I wish I could put Solomon Gann before you in the flesh; for a finer
broad-shouldered specimen of humanity I never saw. He was gruff, bluff,
swarthy; and rugged as his face was, it always bore a pleasant smile,
just as if he had said to you, "Ah! all right; things are rough; but I'm
going to take it coolly."
And he was cool; nobody cooler--even in cases of emergency; and a better
man for an engine-driver could not have been chosen.
I first met Solomon Gann in connection with an accident at Grandton,
where I and other surgeons were called in to attend the sufferers by a
collision with a goods train. After that I attended him two or three
times; for he came to me in preference to the Company's surgeon, and he
used to give me scraps of information about his life, and tell me little
incidents in his career.
"Glorious profession, ain't it, Sir," he said. "Grows more important
every day, does the railway profession, and is likely to. Ah! people in
our great-grandfathers' days would have opened their eyes if you had
talked about being an engine-driver; and I ain't much like a four-horse
mail coachee, am I? Rum set out, the rail. Not so many years back, and
there wasn't such a thing; and now it employs its thousands, beginning
with your superintendents, and going down through clerks, and guards,
and drivers, and so on, to the lowest porter or cleaner on the line.
"I've had some experience, I have. I was cleaner in the engine-house
afore I got put on to stoke; and I'm not going to say that
engine-drivers are worse off than other men because I happen to be one:
for we want a little alteration right through the whole machine: a
little easing in this collar; a little less stuffing there; them nuts
give a turn with the screw-hammer; and the oily rag put over the working
gear a little more oftener, while the ile-can itself ain't spared.
Don't you see, you know, I'm a speaking metaphorically; and of course I
mean the whole of the railways' servants.
"The Public, perhaps--and he's a terrible humbug that fellow Public--
thinks we are well paid and discontented; and leaving out danger, let me
ask him how he would like to be racing along at express speed through a
storm of wind and rain, or snow, or hail, for fifty miles without
stopping, blinded almost, cut to pieces almost; or roasting on a
broiling summer's day; or running through the pitchiest, blackest
night--Sunday and week-day all the year round. `Well, you're paid for
it,' says the public. So we are, and pretty good wages as times goes;
but those wages don't pay a man for the wear and tear of his
constitution; and though there's so much fuss made about the beauty of
the British constitution, and people brag about it to an extent that's
quite sickening, when you come down to the small bit of British
constitution locked up in a single British person's chest--him being an
engine-driver, you know--you'll find that constitution wears, and gets
weak, and liable to being touched up with the cold, or heat, or what
not; and it's a precious ticklish thing to mend--so now then!
"We don't want to grumble too much, but railway work isn't all lying
down on a feather-bed, smoking shag at threepence an ounce, and drinking
porter at threepence a pot in your own jugs; we have to work, and think
too, or else there would soon be an alteration in the companies'
dividends. Accidents will happen, do what we will to stop 'em, and
there's no mistake about it, our accidents are, as a rule, bad ones--
terrible bad ones, even when life and limb don't get touched. Only an
engine damaged, perhaps, but that can easily wear a thousand pound;
while a hundred's as good as nothing when a few trucks and coaches are
knocked into matchwood. Then, too, when we have a bad `pitch-in,' as we
call it, look at the thousands as the company has to pull out for
damages to injured folks. One chap, I see, got seven thousand the other
day for having his back damaged; and I don't know but what I'd think it
a good bargain to be knocked about to that tune. But, there, they
wouldn't think my whole carcase worth half as much. But our work ain't
feather-bed work, I can tell you; and as to risk, why, we all of us come
in for that more or less, though we get so used to it that we don't seem
to see the danger.
"Oh! you'll say `Familiarity breeds contempt,' or something else fine;
but just you come and stoke, or drive, or guard, or be signalman, or
pointsman, every day of your life, and just see if you'll pull a blessed
long face and be seeing a skillington with a hour-glass in one hand and
a harpoon in t'other, ready to stick it into yours or somebody else's
wesket every precious hour of the day. It's all worry fine to talk, but
a man can't be always thinking of dying when he is so busy thinking
about living, and making a living for half-a-dozen mouths at home. I
like to be serious, and think of the end in a quiet, proper way, as a
man should; but it's my humble opinion as the man who is seeing grim
death at every turn and in every movement, has got his liver into a
precious bad state, and the sooner he goes to the doctor the better.
