"What is the horsepower?" asked Mr. Damon.

"I figure on forty-four hundred horsepower. The power must be received
from a three thousand-volt direct-current trolley. There are twelve
driving-wheels, as you can see. Each pair of drivers will be driven by
a twin-motor geared to the axles through a system of flexible spring
drive. Remember, I have got to obtain both speed as well as power in
this locomotive, for it is being built to pull a passenger train--a
fast cross-continent express--to compete with the best passenger
equipment in the country."

"Bless my combination ticket!" murmured Mr. Damon. "You have picked out
some task, and no mistake, Tom Swift."

"He'll do it," cried Ned, with his usual optimism when Tom had once
started on any experimental work. "Of course he will. Just as she
stands there now, only half put together, I would be willing to bet a
farm that she is a better locomotive than the Jandel patent."

"Three cheers!" laughed Tom. "Ned is as enthusiastic as usual. But
believe me, friends, we are not going to turn out a better locomotive
than the Jandel without both thought and work."

His friends' enthusiasm was heartening, however. No doubt of that. He
never let them into his experiment room, any more than he allowed his
workmen in there. Aside from his own father, nobody really knew what
Tom Swift was doing behind that always-locked door.

The huge structure of the locomotive was set up on the driving wheels
and leading and trailing trucks by Tom's chief foreman and a picked
crew. Just such another locomotive had never been seen anywhere about
Shopton. Naturally the men at work on the monster began to speak of it
outside the works.

Not that they betrayed any secrets regarding the locomotive. In fact,
as yet none of them knew anything about what Tom intended to do with
the big machine. But the story soon circulated that Tom Swift, the
young inventor, was about to show all the previous builders of electric
locomotives how such machines should be built.

It was even whispered that Tom's objective was a two-mile-a-minute
locomotive. And when this was publicly known the information was not
long in seeping to the ears of certain men who had been keeping as
close a watch as they dared on the Swift Construction Company and the
activities of Tom himself.

Ned Newton went to the bank one Friday for money for the payroll of the
working and clerical force of the Swift Company. It was an errand he
ne