The Scotch Express

by Stephen Crane

The entrance to Euston Station is of itself sufficiently imposing. Itis a high portico of brown stone, old and grim, in form a casualimitation, no doubt, of the front of the temple of Nike Apteros, with arecollection of the Egyptians proclaimed at the flanks. The frieze,where of old would prance an exuberant processional of gods, is, in thiscase, bare of decoration, but upon the epistyle is written in simple,stern letters the word "EUSTON." The legend reared high by the gloomyPelagic columns stares down a wide avenue, In short, this entrance to arailway station does not in any way resemble the entrance to a railwaystation. It is more the front of some venerable bank. But it has anotherdignity, which is not born of form. To a great degree, it is to theEnglish and to those who are in England the gate to Scotland.The little hansoms are continually speeding through the gate, dashingbetween the legs of the solemn temple; the four-wheelers, their topscrowded with luggage, roll in and out constantly, and the footways beatunder the trampling of the people. Of course, there are the suburbs anda hundred towns along the line, and Liverpool, the beginning of animportant sea-path to America, and the great manufacturing cities of theNorth; but if one stands at this gate in August particularly, one mustnote the number of men with gun-cases, the number of women who surelyhave Tam-o'-Shanters and plaids concealed within their luggage, readyfor the moors. There is, during the latter part of that month, awholesale flight from London to Scotland which recalls the July throngsleaving New York for the shore or the mountains.The hansoms, after passing through this impressive portal of thestation, bowl smoothly across a courtyard which is in the center of theterminal hotel, an institution dear to most railways in Europe. Thetraveler lands amid a swarm of porters, and then proceeds cheerfully totake the customary trouble for his luggage. America provides acontrivance in a thousand situations where Europe provides a man orperhaps a number of men, and the work of our brass check is here done byporters, directed by the traveler himself. The men lack the memory ofthe check; the check never forgets its identity. Moreover, the Europeanrailways generously furnish the porters at the expense of the traveler.Nevertheless, if these men have not the invincible business precision ofthe check, and if they have to be tipped, it can be asserted for thosewho care that in Europe one-half of the populace waits on the other halfmost diligently and well.Against the masonry of a platform, under the vaulted arch of the train-house, lay a long string of coaches. They were painted white on thebulging part, which led halfway down from the top, and the bodies were adeep bottle-green. There was a group of porters placing luggage in thevan, and a great many others were busy with the affairs of passengers,tossing smaller bits of luggage into the racks over the seats, andbustling here and there on short quests. The guard of the train, a tallman who resembled one of the first Napoleon's veterans, was caring forthe distribution of passengers into the various bins. There were nosecond-class compartments; they were all third and first-class.The train was at this time engineless, but presently a railway "flier,"painted a glowing vermilion, slid modestly down and took its place atthe head. The guard walked along the platform, and decisively closedeach door. He wore a dark blue uniform thoroughly decorated with silverbraid in the guise of leaves. The way of him gave to this business theimportance of a ceremony. Meanwhile the fireman had climbed down fromthe cab and raised his hand, ready to transfer a signal to the driver,who stood looking at his watch. In the interval there had somethingprogressed in the large signal box that stands guard at Euston. Thishigh house contains many levers, standing in thick, shining ranks. Itperfectly resembles an organ in some great church, if it were not thatthese rows of numbered and indexed handles typify something more acutelyhuman than does a keyboard. It requires four men to play this organ-likething, and the strains never cease. Night and day, day and night, thesefour men are walking to and fro, from this lever to that lever, andunder their hands the great machine raises its endless hymn of a worldat work, the fall and rise of signals and the clicking swing ofswitches.And so as the vermilion engine stood waiting and looking from the shadowof the curve-roofed station, a man in the signal house had played thenotes that informed the engine of its freedom. The driver saw the fallof those proper semaphores which gave him liberty to speak to his steelfriend. A certain combination in the economy of the London andNorthwestern Railway, a combination which had spread from the men whosweep out the carriages through innumerable minds to the general managerhimself, had resulted in the law that the vermilion engine, with itslong string of white and bottle-green coaches, was to start forthwithtoward Scotland.Presently the fireman, standing with his face toward the rear, let fallhis hand. "All right," he said. The driver turned a wheel, and as thefireman slipped back, the train moved along the platform at the pace ofa mouse. To those in the tranquil carriages this starting was probablyas easy as the sliding of one's hand over a greased surface, but in theengine there was more to it. The monster roared suddenly and