Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1893 — A TERRIBLE TALE. [ARTICLE]

A TERRIBLE TALE.

And the Resultant Tragedy Was Left to the Imagination. Several gentlemen, sitting together in the smoking compartment of a Pullman car, fell to relating their experiences in railroad accidents. Pour or five adventures of the sort had been related, when an Englishman in the party declared that all these stories were as nothing compared with a railway tragedy in his own country, of which he had been an unwilling spectator. Of course he was at once called upon to tell the story. “Five years ago,” the Englishman said, “I took the 6 o’clock train one morning from Bristol to go to a town about twenty miles distant. It was a local branch road. As you are no doubt aware, the English locomotives are not furnished with comfortable cabs for engineer and fireman—or as we call them, the driver and the stoker—as yours are. Those two persons are practically out-of-doors. “Our train had gone on without incident for some miles, when I, who was in one of the foremost carriages, heard loud voices, apparently of persons in a violent quarrel, somewhere in front of me. I put my head out of the carriage window, and saw that the engine-driver and stoker were engaged in a fight on the engine. “Their angry words became fewer and fewer as their blows rained thicker and thicker upon each other. Finally they clutched in a desperate struggle. The driver seemed to be engaged in an attempt to force the stoker off the engine. “I shouted to the guard, but he was out of hearing in the after part of the train. Nearer and nearer the two desperate men came to the step of the engine. The driver gave his antagonist a desperate push; the stoker saw that he was gone, but clung to the driver. A last terrible struggle, and over both went to the ground. • “This .left the engine entirely unattended. Evidently the steam had been left fully turned on, for the train began to rush forward at an increasing rate of speed. On and on we went, at a pace which became terrible. No one could get to the locomotive, and no one knew how to handle it if he could have got there. “We whizzed past a station where we should have stopped, and caught glimpses of astonished faces looking at us. Past another station —past a third —past a fourth, on we whirled, at an even swifter speed. “Then we all knew that the next station was a terminus. When we reached that we should be hurled against a buffer, and the train would be wrecked. What was to be done? “Nothing was done. We plunged on and on. The terminus came into view. It came nearer and nearer, seeming to bulge swiftly into greater size as we bore down upon it. In a moment more " The door of the smoking compartment opened, and the porter called out, “Albany!” “Good-day, gentlemen!” said the Englishman, getting up quickly. “Sorry, but this is my station!” He disappeared, and the others in the smoking compartment never heard how the story came out.