what was done at the nitrating-house by a certain Joshua Plumstead in
the recent explosion. Joshua is a veteran at dynamite-making. He has
worked at the nitrating-vat for twenty-five years, and has probably made
more nitroglycerin than any one man in the world. He has been through
all the great explosions; he has seen many men killed; he has stood by
time and again when his own nitrating-vat has taken fire; and yet he
always comes through safely. They say there is no man like Joshua for
nerve and judgment when the demons of gas and fire begin to play.
This explosion took place at the freezing-house, which is the one place
in all the works where dynamite is never expected to explode. Yet it
_did_ explode now, with a smashing of air and a horrible grinding
underfoot that stifled all things in men but a mad desire to flee.
Joshua Plumstead was in the nitrating-house alone. His helper had fled.
The roof timbers were crashing down about him. He heard the hiss of fire
and the shouts of workmen running. He knew that a second explosion might
come at any moment. There was danger from fire-brands and flying masses
of stone and iron, danger from the open troughs, danger from the near-by
houses. A shock, a spark anywhere here might mean the end.
Plumstead kept his eyes on the long thermometer that reached up from the
furious smoking mass of oil and acid. The mercury had crept up from
eighty-five to ninety, and was rising still. At ninety-five he knew the
nitroglycerin would take fire, probably explode, and nothing could save
it. The vat was seething with a full charge. Ninety-one! He shut off the
inflow of glycerin. Ninety-two! Something might be wrong with the coils
of ice-cold water that chill the vat down to safety. He opened the cocks
full. Crash! came a beam from overhead, and narrowly missed the gearing
of the agitating-blades. Were they to stop but for a single second, the
nitroglycerin would explode. He eased the bearings, turned on compressed
air, watched the thermometer--and waited.
[Illustration: "HE KNEW THAT A SECOND EXPLOSION MIGHT COME AT ANY
MOMENT."]
There was no other man but Plumstead who _did_ wait that day; there was
none but he whose waiting could avail anything. _He_ had to fight it out
alone with that ton of nitroglycerin, or run and let an explosion come
far worse than the other. He fought it out; he waited, and he won.
Gradually the thermometer dropped to eighty-five, to eighty, and the
danger was passed.
But--well, even the superintendent admitted that Joshua did a rather
fine thing here, while the workmen themselves and the people of Kenvil
shake their heads solemnly and vow that he saved the works.
THE LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEER
I
HOW IT FEELS TO RIDE AT NIGHT ON A LOCOMOTIVE GOING NINETY MILES AN HOUR
IT is 8.30 P.M., any night you please, and for miles through the yards
of East Chicago lights are swinging, semaphore arms are moving, men in
clicking signal-towers are juggling with electric buttons and pneumatic
levers, target lights on a hundred switches are changing from red to
green, from green to red; everything is clear, everything is all right,
the Lake Shore Mail is coming, with eighty tons of letters and papers in
its pouches. Relays of engines and engineers have brought these
messages, this news of the world, thus far on their journey. Up the
Hudson they have come, and across the Empire State and along the shores
of Lake Michigan, nearly a thousand miles in twenty-four hours, which is
not so bad, although the hottest, maddest rush is yet to come.
It is a fine thing to know the men who drive the engines on these
trains; just to see them is something, and to make them talk (if you can
do it) is better business than interviewing most celebrities you have
heard about.
To this end I set out, one evening early in January, for the great
round-house of the Northwestern road, that lies on the outskirts of
Chicago. A strange place, surely, is this to one who approaches it
unprepared--a place where yellow eyes glare out of deep shadows, where
fire-dragons rush at you with crunchings and snortings, where the air
hisses and roars. It might be some demon menagerie, there in the
darkness.
To this place of fears and pitfalls I came an hour or so before
starting-time, and here I found Dan White, one of the Northwestern
crack-a-jacks, giving the last careful touches to locomotive 908 before
the night's hard run. In almost our first words my heart was won by
something White said. I had mentioned Frank Bullard of the Burlington
road, a rival by all rights, and immediately this bluff,
broad-shouldered man exclaimed: "Ah, he's a fine fellow, Bullard is, and
he knows how to run an engine." White would fight Bullard at the
throttle to any finish, but would speak only good words of him.
