Re: Sumpter Valley's Heisler #3

Just as a sidebar - The Climax was proported to be able to "follow two marks in the dirt". I actually saw that it could - for a little while.

At the Morton Washington fesivities (Morton Days?) about 7 or 8 years ago the MT Rainier had three locos steamed up in town. In Morton at the old depot location there was a turning wye, half of which was entirely covered by dirt. If you didn't know it was there - well, it wasn't.

Whoever was running the Climax that day decided they would try and "reopen" that part of the wye. If you had taken a movie you would have seen the Climax venture out onto the dirt as if without tracks.

I think they made it several hundred feet then stopped. Not sure what happened but I was told they derailed the lead truck. If that was true they had very little trouble getting back on the tracks again.

So maybe there sometimes is some truth to ad hype. In any case I rode in the Climax cab the next year and, to this day, put it down as the most amazing, bizzare loco ride I've ever taken.

Lon Wall
Trainmaster SVRY