On the best of roads a freight train wrecked by a broken wheel under a borrowed car may be thrown in the path of a passenger train on another track, just as the latter approaches. This has happened more than once lately. No amount of fidelity or forethought (except in the maker of the wheels) can prevent this kind of disaster. There is constant danger, on most roads, of running off the track at misplaced switches, many switches being located at points where the runner can see them only a few seconds before he is upon them; but the chance is so small--perhaps one in ten or a hundred thousand--that the average runner forgets it, and it is only by severe self-discipline that he can hold himself up to compliance with the rule which requires him to be on the watch for every switch-target as long before reaching it as he possibly can. He finds the switches all right and the road perfectly clear so regularly, day after day and month after month, that he may easily fall into the snare of thinking that they will always be so. But, like other trainmen, the engineman finds enough more agreeable thoughts to fill his mind, and reflects upon the hazards of his vocation perhaps too little. [Illustration: Just Time to Jump.] The freight engineman's every-day thoughts are largely about the care of his engine and the perplexities incident to getting out of it the maximum amount of work with the minimum amount of fuel. The constant aim of his superiors is to have the engine draw every pound it possibly can. To haul a train up a long and steep grade when the cars are so heavily loaded that a single additional one would bring the whole to a dead stand-still requires a knack that can be appreciated only by viewing the performance on the spot. Failure not only wastes time and fuel (it may necessitate a return to the foot of the hill or going to the top with only half the load), but it raises a suspicion that some other runner might have succeeded better. The runner whose engine "lays down on the road" (fails to draw its load because of insufficient fire and consequent low steam-pressure) is liable to the jeers of his comrades on his return home, if not to some sharp inquiries from his superior.