Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 206, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 August 1910 — Railway Engineers as Heroes [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Railway Engineers as Heroes

No man eludes death bftener or more narrowly than the locomotive engineer, says Mr. Thaddeus S. Dayton, writing in Harper’s Weekly. On a fast train the danger threatens and Is gone in a fraction of a second, "He goes on to tell of some of those “close calls” which every engineer must reckon on as part of the day’s work. There are a few cases, we are toH, when Providence steps in and averts a disaster which seems inevitable. The most remarkable instance of this sort happened many years ago on a railway in eastern Missouri. The story was told recently in the official organ of the Order of Railway Conductors. One summer morning a twelve-car train containing the members & of a Sunday school was bound for a picnic at' a point about fifty miles distant. Although the sky was cloudless when the excursion started, the train had not proceeded more, than half way when a thunderstorm broke. The rain fell in torrents. The engineer was worried for fear the terrific downpour might cause a washout or a spreading <jf the rails, and he slowed down to about 35 miles an hour. As the train swung around a curve and approached a small station which it was to pass without stopping, the engineer, peering through the broken curtain of rain, saw that the switch just ahead was open. It meant a terrible disaster. He closed hid throttle and put on the brakes in an instant. “Better stick to it,” he shouted to bis fireman. “I mean to,” was the answer. “God help us all!” His last words were drowned by a terrific crash of thunder which came simultaneously with a flash of lightning, that seemed to strike the ground just ahead of the engine. The next thing they knew they were past the station,/still riding safely on the main line ..rails. . .... The train came to a stop and -the engineer and conductor hurried back, to discover what had happened and how the train had passed the open switch. They found that the lightning had struck sqifarely between the switch and the rail and had closed the switch. “It was the act of God,” said the engineer. More often the story of a close call is “a tale of quick-thinking' heroism.” We are told of an engineer whose presence of mind save scores of lives in Newark, N. J., one December day a few years ago. . “A freight train was going up a steep grade about half a mile from the station when the couplings broke between the third and fourth cars from the end, and they began to roll down hill at a terrific speed. A long passenger train had just arrived and was standing directly in the path of the runaway cars. The engineer of the passenger train saw the approaching danger and realized in a flash that the on-rushing cars must be stopped at all hazards before they reached the station. Otherwise there would be a terrible loss of life. He uncoupled his engine, sprang into the cab, and opened the throttle. The big engine bounded forward like a spirited horse struck with a whip. At the last moment before the collision the engineer shut off the steam and jumped. He landed unhurt in a heap of cinders. The engine crashed into the runaway cars, and an Instant later there was nothing left of the locomotive or the cars, but a mass of wreckage. At least a hundred lives were saved by the engineer’s prompt action.” This story is told by J. A. Erickson, an old locomotive engineer: “I know of a surprise test two or three years ago where some young fellow, a signal engineer, probably, impregnated with cigarette smoke, took a bad place to try the test on the engineer of a long train that had about twelve heavy cars on the rear without air, and in the forward part of the train there were light cars. “They set the signal after the engine had passed the distance signal, and when the signal was set again the engineer threw on his brake suddenly and stopped the train so that the heavy cars in the rear piled up the light can and threw them on the opposite track in front of a passenger train going in the opposite direction, which ran Into the wreck and killed the engineer. If It had become known that that was a surprise test that very signal engineer would have been landed in jail.” ' Mr. Erickson also contributed the following Information as to the efficacy of signals, though he admitted that the cases cited by him were rare: "I have seen signals clear with trains in the block. I have seen signals that were clear with tracks obstructed from one end to the other. I was running a' train on Track 1 and there was a local train on Track 3

and the signal behind it was clear. I had been taught that this could not happen. After I reached the terminal I got another man and we went back and we saw four trains go through and still that signal was clear. I went down to the superintendent and told him. He called in the signal engineer. He said: ‘That cannot happen. It Is Impossible for it to happen.’ “I said that it had happened, and I saw It and I had two witnesses, but that the superintendent should send two more men to the signal and see if what I had reported was not true. They went out and came in and told him afterward that it was true. The magnets had been welded by lightning.”