From The Million-Dollar Freight Train - I saw the boy holding the throttle at a half and fingering the air anxiously as we jumped through the frogs; but the roughest riding on track so far beats the ties as a cushion that when the 109 suddenly stuck her paws through an open switch we bounced against the roof of the cab like footballs. I grabbed a brace with one hand and with the other reached instinctively across to Bartholomew’s side to seize the throttle he held. But as I tried to shut him off he jerked it wide open in spite of me, and turned with lightning in his eye. “No!” he cried, and his voice rang hard. The 109 took the tremendous shove at her back and leaped like a frightened horse. Away we went across the yard , through the cinders, and over the ties. My teeth have never been the same since. I don’t belong on an engine, anyway, and since then I have kept off. At the moment I was convinced that the strain had been too much – that Bartholomew was stark crazy. He sat bouncing clear to the roof and clinging to his levers like a lobster. But his strategy was dawning on me; in fact, he was pounding it into me. Even the shock and scare of leaving the track and tearing up the yard had not driven from Bartholomew’s noodle the most important feature of our situation, which was, above everything , KEEP OUT OF THE WAY OF THE SILK-TRAIN. I felt every moment more mortified at my attempt to shut him off. I had done the trick of the woman who grabs the reins. It was even better to tear up the yard than to stop for Foley to smash into and scatter the silk over the coal-chutes. Bartholomew’s decision was one of the traits which makes the runner; instant perception coupled to instant resolve. The ordinary dub thinks what he should have done to avoid disaster after it is all over; Bartholomew thought before. On we bumped, across frogs, through switches, over splits, and into target rods, when – and this is the miracle of it all – the 109 got her fore-feet on a split switch, made a contact, and, after a slew or two like a bogged horse, she swung up sweet on the rails again, tender and all. Bartholomew shut off with an under cut that brought us up double and nailed her feet, with the air, right where she stood. We had left the track, ploughed a hundred feet across the yards, and jumped on to another track. It is the only time I ever heard of its happening anywhere, but I was on the engine with Bartholomew Mullen when it was done.