We followed him down the platform, and then a man, in his shirt sleeves, came out of an office.
“Mr. O’Flaherty,” cried the porter, “here’s two gentlemen that wants to know, if you please, at what o’clock the 7.45 train leaves.”
“It leaves at eight on weekdays and a quarter past eight on Sundays,” was the thoughtful reply.
It is reported that on the same branch, an engine-driver, on reaching the station more than usually behind his time, declared that he had never known “herself”—meaning the engine—to be so sluggish before. She needed a deal of rousing before he could get any work whatever out of her, he said; and she had pulled up at the platform without a hand being put to the brake. When he tried to start the engine again he failed utterly in his attempt. She had “rusted,” he said, and when an engine rusted she was more stubborn than any horse.
It was a passenger who eventually suggested that perhaps if the brakes were turned off, the engine might have a better chance of doing its work.
This suggestion led to an examination of the brake wheels of the engine.
“By me sowl, that’s a joke!” said the engine-driver. “If I haven’t been driving her through the county Tipperary with the brakes on!”
And so he had.