ENGINES ARE SELDOM REVERSED.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 4, 15 January 1915, Page 1 (Supplement)

ENGINES ARE SELDOM REVERSED.

Locomotive engineers do not reverse their engines when they want to stop their trains as quickly as pa-sible. Thore was a time when they did this, but it ! was before the days of the ah' brake. But writers of fiction, in most in stances, do not ueem to know of this, and continue fo write thrilling talcs of railroad accidents in which they declare |.he brave engineer "reversed his engine." Engineers are to-day carefully instructed not to do this, becau.-e the reversing of the engine will lessen the resisting power of the air brakes.

Another error that many writers make in describing tho efforts of an engineer to stop hir, train is 'the declaration that the engineer whistled "down brakes" upon teeing his danger. It is true the engineers of other days always did this when there we.ro no air brakes and when every brakesman on both passenger and freight trains had to dash for his brake wheel and turn it with all his force to help apply brakes, but with air brakes this is not done, the engineer works all these brakes fiom his cab. What an engineer really doo.-, when a collision is apparently impending, i s to shut olf steam, apply the air brakes iinel op* n the sand-box or sand valves. He cannot do more. To reverse his engine would lie to make tho air brakes loss effective. I t takes him only about live seconds to do thiis. Many writeiy apparently have not kept abreast of the time, and in up-to-date stories make their engineer do things that locomotive engineers liave not been doing for a decade or more.