Locomotive

“ A rakish, low-lying locomotive with a long tail of coaches emerged from the woodland and, breathing forth vast volumes of smoke, fled a pursuing cloud of dust, straight as an arrow to the station; where, panting with triumph and relief, as one having won a race, it drew in beside the platform. ”

“ The bars of the trans-continental railroad had careened the horizon with their mighty leverage, and let the cargo through—the very cargo for which they waited in the old days with their faces toward the rising sun, like a praying Israelite. The locomotive had wheeled the rolling globe a half revolution, brought the tide of commerce to the right-about, like a soldier upon his heel. It has proved to be anything but what it was suspected of being—the locomotive has—for, made to be a common carrier, a gigantic, quicktime dray-horse, it is a civilizer, a builder of cities ”

“ Half-way between centers, the big steel bar on the engineer's side of the locomotive had snapped in two and was tearing through the cab like a flail, at every revolution of the driver to which it was attached. ”

“ On shot the locomotive, like an arrow from the bow, the men throwing over the ties until the train was well nigh unloaded, when just as they were close to the curve by which the train arrives at the station, they saw the dreaded cars strike a tie, or something equally of service, and with a desperate plunge rush down the embankment, some fifteen feet, to the little valley, and creek below. ”

“ Think of a ponderous engine, fashioned to grind miles under its wheels like a grist in a mill, being drawn, as one was a short time ago, under the Arch of Constantine at Rome, along the very road whereon the robe of Cicero trailed, if he didn't lift it, and the weak-eyed poet strolled! Classic ground or Holy ground, it stands a poor chance with the locomotive, for with the steam comes the newsboy, the boot-black, modern slang, irreverence, and—peanuts.
No piece of mechanism has affected so widely, diversely and powerfully, the globe and its inhabitants, as the locomotive. ”

“ The very wheels beneath you trundle along in an indistinct fashion, and the engine has a wheeze instead of a whistle. It is as if the railway dictionary had been run over by the cars a number of times, and there was nothing left for the owners but to serve out the fragments to passengers. The brakeman of a train holds, all things considered, the post of honor, because the post of danger. The locomotive talks to him all day, and, as a rule, that is about the only individual with whom he holds much conversation. ”

“ If every holiday recollection of my youth, every escape from town to country, be associated with the railway, I must feel towards it otherwise than did my father, upon whose middle age it came as a monstrous iron innovation. The locomotive is one of the wonders of modern childhood. Children crowd upon a bridge to see the train pass beneath. Little boys strut along the streets puffing and whistling in imitation of the engine. All that romance, silly as it looks, becomes sacred in afterlife. Besides, when it is not underground in a foul London tunnel, a train is a beautiful thing. ”

“ The locomotive is ready to start. Can you not hear it?
"Shug-chug! Shug-chug! Shug-chug!" That is what the locomotive is saying, all to itself. It knoweth how pleasant a journey it is about to make.
"Shug-chug! Shug-chug! Shug-chug!"
Oh, many a time hath it proudly swept over prairie and hill, over river and plain, through sleeping gardens and drowsy cities, swiftly and quietly, bearing the little ones to the far, pleasant valley where lieth Shut-Eye Town. ”

“ A locomotive is, next to a marine engine, the most sensitive thing man ever made; and No. .007, besides being sensitive, was new. The red paint was hardly dry on his spotless bumper-bar, his headlight shone like a fireman's helmet, and his cab might have been a hard-wood-finish parlour. ”

“ The whistle of the locomotive--which, by the way, is very much more melodious than the one in use in England, being softer, deeper, and reaching to a greater distance-the roll of the train into stations, the stop and the start, all become, as it were, blended into uneasy sleep, until daylight sets the darkey at his work of making up the sections. ”