loudly, andsprang forward impetuously. A wrong-headed or maddened draft-horse willplunge in its collar sometimes when going up a hill. But this load ofburdened carriages followed imperturbably at the gait of turtles. Theywere not to be stirred from their way of dignified exit by the impatientengine. The crowd of porters and transient people stood respectful. Theylooked with the indefinite wonder of the railway-station sight-seer uponthe faces at the windows of the passing coaches. This train was off forScotland. It had started from the home of one accent to the home ofanother accent. It was going from manner to manner, from habit to habit,and in the minds of these London spectators there surely floated dimimages of the traditional kilts, the burring speech, the grouse, thecanniness, the oat-meal, all the elements of a romantic Scotland.The train swung impressively around the signal-house, and headed up abrick-walled cut. In starting this heavy string of coaches, the enginebreathed explosively. It gasped, and heaved, and bellowed; once, for amoment, the wheels spun on the rails, and a convulsive tremor shook thegreat steel frame.The train itself, however, moved through this deep cut in the body ofLondon with coolness and precision, and the employees of the railway,knowing the train's mission, tacitly presented arms at its passing. Tothe travelers in the carriages, the suburbs of London must have been onelong monotony of carefully made walls of stone or brick. But after thehill was climbed, the train fled through pictures of red habitations ofmen on a green earth.But the noise in the cab did not greatly change its measure. Even thoughthe speed was now high, the tremendous thumping to be heard in the cabwas as alive with strained effort and as slow in beat as the breathingof a half-drowned man. At the side of the track, for instance, the sounddoubtless would strike the ear in the familiar succession of incrediblyrapid puffs; but in the cab itself, this land-racer breathes very likeits friend, the marine engine. Everybody who has spent time on shipboardhas forever in his head a reminiscence of the steady and methodicalpounding of the engines, and perhaps it is curious that this relativewhich can whirl over the land at such a pace, breathes in the leisurelytones that a man heeds when he lies awake at night in his berth.There had been no fog in London, but here on the edge of the city aheavy wind was blowing, and the driver leaned aside and yelled that itwas a very bad day for traveling on an engine. The engine-cabs ofEngland, as of all Europe, are seldom made for the comfort of the men.One finds very often this apparent disregard for the man who does thework--this indifference to the man who occupies a position which for theexercise of temperance, of courage, of honesty, has no equal at thealtitude of prime ministers. The American engineer is the gildedoccupant of a salon in comparison with his brother in Europe. The manwho was guiding this five-hundred-ton bolt, aimed by the officials ofthe railway at Scotland, could not have been as comfortable as a shrillgibbering boatman of the Orient. The narrow and bare bench at his sideof the cab was not directly intended for his use, because it was so lowthat he would be prevented by it from looking out of the ship's port-hole which served him as a window. The fireman, on his side, had otherdifficulties. His legs would have had to straggle over some pipes at theonly spot where there was a prospect, and the builders had alsostrategically placed a large steel bolt. Of course it is plain that thecompanies consistently believe that the men will do their work better ifthey are kept standing. The roof of the cab was not altogether a roof.It was merely a projection of two feet of metal from the bulkhead whichformed the front of the cab. There were practically no sides to it, andthe large cinders from the soft coal whirled around in sheets. From timeto time the driver took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped hisblinking eyes.London was now well to the rear. The vermilion engine had been for sometime flying like the wind. This train averages, between London andCarlisle forty-nine and nine-tenth miles an hour. It is a distance of299 miles. There is one stop. It occurs at Crewe, and endures fiveminutes. In consequence, the block signals flashed by seemingly at theend of the moment in which they were sighted.There can be no question of the statement that the road-beds of Englishrailways are at present immeasurably superior to the American road-beds.Of course there is a clear reason. It is known to every traveler thatpeoples of the Continent of Europe have no right at all to own railways.Those lines of travel are too childish and trivial for expression. Acorrect fate would deprive the Continent of its railways, and give themto somebody who knew about them.The continental idea of a railway is to surround a mass of machinerywith forty rings of ultra-military law, and then they believe they haveone complete. The Americans and the English are the railway peoples.That our road-beds are poorer than the English road-beds is because ofthe fact that we were suddenly obliged to build thousands upon thousandsof miles of railway, and the English were obliged to build slowly tensupon tens of miles. A road-bed from New York to San Francisco, withstations, bridges, and crossings of the kind that the London andNorthwestern owns from London to Glasgow, would cost a sum large enoughto support the