To an attentive engineer the start is full of interest; for, although he may have made a careful and thorough examination of his engine before joining his train, he cannot feel satisfied that all is right until the full pressure of the steam is on the piston and the engine feels its load. STEAM BLOWING. Now the engineer must begin to use his ears and eyes. As the train moves on he listens. Is the steam blowing? It is. Which side? This is the way to find out. Suppose a blow is heard at each turn and only when the outside crank is nearly in a straight line with the piston rod looking from the left-hand side of the foot-plate and with the outside cranks on the same center line and on the same side of the axle as the inside crank. Then it would be discovered that a piston is blowing because the sound is intermittent, for the blowing through of a valve would be a continuous leaking. Further it would be certain that the defect was not in the left hand cylinder, there being no steam in it when the cranks were in the position above described, and therefore we must look to the right hand cylinder where the full pressure of steam must be on the piston. BEATS OF THE ENGINE. There are four beats for one revolution of the driving wheel or the crank axle. These beats tell you in emphatic language whether the engine is running right, or whether there is something out of gear. Learn what they mean and never let your attention be drawn from them. If the beats weaken--any one of them--it means trouble. Taken in time the difficulty may be easily remedied, allowed to pass unnoticed, death and disaster may result. KEEPING UP STEAM. It is scarcely necessary to state that to properly run your engine steam must be kept up. When the engine has got the train up to speed, steam should begin to issue from the safety valves. When it does not do so there has not been a full boiler, as there always should be at the start and the fireman must be made to understand how to make a starting fire in proper shape. On short runs this does not matter so much, but on express trains it is of the highest importance. On long runs if the engine is not instantly up to the mark at the start, and if the feeds must be held off to allow the fire and the engine a chance of recovery, the consequences are that the water in the boiler gets lower and less, and the uncertainty of ever getting the water up again becomes greater every minute, especially with a heavy train and against a strong side wind. MANAGEMENT OF FIRES. Of course the state of the steam depends altogether upon the way the fires are managed, but for us to give directions how to manage a locomotive fire-box to the best advantage would require pages of description which could scarcely be understood unless one had had previous practical experience.