The doors of the mail cars were rolled open and the crew started tossing the pouches. Henshaw picked up his torch, lighted it, and dropped down to oil around while Benson pulled the spout down from the nearby water tank and gave the engine a drink.
High speed means lots of steam and steam means water and more water. Hundreds of gallons gushed into the tank on the tender and the fireman had just completed his task when they got the highball. He was still on top of the tender when Henshaw cracked his throttle and started the mail on another leg of its fast run.
The fireman scrambled down off the swaying tender, opened the firebox, and started throwing in coal like a man possessed. There was a slight grade out of the station at Raleigh and the laboring exhaust fairly pulled the fire out the stack.
Once over the grade the 1064 hit her stride and they rolled away along the foothills of the Great Smokies. This particular main stem of the Southwestern ran through the foothills for several hundred miles, finally finding a pass through which the rails continued their journey to the coast.
The running would be more precarious now and there was only one more stop and that for water at the village of Tanktown, a hamlet where a few railroad men made their home.
Tim was fascinated by the precision with which the great locomotive worked, with the confidence the engineer displayed in its handling and with the dexterity of the fireman as he fed fuel to the firebox.
On and on rushed the mail, the speed never under sixty miles an hour and sometimes well over seventy. Just before they plunged into the foothills they struck a stretch of ten miles of almost straight track with only one or two gentle grades.
Henshaw yelled at his fireman and Benson grinned and motioned for the engineer to open the throttle. The bar went back into the last notch and Tim felt the engine pulsate with new power. The needle on the speed indicator climbed to seventy-five and kept on. It paused at eighty and then went on up to eighty-three. They were bouncing around in the cab when the little air whistle which the conductor uses in signalling the engine peeped.
Henshaw waited until the conductor had signalled several times before he eased off on the throttle and they dropped down to the slow pace of sixty-five miles an hour.
“I guess we gave the boys behind a thrill,” yelled Henshaw and the fireman nodded as he straightened up to rest his weary muscles.