Re: A Railroad Saga

I copied it out of the past postings...got it all together and cleaned up a couple rough spots. filed it as a text doc in my computer at home, so we can keep it going....

Lessee....Where we left off, Billy & his crew had got the 29
squared away, and out of the snowdrift that had stalled them....

Lets continue........

They had whistled off and were working up to the top of the pass...
jojo was baling in the black diamonds had the left injector set, and had the steam pressure right up against the pops....Lake was riding the front seat on the left side along the boiler and watching ahead on the left curves. Billy had the throttle wide open and was staying on the johnson bar to keep the Hog working her best, and ready to give her sand if she slipped.
The train bucked and slowed when they punched through the drifts across the track, but they were making steady progress......Only a few more miles to go to the Summit.

While doing this, Billy had some time to reflect on the strange actions of the Rear Brakeman on 29 and the story he told them about the wreck long ago....and there still was the mystery of the "second" northbound train they had seen pass them (or thought they had seen) while they were in the hole at Burning Switch.......Was that some kind of hallucination, or was there something to that business of it being a "Ghost Train" with a dead crew still trying to get to the end of their run.....and maybe not able to until they collected the last living man on that crew to take with them??? Shivers ran down Billy's spine as these thoughts coursed through his mind.....