Show ON THE k GRAPHIC STORY OF A THRILLING RAILROAD WRECK file road was slow and a horse hone car line might have made better time but icat li speed of its was wag appreciated in one case anyway here it in we were sitting in the smoking car of ef the sleeper and the conversation un pleasantly pla enough drifted into the question of rai railroad I 1 road wrecks it was strange too that this should be for wo we were all old hands at traveling that sort of people seldom talk about wrecks wr ecks but we were soon in the thick of it every man of us telling his experiences so spoke james A hart to whose mind this story was brought by the occurrence of se several 17 bad wrecks in the east gewere we were traveling from one town to another I 1 wont say where on a road I 1 will call the Ale gazam azain because I 1 dont want to make bad friends of the railroad people but the experience is worth telling for ill never forget it if I 1 live to be a thousand years and a day old there was one big fellow in the smoker a drummer who evidently was a kicker atall at all events he di dia I not like the Ale gazam road why said he it surprise me a bit if we were to go smash before the night is over I 1 never ride on this road w without buying ten dollars worth of accident policy oil oh this ale gazam is a beauty if there was a horse car line alongside of it I 1 would take that chebi the big drummer was getting to bo be a nuisance in the conversation at the end of every horrible tale lie be would brighten up and say that a marker to what will happen someday some day on the iho Ale 0 gazam azam mark my words this road is a hoodoo if there ever was one our cigars were smoked out as cigars will be smoked out and we retired for the night the drummers berth berth was only a aa few numbers from mine mine and as lie he got into bed he poked his head out between the curtains and said in a hoarse whisper let your body hang half out the window so BO be on hand when it strike sand then turned in and I 1 dont doubt went sound to sleep never lookin looking for an accident notwithstanding all his talk now a railroad wreck is a funny thing continued mr hart everybody thinks hes tho the last man out and the last to hear the shock and consequently thinks theres no hope for him people dont stop to consider that in hi i ninety nine out of a hundred wrecks the damage is all done at once or not at all and this case is a good exemplar I 1 sleep soundly roundly but lightly when I 1 travel and I 1 am a ready when there is any unusual noise that is noise not caused by the travel of the train over the rails this night I 1 turned in with a smile at my drummers fears and was waa fast asleep in ten minutes the rub a dub dull dub of the wheels sung me into a sound slumber and im sure I 1 dont know how long 1019 it lasted until I 1 was awakened by a combination of three things lings ti and pretty thoroughly awakened awak enod at that first the train had stopped anti ami there was no rattle then I 1 heard beard u voice cry out in tile the night outside for gods sake stop that engines en ginel and then following that up almost instantaneously there was a great crashing sound of breaking glass that was all following this there was a silence so profound that I 1 could hear my watch ticking under my pillow what did it mein mean A thousand questions rushed into my illy lead head in the second of time that followed the hie breaking of the glass but before I 1 had time to get out of the berth a voice rang through the car in atone a tone the like of which I 1 never heard before and lippe hope never to hear again jump for your livest lives 1 1 I have heard and seen some queer things in my day but before I 1 heard that voice I 1 never knew what horror meant the feeling of a mans whole life was concentrated into that voice voice and it struck into my nerves as might a streak of lightning that had no power to kill As I 1 jumped to the ground and rushed up the track I 1 saw approaching our train on the same track coming to meet our engine the headlight of another locomotive that headlight and the dark outlines of the engine behind it looked to me like some horrible monster from another world it was more ilia ha 1 i 14 a simple piece of machinery the thing was vas alive klive and seemed to be about ten times as large as it really was the impression im I 1 had of it then was the most singular feeling I 1 ever knew and I 1 cant describe it everything bad been done so quickly and I 1 was so terribly excited that it was not for some seconds that I 1 noticed I 1 wa was i the first man in the train that had got out the strange bigna e siira long the nils mils until anti it was within a few frit fri t af pf ouis and topped then the iu pomplo le began coming out 4 aly jia t tue the interval that elapsed between tile the cry of jump tor for your lives live and tuo the time tho the patte were alarmed and had begun to come out a thousand trains might have been wrecked nearly all tile engers were now oil out hide adde inq inquiring into tile the cause of tile the I 1 trouble in my inquiries I 1 discovered the cause of the crushing crashing glass the man inan in tile berth next mine had heard beard the brakes put on had heard the first outcry and thinking that trouble was ahead simply bolted through his win dow carrying the glass with him E he le was n not ot even 9 scratched we learned that through an error in switching itching gw at a station up tho the road the strange engine biad slid down our track just in time to see our headlight and for both engines to stop twenty feet short of a collision but the funniest part is to come long a after f ter the first rush was over a window of our sleeper was broken through and our friend the drummer dived through it head first to the ground he had just learned that we were going to be wrecked and he want to take any chances and in his flight from the window to the ground I 1 heard him say in anything but a pleasant tone of voice oh this is the Ale gazam this chicago post the Alaun facture of wire the manufacture of wire as now carried out m may ay be briefly an and d concisely stated and consists consists in attenuating or reduction in section thin rods of the metal under manipulation by drawing them cold through holes in a draw plate usually made of hard steel the wire drawers bench is ia f furnished with a horizontal cylinder anen by steam or other power on which the wire is wound after leaving the draw plate the holes in the draw plate are arranged in decreasing diameters and a fine wire may require some twenty or thirty drawings ere it is reduced to the size desired much friction is generated in the process notwithstanding the use of lubricants and annealing is necessary to counteract the brittleness produced in the wire where great accuracy is requisite the wire is drawn through rubies or other hard bard stones in the draw plate the speed of the drawing cylinder is increased as the diameter of the wire diminishes minis hes much confusion has existed in regard to the gauges of wires no fewer than fifty live five different gauges being mentioned by a recent writer of which forty five were for measuring and determining the size of wire as made and sold within the united kingdom the whitworth gauge introduced in 1857 by sir joseph whitworth and the birmingham wire gauge B W 0 have been extensively employed in 1884 an imperial standard wire wire gauge became a law and constitutes the legal gauge of this country it ranges from half an inch to one thou sanath of an inch in diameter chambers journal |