Ralph jumped down from the cab, unset a switch, glanced ahead down the open track, and then glanced at his watch.
“Eight minutes,” he said, quite excited now. “Crowd on every pound of steam you can. We may make it by a bare scratch.”
Ahead was the outline of the fence of the yards. The gate to its west special track outlet was shut after working hours, Ralph knew well, but it was a flimsy affair used less for protection than to exclude intruders.
“Four minutes,” he spoke, and the flying locomotive was rushing ahead with a grinding roar.
“Three.”
They took the gate, sending its frail boards flying up into the air in a cascade of riven splinters.
“Arrived!” shouted the fireman triumphantly.
Ralph started to let down speed. Just then something happened. The brake beam of the truck under the tender dropped, causing the wheels to leave the rails.
The locomotive played a veritable “crack the whip” with the cars behind, became separated from the train, and traveled fully four hundred feet before she stopped.
The train broke in three sections. The wheels seemed to be smashing through logs, rails and stones. The noise was deafening. A yardman said later that as the train burst through the switches each car seemed to carry beneath it a huge ball of fire, caused by the wheels being dead-locked by the automatic brakes.