In light of what the east coast is currently facing it is worth remembering what it faced back in 1938...
“On September 21, 1938 darkness had fallen early. I stuck my head out of the window to pick up a clear signal. In the gloaming a very faint clear board shone. We swished past Mystic at barely twenty miles an hour and were soon near the Stonington causeway, a strip of double track laid across an arm of the ocean on boulders and ballast. Creeping up on this structure I could see that breakers were hitting the rocks and tumbling across the iron. As I distrusted those submarine rails, I brought #14 (The Bostonian) down to 8 miles an hour. We had covered about half the causeway when Dennis Horan, my fireman, shouted, “Yellow board.”
I repeated his call and cut down to the pace of a slug. I glanced at the water, now boiling over the track. You could feel the train shiver as waves smashed against the car sides. Just then it happened. We were about 600 feet from the mainland when a spot of red stabbed me in the eye. I cut the air and let the brakes clamp down. With the waves continuing to pound I pulled down the whistle cord but the signal stayed red. There was only one thing to do: climb down and get to the tower. I stepped off the cab rungs into knee deep, boiling, briny water. Surf spray blinded me and quickly soaked me to the skin. I held on to the streamlined apron of the engine and felt my way in the dark until I reached the pilot. Then I walked out into the hurricane.
I fought my way across the remaining causeway. Three times I stumbled, storm-driven logs cracked me in the knee and threw me down but I kept going. At length I slogged ashore. The tower looked like some gaunt ruin of No Man’s Land, for all its windows had been blown out. I found the towerman, H.F. Thomas, down on the floor out of the wind which hammered through the upper story.
“You’ve got to give me a signal to get off the causeway,” I shouted. “Our train is about ready to topple into the ocean.”
“Okay,” he yelled back, “but don’t go beyond the station. Too much risk!” I came back out of the tower and the water had turned into a waist deep torrent. I waved a signal to Denny to come ahead, but nothing happened – apparently he couldn’t see my signal. I plunged out onto the causeway and I could see that several of our coaches were leaning over toward the seas. I fought my way back to the engine, climbed aboard and was confronted by Conductor Barton who had fought his way up to the cab. I told him we had to move and I was afraid I couldn’t take the entire train. I told him to herd the passengers into the deadhead baggage car so we could cut off the rest of the train. The crew went through the cars chanting, ”Everybody up front and make it snappy!”
Two hundred seventy-five passengers poured into the aisles and climbed out into the four feet of moving water. I saw a Negro porter wading waist-deep with a small child on each shoulder and a woman clinging to his coat tails. He got them safely aboard the baggage car. One of the dining car employees lost his life when he plunged into the ocean to save a drowning woman. The name Chester A Walker has been added to the long list of railroad heroes.
Up to the cab came John Greenwood, the flagman. “We’ll have to move fast. The roadbed is gone from under the three rear cars. Meanwhile my fireman and a trainman were boosting more passengers up on the engine since there was no more space in the baggage car. People were everywhere – cab, tender, coal pile, and holding on the handrails. While Barton was taking a head count Dooley, the car inspector was trying to unlock the couplers but there was no slack and he couldn’t lift the pin. Several others floundered about trying to loosen the coupler. Finally the general chairman of the Engineers’ Brotherhood for New Haven(who happened to be on board) had three men hold him over the coupler. He gripped the pin, gave a mighty heave, and the pin came loose. Barton gave me the highball and I started to roll.
Large hunks of debris were slamming into the pilot and the train. We had just started to roll when – bang! A booming to the rear was followed by a jolt as the emergency brakes kicked on. Some floating junk had slammed into us and fouled the air lines. As I turned I felt my back being pummeled by fists – an elderly, gray haired lady was pounding on my back and yelling, “Please make him go mister!” We couldn’t do anything about the air so I shoved the throttle, the engine bellowed an angry staccato as her drivers churned but the locked brakes held. I dragged the throttle back as far as it would go. The big engine boiled, groaned, and to my great relief slowly moved dragging the car in spite of its locked wheels.
The storm continued to throw things at us – a light rowboat, telephone poles and wires, and a house. I kept right on going. The water was rising close to the firebox and the drivers were churning like an old time steamboat. We pushed up against the house. The engine began to labor and then, suddenly, the gale winds shifted and the current caught the house and pulled it out to sea. I thought the worst might be over when, out of the gloom, a full-sized sailboat loomed up and was pitched across the tracks. It was stuck fast. I nudged it with the engine. Wood groaned and creaked. The drivers started to slip and we were going slower when suddenly there was a rending crash, the boat split in two and the two pieces began drifting shoreward. The boat started a rumor, which preceded us down the telegraph lines, that #14 had been struck by a ship and demolished with heavy loss of life – this threw the general offices into a panic until after the storm when wire services were restored.
With all obstacles out of the way the big engine nosed ashore and passed the signal tower, now pierced with holes. We were on dry land again and when I looked back I could see sparks streaming from the wheels but I kept going until I reached the crossing by the station. None of us will ever forget the kindly people of Stonington,Conn., blasted though it was by the elements. They threw open their homes, halls, and churches for us. In a few hours the winds had died, but the storm had made such a hash of the roadbed between Providence and Bristol that no trains could run for three weeks.
I’ve been the object of many kind comments since to causeway run and I’ve been given credit for much of what happened but to tell the truth the credit really belongs to an old lady who kept pounding me on the back and urging: “Please make him go, mister!”
From A Treasury of Railroad Folklore – Botkin and Harlow
