Henry Dawson

“ Several times during my life I have felt the emotions so often told of, so seldom felt by any man, when, with death apparently absolute and inevitable, immediate and inglorious, staring me full in the face, I forgot all fears for myself—dreamed not of shuddering at the thought that I soon must die—that the gates of death were swung wide open before me, and that, with a speed and force against which all human resistance was useless, I was rushing into them. ”

“ And mounted upon this fire-fiend sits the engineer, controlling its every motion, holding in his hand the thread of every life on the train, which a single act—a false move—a deceived eye, an instant's relaxation of thought or care on his part, would cut, to be united nevermore; and the train thunders on, crossing bridges, gullies and roads, passing through tunnels and cuts, and over embankments. ”

“ A first thought of the life of an engineer would be that it was a life peculiarly exhilarating; that in the mind of an engineer the rush and flow of strong feeling and emotion would constantly be felt; that the every-day incidents of his life would keep his nerves continually on the stretch, and that lassitude would never overtake him. But such is not the case. I know of no life that a man could live which would more certainly produce stagnation than it. ”

“ So, with a bravery of heart such as is seldom found in other ranks of men, he stuck to his iron steed, transformed then into the white steed of death, and spent the last energies of his life, the strength of his last pulse, striving to mitigate the suffering which would follow the collision. His death was instantaneous; he had no time for regrets at leaving life and the friends he loved so dearly. When we found him, one hand grasped the throttle, his engine was reversed, and with the other hand he still held on to the handle of the sand-box lever. ”

“ He knows every tie on the road; he knows that here is a bad curve, there a weak bridge, from either of which he may at any time, by the most probable of possibilities, be hurled to his death; and still every day he rides his "iron horse," of fiery heart and demon pulse, over the weak places and the strong, posted at the very front of the procession, which any one of a thousand contingencies would make a funeral train. He passes the same stations, blows his whistle at the same point, sees the same men at work in the same fields, with the same horses that they used last year and the year before. ”

“ On a railroad, as everywhere else, one meets with decidedly "rich" characters—those whose every act is mirth-provoking, and who, as the Irishman said, "can't open their mouths without putting their fut in it." Such an one was Billy Brown, who has been, for nearly thirteen years, a brakeman on one road; who has run through and escaped many dangers; who has seen many an old comrade depart this life for—let us hope, a better one. Scarce an accident has happened on the road in whose employ he has been so long, but Billy has somehow been there; and always has Billy been kind to his dying friends. ”

“ Everybody knows people that they think are capable of any mean act, who would, did opportunity present itself, steal, lie, cheat, swear falsely, or do any other act which is vicious. But do any of my readers think that they know any one who would be guilty of deliberately placing an obstruction on a railroad track, over which he knew that a train, laden with human passengers, must soon pass? Yet such men are plenty. Such acts are frequently done, and often with the sole view of stealing from the train during the excitement which must necessarily ensue after such an accident. ”

“ To be sure they know nothing, or next to nothing, of the circumstances, and the jury knows all about them. To be sure, iron will break and so will wood; the insidious frost will creep in where man cannot probe, and render as brittle as glass what should be tough as steel; watches will go wrong, and no hundred men can be found who will on all occasions give one interpretation to the same words. ”

“ A fond mother and sweet sisters may have been dependent on his scanty earnings for their support. No matter; the great surging tide of humanity that daily throngs these avenues of travel, has not time to inquire after, nor sympathy to waste upon, a greasy wood-passer, whom they regard as simply a sort of piece in the machinery of the road, not half so essential as a valve or bolt, for if he be lost, his place can be at once supplied; but if a bolt or other essential piece of the iron machinery give out, it will most likely cause a vexatious delay. ”

