Connecting the narrow gauge with SG logging mallets

It is sometimes amazing how responding to an NNG posting can lead back to an entirely unexpected connection to the narrow gauge. When I responded to the Mount Rainier RR shutdown announcement, the only connection to the narrow gauge seemed to be that the DSNG was operated by the same organization, American Heritage Railroads. Logging engines at Mt. Rainier led to the very last logging mallet operations at Hoquiam, Washington at the end of May - early June, 1968, which in turn led to attempts at reconstructing a timeline for May of 1968. Here the narrow gauge came into play, since on May 28 476 and 478 ran the first freight of 1968 from Alamosa to Durango. Alamosa and Hoquiam are pretty far apart and how these two events came together in such a compressed time frame seemed lost in the fog of time. It turns out that the key connector between these events were Union Pacific's "City of St. Louis" and "City of Portland" passenger trains that were independent trains before the creation of the "City of Everywhere". Based on advance information provided by Ernie Robart, I invested half of my annual vacation of 10 days into getting to the narrow gauge. I boarded the "City of Portland" at Hinkle, Oregon on Saturday, May 25 at 4:30 pm for Cheyenne, set for a ride in one of the premier trains of the UP (being Saturday, the train didn't carry a car of weapons grade plutonium from Hanford on the head end, this normally happened on Tuesdays).



(to be continued)