Jack and the Runaway Train

Jack and the Runaway Train

During the great depression of the 1930’s unemployed people in North America frequently rode freight trains across the continent in an endless pursuit to find work. In the freezing cold of winter and the stifling heat of summer, they travelled in open box cars, sometimes riding for days to get to a hopeful destination.

During those difficult train journeys, they had to contend with feeding themselves, and with unscrupulous train riders who frequently preyed on those unable to fend for themselves. Bouncers hired by railroad companies to discourage riding the trains were a constant menace. They patrolled the stations intimidating and bullying box car riders but could always be bought by those who had money. It was a superfluous practice by the railroad companies because all the bouncers were corrupt.

For the few people that could afford a ticket, some freight trains pulled passenger coaches, but there were always risk takers that tried to ride the coaches without tickets. That was considered a grave crime by the railroad company and penalties could be quite severe.

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Jack an unemployed miner and a compulsive gambler, had run into hard times working the poker tables that were common on the mines in those days.

Never more than a few months in each mine, he usually got work as an underground laborer but his real intent…. to take advantage of the vulnerable and amateurish, would-be gamblers that were willing to forfeit their earnings against professionals...... Mavericks of the mines !

He depended on his gambling skills, and his luck for a livelihood, but that had run out in recent months. He had become almost penniless.

One night he fell asleep on a bench in the train station in Golden, a small town in South East British Columbia, Canada. He had nowhere to go on that cold windy night in November of 1931.

A trans Canada train had just arrived at the station, bound for Vancouver on the west coast, a journey on the long slow winding railroad through the Rocky Mountains.

The train was hauled by a steam locomotive with thirty-six cars, mostly box cars packed with a variety of freight. There were also four tank cars filled with heavy thick crude from the oil fields of Alberta and two passenger coaches.

Any vacant space in the box cars was occupied by people unable to afford a ticket, who had come from various destinations across the country looking for work. During the layover In Golden some riders had to vacate the train while two box cars were exchanged. While this was happening, the bouncers patrolled the train harassing everyone they found near It.

A sympathetic couple, a man and his wife on the station, about to embark on the train, had seen Jack on the station bench fast asleep, dead to the world. They had assumed he was also intending to get on the train and decided to put him in the warmth of the same coach that they were about to embark on.

When he awoke an hour later, it was the conductor shaking him and demanding to see his ticket. He had no idea he was on a train and by then the train had long departed Golden. The conductor should have put him off, but he had more compassion than to do that on such a cold windy night. Instead he let him remain in the coach, but on the floor, huddled up in a corner of his compartment. Jack was a very calm and polite man and good at talking his way out of any difficult situation.

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The little goblin like people had lived in the mountains for time immemorial. They were the guardians of the environment….. the mountains, the rivers and the forests and everything that lived within.

They had always lived in obscurity, for their existence was in another dimension. They had a unique ability to become instantly invisible and it was only on rare occasions they exposed themselves to the outside world.

With an extremely high intellect and phenomenal physical strength, they were also a psychic people with an extrasensory perception to predict and foresee the future, even from far away in the deep forested mountain valleys where they lived in several hidden communities.

People from the cities in those days seldom ventured into remote forested areas of the Canadian bush except for an occasional trapper, prospector or explorer looking for the fabled ‘Big Foot’ that was rumored to inhabit the densely forested mountain regions.

The few that had ever seen the ‘little People’ had talked about the existence of a strange ‘manlike’ creature that was only ever seen for short instances before disappearing into the forest.

The rumor proliferated through generations and the size of the ‘forest creature’ increased into what was imagined and became known as ‘Big Foot’ and sometimes ‘Sasquatch’.

People being what they were in those days, preferred the perception, the mystery of a giant like creature instead of the real one that was even smaller than they were, and so the legend endured.

These guardians of the forest relied heavily on the resources of their environment, for they too had similar needs. They had to eat and drink and make and build, but they had always done so with foresight and with respect to the environment, never unaware of the needs and natural limitations of normal people.

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It was the same train that left Golden that cold windy day that the ‘Little People’ predicted would meet with a catastrophic accident. The whole community, throughout the extent of their habitat knew it would happen. They had already begun to collaborate a plan to prevent or limit the extent of damage that might be caused.

They knew when and where the accident would occur, that the train would plunge from a railroad embankment sixty feet above the rapidly flowing ‘Kicking Horse’ river where it flowed through a narrow mountain pass, about three hours running time on the train from Golden. They were compelled to prevent the accident because the thick crude oil from the ruptured tank cars would contaminate and ruin the river for a long time. It was crucial to the life blood of their existence.

Unknown to anyone on the train that day, five ‘Little People' boarded it on a curve from an outcrop of rock that overhung the railroad track, close to the top of a mountain pass. The train had slowed right down at this point. It was before the beginning of a long down grade embankment that squeezed through the pass, shared with the river.

The locomotive pulling the train, began its decent at a normal slow speed. Most of the thirty six cars where still on the upgrade, but as the train load diminished going over the pass, its speed began to increase. When the engineer started to apply brakes to maintain a regulated speed, they had no effect. Speed was increasing at an alarming rate as all the cars were now on the downgrade.

