Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 28, 2025
Only Rod thought he had seen the end of the baggage car protruding from the crushing mass, just as the locomotive became released and sprang forward. "The tunnel roof has caved in," said the engineman with a tone of horror; "and not a soul can have escaped beside ourselves. All those hundreds of people are lying in there, crushed beyond recognition.
Tedge was a master-hand among the reefs and shoals, even if the flappaddle Marie had no business outside. But the sea was nothing but a star-set velvet ribbon on which she crawled like a dirty insect. And no man questioned Tedge's will. Only, an hour later, the engineman came up and forward to stare into the faster-flowing water. Even now he pointed to a hyacinth clump. "Yeh!" the master growled.
There were other officials there, including General Manager Ellsworth. "I see Hazelton out yonder," murmured the president of the road. "But where's that young man Reade, now at the moment when the success of his work is being tested?" "Goodness knows," rejoined Mr. Ellsworth. "As likely as not he's back in the office, taking a nap after having given the engineman his signal."
"Do you know," he said, "that we have just covered a mile in forty-two seconds, and that we are travelling at the rate of eighty-five miles an hour?" "I shouldn't be surprised," replied Conductor Tobin, quietly; "I heard Mr. Appleby tell the engineman at the last stop that if better time wasn't made pretty soon he'd go into the cab himself and show 'em how to do it.
He lived to see other wrecks some appalling ones but this was his first, and the shock of seeing Dan Baggs's engine lying prone in the river, trumpeting forth a cloud of steam, instead of thundering across the bridge as he normally saw it every day, was an extraordinary one. Filled with alarm, he ran toward the bridge expecting that the worst had happened to the engineman and fireman.
Ten days afterward an east-bound passenger train was flagged in the night at Sugar Buttes, twelve miles west of Sleepy Cat. When the heavy train slowed up, two men boarded the engine and with pistols compelled the engineman to cut off the express cars and pull them to the water-tank a mile east of the station.
Stephenson taught himself arithmetic and mensuration while working as an engineman during the night shifts; and when he could snatch a few moments in the intervals allowed for meals during the day, he worked his sums with a bit of chalk upon the sides of the colliery waggons. Dalton's industry was the habit of his life.
The engineman, though greatly puzzled at receiving the signal to go ahead immediately after being ordered to stop, had obeyed it, thrown off brakes, and the train was again gathering its usual headway. "Now Rod," said Conductor Tobin, as the other brakeman disappeared; "I want you to make your way over the top of the train to the engine, and tell Eli what is taking place.
But from the time when George Stephenson was appointed fireman, and more particularly afterwards as engineman, he applied himself so assiduously and so successfully to the study of the engine and its gearing—taking the machine to pieces in his leisure hours for the purpose of cleaning and understanding its various parts—that he soon acquired a thorough practical knowledge of its construction and mode of working, and very rarely needed to call the engineer of the colliery to his aid.
"Some of us fellies want to go down to Ten Mile the liquor's out," said the man, trying to get a fair sight of the strange engineman. "Get off!" said Ford; and Hector made the order effective by shoving the intruder from the step. That was easy; but before the train had measured twice its length, a pistol barked thrice and the glass in the cab window on Ford's side fell in splinters.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking