No public announcement was made of the undertaking in advance, for the sufficient reason that the gentlemen in charge were well aware of the difficulty of the task in which they were engaged and the many chances of failure. They had no desire to have such a failure made unnecessarily public. No one was informed of what was in hand except the officials and employees of the Lake Shore road, whose coöperation was necessary, one daily newspaper (the Chicago "Tribune"), the Associated Press, and two gentlemen who were invited to attend as official time-keepers, Messrs. H.P. Robinson and Willard A. Smith--the former being the editor of "The Railway Age," and the latter the ex-chief of the Transportation Department at the Chicago World's Fair. General Superintendent Canniff of the Lake Shore was in charge of the train in person. [Illustration: THE TEN-WHEEL ENGINE 564, WITH WHICH ENGINEER TUNKEY MADE THE RUN FROM ERIE TO BUFFALO, ATTAINING A SPEED OF 92.3 MILES AN HOUR.] It was at two o'clock of the morning of October 24th that the train, which had been waiting since early in the evening on a side track in the Lake Shore station at Chicago, slipped unostentatiously away behind a switch engine which was to haul it as far as One Hundredth Street, where the start was to be made. Here there was a wait of nearly an hour until the time fixed for starting--half-past three. There was plenty to be done at the last moment to occupy the time of waiting, however. There were last messages to be sent back to Chicago; last orders to be sent on ahead; telegrams containing weather bulletins, which promised fair weather all the way to Buffalo, to be read; and, finally, the preparations to be made for time-taking. One of the time-keepers, taking two stop-watches in his hand, started the split-second-hands of both with one movement of his muscles, exactly together. To one or other of these timepieces all the watches on the train were set. In one of the parlor cars, as nearly as might be in the middle of the length of the train, two tables were set, one on either side of the aisle. The time-keepers had agreed to relieve each other at each stop at the end of a division, one being always on duty, and the other close at hand to verify any record on which a question might arise. The time-keeper on duty sat at one of the tables, watch in hand. Opposite to him was a representative of the railway company, with no power to originate a record, but to check each stop in case an error should occur. Across the aisle sat the official recorder, a representative of the Wagner Palace Car Company, and opposite to him a representative of the daily press.