The brakes were not responding at all. It was completely out of control and had now become a ‘Runaway Train'!

The engineer had no recourse that he could think of. He was panic stricken with no control of his heavy train. His fireman who would have been shoveling coal into the firebox to generate and maintain steam pressure, was in a similar state.

It flashed through his mind the catastrophic dilemma they were in. He had to react and do something. His concern….the box cars full of innocent, poor, penniless people braving the freezing cold wind of the mountain weather on their hopeless journey to find work…the tank cars full of thick crude oil, destined to roll off the track, bouncing off the rocks on their fall from the embankment, tearing their containment that would spill into the crystal clear water of the rapidly flowing ‘Kicking Horse’ river’ sixty feet below.

Suddenly Jack the unemployed miner appeared on the footplate. He reacted instantly when the conductor told him they were on a ‘Runaway Train’ because of brake failure. He quickly made his way over the top of the two coaches, through four box cars, onto the coal tender, then onto the footplate of the Locomotive.

He seemed to know exactly what to do to slow the train down. He told the engineer that the locomotive needed to be put into reverse so that the big driving wheels would turn in the opposite direction. This would create reverse traction and slow the train down. He knew how to do this on that style of engine because Jack was also a knowledgeable steam locomotive mechanic from a previous life.

Looking at the gauges above the firebox he saw that steam pressure was below a minimum. He realized that the steam assisted reversing gear was not going to work. Changing the steam valve into reverse would have to be done through the eccentric sheaves on the motion linkage.

With a big steel bar Jack went out onto the open side of the locomotive, now running down the track at well over a safe speed, the engine rocking from side to side. He held onto the handrail along the side of the massive boiler with one hand, the other gripped the steel bar.

Bending down on the boiler platform above the huge connecting rods turning round and round, back and forth, at a crushing speed, he reached out to the eccentric link, and with the steel rod, pushing with all his might, he moved the link into reverse motion.

The train suddenly lurched as the big driving wheels stopped for an instant and then began to turn in the opposite direction, reversing traction and reducing train speed; but was it sufficient?

He made his way back to the footplate to find the fireman desperately shoveling coal into the firebox at an uncanny rate. It was like something unseen assisting him, feeding the fire with coal to generate more steam in the boiler. Steam pressure soon came back to normal and he could begin to increase reverse traction, and hopefully slow the train down even more.

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With their phenomenal powers, their ability to see into the future, the ‘Little People’ had already deployed an arresting system for the ‘Runaway Train’. Part of it… a massive chain wrapped around the inside of the rail track at the beginning of the downgrade on the embankment. The second part was installed on the Locomotive while it layover in Golden….. A large diameter wire cable adjoined to the rear axles of the engine with a huge hook hanging below it.

If the train had not sufficiently slowed down from reversed traction, the hook on the cable could be deployed. It would catch the heavy chain that was fixed to the inside of the railroad track and arrest the speed.

Two ‘Little People’ were underneath the Locomotive, sitting on the shaking axle boxes as it raced down the track, waiting for the train to slow down…. It did not!

They instantly deployed the hook which caught the arresting chain tied to the track!! It worked similar to how aircraft landed on carrier ships in the first world war. It was where they got the idea.

After the slack in the chain was taken up, there was a sudden great lurch as the racing train slowed down, a deafening screech of grinding steel and continuous banging reverberated and echoed through the mountains, as the rail track tore away from its ballasted foundation, winding into a loop, like stretching a massive spring as the speeding train was arrested to a complete stop.

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Although it was the ‘little people’ that ultimately saved the ‘Runaway Train’ who averted a complete catastrophe and saved so many people…. Jack had not been forgotten!

It was he who reacted in an instant when alerted by the conductor. He who knew what to do to slow the train down and he who actually did It!!

If the train had been going too fast, the arrester might not have stopped it before it reached the end of the grade. The train could have never negotiated the curve of the track that followed. A catastrophic disaster would have been inevitable.

Jack was highly commended for what he did that day, especially by the railroad company. They rewarded him handsomely and even though the rail track was pulled up and destroyed completely, it was only a fraction of the cost, had the train met with the catastrophe that the ‘Little People’ had predicted. No one would ever know that, although the railroad company must have realized what the outcome might have been without the arrester.

What about the arrester?..... The remains of it were never found. The long heavy chain fixed to the rail track, the cable and hook on the rear axles of the locomotive. It had all gone… simply disappeared! What was clearly evident was the marks left behind on the track and sleeper ties and on the locomotive axles, caused by an extremely high force, and the remains of the wrapped-up rail directly behind the last box car of the train.

Jack was never again unemployed. He never sat at another poker table, but he did became quite a wealthy man through his deed that day.

And what about the ‘little people'? No one would ever know about them. They remained in obscurity, unknown to the world of normal people. They were good with that !

Evidence of small footprints were all around the scene of the accident until the mountain weather wiped them out.

The legend of ‘Big Foot’ remained intact and they were also good with that ! What a disappointment if the truth was ever revealed and ‘Big Foot’ in fact, was found to be only a ‘Little Foot’. The legend was nearly broken on this occasion of the mountain incident, during the days of the great depression and the ‘Runaway Train’.

MAD.