"Tell me," said I, "about the great run you made the other night." From
a dozen lips I had heard of White's tremendous dash from Chicago to
Clinton, Iowa.
"Oh, it wasn't much; we had to make the time up, and we did it. Didn't
we, Fred?"
This to the fireman, who nodded in assent, but said nothing.
"You made a record, didn't you?"
"Well, we went one hundred and thirty-eight miles in one hundred and
forty-three minutes; that included three stops and two slow-downs. I
don't know as anybody has beat that--much."
[Illustration: A PLACE WHERE YELLOW EYES GLARE OUT OF DEEP SHADOWS.]
By dint of questioning, I drew from this modest man some details of his
achievement. The curve-bent stretch of seventeen miles between Franklin
Grove and Nelson they did in fourteen minutes, and a part of this,
beyond Nachusa, they took at an eighty-mile pace. They covered five
miles between Clarence and Stanwood in three minutes and a half, and
they made two miles beyond Dennison at over a hundred miles an hour. As
the mail rushed west, word was flashed ahead, and crowds gathered at the
stations to cheer and marvel.
"There must have been five hundred people on the platform at Dixon,"
said White, telling the story, "and they looked to me like a swarm of
ants, just a black, wriggling mass, and then they were gone. We came on
to a bridge there after a big reverse curve with a down grade, and I
guess no one will ever know how fast we were going, as we slammed her
around one way and then slammed her around the other way. It was every
bit of ninety miles an hour. You got all you wanted, didn't you, Fred?"
The fireman looked up, torch in hand, and remarked, in a dry monotone:
"Goin' through Dixon I said my prayers and hung on, stretched out flat.
That's what I done."
"Fred and I," continued White, "both got letters about the run from the
superintendent. Here's mine, if you'd like to read it."
The pleasure of these two blackened men over this graciousness of the
superintendent was a thing to see. For such a bit of paper, crumpled and
smeared with oil, I believe they would have taken the Mississippi at a
jump, engine, train, and all. Superintendent's orders, superintendent's
praise--there is the beginning and end of all things for them.
My first long ride on one of these splendid locomotives was with the
Burlington night mail (no passengers), 590 pulling her and Frank Bullard
at the throttle. It is said that the Baldwin Locomotive Works never
turned out a faster engine than this 590. The man must be a giant whose
head will top her drivers, and, for all her seventy tons, there is
speed in every line of her. She is a young engine, too--only four years
old--and Bullard swears he will back her in the matter of getting over
rails to do anything that steel and steam can do. "She's willing and
gentle, sir, and easy running. You'll see in a minute."
These words from Bullard, first-class engine-driver of the C. B. & Q., a
long, loosely jointed man, with the eye and build of a scout. As he
spoke they were coupling us to the mail-cars, in preparation for the
start. In overalls and sweater I had come, with type-written authority
to make the run that night. This was in the first week in January, the
second time Bullard had drawn the throttle for Burlington on the new
fast schedule. Burlington lay off there in Iowa, on the Mississippi,
with all the night and all the State of Illinois between us.
Now the train stands ready--three mail-cars and the engine, not a stick
besides. No Pullman comforts here, no bunks for sleeping, no man aboard
who has the right to sleep. Everything is hustle and business. Already
the mail clerks are swarming at the pouches, like printers on a rush
edition. See those last bags swung in through the panel doors! Not even
the president of the road may ride here without a permit from the
government.
Bullard takes up a red, smoking torch and looks 590 over. He fills her
cups, and prods a two-foot oiler into her rods and bearings. Dan Cleary,
the fireman, looks out of his window on the left and chews complacently.
Down the track beside him locomotive 1309 backs up, a first-class engine
she, but 590 bulks over her as the king of a herd might over some good,
ordinary working elephant. As she stands here now, purring through her
black iron throat, 590 measures sixteen feet three inches from rails to
stack-top. Both engines blow out steam, that rolls up in silver clouds
to the electric lights.
Bullard climbs to his place at the right, and a hiss of air tells that
he is testing the brakes. Under each car sixteen iron shoes close
against sixteen wheels, and stay there. Down the length of the train
goes the repair man with his kit, and makes sure that every contact is
right, then pulls a rope four times at the rear, whereupon four hissing
signals answer in the cab. Bullard shuts off the air.
