Studies in Thrilling Lives

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 6, 11 August 1909, Page 51

Studies in Thrilling Lives

The Locomotive Driver

By

WILLIAM ALLEN JOHNSTON

T) HO is there in all the civilised yy I world who cannot recall a rail--1 I 1, road accident? Everything that human bi a ins and hands can devise has been added to railway equipment for the greater safety of the travelling public—the block system, for instance, that close succession of railway lighthouses, which almost guarantees a constantly free track and makes collisions next to impossible. So much for the public, and so much for improvements. But what of the locomotive driver? Is his occupation less hazardous? In a way, it is; and yet again it is not. All these added safeguards are for his protection, too; and a certain new product of the times has arisen to double the chances of life and death. Day and night it rides the cab with him, a haunting spectre of delight and distress; now laughing, rollicking, tempting, then suddenly fiendish, cruel, destructive, and then "That’s speed!” said a superintendent, grimly. “Speed! Speed!—and more speed! “The American people are speed crazy. Every day, every week our schedules are subjected to the Compelling outside pressure. Our entire organisation is geared up to it—'these offices and clerks, that train shed, the yards and trainmen, from the fireman down to the wiper; all our equipment, from the man who drives the wheels down along the line—and a great line it is—to the melter that made the silicon in the drivers.

“‘Give us speed—more speed!’ That’s the constant cry from commuters and capitalists, shoppers, clerks, office boys. Down in the waiting-room you’ll find people scanning schedules with anxious faces. They are picking out the fastest trains. A slow time-table is worse than useless to them and to us. “It matters not what they will do with their time when they get to their destination; but get them there quickly! That’s the great demand. “In a way it’s funny—or, rather, it would be if it were not so desperate a problem. “This morning one of our Philadelphia expresses was four minutes late. Think of it, man! Only four minutes lost in a fog and drizzle! But a big financier on board came up here and wasted twenty minutes putting in a complaint. Do you see? “Commuters will save eight minutes by a new schedule which we have shortened by an almost superhuman effort, and then waste an hour- gossiping with the grocer on the way home. Haven’t you seen them —how they’ll step off a fast train with faces, and then grow immediately lazy and don’t-care-like, stopping to pet dogs, and looking earnestly around for some foolish means of relaxation? The further the city pushes them out the nearer they want to get to it. And it’s up to us.” “Where will it end?” I asked. “I don’t know,” he said, sharply. “I'm not here to philosophise.” Hoping for More Speed. “ I will say this, however,” he added, “ it is possibile to increase the speed of a locomotive. Already we have them at ninety miles an hour and at a pinch they'll make a hundred. We are studying speed constantly, and it is purely a matter of mechanical achievement to raise it to, say, one hundred and fifty miles an hour. All right, but—-and that’s a big ‘but’ —where will you find men to run such cannon balls, to drive ’em without blinking an eyelid for an hour or more, to watch a dozen things all at once, the track ahead when you’re eating it up at two miles a minute, the steam gauge, the water column, the air brake dial, the time, the target overhead when signal lights flash by you like a string of fireflies? How many men in a million could •tand that strain?

“ Some of them,” he added grimly, “can’t stand it now. Go out and see them and talk to them—our drivers,” and with something of an air of pride of possession he gave me letters to three “ crack” men —“ Pat ” Doyle, “ Wes’” Alpaugh and Martin Dobbs. This same pride was reflected, I found, in the face of every man to whom I showed tile letter and asked for directions. And finally, as an American, 1 began, too, to feel it.

Why? Because of the engine driver’s constant danger? Yes. And more. Because of his constant responsibility. I was talking with “ Wes” Alpaugh, a big man with grey hair and boyish eyes. There’s a constant light of daring in those eyes, and the love of a race —he couldn’t give up the life, he says, and his nerves are as strong as ever; but that full sense of responsibilities has shaped his life and character, and the lines of his face show it. He is quick as a eat and he’ll take every necessary chance without blinking an eyelid; but he’s sober, industrious, sure, dependable. Like other “cracks,” he is just the stuff out of which long training makes the express engineer. Making 90 Miles An Honr. He is speedy. Everyone knows that, from the president down to the enginehouse boys. Just before I found him, a

