Farmington Branch Work

I found the article that I wrote for the Farmington Daily Times, published Nov. 13,1980. In the article conductor Alva Lyons talked about switching on the Farmington branch.
``They loaded the pipe right on trucks at Aztec. We would come into Aztec and the sidings would be filled with cars from the day before. We would have to push these cars out onto the main line to get the loads into the sidings.
We had several unloading spots in Farmington. We started at the El Paso Plant. Sometimes we would have 60 cars to sort out. We would push the empties to the long passing track across from Ford Corners. If there were too many we would push them down to the Continental Plant. We would set out the mud cars there.''
This was all before coming into the yards. The Farmington yards had a main line, passing track and house track. The wye was on the west end, where the hospital is now. Rio Grande Motorway had a warehouse at the wye.
Trainmen liked Lyons as a conductor because he had the ability to plan the work with the fewest moves in the shortest time. Myon Henry was the opposite.
Andy Payne said he once fired for Roy Buchannan on a Farmington turn. When they got back not a lump of coal remained in the 478's tender.
Firemen only kept up enough pressure to keep the air pumps working on the way down. Switching took most of the coal.
The 464, 473 and 478 had power reverses to handle the switching.