'Taint natural, nor it ain't reasonable; and though we often get the
credit of being careless, I mean to say we don't deserve it half the
times, and the very fact of often being in risky places makes you think
nothing of 'em. It's natural, you know, and a wonderful wise thing,
too; for if we were always to be thinking of the danger, it's my
belief--my honest belief--that your railway accidents would be doubled;
for the men would be that anxious and worried that they would work
badly, and in a few years knock up altogether, with their nerves
shattered to pieces.
"I've been on the line twenty year, and of course I've seen a little in
that space, and I could tell you hundreds of things about the different
dangers, if I had time. Now, for instance, I'll tell you what's a great
danger that some railway servants has to encounter, and that is being at
a small country station, say where perhaps very few trains stop in a
day. It don't matter whether it's clerk or porter, the danger's the
same; there's the fast trains thundering by over and over again, twenty
times a day may be, and after a time you get so used to them that _you
don't hear them coming_; and many's the time some poor fellow has
stepped down to cross the line right in front of one, when--there, you
know the old story, and I've got one horror to tell you, and that will
be quite enough, I dare say.
"`Carelessness--want of caution--the man had been years in the company's
service, and must have known better,' says the public. But there--
that's just it--it's that constant being amongst the perils that makes a
man forget things that he ought to recollect; and are you going to try
and make me believe a man can have such power over his thinking
apparatus that he can recollect everything? He must be a very perfect
piece of goods if there is such a one, and one as would go for ever, I
should think, without a touch of the oily rag. No spots of rust on him,
I'll wager.
"Shunting's hard work--terrible hard work--for men; I mean the shunting
of goods trains at the little stations--picking up empty trucks, and
setting down the full ones; coupling, and uncoupling; and waving of
lanterns, and shouting and muddling about; and mostly in the dark; for,
you see, the passenger traffic is nearly all in the day-time, while we
carry on the goods work by night. Ah! shunting's queer work where
there's many sidings, and you are tripping over point-handles, and rods,
or looking one way for the train and going butt on to an empty truck the
other way. There's some sad stories relating to shunting--stories of
fine young fellows crushed to death in a moment; let alone those of the
poor chaps you may see to this day at some of the crossings with wooden
legs or one sleeve empty--soldiers, you know, who have been wounded in
the battle of life, and I think as worthy of medals as anybody.
"Of course, you know, a `pitch-in' will come some time spite of all
care; and I've been in one or two in my time, but never to get hurt. I
remember one day going down our line and getting pretty close to a
junction where another line crossed the down so as to get on to the up.
I knew that it was somewhere about the time for the up train to come
along, for it was generally five minutes before me, and I passed it
about a couple of miles before I got to the junction--me going fast, it
slow. Sometimes we were first, and then it was kept back by signal till
we had passed, so that on the day I am talking of, I thought nothing of
it that my signal was up `All clear,' though the up train hadn't
crossed, and with my stoker shovelling in the coal, I opened the
screamer and on we were darting at a good speed--ours always having been
reckoned a fast line.
"All at once, though, I turned as I had never turned before--thoroughly
struck aback; for as I neared the station I saw the signal altered, and
at the same moment the up train coming round the curve; then it was
crossing my line; and it seemed to me that the next moment we should cut
it right in two and go on through it. But we were not quite so nigh as
that, and before we got close up I had shut off, reversed, and was
screwing down the break, for my stoker seemed struck helpless; then I
just caught a glimpse of him as he leaped off; there was a crash, and I
was lying half stunned back amongst the coal in the tender, and we were
still dashing on for nearly a mile before I was quite recovered and the
train at a standstill.
"I was half stupid for a bit, and on putting my hand to my head I found
that it was bleeding, whilst the screen was bent right down over me, and
had saved my life, no doubt. As far as I could see then there was no
more damage done to us, and just then the guard came running up and
shook hands when he found I'd got off so well.