“ The locomotive engineer is as quiet as a Quaker meeting. One driver of a four-horse coach will make more noise than a dozen of him. There he is with his hand upon the iron lever, and looks forth from his little window. If he wants to say something confidentially to a street crossing, there is the bell-tongue. If he wishes to throw a word or two back to the brakeman, or make a short speech to a distant depot, there is the whistle. He pats his engine, and calls it "she." Its name is Whirling Cloud or Rolling Thunder or Vampire or Vanderbilt, but it is "she" all the time. ”

“ Nothing except a new impossibility; nothing except that a human being had invented an electrical locomotive so powerful that it was pulling that train fifty-five miles an hour while the brakes on the car were set—twelve brakes all grinding twenty miles on those twelve wheels; and the locomotive paid no more attention to the brakes of that heavy Pullman than it would to a feather or to a small boy, all the way from New York to Stamford, hanging on behind. ”

“ Lean mules no longer crawl leisurely along the little rails with trucks of stone, through Croydon, once perchance during the day, but the whistle and rush of the locomotive, and the whirr of the atmospheric, are now heard all day long. ”

“ A brisk, bright-faced young fellow glided from their midst, cleared an obstructing truck with a clever spring, stood ready to greet the locomotive and express car as they parted company from the passenger coaches, and ran thirty feet along the siding to where the freight-sheds stood. ”

“ Just behind the great hissing locomotive, with its parabolic headlight and its coal-laden tender, came the baggage, mail, and express cars; then the passenger coaches, in which the social condition of the occupants seemed to be in inverse ratio to their distance from the engine. ”

“ With literal and historical accuracy, the typical railway engineer sees the modern locomotive as just an elaborated pit pump-engine placed on wheels, and engaged all day in hauling coal-laden trollies from the pit mouth to the cities, and all night in hauling them back empty. ”

“ Like the steamship, the railway is cosmopolitan in its character. The range of its operations may be as extensive as the globe itself; and throughout that sphere of activity, be it what it may, the locomotive engine is scattering thickly the seeds of civilisation, as well as of wealth. ”

“ There is a crackling electric tension in the air—then acheer, and a general surge toward the platform's edge. The locomotive blows its warm quick breath against their faces, crashes past, stops. Strings of girls begin to spill from every coach. ”

“ At every cross road in the country there is a warning signal: “Look out for the Locomotive.” At every railroad crossing in every large city, there are bells rung, whistles blown, and even guards let down when a locomotive passes. ”

“ That man has ever been able to create and build the locomotive, a giant creature of some 200 tons, perhaps, built together with infinite care of some 5,000 to 7,000 parts, and these parts acting with the delicacy of the hair-spring of a watch, almost passes ordinary belief. The wonder becomes even greater when it is realized that this monster creature, set upon two slender rails, is capable of pulling a 4,000 ton train, through every stress of weather and over considerable grades. ”

“ You look forward, and see lights down the track. Drawing in like a turtle, you tell the conductor. "What is it, Joe?" and the brakeman replies "Nothin'." The conductor puts his watch to his ear. Has it stopped? With rattle and roar the engineer keeps launching the train into the midnight. A shrill shriek of the locomotive whistles you up, and you are on your feet like a cat. The brakeman runs up his little iron ladder, the speed slackens, the train comes to a dead halt. It is Genesee, and one grateful passenger leaves that frantic caboose, to set foot in it, as he fervently prays, "nevermore." ”

“ A locomotive preceded our train, and the second section followed us. Down we went at a lively rate, coming close on to the heels, sometimes, of that single locomotive, which would then dart on ahead out of the way for a time; and looking back we could see the other train rushing close upon us. Sometimes, in going around and down some of those horseshoe curves, we could look out of the window, high up the sides of the mountains, but only a short distance across, and see the passengers on the other train waving papers and handkerchiefs at us as if to hurry us out of their way. ”

“ Yet I doubt whether the express trains on the New York Central, drawn by hundred-ton locomotives at a speed of sixty miles an hour, produce on the youth of the present generation anything like the impression made by those simple beginnings. The new personage who now attracted my homage was the locomotive-driver. To me his profession transcended all others. As he mounted the locomotive, and especially as he pulled the starting-bar, all other functions seemed insignificant. ”

