Re: C&TS - July, 1982

Here we are back in town. Note the missing gondola. I don’t remember why we set it out, as we had our normal train the next day. Now for the interesting part, we see George and Russ checking around the engine, along with yours truly in his Brakie outfit. So…who took the picture?





There is a significant lack of photographs from July and August, 1982. Why? Because we seldom got any days off. Remember a couple of posts back when I remarked that we didn’t have any idea how the 7 days a week schedule was going to be handled? Well, it was very simple. Everyone worked every day. It was explained to us “that was how the Grande ran the Silverton Branch…” You were assigned a train, you worked when it ran. If it ran every day, you worked every day. We were all doubtful it would work, but we’d give it a try. George, being 60+ years old flatly refused. So, I got his days off on the engine. As predicted at the end of about 2 weeks straight, everyone was ready to kill everyone else. So we started getting one day off every two weeks. I worked 28 days in July. I spent one day off out chasing the train taking unimpressive pics.

After 4 derailments of the new cars, it was decided that some modification was in order, so they were deadheaded to the shop in Chama for attention, derailing at the Roller Coaster again on their trip over. I spent the trip back to Chama riding them with one hand on the dump valve waiting for them to hit the ground. Luckily they behaved.

In Chama the suspected problem was fixed - not enough side bearing clearance. In their rebuild, the cars never came off the trucks. The center bearings were dry and there was no side bearing clearance between the trucks the body bolsters. Additionally, the cars carried 40-ton capacity springs. There was less than 10 tons of body on the car which made the trucks too stiff to equalize properly. The addition of the body stiffened the frame of the car, which no longer could flex to accommodate superelevation on the curves. So, if the car got into a bit of a twist, one side of one truck got airborn, and on the ties it went. We had no way to respring the trucks (that was a few years away), so we resulted in the old model railroad trick of keeping the bolster screw on one truck loose to create a 3-point suspension. In our case, it was loosening the sidebearings on one truck. It made for a bit of a wobbly ride, but it was a better ride than bouncing on the ties.

On July 24, the Antonito Gang managed to run down a cow, which went under the engine and tender, then derailed caboose 05635 that was behind the engine. A big mess and 2:10 minute delay. Despite a thorough steam cleaning of 488’s running gear. She stank to high heaven for a week or so.

In all my years in Chama, we only ran down two cows, a pretty good record. The second one was a very sick yearly calf that was seen alongside the track near Cascade Creek for several days. It snowed one night, covering it up. Unfortunately it decided to sleep on the track than day, and got clobbered..

July 29 was notable for on this date, under the watchful eye of Russ, I took 488 and train down Cumbres for the first time. I was only slightly terrified. Russ commented that I did a good job but that was the first time he had ever seen a brake valve handle squeezed so tightly that water came out of it....... I guess I was a bit nervous.

Enough for now…..



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2017 09:48PM by Earl.