Allen Chapman - Ralph on the Overland Express - or, The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer

“All aboard.”

Ralph Fairbanks swung into the cab of No. 999 with the lever hooked up for forward motion, and placed a firm hand on the throttle.

It looked as though half the working force of the railroad, and every juvenile friend he had ever known in Stanley Junction, had come down to the little old depot that beautiful summer afternoon to especially celebrate the greatest event in his active railroad career.

Ralph was the youngest engineer in the service of the Great Northern, and there was full reason why he should center attention and interest on this the proudest moment of his life. No. 999 was the crack locomotive of the system, brand new and resplendent. Its headlight was a great glow of crystal, its metal bands and trimmings shone like burnished gold, and its cab was as spick and span and neat as the private office of the division superintendent himself.

No. 999 was out for a trial run – a record run, Ralph hoped to make it. One particular car attached to the rear of the long train was the main object of interest. It was a new car to the road, and its blazoned name suggested an importance out of the ordinary – “China & Japan Mail.”

This car had just come in over a branch section by a short cut from the north. If No. 999 could beat timetable routine half an hour and deliver the mail to the Overland Express at Bridgeport, two hundred miles distant, on time, it would create a new schedule, and meant a good contract for the Great Northern, besides a saving of three hours’ time over the former roundabout trip of the China & Japan Mail.

Ralph had exchanged jolly greetings with his friends up to now. In an instant, however, the sonorous, echoing “All aboard” from the conductor way down the train was a signal for duty, prompt and imperative. The pleasant depot scene faded from the sight and mind of the ambitious young railroader. He turned his strict attention now to the cab interior, as though the locomotive was a thing of life and intelligence.

“Let ’er go, Ralph!”

John Griscom, the oldest engineer on the road, off duty, but a privileged character on all occasions, stepped from the gossiping crowd of loungers at a little distance. He swung up into the cab with the expert airiness of long usage. His bluff, hearty face expressed admiration and satisfaction, as his rapid eye took in the cab layout.

“I’ll hold up the tender rail till we get to crossing,” announced Griscom. “Lad, this is front rank service all right, and I’m happy to say that you deserve it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Griscom,” answered Ralph, his face beaming at the handsome compliment. “I don’t forget, though, that you helped some.”

“Oh, so, so,” declared Griscom. “I say, Fogg, you’re named right.”

It was to Lemuel Fogg that Griscom spoke. Fogg was Ralph’s fireman on the present trip. He presented a decided contrast to the brisk, bright engineer of No. 999. He shoveled in the coal with a grim mutter, and slammed the fire door shut with a vicious and unnecessary bang.

“What you getting at?” he growled, with a surly eye on Griscom.

“Fogg – fog, see? foggy, that’s you – and groggy, eh? Sun’s shining – why don’t you take it in? No slouch privilege firing this magnificent king of the road, I’m thinking, and you ought to think so, too.”

“Huh!” snapped Fogg, “it’ll be kid luck, if we get through.”

“Oho! there’s where the shoe pinches, is it?” bantered the old railroad veteran. “Come, be fair, Fogg. You was glad to win your own spurs when you were young.”

“All right, mind the try-out, you hear me!” snorted Fogg ungraciously. “You mind your own business.”

“Say,” shot out Griscom quickly, as he caught a whiff from Fogg’s lips, “you be sure you mind yours – and the rules,” he added, quite sternly, “I advise you not to get too near the furnace.”

“Eh, why not?”

“Your breath might catch fire, that’s why,” announced Griscom bluntly, and turned his back on the disgruntled fireman.

Ralph had not caught this sharp cross-fire of repartee. His mind had been intently fixed on his task. He had started up the locomotive slowly, but now, clearing the depot switches, he pulled the lever a notch or two, watching carefully ahead. As the train rounded a curve to an air line, a series of brave hurrahs along the side of the track sent a thrill of pleasure through Ralph’s frame.

The young engineer had only a fleeting second or two to bestow on a little group, standing at the rear fence of a yard backing down to the tracks. His mother was there, gaily waving a handkerchief. A neighbor joined in the welcome, and half-a-dozen boys and small children with whom Ralph was a rare favorite made the air ring with enthusiastic cheers.

“Friends everywhere, lad,” spoke Griscom in a kindly tone, and then, edging nearer to his prime young favorite, he half-whispered: “Keep your eye on this grouch of a Fogg.”

“Why, you don’t mean anything serious, Mr. Griscom?” inquired Ralph, with a quick glance at the fireman.

“Yes, I do,” proclaimed the old railroader plainly. “He’s got it in for you – it’s the talk of the yards, and he’s in just the right frame of mind to bite off his own nose to spite his face. So long.”

The locomotive had slowed up for crossing signals, and Griscom got to the ground with a careless sail through the air, waved his hand, and Ralph buckled down to real work on No. 999.

He glanced at the schedule sheet and the clock. The gauges were in fine working order. There was not a full head of steam on as yet and the fire box was somewhat over full, but there was a strong draft and a twenty-mile straight run before them, and Ralph felt they could make it easily.

“Don’t choke her too full, Mr. Fogg,” he remarked to the fireman.

“Teach me!” snorted Fogg, and threw another shovelful into the box already crowded, and backed against the tender bar with a surly, defiant face.

Ralph made no retort. Fogg did, indeed, know his business, if he was only minded to attend to it. He was somewhat set and old-fashioned in his ways, and he had grown up in the service from wiper.

Ralph recalled Griscom’s warning. It was not pleasant to run two hundred miles with a grumpy cab comrade. Ralph wished they had given him some other helper. However, he reasoned that even a crack fireman might be proud of a regular run on No. 999, and he did not believe that Fogg would hurt his own chances by any tactics that might delay them.

The landscape drifted by swiftly and more swiftly, as Ralph gave the locomotive full head. A rare enthusiasm and buoyancy came into the situation. There was something fascinating in the breathless rush, the superb power and steadiness of the crack machine, so easy of control that she was a marvel of mechanical genius and perfection.

Like a panorama the scenery flashed by, and in rapid mental panorama Ralph reviewed the glowing and stirring events of his young life, which in a few brief months had carried him from his menial task as an engine wiper up to the present position which he cherished so proudly.

Ralph was a railroader by inheritance as well as predilection. His father had been a pioneer in the beginning of the Great Northern. After he died, through the manipulations of an unworthy village magnate named Gasper Farrington, his widow and son found themselves at the mercy of that heartless schemer, who held a mortgage on their little home.

In the first volume of the present series, entitled “Ralph of the Roundhouse,” it was told how Ralph left school to earn a living and help his self-sacrificing mother in her poverty.