"What would you do in a collision?" I asked.
The engineer pushed back the little black skullcap from his iron-gray
hair and said, in the low tone which is usual with him:
"It is pretty hard to say what a man should do when he hears the
whistle of danger ahead or sees that a crash is coming. Even the best
of us are liable to get confused at such a moment. What would you do
if you woke up in the night and found a burglar holding a pistol at
your head? There are no rules for such cases. What I would not do,
though, is to reverse my engine, although many engineers are liable to
lose their heads at a critical moment and make that mistake. It is a
curious thing that reversing your engine suddenly when going at high
speed makes the train go faster instead of slower. The reason is that
the drivers slip and the locomotive shoots ahead as if she were on
skates. The only thing to do is to put on the air-brakes and pray
hard."
The man's words, all the more impressive for their rugged simplicity,
brought to my mind again the thought of danger, for in spite of the
wonderful system by which these flying trains are run, in spite of the
elaborate precautions taken and the many eyes forever watching to see
that they are carried out, it is impossible to go through such an
experience as mine without realizing that there is danger in these
desperate dashes. Suppose something goes wrong on the track ahead
while the train is making sixty or seventy miles an hour. Suppose, as
the whirling caravan rounds a curve or plunges through a tunnel,
another whirling caravan is seen blocking the path. Then what? Would
there be time to stop? Could the engineer, with all his skill and
bravery, prevent disaster? With the old trains running forty miles an
hour, seven hundred and sixty feet of track was necessary to bring the
locomotive and six cars to a dead stop from full speed. No one has
ever made the experiment with the Chicago flyer or the Empire State
express, but unquestionably it would take at least a thousand feet of
track to stop either of them, and many things can happen in a thousand
feet. There are never more than a thousand feet, and very often only a
few hundred, between the three sets of signals, with their red, green,
and yellow bars, which are shown at each station of the block system
all along the route. As there are a hundred of these stations between
New York and Albany, that gives three hundred sets of signals to be
instantly recognized and obeyed on this relay alone, and a man had
better die than make a mistake. Now there are two difficulties with
these signals; in the first place, some of them are so close together
that no human power could stop the train in the space between them;
and in the second place, going at such a speed, it is almost
impossible to distinguish the green signals against the background of
foliage. Already it has been found necessary to substitute yellow
signals for green ones in a number of cases.
While we were talking, a trainman drew a dead chicken from between two
bars of the cowcatcher, where its head was wedged. It had been struck
so suddenly that the feathers were scarcely rumpled, and the lucky
finder evidently proposed to have broiled poulet for dinner. I had
noticed the poor fowl on the way up, scurrying along in front of the
engine, and pitied its stupidity in refusing to leave the track, as it
might perfectly well have done. Buchanan told me that they often catch
chickens in this way, and find them excellent eating. Then he went on
to describe the sensations of running over animals and men.
"It always seems to me, sir, that the engine hates to kill a man as
much as we do. Of course, it's only a fancy, but once, up at
Germantown, when the sheet-iron flange around the tender cut off a
man's head clean as a razor, the fireman and I both felt the engine
tremble in a queer way. Another time there was a man on the track who
had just come out of a hospital, and, instead of killing him, old 870
just caught him gently on her cowcatcher and threw him off the track
without doing him any injury except a broken arm. It's curious about
animals. The ones we dread most are hogs. A fat hog will throw a train
off the track quicker than a horse or a cow. When we see a cow or
horse ahead we put on full speed and try to hurl them clear of the
track. If we strike them going slow we are apt to get the worst of
it."
There is a sympathy which draws together two men who have ridden side
by side on an engine running seventy miles an hour, and I was glad to
accept Engineer Buchanan's invitation to pay him a visit at his place
up the Hudson. No contrast could be greater or more charming than that
between the engineer at his post of danger and endurance, and the
father and husband, in his pretty vine-covered home by the river. Mr.
Buchanan in private life is a prosperous resident of Morris Heights,
where he owns valuable property, and enjoys alternate days among the
flowers, fruits, and vegetables of his garden. This garden is the
pride of his life, and, next to bringing a train in on time, I believe
he takes more pride in his roses, grapes, peas, and onions than in
anything in the world. We sat for a long time on the engineer's
favorite bench, under a cool grape arbor, with the river running
lazily at our feet. Buchanan, looking like a different man in
citizen's dress, talked unpretentiously of his life. There was no
posing as a hero, no complaining about hardships, just a simple,
straight-forward story of twenty-six years passed almost entirely on
an engine--twenty-six years of constant danger. Surely that ought to
have some curious influence on the human mind and character. In
Buchanan's case this influence certainly has been for good, for he
told me how, as a young man, he had come out of the war with
shiftless, lazy habits, fond of wasting his time and money in Eighth
Avenue saloons, and then how he had become steady and saving, when he
began to run regularly on an engine.
