Running a Fast Express.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 1, 4 January 1908, Page 4

Running a Fast Express.

100 MILES ON THE FOOTPLATE. (By WILL LAWSON-.) The mail train roll* into the station, drawn by No. 17, a powerful engine, whose eight driving wheels have proved their gripping power on the heavy grades between the city and the plains which stretch northward and skirt the sea

for many miles. This locomotive, having done her duty, is uncoupled and run on to a siding. Then No. 20, a beautiful brass-girdled engine, blowing white steam from either side, sweeps out on the main line and down to the waiting express. From her foot-plate one looks down on the world. She has six driving wheels, five feet in diameter, and her piston-rods and connecting-rods (those bright steel bars which sweep so rhythmically with the revolving wheels) are as thick as those of a

steamer. Her horse-power would be from 500 to 1000, but railway engines decline to be measured by the power of ihorslesj as with diflferent -loads and grades, and other conditions, their indicated horse-power varies. No. 20 can haul a 300-ton train up a one-in-sixty grade and never slacken her speed. Locomotives are raft'd according to their tractive force, i.e., pulling power. . No. 20 being a compound engine, her exhaust is softer than 1 'that of a highpressure locomotive, and there is a hol-

low, echoing sound from hr escaping steam — a “hoosh! hooshl' —which is suggestive of immense p»wer. Her Westinghouse hisses as she backs up to the mail vans. Very softly she stops and is coupled up. To the quick gasping of her brake-pump she stores air for use during her journey. She is to haul the north-bound mail over frften-seven miles of track, and hers is the fastest running on the line. Her tender, is stacked high with coal, sufficient tc carry her more than one hundred miles. She will bring

the south bound express back in the afternoon. In her cab the brass-work is even more lavish than on her boiler-polished, gleaming brass, which reflects like a mirror, and above the curve of her firebox, in a triangular group, are her steam-gauge, her air-pressure gauge, and her clock. Alongside these is the steam lubricator which conveys oil to the inside of the cylinders. Oil may be seen to rise, one drop at a time, in a glass tube filled with'water;

then a jet of steam blows it through a small tube to the cylinders. In the eyes of the engine cleaners, No. -0 is a heart-breaker, for the whole of her huge bulk, her mechanism and her brasswork are cleaned each night by one man, and the work is done in eight hours. The brake-pump has ceased its clatter, save for an occasional gasp; steam blows from her safety-valve; there is a quiver of suppressed energy about her. The

