JUMPING THE GAP.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 89, 12 September 1874, Page 3

JUMPING THE GAP.

Tom Potts, a well-known locomotive-en-gineer, in England and the States,is the selfaccredited hero of the following wonderful story of successful daring. I will narrate it as nearly as I can in his own words. I have heard him tell it often : * Well, gentlemen, you’ll say it’s a lie, but I can’t help thnt ; you have asked me to tell it; and all I can say is, if you’d 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 half so fond of an engine as I was of her. She was the kind of a machine a man only gets once in a lifetime,

‘ She made her steam quick, was easy on fuel, started off lively, 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. ‘ To see 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 shoii to he titivated, arid if there’s anything I don't, like it’s an engine that, all flic time wants to he titivated. She was always ready and willing to work. Why, bless you, she was only washed out for the sake of cleanliness — she didn’t need it a hit.

‘ She was the tidiest thing 1 ever see—seemed as though dirt wouldn’t stick to her.

‘ Well, what I’m going to tell came off years ago, before I left the old country, and was on one of the best of railroads—single t rack them, though it’s got three now, and four in some spots, ‘ Well, the Witch and I were put on the mail—one of the fastest trains, and they went like sixty in 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 darkish 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’s going her prettiest,’’when she suddenly shot ahead as if we had been fired out of a cannon. 1 1 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, ‘ How we flew, to be sure! I whistled the guard to brake up the train, How we bounded along. ‘ I 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 track for some miles; I did not shut off steam directly we broke, for I didn’t want the train to run into us, which might happen if they did not hear me whistle for brakes. ‘ It was lucky 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. 1 You might as well have tried to stop a whirlwind as the Witch in that distance. Her speed was frightful, ‘ There was not much time to think, and, as we could not stop, the faster we went the better; so I gave her what more steam there was. She seemed to have some go in reserve, for we shot past the red flag like a flash. ‘ I saw men standing there horror-struck. ‘ Bill, I said, ‘ quick 1 Get on the coke, and see what’s ahead.’ ‘ He looked, and went deadly pale, tottered, and fell back in a faint. ‘ By this time I could see plain enough what was wrong ‘ There was a gap in the track where a bridge had gone down ! ‘You can’t fancy my feelings just then. Going to death—death swift and terrible—at about two miles a minute—getting nearer, nearer ! 1 thought o£ my wifn and child—nearer I An instant more—the gap 1 ‘ God have mercy 1’ I shrieked. ‘ Well, would you believe it ? that engine just cleared that gap 1 ‘lt 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 ! ‘ I stirred Bill up, and with both of us at the brake we managed at last to stop the Witch.

‘ She was on a tear that day, hut I never dreamed she’d jump the gap—that’s a fact.’