“ Some years ago we visited in a family in which there was a boy of this type. At that time his chief interest was in locomotives. He had a toy locomotive and took the greatest delight in operating it. Whenever he went near a railroad station he improved every opportunity to examine carefully the parts of a locomotive and, if possible, to induce the engineer to take him up into the cab and show him the levers, valves and other parts to be seen there. ”

“ It is not among the least wonders effected by the locomotive that a short hour can transport us from the midst of the busiest centres of manufactures to a solitude as complete as is to be found in the prairies of America or Australia, unless we by chance stumble upon a prying gamekeeper or an idle rustic seeking whortle-berries or snaring hares. ”

“ With a grind of brakes it suddenly loomed out of the blackness and into the dull haze of light at the shaft-bottom. With a roar it passed by. The locomotive, a great iron box, was built like a battering-ram, the headlight set in its armor-plated bow, and behind, on two low seats, as in a racing automobile, sat the motorman and the 'trip-rider' or helper, the motorman with one hand on the great iron brake-wheel, the other on his controller, and the trip-rider swinging on his low seat, half on the motor and half over the coupling of the rocking car behind, clinging to the pole of the trolley. ”

“ Put a schoolgirl fresh from belles-lettres and matinées in the cab of a locomotive and tell her to run it to the next station. She can not but know that steam will make the wheels go round, but what will she do in the maze of throttles, handles, disks, and rods that confronts her? What will she do if utterly hungry? ”

“ LOCOMOTIVES. As the locomotive engine is the power by which railroads are worked, and as its proportions and dimensions are so intimately connected with the physical character of the road, it is thought proper to take space enough at this point to examine the general principles of its construction, and of its adaptation to the work required of it upon railroads. ”

“ Looking far across the valley we try to make out the distant mountains, but only dim phantoms of gigantic size are seen, gliding stealthily away in the darkness.
We make interest with the conductor and engineer of the train for a special purpose. We are in search of a new sensation, to wit, such as may be derived from a night-ride on the engine, where one can see all the engineer sees, which is indeed little enough. The headlight of the locomotive throws its rays dimly on the darkness for a few rods in advance of the train. ”

“ A locomotive attached to two vans of coal had been shunting on to a side line in order to let us pass, when one of the vans got off the rails, and the locomotive tired its lungs with whistling the alarm, whilst men ran to meet us, scattering crackers. ”

“ When practical railroad men hear the size of cylinders, the diameter of driving-wheels, and the boiler dimensions of a locomotive, mentioned, they understand what kind of service the engine is adapted for, and about the weight of train it can haul. As it has been found necessary for designing and other purposes, to estimate, with some degree of accuracy, the work a locomotive is capable of doing, it has become usual to reckon the power of a locomotive by the tractive force it can exert upon the rails. ”

“ THE STEAM LOCOMOTIVE MODERN railroads are the outcome of the invention of the locomotive; yet the invention of the practical locomotive was the outcome of iron railroads which had been in existence for half a century. ”

“ The admirable invention of the locomotive enabled men to travel farther in less than an hour than they formerly could have done in more than a day.
The locomotive has not only enlarged the field of human activity, but, by diminishing space, it has increased the capabilities of human life. ”

“ The locomotive is a non-condensing, high pressure engine, working at a greater or less degree of expansion, according to the labor to be performed, and placed upon wheels which are so connected with the piston, that any motion of the latter is communicated to the former, by which the whole is moved. ”

“ In the case of a light locomotive drawing or constructed to draw another vehicle or constructed or used for the carriage of goods, the name of the owner and the place of his abode or business, and in every such case and in the case of every light locomotive weighing unladen one ton and a half or upwards, the weight of the light locomotive unladen shall be painted in one or more straight lines upon some conspicuous part of the right or off side of the light locomotive in large legible letters in white upon black or black upon white, not less than one inch in height. ”