Excerpt from The Latter-Day Saints' Millennial Star, Vol. 76: July 16, 1914

The station was but an isolated telegraph-post; the station house comprised but one small room, a mile away from the nearest village. The reason for the maintenance of a telegraph-post at this point was found in the dangerous nature of the road in the vicinity, and the convenient establishment of a water-tank to supply the engines. The train for which we so expectantly and hopefully waited, was the Owl Express - a fast night-train con nectin g large cities. Lts time-schedule permitted stops at but few, and these the most important, stations; but, as we knew, it had to stop at this out-of-the-way post to replenish the water supply of the locomotive.

Long after midnight the train arrived in a terrific whirl of wind and snow. I lingered behind my companions as they hurriedly clambered aboard, for I was attracted by the engineer, who, during the brief stop, while his assistant was attending to the water replenishment, bustled about the engine, oiling some parts, adjusting others, and generally overhauling the panting loco motive. I ventured to speak to him, busy though he was. I asked how he felt on such a night - wild, wierd and furious, when the powers of destruction seemed to be let loose, abroad and uncon trolled, when the storm was howling and when danger threatened from every side. I thought of the possibility, the probability even, of snow-drifts or slides on the track, of bridges and high trestles that may have been loosened by the storm, of rock-masses dis lodged from the mountain-side - of these and other possible obstacles. I realized that in the event of accident through obstruction on or disruption of the track, the engineer and the fireman would be the ones most exposed to danger; a Violent collision would most likely cost them their lives. All of these thoughts and others I expressed in hasty questioning of the bustling, impatient engineer.

His answer was a lesson not yet forgotten. In effect he said, though in jerky and disjointed sentences: Look at the engine headlight. Doesn't that light up the track for a hundred yards or more? Well; all I try to do is to cover that hundred yards of lighted track. That I can see, and for that distance I know the road is open and safe. And, he added, with what, through the swirl and the dim lamp-lighted darkness of the roaring night, I saw was a humorous smile of his lips and a merry twinkle of his eye, believe me, I have never been able to drive this old engine of mine, God bless her! So fast as to outstrip that hundred yards of lighted track. The light of the engine is always ahead of me!

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