THE ATLANTIC 4-4-2 PULLING the Coast Line Limited was built for speed.

Her engineer, Rufus Patrick, loved her for it. The American Locomotive Company of Schenectady, New York, had fitted her with enormous eighty-inch drive wheels. At sixty miles per hour, the four-wheeled engine truck in front held her on the rails as steady as the Rock of Ages while a two-wheeled truck in back supported a big firebox to generate plenty of superheated steam.

Rufus Patrick would admit that she was not that strong. The new, heavier steel passenger cars coming along soon would demand the more powerful Pacifies. She was no mountain climber, but for blazing speed on a flat, pulling a crack flyer of wooden passenger cars across long distances, she was not to be beat. Her identical sister had been clocked the previous year at 127.1 mph, a speed record unlikely to be bested anytime soon, thought Patrick. At least not by him, not even tonight running late, not when he was hauling ten passenger cars full of folks hoping to get home safe. Sixty was just fine, flying at a mile a minute.

The locomotive's cab was crowded. In addition to Rufus Patrick and his fireman, Zeke Taggert, there were two guests: Bill Wright, an official of the Electrical Workers Union who was a friend of Rufus's, and Bill's nephew, his namesake Billy, whom he was accompanying to Los Angeles, where the boy was to begin an apprenticeship in a laboratory that developed celluloid film for moving pictures. When they had last stopped for water, Rufus had walked back to the baggage car, where they were stealing a free ride, and invited them up to the cab.

Fourteen-year-old Billy couldn't believe his amazing luck to be riding in a locomotive. He'd been mooning over trains rumbling past his house his whole life and been up all night excited about this trip. But he had never dreamed he could actually ride up front in the cab. Mr. Patrick wore a striped cap just like you saw in pictures and was the surest, calmest man Billy had ever seen. He had explained what he was doing every step of the way, as he sounded two long blasts on the whistle and started the train moving again.

"We're off, Billy! I'm dropping the Johnson bar to full forward. All the way forward to go ahead, all the way back for reverse. We can go just as fast backward as forward."

Patrick gripped a long, horizontal bar. "Now I'm opening the throttle, sending steam to the cylinders to turn the drive wheels, and I'm opening the sand valve to get adhesion on the rails. Now I'm pulling back on the throttle so we don't start too fast. You feel her bite and not slipping?"

Billy had nodded eagerly. She had picked up speed smooth as silk as Patrick began notching out the throttle.

Now rolling toward Glendale on the last few miles before Los Angeles, blowing the whistle at grade crossings, Patrick told the awestruck boy, "You'll never drive a finer locomotive. She's a good steamer and rides easy."