fireman, leaning from his window, watches for the guard’s starting signal. Tile guard’s whistle blows; the fireman Bays: ’‘Right.” The driver pulls the whistle cord; No. 20 blows a hoarsely-sweet call, moving forward very gently in response to her driver’s movement of her regulator. There is a thunderous “hoosh” from her funnel. She moves faster. Her exhaust quickens. The fireman clangs his door open and tosses a couple of shovels of coal into her incandescent furnace. iWhen he does this, the heat brings the perspiration in beads to his forehead. She is lieginning to move, when her wheels slip a little, in spite of her sixty tons weight pressing them to the rail. Steam is shut off until she recovers her footing. She has a heavy train to start, and her big driving wheels are not so good at starting as the smaller wheels of the engine which brought the train over the hills. .She is built for speed as well as power, like the old-time fliers of Great Britain, whose eight and tenfoot drivers rendered them so difficult to start that a shunting engine always gave a push behind the train to enable the big engine to make one revolution of her wheels, after which she took on the load herself. The increased frequency of her exhaust shows that the pace is quickening. The line curves out to the open and the effect, as the engine rounds the bend, is that she is heading straight for the fence. This in fact is true, for the rails drag her round with her wheel flanges grinding on the outer rail. As her speed increases, the sound of the exhaust steam becomes softer. This is due to the mechanical law that it takes more power to attain speed than to maintain it. Once the engine is well under way her driver “links her up.” This shortens the travel of her valves so that less steam enters the cylinders. Expanding instantly, the steam has barely time to give the piston-head a kick before the piston returns on the next stroke. The big engine is fairly away now, and the noise of her wheels drowns the sobbing of the funnel. As she gathers pace, there is a pleasant exhilaration in the motion. The track seems ridiculously flimsy for such a monster to gallop over, yet it is built of ninety-pound rails, laid on iron-bark sleepers, and is very solid. It stretches away to the horizon, as straight as a die, with a slight dip and rise between, And now she is flying down a grade, shouldering from side to side to the thrust of her pistons, and screaming her challenge call at every level crossing. About two miles ahead a horse appears, like a figure in a cinematograph crossing the line; then another ' and another, and a dray. The engine-driver has seen them pass, and when they are clear, the big racer screams again to warn a possible following team that she has the right of way. Down the dip, up the rise, then an easy curve and another stretch hori-zon-wards to a reddish-brown cluster of sheds. This is a way-station with sidings, on which trucks are being unloaded into waggons. With a loftg blast of her whistle she careers past, the points and crossings clashing under her wheels, and the horses of the waggons starting nervously. Then she settles again to her steady, throbbing motion which is almost a gallop. The effect on untried knees is trying, and one requires his “enginelegs” before standing can be indulged in for any length of time. Looking backward, the carriages appear to be hurrying to crush the engine, which is flying to escape her doom. At the curves she rolls, and each carriage rolls too, independently, giving the train the appearance of a rocking chain of detached vehicles. Even now she has not attained her best speed. For the first ten miles she is taken easily; when she warms up she will steam better. The fireman keeps an eye on the water-gauges—glass tubes enclosed, but for one slit, in steel casing, which show the height of the water in her boiler. Formerly these tubes had no easing and frequently hurst, sometimes causing injuries to the men on the foot-plate. When the water is low, the injector is started. This pumps water from the water-tank into the boiler. Almost unceasingly, coal is tossed into the roaring fire. Coal for locomotives is measured in baskets of 4501 b., and on her fifty-milc rnn No. 20 burns from 14 to 17 baskets—about 3 tons—levcry shovelful of which the fireman lifts and throws. During the day he shifts between six and seven tons of coal.

