A Terrible Race for Life.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 9, 5 January 1870, Page 3

A Terrible Race for Life.

A correspondent of the Gnni Rapids Eagle, an American paper, senii the following story:— The Buffalo, Corry, and Pittsburg Road intorsects the Lake Shore Road. The station at the junction is named Brockton, and from this point to Mayvitle, at the head of Chantuaqua Lake (a distance of only ten miles), a train is carried over an elevation of 700 ft. From the station to the summit tho grade is about 80ft to the rnilo, with curves which increase the distance by four miles. It is over this road that the immense quantities of petroleum are brought; and on Tuesday evening a train, consisting of six oil cars and two passenger cars, reached the summit, on its way to the junction. Here, by somo cause unknown, one of the oil tanks took fire. The passenger cars were at once detached, and the breaks stopped them. Next the oil oars were cut off, and the locomotive, tender, and a box car, containing two valuable horses and two men, passed down the road, the engineer supposing that the brakesmen on the oil cars would arrest the course of those; but what was his horror, on looking back, to see the six cars in pursuit of him down the grade, enveloped in flames. They not only pursued, but overtook him, striking the box car with inconceivable force, knocking the horses and men flat upon the floor, and yet almost miraculously not throwing the engine from the track. It was now with the engineer a race for life, and he gave the engine every ounce of steam. Looking south from the place of my residence, at that terrible juncture one of the most magnificent spectacles was witnessed that a man sees in a lifetime. A sheet of intensely bright flame, sixty feet high, was seen coming down that southern slope, apparently with the speed of a meteor, and really at very near the speed of a hurricane (80 miles an hour) : for pursued and pursuer flew over the course, or rather down it, and around the curves, at the rate of more than 70 miles an hour, as the engineer declares, and as everybody can believe who witnessed the spectacle. The whole heavens were illuminated, and the landscape was lit up as by the noonday light. Onward and downward flew the engine ; and behind it thundered the huge fiery demon. Twice its prodigious weight was driven against the fugitive, as if instinct with a purpose to''drive it from its track. It seemed as if to the heroic engineer and fireman there was a perfect environment of peril. The speed of the engine was such that it ceased to pump. The Cincinnati express was due at the junction at this time : so the engineer of the oil train whistled ' open switch,' and shaking hands with the fireman, they bads each other farewell, knowing that their lives depended on the opening of the Like Shore switch by their friends below, and to do this was to imperil tha express train coining down from the west with its human freight. The engineer who was on this train saw the fire when it first broke out on the summit, and supposing he could clear the junction before the flaming terror reached it, he, too, put his engine to the utmost speed on a level grade. A mile short, of the junction, he saw that the effort was a vain one, for the flying conflagration had rushed out upon the Lake Shore track, and was roaring onward in the direction of Dunkirk. He checked the headlong rush of his own train, aud brought it to a standstill. The case here took in another danger, and it was imminent. A heavy freight train was c jruing up the Lake Shore road. All I will say of this is, that it did escape to the side track, and only by the last minute of possibility. Running at a safe distance from the depSfc, the engineer of the oil train detached his engine, and left the six cars to consume. He says the situation was fu'ly realised by him ; and that he expecte 1 to lose his life. At every moment he expected the engine to leave the track. He saw that he was going at a perilous rate of speed ; but there was no help for it. The demon was behind him ; and he declares that it looked like a demon. With that fondness, or real affection, for his engine which these men display, he said, " I thought everything of my engine, and was determined to stay by it to the last." Altogether, tha occurrence was a very remarkable ons, and more remarkable for this—there were no lives lost. The brakesmen on the oil cars had gone back to the passenger cars when the oil cars started. It was well they did so, for unless those rear cars had been detached and stopped, their inmates would inevitably have been burned to death.