RW, in the early 70s, I became good friends with D&RGW engineer Frank Wright. Spend hours with him at his home in Grand Junction taking notes and recording him. He mentioned your grandfather many times. Following are a few examples....
The Crested Butte run was always held by the older men like Estes, Berryhill, Lathrop and Braswell. They would use us pool men on helpers and that is when I would work on the branch. But I did work on the Crested Butte switch engine quite a lot especially in the winter time. I also worked on both rotaries although I got to run the OO only a couple of times, but I did run one of the engines behind it a lot of times.
This time I run OO, we got to Jacks Cabin, the lubricator on the rotary wasn't mounted straight, it was tipped over to one side. When they drained the rotary this one feed froze it never drained out and it wouldn't feed to that left side of the rotary and I had to stop at Jack's Cabin and send back to Gunnison for a part. Got thru Slate Cut by about the water box and stuck the wheel. C L. Braswell was the pilot. We thawed the wheel out. I thought we would go on to Crested Butte, but we went back to Gunnison.
The 490s were wonderful engines in the snow. They were so heavy they didn't slip much. You could buck now!
I bucked out the wye. You had to back around the wye. Snow was drifted over as high as a box car. I had the flanger behind me. Of course you would lift the blade up and then back as far as you could go and then drop the blade and come ahead.
Bernie Dean won a bet off of C L Braswell. Braswell bet Bernie that I couldn't make it. But I made it, took about three pokes.
