The SVRy "Conductor's Report of Time of Train Crew", shown is interesting because this is for a crew that had a fairly unique assignment. Note that they operated 4 different scheduled trains each day with SVRy eng. #50. Their day started out at Austin with Train #3 which was the daily freight move from Austin up over the summit at Dixie, down through the 2 switchbacks and then the long descent to the John Day River Valley and Prairie City. Once the crew arrived with their freight cars, they coupled up to the waiting passenger consist. This could be a coach, combine and an RPO. This train would be #2 the daily east bound passenger train. They would climb out of the valley, through the switch backs over Dixie Summit and then a long descent down Bridge Cr. to Bates on the Middle Fork of the John Day River. So far as I know, they met the west bound passenger train #1 at Bates, where they swapped engines between the consists. They may have met at Austin, but I think that was probably before 1918 when the new company town of Bates was built along with the company hotel trackside. So now our crew is coupled up to Train #1 to take it back up Bridge Cr. to Dixie Summit, down through the switch backs and another long descent down to the valley, across the valley to Prairie City. Notice Train #4. Our crew after uncoupling from the passenger consist would now head back east with freight cars as #4. Based on some other types of reports we have from 1925, they would stop at Bates and do any switching needed at the mill, then head over to the engine house at Austin to tie up for the day. The crew made 4 trips over a summit with 3-4% grades each day taking 8 hours. They got to claim a 10 hour day per their wage agreement, so I imagine it was a pretty good job as long as the crew was all working together, what with all of the switching required plus working through the switch backs. This time record is 1921. By 1925, in other reports we have, we see that scheduled train #4 is no more and the return trip at the end of the day is always an extra. This could be because the time required to do mill switching on the way back to Austin may have varied making a predictable schedule at the end of the day hard to keep. The engineer shown on the report is Ulysses Sylvester Carpenter. He was a long time SVRy employee and was at the throttle for the last regular passenger train on the SVRy in 1937. His son was Floyd Carpenter who became SVRy's master mechanic and then superintendent after mainline operation ended in 1947. He was still around to help the fledgling volunteers at SVRR in the 1970's with restoration to service of the WHEccles #3 and was on hand for for the ribbon cutting when SVRR opened in 1976.
