A RECORD BREAKING RUN.
One hundred and thirty-one seconds were lost at Elkhart in changing locomotives, and it was three minutes to five when big 599, with Dave Luce in the cab, turned her nose toward the dawning day and started for Toledo, 133 miles away. Great things were expected in this relay, for about half of it was straight as a bird's flight and down grade, too, so that hopes were high of making up lost time, especially as Luce had the reputation of stopping at nothing when it was a question of "getting there." He certainly did wonders, and five minutes after the start he had the train at a 62-mile gait, and ten minutes later at a 67-mile gait. Then they struck frost on the rails and the speed dropped, while the time-takers studied their stopwatches with serious faces.
At ten minutes to six they reached Waterloo and the long, straight stretch. As they whizzed past the station, Dave pulled open his throttle to the last notch and yelled to his fireman. Here was where they had to do things. Butler was 7½ miles away, the first town in the down grade, and they made it in 6 minutes and 40 seconds, nearly 68 miles an hour. In the next 7 miles Dave pushed her up to 70 an hour, then to 72½, and let her out in a great burst which made the passengers sit up, and showed for several miles a top-notch rate of 87 miles an hour. Nevertheless, taking account of frost and slow-downs, they barely finished the relay on schedule time, so that for the whole run they were still seven minutes behind time; the schedule they had set themselves called for such tremendous speed that it seemed almost impossible to make up a single lost minute.
The third relay was 108 miles to Cleveland, and they did it in 104 minutes, including many slow-downs and a heart-breaking loss of four minutes when a section-hand red-flagged the train and brought it to a dead stop from a 70-mile gait because he had found a broken rail. The officials were in such a state of tension that they would almost have preferred chancing it on the rail to losing those four minutes. There is a point of eagerness in railroad racing where it seems nothing to risk one's life!
The train drew out of Cleveland 19 minutes behind the time they should have made for a world's record. Every man had done his best, every locomotive had worked its hardest, but fate seemed against them and hopes of beating the Central's fast run were fading rapidly. The fourth relay was to Erie, 95½ miles, and some said that Jake Gardner with 598 might pull them out of the hole, but the others shook their heads. At any rate, Jake did better than those who had preceded him, and he danced that train along at 75, 80, 84 miles an hour, so the watches said, and averaged 67 miles an hour for the whole relay.
"It's the kind of thing that makes you taste your heart, and packs a week into ten minutes," said the superintendent, telling about it. "You may take one ride smashing around curves at 80 miles an hour, but you'll never take another."
Still, in spite of these brave efforts, they pulled out of Erie 15 minutes late, and started on the last relay with gloomy faces. It was 86 miles to Buffalo, the end of the race, and they must be there by eleven thirty-one to win, which called for an average speed of over 70 miles an hour, including slow-downs. No train in the world had ever approached such an average, and their own racing average since leaving Chicago was much below it. So what hope was there?
There was hope in a tall, sparely built man named Bill Tunkey, whom nobody knew much about except that he was a good engineer with a rather clumsy ten-wheel locomotive not considered very desirable in a race. All the other locomotives had been eight-wheelers. Still, the new engine had one advantage, that she carried water enough in her tank for the whole run, and need not slow up to refill, as the others had done. She had another advantage—that she carried Tunkey, one of those men who rise up in sudden emergencies and do things, whether they are possible or not. It was not possible, everybody vowed, to reach Buffalo Creek by eleven thirty-one. "All right," said Tunkey, quietly, and then—
Within forty rods of the start he had his engine going 30 miles an hour, and he pressed her harder and harder until 11 miles out of Erie she struck an 80-mile pace, and held it as far as Brockton, when she put forth all her strength and did a burst of 5 miles in 3½ minutes, one of these miles at the rate of 92¼ miles an hour, as the watches showed. "And I never want any more of that in mine," said the superintendent.