Re: That darn backhoe

John is correct. One of the shop crew took a snowmobile up to Big Horn a couple days before the charter and reported that he thought the wye would need to be dug out. The only way to get to the wye with the back hoe was to drive up the ROW, which would have messed up the snow for the plow train photographs, so the decision was made to take the back hoe to Big Horn on the steel equipment flat. That meant a day's work redoing the brake piping, done the day before we went to Big Horn. Marvin was welding up the angle cock bracket pretty much at the last minute.

Once we got to Big Horn, the engine crew decided that the snow didn't look any deeper than last year, when they were able to back through the wye, so they decided to give it a shot. The result was 489 got stuck and the back hoe had to help pull it out of the snow bank, then clear the wye anyway, after we had headed west with just the flanger outfit.

Michael Allen