“ You may quarrel with a man having a soul in him beside which yours would look most pitifully insignificant; one who, were the dread signal to sound, would rush out into the danger, and, throwing himself into the chasm, die for you, amid all the appalling scenes of the chaotic wreck of that train of cars, as coolly, as determinately, as unselfishly as the Stuart queen barred the door with her own fair arm, that her liege lord might escape. ”

“ As to an accident that could not be avoided by human forethought, that idea is scouted, and if a coroner's jury does ever so far forget what is expected of it by these editors—who are the self-elected bull-dogs of society, and must needs bark or lose their dignity—why no words are sufficiently sarcastic, no sentences sufficiently bitter, to express the contempt which they feel for that benighted coroner's jury. ”

“ If one were to judge from the words of the press and the finding of coroners' juries, he would infer that a pure accident, one unavoidable by human foresight, was a thing unknown; but if he will only think, for a moment, of all the circumstances, consider the enormous velocity at which trains move, the tremendous strain thus thrown upon every portion of the road-bed and the machinery, I think the wonder will be why there are not more accidents. ”

“ Hart tried to reverse his engine, but had not time to do it; so he could not jump, but was caught in the close embrace of those huge monsters. The freight engine pushed the "tender" of his engine up on to the "foot-board." It divided; one part crushed the fireman up against the dome and broke in the "fire-door;" the wood piled over on top of him, and the flames rushing out of the broken door soon set it on fire, and there he lay till he was taken out, eighteen hours afterward, a shapeless cinder of humanity. ”

“ The presence of mind shown by railroad men is a great deal talked about; but few, I think, know the trying circumstances under which it must be exercised, because they have never thought of, and are not familiar enough with the details of the business, and the common, every-day incidents of the lives of railroad men. If any thing does happen to a train of cars, or an engine, it comes so suddenly, and is all over so quickly, that the impulse, and effort, to do something to prevent it, must be instantaneous, or they are of no avail. ”

“ Still the engineer sits there cool and calm; but let him have a care,—let not the exhilaration of his wild ride overcome his prudence, for the elements he controls are, while under his rule, useful and easily managed, but broken loose, they have the power of a thousand giants, and do the work of a legion of devils in almost a single beat of the pulse.
A man can easily retain his presence of mind where the danger depends entirely upon him ”

“ The night wind moaned through the wreck, the dripping water yet hissed upon the still hot iron of the engine, the waves of the river gurgled and rippled among the rocks of the shore, and an occasional bellow of agony was heard from amidst the cattle cars, where all the rest of the hands were at work releasing the poor creatures ”

“ In short, Uncle Jimmy is any thing but a romantic-looking fellow, and a novelist would hesitate long before taking him as the hero of a romance; but the old man is a hero, and under that rough, yet placid exterior, there beats a heart that never cools, and a will that never flinches. We go back into the history of the past ages to find our heroes, and them we almost worship, but I question whether the whole history of the world furnishes a better example of self-sacrificing heroism, than this same rough and unromantic looking Jimmy Wiggins. ”

“ Uncle Jimmy was coolly at work, when a shriek from the conductor called his attention, and looking up, he saw what would frighten and unnerve almost any one. The stupid fool at the switch had thrown it wide open, and the express was already on the branch, coming too at the rate of thirty miles an hour—thirty feet in the beat of your pulse—and his train loaded with passengers stood there stock-still. That was a time to try the stuff a man was made of; ordinary men would have shrunk from the task, and run from the scene. ”

“ How the engineer is to obviate this most fruitful cause of explosions, for the life of me I cannot see; still if his engine does blow up, everybody and their wives will believe that it happened entirely through his neglect. A person who has never seen an explosion, can form no idea of the enormous power with which the iron is rent. I saw one engine that had exploded, at a time too when, according to the oaths of three men, it had a sufficiency of water and only 95 lbs. ”

“ Those who have traveled much on the Little Miami Railroad, must have noticed a little old fellow, with grizzled locks and an unpoetical stoop of the shoulders, who whisks about his engine with all the activity of a cat, and whom the railroad men all call "Uncle Jimmy." ”

