The practice of waiting for the train to get to Osier ended about 20 years ago when I was working as a fireman. I often got helper duty and it was decided that paying the crew for an extra hour wasn't worth the chance that we'd have to rescue the train. I don't remember ever having to go to Osier myself, but do remember at least one other crew had to perform a rescue and I think at least once a helper was stopped on its way downhill and ordered to go to Osier.
There were several times where we traded locomotives, or traded engine crews once getting to Cumbres due to some problem. I always carried extra food in my grip just for that possibility.
Helper duty was nice as you clocked off usually before 1500 and had the afternoon to do laundry or enjoy a cold one at Fosters.
Sometimes we would get back to Chama and have switching to attend to. I remember being on the 497 once and taking it down the hill and once we got to Chama Dan Ranger came out and had about two hours of switching for us. My Engineer told me he'd fire and I could run. The 497 had a very stiff throttle and Johnson bar so by the end of the switching I was pretty worn out...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/08/2018 11:01AM by Dave Peterson.