Show T- T 1 ADVENTURERS' ADVENTURERS CLUB HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELF Monster Out of o HandBy Hand By FLOYD GIBBONS Famous Headline Hunter H HELLO ELLO EVERYBODY I IJohn John J. J Boner of Chicago has been firing a locomotive since 1906 He says that in that time he has had many a thrill as as what railroad man from engineer right along to conductor hasn't But the biggest thrill in in all John Boners Boner's railroading I career came to him on September 10 1910 when he was firing an engine on the Milwaukee I I John was working west out of Perry Iowa and early in the morning I he was called to fire on a header double coal train John was on the lead engine and John Cunningham was the engineer The train John says consisted of forty carloads of coal behind two Baldwin compound com com- compound pound engines The train pulled out of Perry in some of the finest weather John had ever seen in his life The beauty of the day he says seemed to impart something of its zest to our engines and we made the wheels sing on those forty cars as we pushed the big locomotives along From Perry to Council Bluffs the road was all single track and water grades Up and Down the Water Vater Grades For the benefit of us lubbers who dont don't know what a water grade grades is s John n. n explains it to us Those water grades get their name from the fact that mat a water tower is always set on the top of a hill whenever possible possible possible pos pos- sible so a train after stopping to take on water can get up momentum again by coasting downgrade Water Vater grades were just a series of ups and downs in the track and with a heavy train you go as fast as you can turn a wheel down one hill in order to get up the next They cleared half a dozen of those grades and everything was going fine The train tram topped a hill east of Manning Iowa and John Cunningham Cunningham Cunning Cunning- ham opened the throttle and the train roared downgrade through a series of curves gathering momentum for the next climb They were rounding the last curve a mile east of Manning when it happened John was tossing a few s of coal into the firebox The Lead Engine Took a Nose Dive when all of a sudden he saw John Cunningham go into action He was grabbing for the whistle whistle grabbing grabbing for the brake valve valve grabbing grabbing forthe forthe for forthe the reverse lever says John and it seemed to me as if he was grabbing for all of them at the same time Off the Track at Full Speed I jumped to the left cab window I was just in time to see a section gang scattering to the fields fields and and in time to get a shower of ballast full in the face We Ve had struck a hand-car hand loaded with iron rails John reeled ba back k under the force of the blow he had received Fo For Fora Foa a second or two the big engine seemed to be riding the rails Then John felt Celt the wheels bump off onto the ties The liThe emergency brake he says was almost useless We Ve had been tearing downhill and around those curves with the throttle as wide open as it was safe to have it on that particular particular particular par par- stretch of track Our speed was almost forty-five forty miles an I hour at the time tune and behind us were another locomotive and forty heavy carloads of coal shoving us along with the momentum they had gathered in that downhill run There was no hope of stopping that train and John says that there wasn't any possibility of jumping either The big engine was rocking and swaying so badly that neither John nor Cunningham could stand long enough to jump All we could do he says was to grab whatever whatever whatever what what- ever we could get hold of in the cab and hang onto it All that happened in just a couple of seconds and things were happening so fast that John didn't even have time to think But afterwards he could recall vividly sensations that he wasn't even aware of at the time Was I scared he says I dont don't know Things were coming so fast that I dont don't think I had time to be frightened For more more than forty feet we rode the ties and then bumped out on a trestle bridge We Ve ran sixty more feet out on that and then the lead engine engine- the one I was in took in-took took a nose dive to the right keeled over on her side and began sliding down a thirty-foot thirty bank He Got Out Just in T Time John and John Cunningham were still in the cab still cab still fighting for equilibrium for equilibrium for a foothold that would give them a chance to jump lump The engine slid down the bank and came to rest in a hog wallow beyond the way right-of-way fence The minute it stopped John was at the window and andon andon andon on his way out with John Cunningham crowding behind him They were out the window so fast that it seemed as if both of them had gone through together But at that they weren't a second too soon Just as ns they cleared the cab a steam tube let go burst go-burst burst with a roar that cleared the cab out as clean as dynamite could have cleaned it and two hundred pounds of steam pressure flooded the spot they had just left with hot scalding death Only a seconds second's delay and both John and Cunningham would have died back there in the engine cab cooked cab cooked to death in an instant by the jet of live steam The second engine says John bumped into our tender and turned off to the left but the crew escaped injury in almost the same miraculous miraculous miraculous lous manner that we did None of the coal cars piled up on top of either engine as they usually do in such accidents and that was almost another miracle Since that time Ive I've had many a spill and been in many manya a wreck In some of them Ive I've sustained injuries But none o of those close calls ever gave me anything like the thrill I got out of this one in which I wasn't even scratched Copyright Copyright Service |