German army for a term of years. The whole way isconstructed with the care that inspired the creators of some of our nowobsolete forts along the Atlantic coast.An American engineer, with his knowledge of the difficulties he had toencounter--the wide rivers with variable banks, the mountain chains,perhaps the long spaces of absolute desert; in fact, all theperplexities of a vast and somewhat new country--would not dare spend arespectable portion of his allowance on seventy feet of granite wallover a gully, when he knew he could make an embankment with little costby heaving up the dirt and stones from here and there. But the Englishroad is all made in the pattern by which the Romans built theirhighways. After England is dead, savants will find narrow streaks ofmasonry leading from ruin to ruin. Of course this does not always seemconvincingly admirable. It sometimes resembles energy poured into a rat-hole. There is a vale between expediency and the convenience ofposterity, a mid-ground which enables men surely to benefit thehereafter people by valiantly advancing the present; and the point isthat, if some laborers live in unhealthy tenements in Cornwall, one islikely to view with incomplete satisfaction the record of long andpatient labor and thought displayed by an eight-foot drain for anonexistent, impossible rivulet in the North. This sentence does notsound strictly fair, but the meaning one wishes to convey is that if anEnglish company spies in its dream the ghost of an ancient valley thatlater becomes a hill, it would construct for it a magnificent steeltrestle, and consider that a duty had been performed in properaccordance with the company's conscience. But after all is said of it,the accidents and the miles of railway operated in England are not inproportion to the accidents and the miles of railway operated in theUnited States. The reason can be divided into three parts--olderconditions, superior caution, the road-bed. And of these, the greatestis older conditions.In this flight toward Scotland one seldom encountered a grade crossing.In nine cases of ten there was either a bridge or a tunnel. Theplatforms of even the remote country stations were all of ponderousmasonry in contrast to our constructions of planking. There was alwaysto be seen, as we thundered toward a station of this kind, a number ofporters in uniform, who requested the retreat of any one who had not thewit to give us plenty of room. And then, as the shrill warning of thewhistle pierced even the uproar that was about us, came the wild joy ofthe rush past a station. It was something in the nature of a triumphalprocession conducted at thrilling speed. Perhaps there was a curve ofinfinite grace, a sudden hollow explosive effect made by the passing ofa signal-box that was close to the track, and then the deadly lunge toshave the edge of a long platform. There were always a number of peoplestanding afar, with their eyes riveted upon this projectile, and to beon the engine was to feel their interest and admiration in the terrorand grandeur of this sweep. A boy allowed to ride with the driver of theband-wagon as a circus parade winds through one of our village streetscould not exceed for egotism the temper of a new man in the cab of atrain like this one. This valkyric journey on the back of the vermilionengine, with the shouting of the wind, the deep, mighty panting of thesteed, the gray blur at the track-side, the flowing quicksilver ribbonof the other rails, the sudden clash as a switch intersects, all the dinand fury of this ride, was of a splendor that caused one to look abroadat the quiet, green landscape and believe that it was of a phlegm quietbeyond patience. It should have been dark, rain-shot, and windy; thundershould have rolled across its sky.It seemed, somehow, that if the driver should for a moment take hishands from his engine, it might swerve from the track as a horse fromthe road. Once, indeed, as he stood wiping his fingers on a bit ofwaste, there must have been something ludicrous in the way the solitarypassenger regarded him. Without those finely firm hands on the bridle,the engine might rear and bolt for the pleasant farms lying in thesunshine at either side.This driver was worth contemplation. He was simply a quiet, middle-agedman, bearded, and with the little wrinkles of habitual geniality andkindliness spreading from the eyes toward the temple, who stood at hispost always gazing out, through his round window, while, from time totime, his hands went from here to there over his levers. He seldomchanged either attitude or expression. There surely is no engine-driverwho does not feel the beauty of the business, but the emotion lies deep,and mainly inarticulate, as it does in the mind of a man who hasexperienced a good and beautiful wife for many years. This driver's facedisplayed nothing but the cool sanity of a man whose thought was buriedintelligently in his business. If there was any fierce drama in it,there was no sign upon him. He was so lost in dreams of speed andsignals and steam, that one speculated if the wonder of his tempestuouscharge and its career over England touched him, this impassive rider ofa fiery thing.It should be a well-known fact that, all over the world, the engine-driver is the finest type of man that is grown. He is the pick of theearth. He is altogether more worthy than the soldier, and better thanthe men who move on the sea in ships. He is not paid too much; nor dohis glories weight his brow; but for