Jim was hired in DUR and spent the first part of his carrier there. As a low senority holder he got some oddball assignments including being night watchman on 345 and 319 when on the "Denver & Rio Grande" movie shoot. He took care of them then night before they staged the head on collision. When he was getting ready to go home he was told that then engines were loaded up with dynamite and black powder and it was good thing they didn't blow up that night!
Jim also got called to work on the RGS a few times. In the RGS' last years many guys retired or quit to find more regular work. When no one else could be found they loaned Jim out to the RGS. He worked some trips to Dolores and back firing mudhens but he told me he made a trip on 319 once. He said going to Dolores was OK as there was a hotel he could stay at in Dolores. One time he had to go all the way to Rico. There was no hotels in Rico then. The train crew holed up in the caboose, the engineer stayed with a friend in town, Jim was on his own. I think he said he ended up just sleeping on the engine. When he got back to Durango, he told the crew caller never to call him for Rico again. Jim was probably the last living being to have fired on the RGS.
When he got loaned out to Salida, he worked the Monarch Branch. When Monarch was real busy, they ran two trips a day. The first trip was 2 engines and 52 cars. The second trip which left after the first one came back late in the day, was one engine and 26 cars. Jim usually got the second Monarch Turn. He said Monarch was a killer. His old engineer beat the living snot out of the engine all night long. When they got to Monarch, he had to get up on top of the coal pile and shovel coal ahead so he didn't have to take two extra steps into the coal pile for every scoop.
When The DRGW started Rio Grande Land and added the second train in the early 1960's, they added a Roadforeman of Engines position in Durango. Jim applied for and got the job, mostly to get a consistent paycheck. Usually a new road foreman never works his former territory because he would have friendships with the guys he was now supervising. Because of the lack of steam experience of other candidates, he got the job. It instantly put him on the "outs" with all his former crew members. It must have been a tough deal for him. He was now supervising the same old heads he fired for years. Even after Jim went back into engine service in his later years, he was still considered "one of them". When we had our great evenings with the "boys" in Alamosa, the other old heads treated him cordially, but I could see a wall between him and the others. Too bad, Jim was a good guy.
When I became Roadforeman of Engines in Alamosa on the SLRG, one of my first duties was to show the engineers there how to get down La Veta using retainers, short-cycling automatic air and dynamic brakes. Jim (and Eldon Morgan) gave me lots of pointers on how to do that. I am forever in Jim's debt for helping me.
High Green's, Jim.
