Re: Jim Pearce, former D&RGW Engineer (yet another story)

Many of Jim's stories came from his first years of firing. He said he normally got the Durango to Chama run. He said this was usually double-headed and he'd get the helper. It usually ran at night (or as the employees called it "run by the light of a Rio Grande sun").
On one occasion the two engineers assigned to the train had a very strong dislike for each other going back for decades. They left Durango with Jim on the head locomotive. It quickly became apparent that the 2nd engine was doing little if no work on the upgrades. This meant that Jim's Engineer had a much harder task as his engine frequently slipped and Jim had to shovel that much harder to keep up.
The train struggled across the line until it got to Navajo Tank. All this time Jim's engineer was bitching about how useless a lump of flesh the other engineer was(I'm using the G rated version). When they reached Navajo tank Jim climbed up on top of the tender to fill it and had a ring side seat as to what happened next. Jim's engineer walked back to the 2nd engine's cab and hollered up:
"If you don't plan to do any work this trip I'm going back to the Caboose and have the Conductor sell you a ticket as a passenger on this train" (again G rated version). The other engineer gave a very non-G rated response and the two ended the encounter with more non-G rated threats and comments on each's family trees.
Jim said from that point on the 2nd engine did a fair amount of work and they finally reached Chama. When the tied up the two Engineers refused to even look at each other, much less talk...