outright performance, carried onconstantly, coolly, and without elation, by a temperate, honest, clear-minded man, he is the further point. And so the lone human at hisstation in a cab, guarding money, lives, and the honor of the road, is abeautiful sight. The whole thing is aesthetic. The fireman presents thesame charm, but in a less degree, in that he is bound to appear as anapprentice to the finished manhood of the driver. In his eyes, turnedalways in question and confidence toward his superior, one finds thisquality; but his aspirations are so direct that one sees the same typein evolution.There may be a popular idea that the fireman's principal function is tohang his head out of the cab and sight interesting objects in thelandscape. As a matter of fact, he is always at work. The dragon isinsatiate. The fireman is continually swinging open the furnace-door,whereat a red shine flows out upon the floor of the cab, and shovelingin immense mouthfuls of coal to a fire that is almost diabolic in itsmadness. The feeding, feeding, feeding goes on until it appears as if itis the muscles of the fireman's arms that are speeding the long train.An engine running over sixty-five miles an hour, with 500 tons to drag,has an appetite in proportion to this task.View of the clear-shining English scenery is often interrupted betweenLondon and Crew by long and short tunnels. The first one wasdisconcerting. Suddenly one knew that the train was shooting toward ablack mouth in the hills. It swiftly yawned wider, and then in a momentthe engine dived into a place inhabitated by every demon of wind andnoise. The speed had not been checked, and the uproar was so great thatin effect one was simply standing at the center of a vast, black-walledsphere. The tubular construction which one's reason proclaimed had nomeaning at all. It was a black sphere, alive with shrieks. But then onthe surface of it there was to be seen a little needle-point of light,and this widened to a detail of unreal landscape. It was the world; thetrain was going to escape from this cauldron, this abyss of howlingdarkness. If a man looks through the brilliant water of a tropical pool,he can sometimes see coloring the marvels at the bottom the blue thatwas on the sky and the green that was on the foliage of this detail. Andthe picture shimmered in the heat-rays of a new and remarkable sun. Itwas when the train bolted out into the open air that one knew that itwas his own earth.Once train met train in a tunnel. Upon the painting in the perfectlycircular frame formed by the mouth there appeared a black square withsparks bursting from it. This square expanded until it hid everything,and a moment later came the crash of the passing. It was enough to makea man lose his sense of balance. It was a momentary inferno when thefireman opened the furnace door and was bathed in blood-red light as hefed the fires.The effect of a tunnel varied when there was a curve in it. One wasmerely whirling then heels over head, apparently in the dark, echoingbowels of the earth. There was no needle-point of light to which one'seyes clung as to a star.From London to Crew, the stern arm of the semaphore never made the trainpause even for an instant. There was always a clear track. It was greatto see, far in the distance, a goods train whooping smokily for thenorth of England on one of the four tracks. The overtaking of such atrain was a thing of magnificent nothing for the long-strided engine,and as the flying express passed its weaker brother, one heard one ortwo feeble and immature puffs from the other engine, saw the firemanwave his hand to his luckier fellow, saw a string of foolish, clankingflat-cars, their freights covered with tarpaulins, and then the trainwas lost to the rear.The driver twisted his wheel and worked some levers, and the rhythmicalchunking of the engine gradually ceased. Gliding at a speed that wasstill high, the train curved to the left, and swung down a sharpincline, to move with an imperial dignity through the railway yard atRugby. There was a maze of switches, innumerable engines noisily pushingcars here and there, crowds of workmen who turned to look, a sinuouscurve around the long train-shed, whose high wall resounded with therumble of the passing express; and then, almost immediately, it seemed,came the open country again. Rugby had been a dream which one couldproperly doubt. At last the relaxed engine, with the same majesty ofease, swung into the high-roofed station at Crewe, and stopped on aplatform lined with porters and citizens. There was instant bustle, andin the interest of the moment no one seemed particularly to notice thetired vermilion engine being led away.There is a five-minute stop at Crewe. A tandem of engines slip up, andbuckled fast to the train for the journey to Carlisle. In the meantime,all the regulation items of peace and comfort had happened on the trainitself. The dining-car was in the center of the train. It was dividedinto two parts, the one being a dining-room for first-class passengers,and the other a dining-room for the third-class passengers. They wereseparated by the kitchens and the larder. The engine, with all itsrioting and roaring, had dragged to Crewe a car in which numbers ofpassengers were lunching in a tranquility that was almost domestic, onan average menu of a chop and potatoes, a salad, cheese, and a bottle ofbeer. Betimes they watched through the windows the great chimney-markedtowns of northern England. They were waited upon by a