scrap of conversation between the two younger engine drivers reached my ears. “No. 593,” said one, “pulled out of Bound Brook yesterday six minutes late —short of steam—poor coal. But you couldn’t hold her. She got up on her hind legs, made 518 take a siding, and rode in here right on the heels of 583, just half a minute late.” “Who’s that?” asked a young fireman. ‘“Wes’ Alpaugh?” “Sure!” said the two in one breath. “ Who else?” And while we were talking the railroad chief of police strolled by. “ No. 80!” he yelled. “ Ninety miles an hour!” Alpaugh chuckled, “lie’s kidding me” he said. “ Some years baek I brought a special over from Easton—a marrieage party—with No. 80, an old freight locomotive. She didn’t go ninety miles an hour, but she made over eighty. I was called up and suspended three days.” “You’ve had narrow escapes?” I suggested, when he told me he had never been in a bad accident. “Every engine driver has,” he said. “But we don’t speak of them. What’s the use? They make every driver better, you know. Once,” he began, and stopped. “No, rd rather not tell any.”

“Ever kill people—on the track ?” “Lots,” he said cheerfully. “But it’s hard. A man with a heart in him never gets used to that. “I’ve had ’em step suddenly right out of the bushes on a moonlight night, and walk straight into me. Generally they hold up one hand, like they would ward off a blow of a hundred tons goin’ a mile a minute. Many Are Snicides. “They’re suicides—mostly; and lots of ’em are, I believe, when the public doesn’t know it. Once I hit a wealthy contractor just out of Spring Lake. He was walking along with his back to me, and though the whistle must have split his ears he never budged. I managed to slow down, but the breast beam struck his head and split it.” Alpaugh’s flyer, No. 590, stood ready for her day’s run, all slickly groomed,

fed and watered. As he talked, he walked up and down and around her, tapping a nut here, testing a valve there, listening keenly as she purred and talked to him. “Gentle as a kitten,” he said proudly ; “and look at her wheels—eighty-five inches high!” “Is it hard to make up time?” I asked. “You bet it is—and easy to lose it. Oh, it’s all right on a clear day, with tangent tracks and trailing switches, but wait till a fog settles down or you’re driving against wind and sleet. “And, again, when everything is running fine the fireman comes crawling over the water-board and yells that the flues are leaking, or suddenly the ejector becomes hot, or the eccentric gets crazy, and then it’s slow down; and, mind you, if you slip the throttle back once you’re two minutes out anyway. “On the other end you’re up against that schedule. Already they’ve squeezed it down until there isn’t a loose second in it. But. still, you’ve got to catch up some way. It’s a rip-roarin ’slide here, and a chance on a slow curve there, and an extra notch on an up-grade that gives you another second. “Do you mind the last six-day bicycle

race where two riders lost a single lap the first day and couldn’t make it up in several thousand miles? I felt sorry for those fellows. Then I remember when the Lake Shore tried to beat the New York Central’s record between Chicago and Buffalo —436 miles at 62J miles a minute. They did beat it—by 26 seconds. Think of it! That’s what a fast schedule means. The Bigness of a Minute . “You ean see now what a big thing a minute is to a railroad man,” he said, snapping his watch. “A whole lot can happen in it, and a whole lot can be lost. Well, I’m off.” He made some pantomimic gestures to the fireman, notched his throttle, pulled his cap down, and rolled gently out. “One more!” I shouted. “Could you run a hundred-and-fifty-mile-an-hour locomotive 1*

