Sawdust & Spangles: Stories & Secrets of the Circus

by W. C. Coup

A blinding rainstorm added to the horror of the situation, and, with the speed at which we were traveling, each drop seemed to have the penetrating power of a shot. Quick as a flash the thought passed through my head: What if we meet a train? Just at that moment we sped past Blairsville at the junction of the branch road and the main line. The station lights seemed mere specks. As we struck the switch the engine jumped and almost left the track. Looking back we could see the rear lights of our train swaying in the path like a ship tempest-tossed at sea. Our speed seemed to increase as we flew along the main line.

We had gone twenty miles when a whistle was heard ahead.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Another train," replied the engineer; "it will pass us now," and as he was speaking the reflecting lights of its engine appeared, apparently not six rods from us. With lightning rapidity the trains passed each other and the "windage," to use a nautical term, nearly took my breath.

During all this time, which positively seemed hours, my thoughts were not of the pleasantest. On, on we dashed, the engine frequently jumping as it struck something on the track. It seemed to me a miracle that the train did not lurch sheer over some one of the terrible embankments. The fireman was not engaged in tending the fire. It was unnecessary. We were all mute spectators of the scene being enacted by this silent machine—the marvelous and lifelike invention of man. Gradually, at last, our speed began to slacken. We had reached a grade. The danger was past and our lives were saved!

A SINGLE TRACK AND A BROKEN RAIL

We were still moving ahead at the rate of thirty miles an hour when—crash! through the window came some object. Once more the whistle sounded "down brakes," and in less than a mile the train came to a stop. Shortly afterward we heard shouts in our rear, and the man who had flung the missile through the cab window came running breathlessly, and said that less than a mile ahead of us was a broken rail that would undoubtedly have wrecked our train. Knowing that the express train was due in about an hour he had been running back to the station to detain it, when he had met our "wild" train and, realizing the danger, had done all he could to prevent a catastrophe.

Back sped the man to the station to warn the express, leaving us between what were undoubtedly two horrors. The station was fully a mile away. Suppose he could not reach there in time! There we were on a single track, a broken rail ahead of us, an express train due at any moment behind us. Slowly we pulled up to the broken rail and at once replaced it with a new one, for we always carried extra rails on our train for cases of emergency. The track walker succeeded in getting to the station in time to stop the express, though luckily it was not quite due. We ran back to Blairsville and switched on to a side track.

There we found that the second section of our circus train was due at nearly the same, time as the express train, and it was an anxious quarter of an hour that we spent in righting things. When, however, the second section did come in, I found they had been more fortunate than the first section. They had taken the precaution to add to their train several cars belonging to the railroad company, which were fitted up with better brakes than ours, some of them being supplied with both new air and common brakes. Then as a consequence of these precautions the train had descended the mountain under perfect control. I learned a lesson from that experience, and lost no time in fitting all our cars with air-brakes. I wish I could remember the name of the engineer. A braver man never handled an engine or went into a battle.

It may not be generally known that all well-regulated roads employ a certain number of men as track walkers, whose constant duty it is to patrol every inch of the road and report the slightest irregularity of rails, road-bed, etc. On this particular night the track-walker's lantern had gone out, and the only expedient he could think of was to throw a stone through the cab window. I have often shuddered to think of what the consequences might have been had not his aim been a true one.