“ THE BRAKEMAN.
A very humble class of railroad men, a class that gets poorer pay in proportion to the work they do and the dangers they run than any other upon a road, are the brakemen. Though perhaps less responsibility rests upon them, they are placed in the most dangerous position on the train; they are expected to be at their posts at all times, and to flinch from no contingency which may arise. The managers of a railroad expect and demand the brakemen to be as prompt in answering the signals of the engineer as the throttle-valve is obedient to his touch. ”

“ Maybe a child, long time absent, is hastening home to meet the aged mother or father, and bid them good-bye ere the long running sands are run out entirely; but here he is caught, and his last breath of life goes out with a heart-rending, horrible scream of agony, and only his mangled corpse can go home. ”

“ Thus the engineer rides every day, having the same care, and facing the same dangers, with the same responsibility resting on him. Who then shall say that, though he be grimy and greasy, rough and uncouth, given to tobacco-chewing, and sometimes to hard swearing, he is of no consequence to the world? Who shall blame him too severely if sometimes he makes an error? ”

“ The fog was so thick that I could not tell by passing objects how fast we ran, but the dull, heavy and oppressive roar, as we shot through rock cuttings and tunnels, the rocking and straining of my engine, and the almost inconceivable velocity at which the driving-wheels revolved, told me that my speed was something absolutely awful. ”

“ The fireman sprang at once to the post vacated by the engineer, reversed the engine, opened the sand-box valve, and rode into the hind end of that train; losing, in so doing, a leg and an arm. He has been most munificently rewarded for his heroism, being now employed to attend a crossing and hold a flag for passing trains, and receiving the princely compensation of twenty-five dollars per month; while the engineer, who deserted his post and left all to kind Providence, is running on the road at a salary of seventy-five per month. ”

“ Does a train run off the track, and thereby mischief be worked, every possible circumstance that can be twisted and distorted into a shape such as to throw the blame upon the men connected with the road, is so twisted and distorted. The probability of any accident happening without its being directly caused by the scarcely less than criminal negligence of [Pg 52] some of the railroad men, is always scouted by the discerning public; most of whom scarcely know the difference between a locomotive and a pumping engine. ”

“ Why, the bare idea that any accident upon any road can happen, and some poor devil of an engineer, [Pg 155] conductor, brakeman or switchman not be ready at hand, to be made into a pack-horse on whom to pile all the accumulated bile of these men who, many of them, have some private grudge to satisfy—the idea, I say, is preposterous to these men, and they fulminate their thunders against railroad men, until community gets into the belief that virtue, honesty, integrity or common dog sense are things of which a railroad man must necessarily be entirely destitute ”

“ Of the various kinds of accidents that may befall a railroad-man, a collision is the most dreaded, because, generally, the most fatal. The man who is in the wreck, of matter that follows the terrible shock of two trains colliding, stands indeed but a poor chance to escape with either life or limb. No combination of metal or wood can be formed strong enough to resist the tremendous momentum of a locomotive at full or even half speed, suddenly brought to a stand-still ”

“ The engineer, firm to his post, still regulates the breath of his steam-demon and keeps his eye upon the track ahead, with a thousand things upon his mind, the neglect or a wrong thought of either of which would run the risk of a thousand lives; [Pg 39] —and these readers in the cars are still absorbed with the daring deeds of the Zouaves under the warm sun of Italy, but pay not a thought to the Zouave upon the engine, who every day rides down into the "valley of death" and charges a bridge of Magenta. ”

“ What kind of a soul can such a man have? The man who desires to steal, wishes to get a chance to do so when people's minds are so occupied with some other idea that their property is not thought of. So he goes to the railroad track and lifts up a rail, places a tie or a T rail across the track, or does something that he thinks will throw the train from the track; and then lies in wait for the accident to happen, calmly and with deliberate purpose awaiting the event ”