He grinned back th-ougti the hissing steam. "I’d like to try,” he yelled. “So long!" The Americana Are Speed Mad. Back in the shed I found that same keen-faced surgeon moving sharply about, and as he walked out 1 followed him into a little office set in the middle of the railway village, near the battery of engines. I will say freely of this man that he was the most difficult to interview 1 have ever met —-though for that matter most railroad men are similar in this respect. His eyes and red face showed that he did not talk; his lips proved it. For fully twenty minutes he eyed me politely and absently—and said nothing. Then something unlocked his taciturnity and lie talked—for a few brisk minutes, but how he did talk; Hissing out his words and biting them off in short, sharp sentences, thumping the desk and bending savagely forward as he scored a point. It was that same rattling story of speed—speed—speed! “Son, it’s hell!” said he. “Just that!’’ And he gave me a quick vivid picture of a vast organisation hitched up to the heels of a single fast locomotive. The whole schedule of four hundred trains a day must be unscrewed and retightened to sandwich in that flyer. A small regiment of clear headed men in the towers of the block system must give her a clear track despite the claims of a hundred other trains, give her free way for a hundred and more miles, so that she will split the air and nothing else. A small array of switchmen all along the flying route, must give her locked or open switches as she demands them. Telegraph operators must flash a stream of clicking orders before and behind her; and so the system grows and intensifies—finer, finer. Let that big driving rod snap and a half ton finger whizzing eighty miles an hour will swing up from beneath and cut him in two. Let one man blunder and that tissue order he takes so smilingly as he jumps in his cab is a plain out-and-out death warrant. “So you take a chance every time you start out, don’t you?” I asked an engine driver. Taking Big Chances. “Oh, sure!” said he, and his eyes lit up with the excitement of the thing. “But you mustn’t think about it,” he added seriously. “If you do it will get you.” “It gets some men?” I suggested. ‘‘Very often. There’s Clapp, my running mate some years ago. He had a hard run of luck with one of the fast ‘Phillies’ — three accidents right hand running, two of which turned his engine right around. After that he was looking for more, and I guess you know what that means when you fly around curves so fast that the track seems to jump off into space and you having no idea of what may be ahead.” He grinned. “No. 900 caught a bakery wagon in a grade crossing the other day, cutting her in two with a noise like a rip saw. She was running ninety-three and a-half miles an hour. And in the same rim she caught a handcar loaded with scrap iron. Funny thing, the handcar never left the rails, but she went spinning a half mile down the track, the handles going so fast you couldn’t see them, while the scrap iron broke every window in 900. That’s the observation engine, you know.” “So you’re never dead sure what’s ahead. And in a day or so Clapp came to me shivering like a cat out of cold water. ‘l’ve got to give her up,’ he said. I’ve got to give her up.’ “He did; and he ran a local then. He kept at it for one, two. three years, and then one day he came in smiling and said, ‘l’m all right now.’ And to-day he’s running a ‘Phillie’ again. He doesn’t think about what’s ahead now.” A Railway Village. Have yon ever entered a railway village? It is worth while, if only to get an idea of the fast age we are living in” There’s tin- great cavernous train shed, with its gleaming tracks, impatient trains, clean cemented a'-h--. reverberating erics, its hurrying, jostling crowds of commuters and express‘travellers. They handle a city of people here every day—--70,000 speed maniacs in all—and over 400 long trains whirl them in and out of the station. Baek of the shed spreads out an interminable maze of tracks and trailing switches, and with a warning, “Look Sharp, now, every time you cross a

track!" you thread your way along the broad labyrinth of steel and cinders. “Whrr-rr-rr!” The fast Atlantic City express, “Pat” Doyle at the throttle, rushes by, swings its seven cars gracefully over a succession of switches, and disappears in a cloud of dust and steam. Back in the shed this engine driver was chatty and agreeable as he pointed out his valves, levers, and pistons, and how, pigmy though he was, he had the speedy monster under him subservient to his finger tips; but suddenly he snapped his watch and threw his throttle lever on the second, and you had to run along the front of the big boiler and yell “Good-bye!” in the act of jumping. Now he looks grim and taciturn as he flies by, his mind concentrated upon two things' only—speed and its antithesis, safety. One hand is hovering over the brake lever, and another is notching up the throttle, coaxing her, forcing her faster, faster, till soon the seven feet drivers under him will be leaping a hundred feet along these little steel rails, for seconds count with him from the very moment his watch was snapped, and one second lost now means one to be stolen on the run —somehow, somewhere. He is gripped in the tension of that stern schedule, gripped fore and aft. It is speed—speed—speed.

What It All Means Baek on a long bench on the sunny side of the surgeon’s office I listened secretly to the conversation of a row of engine drivers—they won’t talk to you otherwise—and I heard thrilling stories of engines stopped within six inches of their pilots; of breast beams just grazing a train in a flying switch, of a semaphore arm that played false one day because the heat inside melted a bit of solder and let down a white light when it should have been green; of a driver ploughing through a tunnel every day with a cracked steam chest and the steam clouds obscuring his signals (they pulled him out of a wreck one day, and with his dying breath he said, “It’s my fault,” though it wasn’t). And inside the office, later, my friend the grim surgeon gave me the best definition of an engine driver and his lot. “To my mind,” said he. “they are superhuman. They do dare, and are damned for it. And you push them to it, son—don’t forget that —you and your bunch of heel-clicking, foot-wriggling, watchcrazy Americans, with your clamour of speed, speed, speed!”