The man on the other bench pulled the whistle cord for each crossing and station, but the huge eight-driver engine and its long tail of varnished cars sped past the switch targets and the station lights with no decrease of speed.
The other fireman sprayed the coal into the firebox door, keeping an even bed of living embers from which the lambent flames sprang like live tongues. Occasionally Ralph stepped back upon the deck to look over the fireman’s shoulder into the hot maw of the box.
The two firemen changed places every hour. And Ralph did not wonder at this. When he had served his time with the shovel and bar it was on no such mighty machine as this that drew the Midnight Flyer. The mountain climbers and moguls had been big enough in those days. But this was even a more powerful locomotive than the oil-burners, of which the Great Northern owned several.
One man could never have fed the furnace of this engine for four hours—the length of the run. They had to spell each other. The attempt to make the schedule across the country from Rockton to Hammerfest was no small job!
The minute he had got the long train out of the Rockton yard, Ralph had set his mind to the work of arriving at Hammerfest on time. After all, a good locomotive engineer pulls his train with his head more than by any bodily exertion.
Sitting on the bench with the throttle within easy touch, Ralph for the most part gazed ahead at the rails glimmering under the white radiance of the headlight. It was true that he knew almost every foot of this road as a boy knows his own back yard.
Here, he remembered, was a level with a sharp curve at the end. He took three-quarters of the straight stretch at top speed; then he shut off the steam and went around the sudden curve so easily that few of the passengers, unless they were awake, would know anything about it.
For not only does the engineer of a fast and expensive train have to make time, but he must run the train so well and with such precision as to make a reputation for the road and the train which will bring passengers back over the route.
On the mild grades Ralph could use the steam so skillfully that the speedometer registered the same speed as on the levels. Nor had his firemen anything to complain of.
“We got to hand it to you, Boss,” said one of the firemen, as Ralph slowed to a stop at Shadow Valley Station. “You don’t waste the precious steam. But poor old By was a hog for it, going up a grade.”