So it results that twenty-eight engineers, one at a time, are required to run this wonderful train from New York to Chicago and back again. Fourteen veterans drive the great engines one way, and fourteen brother veterans drive them the other. Twenty-eight men for a single complete trip of a single train, and they the flower of American engineers, splendid fellows every one of them, with cool heads, stanch hearts, and the experience of years at the throttle. The fact is, these men of iron, who, after all, are made of flesh and blood, have been called upon of late years to bear a mental and physical strain which has increased steadily as the speed rates have advanced. Forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, and now eighty miles an hour, each greater velocity has meant greater pressure, not only on the boilers and cylinders, but on men's brains; has meant greater expenditure, not only of coal and dollars, but of nerve force, until now experts recognize with concern that the limit of human endurance has been almost reached. Science may remove the mechanical difficulties in the way of running a hundred miles an hour, or more, for such a rate has already been predicted; money may buy better axles, wheels, lubricators, and machinery, but where are the men who will run these trains of the future when they are built? Can science breed us a race of giants? Can money purchase an immunity against suffering or eyes that are indestructible? If twenty-eight engineers are required to-day on the Chicago flyer, how many, pray, will be necessary on a train running fifty or one hundred per cent. faster? I gained a vivid impression of what it means to drive one of these monster engines, by actually travelling from New York to Albany, a few days ago, in the cab of Engine 870, which takes the Empire State express over the first stretch of its journey--one hundred and forty-two miles--at a rate rather faster than that of the Chicago flyer. At the throttle was Archie Buchanan, a silent man with gray eyes and earnest face, who comes of a family of engineers, and is one of the most trusted of the New York Central employees. Buchanan's brother John, a skilled engineer in his time, was cut in two some years ago in an accident near East Albany. His brother James is a master mechanic at the shops at West Albany, and his brother William, after serving for years as a New York Central engineer, was made Superintendent of Rolling Stock, a position he still holds. Buchanan smiled quietly as I climbed upon the fireman's seat at the left. It was a perfect July morning, and at 8.39 the shrill whistle sounded, worked by the conductor's bell-rope, and we were off, nine minutes behind time on account of some trouble with the air-brakes. "We must make up the delay, Al," said the engineer to his fireman, as the wheels began to turn. Those were the only words he spoke until we reached Albany, and, had he spoken, neither Al nor I could have heard him for the roar.