Forty Years a Locomotive Engineer; Thriling Tales of the Rail (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1913. Excerpt: ... We were now on a stretch where the roadbed rested on a considerable fill and the track curved considerably and from my side the track was not often in had lost its root hold and had fallen against the side of the fill, and its jagged end sticking above and across the track about on a line with the hand rail of the engine. The projecting stump was about two feet in diameter and this in the path of a passenger train traveling at a speed of seventy miles an hour. It has taken several minutes to write this, but from the moment that I first saw the obstruction until we tore into it was only a matter of a second's time, yet I seemed to live ten years in that second's space. Of course, I applied the emergency, pulled her over and all that, but those things are really a joke when you are right on top of an obstruction in front of a fast running train. You are going to hit, and hit hard; what the results are going to be no man can know until after the shock, then those who are left will have some idea of it. Well, as said, we hit that stump, and it was no love tap either; I waited for the shock, but there was only the slightest tremble and our momentum carried us on, while the brakes were working overtime bringing us to a stop, and the drivers spitting fire from the friction of the brake shoes--then we stopped. I whistled back a flagman and then jumped from the cab with torch in hand to see what had been done to us. I found the nigger head of the boiler smashed in, and there was a hole large enough for a man to crawl through. The left main driving rod was kinked, evidently having been hit and jammed by a piece of the broken tree. About this time dapper little Paul Thompson, the captain, came running up and inquired, "What's the matter, Harve?" I Applied the Emergency, but Too Late, view. Sud...