The Great Dayton Train Race

For five minutes this afternoon John H. McGraw was the unconscious hero of a very thrilling experience. The Union Pacific branch line from Bolles to Dayton parallels the Hunt road from Waitsburg into town, a distance of several miles. Mr. McGraw, Col. Patrick Henry Winston and their party were passengers on the afternoon express from Pendleton that pulled out of Waitsburg over the Hunt line. When the train was four miles from Dayton, and jogging along at about twenty-five miles an hour, the Union Pacific express crept up unobserved. It was plunging over the rails at the rate of forty miles an hour, evidently bent upon showing the Hunt train its heels into Dayton. Its whistle shrieked defiantly as the locomotive flew past, the passengers gestured their handkerchiefs scornfully and the trainmen placed their forefingers to their respective noses in such a manner as to imply disrespect for the Hunt express and every one on board.

Meanwhile, big, live coals had begun to pour out of the smokestack of the Hunt line locomotive and to swirl in the windows of the coaches, warning the passengers that they were in for a railroad race. The procession of telegraph poles passed swiftly, the dust was as though plowed up by a leviathan and with each opening jerk at the throttle, the train fairly leaped from the rails. Anxious glances were exchanged, but the danger was drowned in the exhilaration of the contest. The fact was that the Hunt locomotive was the better machine. At a speed of fifty miles an hour, it crawled up on the impudent Union Pacific train and soon passed it. The passengers on both trains shouted defiance and delight respectively. The Hunt train kept up its wild pace until the yard limits were reached, by which time it had distanced its rival. At the depot Col. Winston hurried forward to hand the engineer a lot of fine cigars. 'That was a great run, sir,' said the colonel. 'Did you know who you had on board?' 'You bet I did,' said the engineer proudly, 'the next governor of Washington and I'd rather go into the ditch than let that fellow beat us into town.'