"It's all there is to stop her with," says he, "so we take no chances
with it. She's got high-speed brakes on her, 590 has--one hundred and
ten pounds to the inch. Twenty-four, Dan," he adds, and snaps his watch.
"We start at thirty."
Dan chews on. "Bad wind to-night," he says; "reg'lar gale."
Bullard nods. "I know it; we're fifteen minutes late, too."
"Make Burlington on time?"
"Got to: you hit it up, and I'll skin her. Twenty-six, Dan."
Four minutes to wait. Two station officials come up with polite
inquiries. The thermometer is falling, they say, and we shall have it
bitter cold over the plains. They reach up with cordial hand-shakes. I
pull my cap down, and take my stand behind Bullard. Our side of the cab
is quite cut off from the fireman's side by a swelling girth of boiler,
which leaves an alleyway at right and left wide enough for a man's body
and no wider. Bullard and I are in the right-hand alleyway, Bullard's
back and black cap just before me. Dan, with his shovel, is out on a
shaky steel shelf behind, that bridges the space between engine and
tender. That is where he works, poor lad! We are breathing coal-dust
and torch-smoke and warm oil.
"F-s-s-s-s-s!" comes the signal, and instantly we are moving. Lights
flash about us everywhere--green lights, white lights, red lights, a
phantasmagoria of drug-store bottles. The tracks shine yellow far ahead.
A steady pounding and jarring begins, and grows like the roar of battle.
Our cab heaves with the tugging of a captive balloon. Our speed
increases amazingly. We seem constantly on the point of running straight
through blocks of houses, and escape only by sudden and disconcerting
swayings around curves that all lead, one will vow, straight into black
chasms under the dazzle. Whoever rides here for the first time feels
that he is ticketed for sure destruction, understands that this plunging
engine _must_ necessarily go off the rails in two or three minutes, say
five at the latest; for what guidance, he reasons, can any man get from
a million crazy lights, and who that is human can avoid a snarl in such
a tangle of bumping switches? I am free to confess, for my own part,
that I found the first half hour of my ride on 590 absolutely
terrifying.
Thus, at break-neck speed, we come out of Chicago, all slow-going city
ordinances to the contrary notwithstanding. We are chasing a
transcontinental record schedule, and have fifteen minutes to make up. I
breathe more freely as we get into open country. We are going like the
wind, but the track is straighter, and the darkness comfortable. I begin
to notice things with better understanding. As the lurches come, I brace
myself against the boiler side without fear of burning; that is
something learned. I find out later that I owe this protection to a
two-inch layer of asbestos. I catch a faint sound of the engine bell,
and discover, to my surprise, that it has been ringing from the
start--indeed, it rings, without ceasing, all the way to Burlington, the
rope pulled by a steam jerking contrivance, but the roar of the engine
drowns it.
Deep shadows inwrap the cab, all the deeper for the glare that flashes
through them every minute or two as Dan, back there on his iron shelf,
stokes coal in at the red-hot door. Two faint lights burn for the
gages--a jumping water column in front, a pair of wavering needles on
the boiler. These Bullard watches coolly, and from time to time reaches
back past me to turn the injector-cock, whereupon steam hisses by my
head. For the most part he is quite still, like an Indian pilot, head
forward at the lookout window, right hand down by the air-brake valve,
left hand across the throttle lever, with only a second's jump to the
reversing lever that rises up from the floor straight before him. As we
race into towns and roar through them, he sounds the chime whistle,
making its deep voice challenge the darkness. At curves he eases her
with the brakes. And for grades and level stretches and bridges he
notches the throttle up or down as the need is. Watch his big, strong
grip on the polished handles! Think of the hours he spends here all
alone, this man who holds life and death in his quick, sure judgment!
Now he catches the window-frame and slides it open. A blast sweeps in
like an arctic hurricane. Bullard leans out into the night and seems to
listen. "Try it," he cries, but his voice is faint. I put my head out,
and come into a rush of air billows that strangle like breakers.
[Illustration: AT THE THROTTLE.]
"Greggs--Hill--three--miles--long. Let--her--go--soon." He closes the
window. And now, as we clear the grade, begins a burst of speed that
makes the rest of small account. Faster and faster we go, until the
very iron seems alive and straining underneath us. I am tossed about in
hard pitches. The glow of the furnace lights up continuously. There is
no sense of fear any longer. It is too splendid, what we are doing. Of
course it means instant death if anything breaks. Let the massive side
rod that holds the two drivers snap, and a half--ton knife sweeping
seventy miles an hour will slice off our cab and us with it like a cut
of cheese. Did not an engineer go to his death that way only last week
on the Union Pacific run? After all, why not this death as well as any
other? Have we not valves and tubes in our bodies that may snap at any
moment!
