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He drew a long breath when the train had backed and bumped down to the car, and the couplers had clashed together, and the maniac, who had not been mashed in dropping the coupling-pin into its socket, scrambled out from the wheels, and frantically worked his arms to the potential homicide in the locomotive cab, and the train had jolted forward on the beginning of its run.
The reel clanged up, two of its crew sprang for the engine with the hose-end and couplers, and the cart sped on, peeling the hose out behind it. The speed with which they could get into action was a matter of pride with the Haddowville firemen.
This was before the days of mile-long freight-trains with air-brakes and patent couplers. Over the grades of the Transcontinental no engine yet had pulled more than twenty "empties." There was ever the danger of breaking in two. In the dim interior of the caboose the conductor, with Geordie Graham by his side, was bending over a battered and dishevelled form.
A petition signed by nearly 10,000 railway brakemen was presented to the Commission asking that steps might be taken to bring about the use of automatic brakes and couplers on freight cars.
He peeled off carbonized wrappings but some did not need to be peeled: they crumbled at a touch and in twenty minutes he knew the whole story. The rotor motors were ruined. The couplers pilot-to-main-gyro connections had been heated red hot and were no longer hardened steel; their dimensions had changed and they would no longer fit. But these were not disastrous items.
I also renew my recommendation in favor of legislation affording just copyright protection to foreign authors on a footing of reciprocal advantage for our authors abroad. It may still be possible for this Congress to inaugurate by suitable legislation a movement looking to uniformity and increased safety in the use of couplers and brakes upon freight trains engaged in interstate commerce.
Statistics furnished by the Interstate Commerce Commission show that during the year ending June 30, 1891, there were forty-seven different styles of car couplers reported to be in use, and that during the same period there were 2,660 employees killed and 26,140 injured.
"Now, I think we are all ready," he muttered, as, stepping back to the platform of his own car, he grasped the coupling lever firmly with both hands, giving it a mighty tug. At first it would not budge. The drawheads of the couplers of the two cars were straining because of the drag of the brake that he had but just set. Teddy loosened the brake a little, then tried the coupling lever again.
Yet if he could have seen the bomb and the sputtering fuse, he could not have slowed more deftly to let the automatic couplers clutch each other, nor, at the touch and clamp, could he have reversed and gathered headway with greater skill. The three occupants of the Nadia staggered to their feet as the private car lunged ahead in the grasp of the big engine, increasing speed with every wheel-turn.
A law requiring of every railroad engaged in interstate commerce the equipment each year of a given per cent of its freight cars with automatic couplers and air brakes would compel an agreement between the roads as to the kind of brakes and couplers to be used, and would very soon and very greatly reduce the present fearful death rate among railroad employees.
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