Re: Water Facilities (Empty Tanks)

Regarding empty water tanks…it happens. Rich Braden (employee2) may remember this as well, but when I was working for the C&TS it happened to me. I was a young, dumb fireman, who was still stressed about doing a good job attempting to fire those engines up the big hill out of Chama. Rich and I were assigned the 487 for the days train and arrived at the yard early to clean the fire and prepare the engine. Like all good fireman, I climbed up on the tender and checked the water level. It was down a little over a foot. Seemed like plenty to me! At this time, the Chama tank was not in service, so we went with water provided via hose and the night engine watchman. By the time we moved the engine, blew down, coupled to the train, and conducted our brake test, almost 2 hours (an several gallons of water) had gone by. Ten minutes prior to departure, Rich asked me if I had checked the water in the tender. I said “sure, did that first thing this morning and we were only down a little over a foot”. I was pretty proud of myself that I was ahead of the game! Rich had this look of horror on his face, went back and took a look at the water level and now we were down almost to half a tank or so, barley enough to get a tonnage train to Cumbres. After a quick “job briefing” with the Conductor/Trainmaster, Gary Gettman (he was not happy), we decided to leave on schedule and stop for water at Cresco, a challenge for the engineer because we would have to get started again on the steep grade.

Well, off we went, and on to Cresco. I was very embarrassed, but kind of excited because we were going to get to stop at Cresco for water! My dad and a friend of his were on the train and worked their way up to the first car so he could take pictures of me taking on water. Rich made a perfect stop at the tank, I climbed up to the tender, pulled down the spout, and as the shutters were clicking, pulled the rope to open the valve. All I got was dust and rust….there wasn’t a drop of water in the tank! Now I was really embarrassed and the engineer and conductor were not happy. We decided to push on and see how far we could get before having to ‘cut and run” for water. Rich managed to get the train started and we headed up the hill. We made it as far as Coxo when the injectors started to have trouble. We tied down the train, let the passengers off to pick wild raspberries, and Rich and I ran to Cumbres for water.

I have the photo somewhere that my dad took as I was trying to coax water out of Cresco tank that day. Not one of my finer moments.

Mike Ramsey