We were still moving ahead at the rate of thirty miles an hour
when--crash! through the window came some object. Once more the whistle
sounded "down brakes," and in less than a mile the train came to a
stop. Shortly afterward we heard shouts in our rear, and the man who
had flung the missile through the cab window came running breathlessly,
and said that less than a mile ahead of us was a broken rail that would
undoubtedly have wrecked our train. Knowing that the express train was
due in about an hour he had been running back to the station to detain
it, when he had met our "wild" train and, realizing the danger, had
done all he could to prevent a catastrophe.
Back sped the man to the station to warn the express, leaving us
between what were undoubtedly two horrors. The station was fully a mile
away. Suppose he could not reach there in time! There we were on a
single track, a broken rail ahead of us, an express train due at any
moment behind us. Slowly we pulled up to the broken rail and at once
replaced it with a new one, for we always carried extra rails on our
train for cases of emergency. The track walker succeeded in getting to
the station in time to stop the express, though luckily it was not
quite due. We ran back to Blairsville and switched on to a side track.
There we found that the second section of our circus train was due at
nearly the same, time as the express train, and it was an anxious
quarter of an hour that we spent in righting things. When, however, the
second section did come in, I found they had been more fortunate than
the first section. They had taken the precaution to add to their train
several cars belonging to the railroad company, which were fitted up
with better brakes than ours, some of them being supplied with both new
air and common brakes. Then as a consequence of these precautions the
train had descended the mountain under perfect control. I learned a
lesson from that experience, and lost no time in fitting all our cars
with air-brakes. I wish I could remember the name of the engineer. A
braver man never handled an engine or went into a battle.
It may not be generally known that all well-regulated roads employ a
certain number of men as track walkers, whose constant duty it is to
patrol every inch of the road and report the slightest irregularity of
rails, road-bed, etc. On this particular night the track-walker's
lantern had gone out, and the only expedient he could think of was to
throw a stone through the cab window. I have often shuddered to think
of what the consequences might have been had not his aim been a true
one.