"`But where's Joe?' he says, meaning my stoker.
"`He went off,' I says, `just as we went into 'em. How about t'other
train?'
"`Let's run back,' he says; and I put her gently back; but all the while
in a muddly sort of way, as if I wasn't quite right in my head, which
bled powerful. Then there was a good deal of shouting and noise amongst
the passengers; but my guard went along the foot-board from coach to
coach till he had quieted them all pretty well, and then by that time
they signalled to us to stop.
"Not many ruins to see, there wasn't, only the guard's break of the up
train, which my engine had struck full, and another few seconds of time
would have let us go clear; while how the points didn't throw us off I
can't tell, for it's quite a wonder that my train kept on the line.
"The guard's break was knocked all to shivers, of course, but he had
jumped out and escaped with a bruise or two; but not so poor Joe, as I
soon saw; for when I asked about him, they showed me something lying
under a tarpaulin which a doctor was just putting straight again. But
of all things that struck me on the day of that accident there was
nothing like the face of the poor young fellow as had the management of
the signal. I never saw a face so pale and ghastly and frightened
before. But there let it rest. I suppose he was frightened and
confused at seeing the two trains coming in together; and as better men
have done afore now, he lost his nerve.
"Ever kill anyone? What! run him down? Yes, one. Shocking thing, too,
and one I don't much like talking about; but then, it was not my fault,
and I did my best to save him: but then, what can you do when you're
going nearly a mile a minute?
"That was a shunting case, that was, with a goods train, at a little
station, past which we on the express down used to go at the rate I said
just now. This goods up used to stop there, and be picking up and
setting down nearly every day when we passed. I used to give a whistle,
and then it was touch and go, and we were thundering along and past
them. But one day as we were running along the straight I could see the
guard signalling his engine-driver to back a bit to run into a siding,
as it came out at the inquest, for some empties, and to do this, what
does he do but step on to the down line, and right in front of my train.
"Now all he had to do was to step off again, for he had plenty of time,
and keep in the six-foot till we were gone by. I set the whistle going,
and I saw his driver waving his hand to him, and a man at the station
seemed to me to be shouting; and all this I noticed as we tore along;
and then he did not move, while I felt my blood creep like, as I leaned
round the screen, holding on to the handle; and just as if he could hear
me I shouted to him to take care as I wrenched the handle and signed my
stoker to grind down the break.
"But there, bless you, it was impossible to stop, and though I felt no
shock, it seems to me that my heart did, and when we pulled up in a
wonderful short time, my stoker and I were looking at one another in a
queer scared way, for the buffer had caught the poor fellow and driven
him along; then the wheels had him, and he was tossed at last into the
six-foot to lie with his life-blood soaking into the gravel.
"I'm a big, stout fellow, but as I ran back towards the station I felt
sick, and my head was in a whirl; while I seemed to be hearing the
thundering-by of the train, the shriek of the whistle, the grinding and
screeching of the braked wheels, and seeing that poor fellow torn to
pieces. And then I got close up to the spot where there was something
lying, and others were coming up to it, all feeling the same creeping,
horrified sensation as they trembled and gathered up the pieces of what
had a minute before been one of themselves.
"What ought I to have done? Gone back to my engine, helped the men from
the station, thrown sand and ballast over the horrible stains? What
ought I to have done? I don't know. But I'll tell you what I did do.
I went and sat down on the bank beside the line, and cried like a great
girl.
"But no one saw it, for I had my hands over my face, and them down on my
knees, while a gentleman from my train, thinking I was faint, gave me
some brandy from his flask, and then I went back to my engine and
finished my journey.
"No fault of mine, you know, and though in the heat of a fight a man may
perhaps strike down another without feeling any sorrow, yet to cause the
death of a fellow servant, when in the ordinary daily work of one's
life, had something very awful in it, and it was a long time before I
could run down past that station without feeling my heart beat faster,
and a strange shuddering sensation come over me.
"I could tell you some strange stories of our life, sir, not one of the
easiest, but I think we'll stop here for to-day."