"When I used to be away on long stretches," he said, "with nothing to
do but think, I saw how foolish it was giving my money to a saloon
keeper for him to put in the bank instead of putting it there myself.
It used to come to me at night, as the engine ran along through the
shadows, that the friends I had down in the city were not good for
much, and that, if I lost my job or was hurt in an accident, they
would be the first to turn their backs on me. At last I decided to get
away from all my bad associations and from New York too; so I scraped
together what money I could and bought this land, where I have lived
ever since with my wife and children. That was the best day's work I
ever did. It was a hard-looking place when I bought it, nothing but
rocks and weeds, but I was proud of it, and put in all my spare time
fixing it up until I have made it what it is to-day."
As he spoke the engineer's eyes wandered complacently over the
gardens, the trim gravel walks, and the pretty house--everything as
neat and spic-span as the kitchen of a Dutch house-wife.
When not busy with his garden Buchanan's favorite occupation is
reading histories of the war and reminiscences of its great generals.
He will sit in his rocking-chair on the shady piazza for hours,
reading of Lincoln and McClellan and the stirring scenes in which he
himself took part--the battles of Second Bull Run, Seven Days, Big
Bethel, and Bristol Station. He has fought these battles over again
hundreds of times in his fancy, and many a lonely hour on the track
has been brightened by the memories of what he saw and did in the
great struggle. His admiration for General McClellan knows no bound,
and he entered into quite an argument to show that "McClellan did all
the work, sir, and the other fellows got all the glory." The only
vacation Buchanan has taken in a quarter of a century was a few years
ago, when he went South for a month to see the old battlefields once
more; but they were all changed, and he came back saddened. "I shall
never lay off again," he said, "until I lay off for good."
Archie Buchanan is but a fair type of the loyal fellows who drive the
flying engines of to-day. Many of them are as thrifty as he is; he
told me of one veteran in the company's employ, Thomas Dormatty, who
has property in Schenectady valued at one hundred thousand dollars,
and who, in spite of his seventy years, does his regular run between
Albany and Syracuse. It is easy to see what that means of saving and
prudent investment, when one remembers that the best engineers receive
only from one hundred and forty to one hundred and sixty dollars per
month. And when they have finished their terms of usefulness, and are
unable to run any longer, that same day their pay stops, as it stops
when they are ill; for railway companies are not philanthropists and
have no pension system.
I was glad to learn that there is no truth in the popular notion that
engineers are full of superstition. Buchanan told me he had never
experienced any such feeling, and had never known a superstitious
engineer, with the exception of Nat Sawyer, the veteran who is now at
Chicago with Engine 999. It is Nat who runs "the bosses' engine"--that
is, the luxurious observation car which takes the directors and
officials of the road on their tours of inspection. In spite of his
well-proven courage, Engineer Sawyer always hesitates to go out on his
engine if he meets a cross-eyed person in the morning on his way to
the roundhouse. That, however, is only the exception which proves the
rule.
As he was showing me about his house, which is furnished with taste
and comfort, Buchanan stopped before two large portraits of his father
and mother. Both of them are alive. His father is eighty-seven, his
mother four years younger. Speaking of his parents, the engineer said
reverently: "My father was a blacksmith and gave me a strong body, but
my mother did more for me than that, because she has prayed for me
every day of her life, and I have never had an accident on a train and
never got so much as a scratch in the war."
When I spoke of religion Buchanan showed some reticence. "How can I
get time to go to church," he said, "when I run my engine every other
day in the year, Sundays, holidays, and all? I guess my religion is
hard work, and I don't know but it's as good as any other."
The religion of hard work! Is it possible for the man who drives one
of our great modern trains to have any other religion than that?
Fifteen days in the month, twelve months in the year, he runs his
engine three hundred miles; and besides that, does extra work when a
sick comrade must be replaced, or the occasion demands. The remaining
days of the year he is resting for the strain and responsibility of
the morrow. He worships in the same place that he does his duty, under
the broad arch of heaven; his creed is to keep the train on time, his
prayer that danger may be averted. And when his eyes fail or his
health breaks down, he says good-by to the old engine which has been
his comrade on many a thrilling ride, and spends the years that remain
in some quiet, vine-covered home like the one I saw up the Hudson.