Jerry suggested that I post here this PM to him (see bottom of this message).
Also here is one humorous story I would like to add. Roy Breffle was a retired flatlands CB&Q steam engineer--and he tended to run the train as though he was out there some place in Illinois, Iowa, or??? He could be a crusty old soul too. So one day we young whippersnappers decided that we were going to "pimp" Roy. We gathered up every empty aluminum, pop can we could find in the gift shop and on the train--and poured them down the locomotive smokestack! At first, Roy didn't notice the pop cans, because drifting downhill he was not working steam. But after easing away from the end-of-track stop at the Mountain City trestle site, he yanked open the throttle with the Johnson bar in the corner--and there was a Vesuvius-like eruption of pop cans that must have rained back down for half of our trip back to the depot! Roy said nothing about the incident either during or after the trip. We, on the other hand, laughed until our sides hurt. Then we spent more than an hour collecting oil-soot-coated pop cans from teh right-of-way. It was worth the work!
Ah, to be young and stupid again! It's better than being old and stupid! Right Russ? Right Jerry?
Mike
Ah, Jerry,
>
> I remembers very well personally prepping #40 for
> its initial service because the #44 was going to
> the Loop and #14 was having issues with its
> crankshaft bearings. Breffle had gone to the Loop
> to run trains, and I apparently deputized myself
> to fill the boiler with water and light off the
> fire. I knew that Breffle had done a hydro, so I
> was reasonably safe in that regarding, and I think
> i got an offhanded OK from Lindsey (amazing how
> memories fade after 35 years). Things were VERY
> casual in those days, and Lindsey and Rosa were
> busy getting the Loop off the ground, so we were
> pretty much left to our own devices in Central.
> Things were pretty primitive too. I figured out I
> had best check to see if any of the driver axle
> stuffing boxes on #40 had any cake grease in them, and
> somehow I figured out how to drop the binder bars
> and then drop the stiffing boxes with a car jack.
> Of course that was done laying on my back on a
> piece of cardboard so I wouldn't get soaked/caked
> with Central's notorious rain and mud; working on
> my back with my hands above my head was a
> pain--and there were eight of those blooming
> boxes!. Getting them back in was equally onerous,
> and then I had to figure out how to adjust the
> wedges (on-the-job training!). Nothing froze up
> or blew up, so I guess I did alright. Interesting
> enough, the #40 proved to be the better, more
> reliable of the two locomotives (of course #44 had
> been laid over in Central America; it's
> reconstruction included the conversion to
> superheat and piston valves, which led to the #40
> and others in that series receiving similar
> conversions). Pretty brash of me, I suppose, but
> all of us in Central felt that we had to do what
> we needed to do to keep the Central operation
> running and making money to support the early
> stages of the Loop effort. We got by--but today,
> Mike Ramsey (then a Central employee) today would
> be officially horrified in his capacity as FRA
> regional inspector.
>