"How--fast?" I call out.
"Eighty--miles--an--hour," says Bullard, close to my ear, and a moment
later pulls the rope for a grade crossing. "Ooooo--ooooo--oo--oo,"
answers the deep iron voice, two long and two short calls, as the code
requires. "Year--ago--killed--two--men--here," he shouts as we whiz over
the road. "Struck--buggy--threw--men--sixty--feet." I wonder how far we
would throw them now.
In the two hundred and six miles' run to the Mississippi we stop only
twice--for water, at Mendota and at Galesburg--nine minutes wasted for
the two, and the gale blowing harder. Our schedule makes allowance for
no stops; every moment from our actual going is so much "dead time" that
must be fought for, second by second, and made up. Drive her as he will,
with all the cunning of his hand, Bullard can score but small gains
against the wind. And some of these he loses. At Mendota we have made up
seven minutes, but we pull out thirteen minutes late. At Princeton we
are fifteen minutes late, at Galva fourteen minutes, at Galesburg eight
minutes, but we pull out twelve minutes late. Then we make the last
forty-three miles, including bridges, towns, grades, and curves, in
forty-four minutes, and draw into Burlington at 1.22 A.M.--on time to
the dot. This because Bullard had sworn to do it; also because the road
beyond Galesburg runs west instead of southwest, and it is easier for a
train to bore straight through a gale, head on, than to take it from the
quarter.
We took the big, steady curve at Princeton, a down-grade helping us, at
a hundred miles an hour--so Bullard declares and what he says about
engine-driving I believe. Indeed, these great bursts can be measured
only by the subtle senses of an expert, since no registering instrument
has been devised to make reliable record. Across the twin high bridges
that span the Bureau creeks we shot with a rush that left the
reverberations far back in the night like two short barks. And just as
we rounded a curve before these bridges I saw a black face peering down
from the boiler-top, while a voice called out: "Wahr--wahr--wahr--wahr!"
To which startling apparition Bullard, undisturbed, replied:
"Wahr--wahr--wahr--wahr!" Then the head disappeared. Dan, from his side,
was telling Bullard that he had seen the safety-light for the bridges,
and Bullard was answering something about hitting it up harder. How
these men understand each other in such tumult is a mystery to one with
ordinary hearing, but somehow they manage it.
Half way between Kewanee and Galva a white light came suddenly into view
far ahead. I knew it for the headlight of a locomotive coming toward us
on the parallel track. Already we had met two or three trains, and swept
past them with a smashing of sound and air. But this headlight seemed
different from the others, paler in its luster, not so steady in its
glare. The ordinary locomotive comes at you with a calm, staring yellow
eye that grows until it gets to be a huge full moon. But it comes
gradually, without much jumping or wavering. This light danced and
flashed like a great white diamond. I watched it with a certain
fascination, and as it came nearer and nearer, realized that here was a
train of different kind from the others, coming down on us at terrific
speed. And Bullard shouted: "Number--8--with--the--mail." Then added, as
the train passed like the gleam of a knife: "She's--going--too."
II
WE PICK UP SOME ENGINE LORE AND HEAR ABOUT THE DEATH OF GIDDINGS
THE next day, with comfortable rocking-chairs to sit in and a row of
hotel windows before us, Bullard and I found time for engine chat, and I
was well content. First I asked him about putting his head out of the
cab window there at Greggs Hill and elsewhere. "Was it to see better?"
said I.
"No," said Bullard; "it was to hear better and to smell better."
"Hear what? Smell what?"
"Hear the noises of the engine. If any little thing was working wrong,
I'd hear it. If there was any wear on the bearings, I'd hear it. Why, if
a mouse squeaked somewhere inside of 590, I guess I'd hear it."
Then he went on to explain that the ordinary roar of the engine, which
drowned everything for me, was to him an unimportant background of sound
that made little impression, and left his ears free for other sounds.