young man ofLondon, who was supported by a lad who resembled an American bell-boy.The rather elaborate menu and service of the Pullman dining-car is notknown in England or on the Continent. Warmed roast beef is the exactsymbol of a European dinner, when one is traveling on a railway.This express is named, both by the public and the company, the "CorridorTrain," because a coach with a corridor is an unusual thing in England,and so the title has a distinctive meaning. Of course, in America, wherethere is no car which has not what we call an aisle, it would definenothing. The corridors are all at one side of the car. Doors open thenceto little compartments made to seat four, or perhaps six, persons. Thefirst-class carriages are very comfortable indeed, being heavilyupholstered in dark, hard-wearing stuffs, with a bulging rest for thehead. The third-class accommodations on this train are almost ascomfortable as the first-class, and attract a kind of people that arenot usually seen traveling third-class in Europe. Many people sacrificetheir habit, in the matter of this train, to the fine conditions of thelower fare.One of the feats of the train is an electric button in each compartment.Commonly an electric button is placed high on the side of the carriageas an alarm signal, and it is unlawful to push it unless one is inserious need of assistance from the guard. But these bells also rang inthe dining-car, and were supposed to open negotiations for tea orwhatever. A new function has been projected on an ancient custom. Nogenius has yet appeared to separate these two meanings. Each bell ringsan alarm and a bid for tea or whatever. It is perfect in theory thenthat, if one rings for tea, the guard comes to interrupt the murder, andthat if one is being murdered, the attendant appears with tea. At anyrate, the guard was forever being called from his reports and hiscomfortable seat in the forward end of the luggage-van by thrillingalarms. He often prowled the length of the train with hardihood anddetermination, merely to meet a request for a sandwich.The train entered Carlisle at the beginning of twilight. This is theborder town, and an engine of the Caledonian Railway, manned by two menof broad speech, came to take the place of the tandem. The engine ofthese men of the North was much smaller than the others, but her cab wasmuch larger, and would be a fair shelter on a stormy night. They hadalso built seats with hooks by which they hang them to the rail, andthus are still enabled to see through the round windows withoutdislocating their necks. All the human parts of the cab were coveredwith oilcloth. The wind that swirled from the dim twilight horizon madethe warm glow from the furnace to be a grateful thing.As the train shot out of Carlisle, a glance backward could learn of thefaint, yellow blocks of light from the carriages marked on the dimmedground. The signals were now lamps, and shone palely against the sky.The express was entering night as if night were Scotland.There was a long toil to the summit of the hills, and then began thebooming ride down the slope. There were many curves. Sometimes could beseen two or three signal lights at one time, twisting off in some newdirection. Minus the lights and some yards of glistening rails, Scotlandwas only a blend of black and weird shapes. Forests which one couldhardly imagine as weltering in the dewy placidity of evening sank to therear as if the gods had bade them. The dark loom of a house quicklydissolved before the eyes. A station with its lamps became a broadyellow band that, to a deficient sense, was only a few yards in length.Below, in a deep valley, a silver glare on the waters of a river madeequal time with the train. Signals appeared, grew, and vanished. In thewind and the mystery of the night, it was like sailing in an enchantedgloom. The vague profiles of hills ran like snakes across the sombersky. A strange shape boldly and formidably confronted the train, andthen melted to a long dash of track as clean as sword-blades.The vicinity of Glasgow is unmistakable. The flames of pauselessindustries are here and there marked on the distance. Vast factoriesstand close to the track, and reaching chimneys emit roseate flames. Atlast one may see upon a wall the strong reflection from furnaces, andagainst it the impish and inky figures of workingmen. A long, prison-like row of tenements, not at all resembling London, but in one wayresembling New York, appeared to the left, and then sank out of sightlike a phantom.At last the driver stopped the brave effort of his engine The 400 mileswere come to the edge. The average speed of forty-nine and one-thirdmiles each hour had been made, and it remained only to glide with thehauteur of a great express through the yard and into the station atGlasgow.A wide and splendid collection of signal lamps flowed toward the engine.With delicacy and care the train clanked over some switches, passes thesignals, and then there shone a great blaze of arc-lamps, defining thewide sweep of the station roof. Smoothly, proudly, with all that vastdignity which had surrounded its exit from London, the express movedalong its platform. It was the entrance into a gorgeous drawing-room ofa man that was sure of everything.The porters and the people crowded forward. In their minds there mayhave floated dim images of the traditional music-halls, the bobbies, the'buses, the 'Arrys and 'Arriets, the swells of London.

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