The Columbus Journal

Half a dozen railroad men were standing by the Union depot lunch counter this other night awaiting for a train, drinking coffee and telling stories about their experiences in railroading. An engineer was making camel tracks in a half of a pie, and between swallows he was entertaining the boys about a fast run he made one day between Milwaukee and La Crosse, when the "old man" was in a hurry to get up there to see about the bridge that was being built there. As he was describing how the engine and two cars fairly blistered the rails between Portage and Camp Douglas, a frightened looking man stepped up and asked for a cup of coffee and some doughnuts, and while he was soaking a doughnut in the coffee, he said they didn't know anything about fast running unless they had been on the Pennsylvania Road. The men asked him what he knew about fast running, and he turned out some coffee in a saucer, blew on it, to cool it, swallowed it, and said:

"Well, I just got here from the East, and I have witnessed railroading that knocks the socks off of anything that ever was. We started out of Jersey City one night at eight o'clock, and up this side of Philadelphia there was a wreck ahead of us, and we side-tracked for six hours, and when the track was clear we started. Well, sir, that train flew, fairly flew. We didn't realize in the car that we were going fast, by any jar, for it was just as smooth as a pair of skates on smooth ice, but if a man went out on a platform he could not breathe. The nigger started to bring a lunch from the hotel car into the car I was in, and while he crossed the platform the coffee froze as stiff as ice cream, and a man ate it with a spoon. The nigger was afraid to go back into his car, and waited till the train stopped at a coal place. The conductor told me the train was going faster than a bullet. He said the engineer often shot his revolver up the track ahead, and the engine would overtake the bullet and flatten it against the smoke stack. Did you ever see a passenger train jump right over a freight train, when both were in motion?" asked the doughnut man, as he filled his coffee cup up with milk.

"O, what you giving us?" said the engineer, as he loosened the leather belt around his greasy overalls, and looked at the man with disgust.

"Well, you don't have to believe it if you don't want to, but I pledge you my word our train jumped right over a long freight train ahead of us." We come up to it, on a straight track, and our engineer signaled to the freight engineer to slow up a little, and the conductor told us to keep our seats. We had seen the freight train ahead on a curve, and wondered why our train did not stop. When the conductor told us to keep our seats, I asked him what was the matter, and he said we were going to jump a freight, and if we moved around we would jar the cars so they wouldn't be so liable to hit the track ahead, when we come down. Just then I could feel the train go into the air. and hear the wheels turn with no track under them, and in less than ten seconds we began to descend, and I could hear the wheels on the track again, and I looked back and the freight engineer was waving his hat at us." Why, there was no more jar than there is in this room now. Of course they wouldn't attempt to jump a freight train on a curve or in a tunnel,"—and the man scratched a match on his pants, and lit a cigar stub he had been keeping.—

Peck's Sun.