New Ulm Weekly Review

Riding in the Engineer's Cab.

H. G. Prout says in the September Scribner's: We cannot tell from the timetables how fast we travel. The schedule times do not indicate the delays that must be made up by spurts between stations. The traveler who is curious to know just how fast he is going, and likes the stimulus of thinking that he is in a little danger, may find amusement in taking the time between mile posts; and when these are not to be seen, he can often get the speed very accurately by counting the rails passed in a given time. This may be done by listening attentively at an open window or door. The regular clicks of the wheels over the rail joints can usually soon be singled out from the other noises, and counted. The number of rail-lengths passed in twenty seconds is almost exactly the number of miles run in an hour.

But if one wants to get a lively sense of what it means to rush through space at fifty or sixty miles an hour he must get on a locomotive. Then only does he begin to realize what trifles stand between him and destruction. A few weeks ago a lady sat an hour in the cab of a locomotive hauling a fast express train over a mountain road. She saw the narrow, bright line of the rails and the slender points of the switches. She heard the thunder of the bridges, and saw the track shut in by rocky bluffs, and new perils suddenly revealed as the engine swept around sharp curves. The experience was to her magnificent but the sense of danger was almost appalling. To have made her experience complete, she should have taken one engine ride in a dark and rainy night. In a daylight ride on a locomotive, we come to realize how slender is the rail and how fragile its fastenings, compared with the ponderous machine which they carry. We see what a trifling movement of a switch makes the difference between life and death. We learn how short the look ahead must often be, and how close danger sits on either hand. But it is only in a night ride that we learn how dependent the engineer must be, after all, upon the faithful vigilance of others. The head-light reveals a few yards of glistening rail, and the ghostly telegraph poles and switch targets. Were a switch open, a rail taken up, or a pile of ties on the track, we could not possibly see the danger in time to stop.