JUMPING THE GAP.

Dunstan Times, Issue 654, 30 October 1874, Page 3

JUMPING THE GAP.

Tom Pott, a well-known locomotive engineer, in England and the States, is the self-accredited hero of the following wonderful story of successful daring. I narrate it as nearly as I can in his own words, I have heard him tell it often

“ Well, gentlemen. I’ll say you’ll think it’s a lie, but I can’t help that; you have asked me to tell it, and all I can say is, if you had been in my place, you’d have seen it.

“ I had been driving the Witch for about seven months, and a sweet thing she was. I never was so fond of an engine as I wrs of her. She was the kind of engine a man gets only once in a lifetime.

“ She made her steam quick, was easy on fuel, started offlively, and went like a deer. Her cylinders were sixteen-inch, her stroke twenty-two, and her drivers seven feet six ; and she was as kind to drive as a baby. “Tosco her run off with a heavy load, light and gay, was enough to shame the Juno, Venus, and Helen, and other eighteeninch machines.

“She never wanted fixing up. Venus was always going in and out of the shop to be tittivated, and if there’s anything I don’t like, it’s an engine that all the time wants to be tittivated. She was always ready and willing to work. Why, bless you she was only washed out for the cleanliness she didn’t need it a bit.

She was the tidiest thing I ever see seemed as though dirt wouldn’t stick to her.

“Well, what 1 am going to tell came off years ago, before I left the old country, and was on one of the best railroads-single track though it s got three now and four in some spots.

“ Well, the Witch and 1 were put on the mail,-oneof the fastest trains; and they went like sixty them days.

“ The engineer was fined a shilling for every minute he lost. He durst not go slow for fog unless he wanted to lose his day’s pay. He had to keep going right along, and see things before he got in sight of ’em. " °

“We were running north one wintry day, and were making our best streaks. I should reckon we were going about fifty miles an hour.

“I was saying to myself, ‘she is going her prettiest,’ and she suddenly shot ahead as if we had been fired out of a cannon. “ I knew what that meant; we had broke loose—we hadn’t a car behind ns. The coupling had broken between the tender and first coach. • ’ -f. Jill i flew we flew, to be sure ? J whistled the guard to brake np the train. JJow we bounded along | f

1 could make out no objects alongside we seemed to get faster and faster ; we must have got as fast as one hundred miles an hour.

“ It was a straight piece of level track for gome miles. I did not shnt off steam directly we broke, for I didn’t want the train to run into us, - which might happen if they did not hear the whistle for brakes.

“ It waslucky I kept her going for just as I had had enough of such flying, a man started out about six hundred yards before us holding a red flag. “There was nothing in the way, so I knew something must be wrong with the track.

“You might as well have tried to atop a whirlwind as the Witch in that distance. Her speed was something frightful. “‘Bill,’ I said, ‘quick! Get on tho coke, and see what's ahead.'

“He looked, and went deadly pale, tot' tered, and fell back in a faint.

!! By this time 1 could see plain enough what was wrong. “ There was a gap in the track where a bridge had gone down. “ You can fancy my feelings just then. Going to death—death swift and terrible—at about two mile a minute—getting nearer, nearer ! 1 thought of my wife and child nearer 1 An instant more—the gap. “ ‘ G«d have mercy !’ I shrieked. “Well, would you believe it ? that engine just cleared that gap! “It was fifteen feet across, and about sixty feet deep. “She jumped that gap like a stag, and what’s more she struck the rails all right on the other side, and kept right along, just as if she had not noticed the gap 1

“ I stirred Bill up, and with both of us at the brake we managed at last to stop the Witch.

“ She was on the tare that day, but I never dreamed she’d jump that gap—that’s a fact ”