The mention of a burglar led one of the new-comers to tell of William Powell's adventure with some Sing Sing convicts. Powell was the oldest engineer on the New York Central. He died a year ago, and this thing happened back in the seventies. It seems there was a trestle over the track about half a mile below the Sing Sing station, and on this trestle some convicts working in the quarry used to run little cars loaded with stone and dump them into the larger cars underneath. Of course, they worked under the surveillance of well-armed guards.
On one occasion, however, four or five convicts out-witted the guards by dropping from the trestle upon the tender of a moving locomotive, and the first thing the engineer knew he was set upon by a band of desperate men, who covered him and his fireman with revolvers. At the same moment half a dozen shots rang out, and bullets came crashing through the cab sides from the guards firing at random after the fleeing engine. Altogether it was quite the reverse of pleasant for William Powell.
"Out you go now, quick!" said the convicts; "we'll run this engine ourselves."
The engine was No. 105, Powell's pride and pet, and he could not bear to have unregenerate hands laid upon her, so he spoke up very politely: "Let me run her for you, gentlemen; I'll go wherever you say."
They agreed to this, and some distance down the line left the engine and departed into the woods.
"And the joke of it was," concluded the narrator, "that the revolvers those convicts had were made of wood painted black, and couldn't shoot any more than the end of a broom! It was a big bluff, but it worked."
"Wasn't any bluff when Denny Cassin got held up at Sing Sing," said another engineer. "Convicts had revolvers all right that trip, and Denny threw up his hands same as any man would. That was twenty years ago, on old engine 89. It was right at the Sing Sing station, and three of 'em jumped into the cab all of a sudden and told Denny to open her up, and you bet he did. Then they told him to jump, and he jumped; but first he managed to fix her tank-valves so she'd pump herself full of water and stop before she'd gone far. That was Denny's great scheme, and he walked along laughing to think how mad those convicts would be in a few minutes.
"It turned out, though, that Denny spoiled a nice trap they'd laid up at Tarrytown to catch those fellows when they got there. You see, the telegraph operator wired up the line that a runaway locomotive was coming with three escaped convicts on her, and the train despatcher at Tarrytown just set the switch so the locomotive would sail plump over a twelve-foot stone embankment down into the Hudson River. That's what would have happened to those convicts if Denny had left his tank-valves alone, but, of course, 89 got water-logged long before she reached Tarrytown; she just kicked out her cylinder-ends a few miles up the track and stopped. Then the convicts climbed down and skipped away. Two of 'em got caught afterward, but there was one they never caught."
Presently somebody reported that Big Arthur was out in the round-house, getting 2994 ready to take out the Empire State. It was clear enough that Big Arthur was an important figure in the eyes of these begrimed men, and, setting forth across the yards, I came upon him presently, torch in hand, looking over his deep, purring locomotive against the dangers of the run. Another engineer by the fire-box was discussing a theory of some of the boys, that a man can run his locomotive by his sense of time as well as by a watch.
"Denny Cassin says he'd agree to take the Empire State from Albany to New York and keep her right on the dot all the way, and bring her in on the minute, just by feeling. What d' ye think of that?"