Another way-station comes into view, and, away over the rise ahead, a column of smoke ascends. “ Late! ” the driver grunts. The fireman nods, and latches his door open a little. Usually the express does not stop here, the goods train approaching being timed to reach the siding first, and the mail thundering through without drawing rein. The brakes emit their stinging hiss, and the long train of twelve carriages draw up to await the other train’s arrival, No. 20. affecting an air of intense disgust, and snorting disdainfully. The approaching train soon roars in— a long procession of cattle and goods trucks, hauled by an engine nearly as large as No. 20. Her perpsiring fireman shouts felicitations to his comrade on the engine of the mail, and is answered witn a brevity befitting the dignity of the mail. Without delay the “ rightaway ” is given, and, impatient as a fretting horse, the big American tears at her load and is soon careering down the grade which had retarded the other train’s progress. She has some time to make up, due to the unforeseen delay. The most difficult part of an express driver’s duties is to keep on time; it requires judgment and an intimate knowledge of the line and of his engine’s capabilities. The line runs now through an avenue of trees, affording a striking example of perspective. At the end of this avenue stands a semaphore, rigid against the blue of the sky. No. 20 blows a challenge; the white arm drops. This is the first scheduled stopping-place. The ph“ form of the station being on the fireman’s side of the train, that individual leans out to watch for the guard’s signals. His right hand waves in railway style, inside the cab, in unison with the movement of the guard’s arm. The driver, his hand on the brake-valve, watches the firenfiln’s hand from the corner of his eye, his gaze otherwise being directed, as always, dead ahead. Slower and slower; the fireman still moves his hand; then he holds it up, and says: “ Stop! ” The brakes, hissing like serpents, grip hard. The weight of the heavy carriages jerks the big engine backward for maybe half an inch, just enough to constitute a jerk. To preserve the draught while standing, there being no rush of steam up the funnel, the blower is started. This is a jet of steam directed up the funnel. There is a ten-minute stop here for passengers to “refresh.” The engine is uncoupled, and runs down to take water. She stops at the tank, the fireman clambers up on the coal, and. seizing the long steel neck attached to the tank, inserts it in a hole in the top of the tender. A rope is pulled, and gallons of water gush into the engine’s water-tank, which is situated under and around the coal. While this is being done, the driver takes a long-spouted oil-can and inspects the bearings, feeling them to detect any heating due to the high speed. He also fills up the lubricators. When this is done, and water taken, she rumbles back to her train. The grades are heavier on the next portion of the run, and here the advantage of coupled driving-wheels is manifest. One pair of wheels may slip, yet there are two other pairs to hold, the six moving like one wheel, with six times one wheel’s gripping power. Far ahead on either side of the line are dark objects, which resolve themselves, on nearer approach, into men—gangers and labourers at work replacing worn sleepers with new ones. The track is unballasted, and consequently speed is reduced. On the unballasted portion, she rocks and quivers nervously, but she is soon on the solid road again, and rushing down grade among rivulets and waving trees, brilliant green in the sunshine. Then,again the trend is upward, and continues so until the end of her “ beat ” is reache 1. She presently rolls into the junction, where her work for the morning ends. Another engine relieves her, and she retires to be swung on the turn-table, so that her pilot will be pointed southward, ready for the return trip in the afternoon. Afterwards her fireman treats her to a “ blow-out.” This is not so satisfying as it sounds, consisting of the blowing of accumulated cinders and ashes from her smoke-box by a jet of steam. When the south-bound mail arrives in the afternoon, she moves, spluttering and sizzling with suppressed energy, down to the train. It is on the south run that she makes her Fastest running. Out of the station-yard she thrashes, over the bridge, round the curve aud up a gentle rise. Then ner driver pulls the regulator, which his left hand never leaves while she is running, and she feels

the kick of the steam. The fireman plies his shovel as though he had a wager to shift the coal against time. The ‘ knock” of the wheels becomes one prolonged crash which hurts the ears, and she sways in the ecstacy of speed. Mile on mile the line is straight. Telegraph posts dance past. Her whistle screams and screams at the numerous level crossings. With a nonchalance born of familiarity the fireman moves about the flying engine—now on top of the coal, shaking it down to a convenient position for his shovel; now standing on the step and getting water in a bucket from a tap in the side of the tender. This water lie dashes on the floor of the engine and tender to cool it somewhat. Between the bouts of firing, he leans out and lets the cool gale fan his temples. Now the rolling, galloping locomotive is tearing through a station where some trucks are standing. There is a babel of echoing sounds, a stuttering clatter from her wheels and the open road again. In all the world, only one thing matters and that is the racing engine. The rails are but ribbons to mark her course—too frail they seem to be in any way connected with so self-contained a thing as this monster breathing fire. Cattle gallop away at her approach; dogs race alongside for one moment; the next are left, yelping and indignant, far behind. At the curiXi she tosses like a steamer in a seaway, her long brass-bound barrel, surmounted by the spouting funnel, swinging majestically. The carriages jostle one another in their haste to overtake her. Over 40 miles an hour is her speed, and No. 20 is in her element. This is what she was built for—to toss the roaring miles behind her. There is no sensation in the world to equal the motion of a fast locomotive flying through the open country, up hill and down dale. So No. 20 comes at last to her home station, where No. 17, the black-browed hillclimber, takes the train from her. As the mail pulls out on its last flight to the city, No. 20 stands on a siding coughing a little after her exertions, her tender almost depleted of coal. Then she is run into the engine-shed to be handed over to her cleaner.