"I get so accustomed to listening to an engine," he added, "that often
up home, talking with my wife and child, I find myself trying to hear
sounds from the round-house. And, after a run, I talk to people as if
they were deaf."
"You spoke about smelling better."
"That's right. I can smell a hot box in a minute, or oil burning. All
engineers can. Why, there was--"
This led to the story of poor Giddings, killed on 590 three years before
through this very necessity of putting his head out of the cab window.
Giddings had Bullard's place, and was one of the most trusted men in the
Burlington employ.
"You saw last night," said Bullard, "how the boiler in 590 shuts off the
engineer from the fireman. And prob'ly you noticed those posts along the
road that hold the tell-tale strings. They're to warn crews on
freight-car tops when it is time to duck for bridges. Well, Giddings was
coming along one night between Biggsville and Gladstone--that's about
ten miles before you get to the Mississippi. He was driving her fast to
make up time, sixty miles an hour easy, and he put his head out to hear
and to smell, the way I've explained it.
"There must have been a post set too near the track, and anyway 590's
cab is extra wide, so the first thing he knew--and he didn't know
that--his head was knocked clean off, or as good as that, and there was
590, her throttle wide open, tearing along, with a fireman stoking for
all he was worth and a dead engineer hanging out the window.
"So they ran for eight miles, and Billy Maine--he was firing--never
suspected anything wrong--for of course he couldn't see--until they
struck the Mississippi bridge at full speed. You remember crossing the
bridge just before we pulled in here. It's twenty-two hundred feet long,
and we always give a long whistle before we get to it, and then slow
down. That's the law," he added, smiling, "and, besides, there's a draw
to look out for. When he heard no whistle this time, Billy Maine jumped
around quick to where Giddings was, and then he saw he had a corpse for
a partner."
[Illustration: "THEY STRUCK THE MISSISSIPPI BRIDGE AT FULL SPEED."]
Another question I asked was about stopping a train at great speed for
an emergency--how quickly could they do it? "I've stopped," said
Bullard, "in nine hundred and fifty feet, pulling five cars that were
making about sixty-two miles an hour. I don't know what I could do with
this new train, only three cars, and going eighty or ninety miles an
hour. That's a hard proposition."
"Would you reverse her?"
"No, sir. All engineers who know their business will agree on that. I'd
shut the throttle off, and put the brakes on full. But I wouldn't
reverse her. If I did, the wheels would lock in a second, and the whole
business would skate ahead as if you'd put her on ice."
Then we talked about the nerve it takes to run an engine, and how a man
can lose his nerve. It's like a lion-tamer who wakes up some morning and
finds that he's afraid. Then his time has come to quit taming lions, for
the beasts will know it if he doesn't, and kill him. There are men who
can stand these high-speed runs for ten years, but few go beyond that
term, or past the forty-five-year point. Slow-going passenger trains
will do for them after that. Others break down after five years. Many
engineers--skilled men, too--would rather throw up their jobs than take
the run Bullard makes. Not that they feel the danger to be so much
greater in pushing the speed up to seventy, eighty, or ninety miles an
hour, but they simply _cannot_ stand the strain of doing the thing.
"This doubling up is what breaks my heart," said Bullard. "Since they've
put on their new schedule I have to divide 590 with another fellow. John
Kelly takes her on the fast run East while I wait here and rest. And so
I've lost my sweetheart, and I don't feel near as much interest in her
as I did. You see, she ain't mine any more. And, between you and me,"
he added, confidentially, "I don't think 590 likes it much herself; you
see, engines are a good deal like girls, after all."
The next night, in workman's garb again, I made my way to a gloomy
round-house, ready for the run to Omaha. I was to ride the second relay,
as far as Creston, on locomotive 1201, with Jake Myers in the cab, so I
had been informed. Being hours ahead of time, I saw something of
round-house life.
First, I followed a gaunt, black-faced Swede, with stubby beard, through
his duties as locomotive hostler; saw him take the tired engines in
hand, as they came in one after another from hard runs, and care for
them as stable hostlers care for horses. There were fires to be dropped
in the clinker-pit, coal and wood to be loaded in from the chutes,
water-tanks to be filled, sand-boxes looked after, and, finally, there
was the hitching fast of the weary monsters in empty stalls, whither
they were led from the lumbering turn-table with the last head of steam
left over dead fire-boxes. And now spoke the Swede: