Railway Adventures and Anecdotes Part 28

A YANKEE COMPENSATION CASE.

A h.o.r.n.y-handed old farmer entered the offices of one of the railroad companies, and inquired for the man who settled for hosses which was killed by locomotives. They referred him to the company's counsel, whom, having found, he thus addressed:-

"Mister, I was driving home one evening last week-"

"Been drinking?" sententiously questioned the lawyer.

"I'm centre pole of the local Tent of Rechabites," said the farmer.

"That doesn't answer my question," replied the man of law; "I saw a man who was drunk vote for the prohibition ticket last year."

"Hadn't tasted liquor since the big flood of 1846," said the old man.

"Go ahead."

"I will, 'Squire. And when I came to the crossing of your line-it was pretty dark, and-zip! along came your train, no bells rung, no whistles tooted, contrary to the statutes in such cases made and provided, and-whoop! away went my off-hoss over the telegraph wires. When I had dug myself out'n a swamp some distance off and pacified the other critter, I found that thar off-hoss was dead, nothing valuable about him but his shoes, which mout have brought, say, a penny for old iron.

Well-"

"Well, you want pay for that 'ere off-hoss?" said the lawyer, with a scarcely repressed sneer.

"I should, you see," replied the farmer, frankly; "and I don't care about going to law about it, though possibly I'd get a verdict, for juries out in our town is mostly made up of farmers, and they help each other as a matter of principle in these cases of stock killed by railroads."

"And this 'ere off-hoss," said the counsel, mockingly, "was well bred, wasn't he? He was rising four years, as he had been several seasons past. And you had been offered 500 for him the day he was killed, but wouldn't take it because you were going to win all the prizes in the next race with him? Oh, I've heard of that off-horse before."

"I guess there's a mistake somewhere," said the old farmer, with an air of surprise; "my hoss was got by old man b.u.t.t's roan-pacing hoss, Pride of Lemont, out'n a wall-eyed no account mare of my own, and, now that he's dead, I may say that he was twenty-nine next gra.s.s. Trot? Why, Fred Erby's hoss that he was fined for furious driving of was old Dexter alongside of him! Five hundred pounds! Bless your soul, do you think I'm a fool, or anyone else? It is true I was made an offer for him the last time I was in town, and, for the man looked kinder simple, and you know how it is yourself with hoss trading, I asked the cuss mor'n the animal might have been worth. I asked him forty pounds, but I'd have taken thirty."

"Forty?" gasped the lawyer; "forty?"

"Yes," replied the farmer, meekly and apologetically; "it kinder looks a big sum, I know, for an old hoss; but that 'ere off-hoss could pull a mighty good load, considering. Then I was kinder shook up, and the pole of my waggon was busted, and I had to get the harness fixed, and there's my loss of time, and all that counts. Say fifty pounds, and it's about square."

The lawyer whispered softly to himself, "Well, I'll be hanged!" and filled out a cheque for fifty pounds.

"Sir," said he, covering the old man's hand, "you are the first honest man I have met in the course of a legal experience of twenty-three years; the first farmer whose dead horse was worth less than a thousand pounds, and could trot better without training. Here, also, is a free pa.s.s for yourself and your male heirs in a direct line for three generations; and if you have a young boy to spare we will teach him telegraphing, and find him steady and lucrative employment."

The honest old farmer took the cheque, and departed, smiting his brawny leg with his h.o.r.n.y hand in triumph as he did so, with the remark-

"I knew I'd ketch him on the honest tack! Last hoss I had killed I swore was a trotter, and all I got was thirty pounds and interest. Honesty is the best policy."

-_Once a Week_.

ABERGELE ACCIDENT.

The Irish mail leaving London at shortly after seven A.M., it was timed in 1868 to make the distance to Chester, one hundred and sixty-six miles, in four hours and eighteen minutes; from Chester to Holyhead is eighty-five miles, for running which the s.p.a.ce of one hundred and twenty-five minutes was allowed. Abergele is a point on the seacoast in North Wales, nearly midway between these two places. On the 20th of August, 1868, the Irish mail left Chester as usual. It was made up of thirteen carriages in all, which were occupied-as the carriages of that train usually were-by a large number of persons whose names, at least, were widely known. Among these, on this particular occasion, were the d.u.c.h.ess of Abercorn, wife of the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with five children. Under the running arrangements of the London and North-Western line a goods train left Chester half-an-hour before the mail, and was placed upon the siding at Llanddulas, a station about a mile-and-a-half beyond Abergele, to allow the mail to pa.s.s. From Abergele to Llanddulas the track ascended by a gradient of some sixty feet to the mile. On the day of the accident it chanced that certain wagons between the engine and the rear end of the goods train had to be taken out to be left at Llanddulas, and, in doing this, it became necessary to separate the train and to leave five or six of the last wagons in it standing on the main line, while those which were to be left were backed on to a siding. The employe whose duty it was to have done so, neglected to set the brake on the wagons thus left standing, and consequently when the engine and the rest of the train returned for them, the moment they were touched, and before a coupling could be effected, the jar set them in motion down the incline toward Abergele. They started so slowly that a brakeman of the train ran after them, fully expecting to catch and stop them, but as they went down the grade they soon outstripped him, and it became clear that there was nothing to check them until they should meet the Irish mail, then almost due. It also chanced that the wagons thus loosened were oil wagons.

The mail train was coming up the line at a speed of about thirty miles an hour, when its engine-driver suddenly perceived the loose wagons coming down upon it around the curve, and then but a few yards off. Seeing that they were oil wagons, he almost instinctively sprang from his engine, and was thrown down by the impetus and rolled to the side of the road-bed.

Picking himself up, bruised but not seriously hurt, he saw that the collision had already taken place, that the tender had ridden directly over the engine, that the colliding wagons were demolished, and that the front carriages of the train were already on fire. Running quickly to the rear of the train, he succeeded in uncoupling six carriages and a van, which were drawn away from the rest before the flames extended to them by an engine which most fortunately was following the train. All the other carriages were utterly destroyed, and every person in them perished.

The Abergele was probably a solitary instance, in the record of railway accidents, in which but one single survivor sustained any injury. There was no maiming. It was death or entire escape. The collision was not a particularly severe one, and the engine driver of the mail train especially stated that at the moment it occurred the loose wagons were still moving so slowly that he would not have sprung from his engine had he not seen that they were loaded with oil. The very instant the collision took place, however, the fluid seemed to ignite and to flash along the train like lightning, so that it was impossible to approach a carriage when once it caught fire. The fact was that the oil in vast quant.i.ties was spilled upon the track and ignited by the fire of the locomotive, and then the impetus of the mail train forced all of its leading carriages into the dense ma.s.s of smoke and flame. All those who were present concurred in positively stating that not a cry, nor a moan, nor a sound of any description was heard from the burning carriages, nor did any one in them apparently make an effort to escape.

Though the collision took place before one o'clock, in spite of the efforts of a large gang of men who were kept throwing water on the line, the perfect sea of flame which covered the line for a distance of some forty or fifty yards could not be extinguished until nearly eight o'clock in the evening, for the petroleum had flowed down into the ballasting of the road, and the rails were red-hot. It was, therefore, small occasion for surprise that when the fire was at last gotten under, the remains of those who lost their lives were in some cases wholly undistinguishable, and in others almost so. Among the thirty-three victims of the disaster, the body of no single one retained any traces of individuality; the faces of all were wholly destroyed, and in no case were there found feet or legs or anything approaching to a perfect head. Ten corpses were finally identified as those of males, and thirteen as those of females, while the s.e.x of ten others could not be determined. The body of one pa.s.senger, Lord Farnham, was identified by the crest on his watch, and, indeed, no better evidence of the wealth and social position of the victims of this accident could have been asked for than the collection of articles found on its site. It included diamonds of great size and singular brilliancy; rubies, opals, emeralds; gold tops of smelling bottles, twenty-four watches-of which but two or three were not gold-chains, clasps of bags, and very many bundles of keys. Of these, the diamonds alone had successfully resisted the intense heat of the flame; the settings were nearly all destroyed.

RAILWAY DESTROYERS IN THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR.

One obvious means of hampering the military operations of the Germans was the cutting of railroads, so as to interrupt and overthrow on-coming trains. This method was resorted to by bands of volunteers, calling themselves "The Wild Boars of Ardennes," and "Railway Destroyers." Here again the invaders incurred great odium by announcing that, on the departure of a train in the disaffected districts, the mayor and princ.i.p.al inhabitants should be made to take their places on the engine, so that if the peasants chose to upset the conveyance, their surest victims would be their own compatriots.

-_Annual Register_, 1870.

FRIGHTENED AT A RED LIGHT.

A driver, not on duty, had been drinking, and was, in company with his fireman, walking in the vicinity of the Edgware Road, when he suddenly started violently, and seizing his mate's arm, shouted-

"Hold hard, mate-hold hard!"

"What's the matter?" cried the fireman.

"Matter!" roared the driver, "why, you're a-running by the red light;"

and he pointed to the crimson glare which streamed through a gla.s.s bottle in a chemist's window.

"Come along; that's nothing," said the fireman, trying to drag him on.

"What, run by the red light, and go afore Dannel in the morning?"

retorted the driver, and no persuasion could or did get him to pa.s.s the shop. He was a Great Western man, and the "Dannel" whom he held in such wholesome awe was the celebrated engineer, now Sir Daniel Gooch, and chairman of that line. He was then the locomotive chief, and renowned above all other things for maintaining discipline among his staff, while they cherished a feeling for him very much akin to what we hear of the clannish enthusiasm of the ancient Scotch.

THE DECOY TRUNK.

August 27, 1875. The Metropolitan magistrates have had before them a case which seems likely to show how some, at least, of the robberies at railway stations are accomplished. Some ingenious persons, it appears, have devised a way by which a trunk can be made to steal a trunk, and a portmanteau to annex a portmanteau. The thieves lay a trunk artfully contrived on a smaller trunk; the latter clings to the former, and the owner of the larger carries both away. The decoy trunk is said to be fitted with a false bottom, which goes up when it is laid on a smaller trunk, and with mechanism inside which does for the innocent trunk what Polonius recommended Laertes to do for his friend, and grapples it to its heart with hooks of steel. In fact, the decoy duck-we do not know how better to describe it-is made to perform an office like that of certain flowers, which suddenly close at the pressure of a fly or other insect within their cup and imprison him there.

-_Annual Register_, 1875.