty I pay my debt to Reagan's nerve and skill. He sent “898” 10.02 miles in five minutes five and threequarter seconds, instead of six minutes, as told by the wires that day. Her drivers in that ten-mile rush turned around eight times every tick of the clock. In every second of time she made 173 ft of distance—three feet less than at the rate of two miles per minute, or a shade off 120 miles per hour.

Matty Reagan “signed orders” for a far journey years ago, but his name is not forgotten in the service. Among those who proudly waved at the engineer from his home by the railroad tracks that Sunday afternoon—among them was a son who is firing to-day on another 20-hour run over the Hudson Division — in line for his father’s old place.