Samart Wrote:
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> Earl and John - I'd be interested in hearing more
> of this adventure. What year was this?
That would have been the 1993 run, by far the toughest one we ever had to deal with.
The first day, May 3, we got out of Chama at 800am with OY, 487 497 & 488. We got as far as Coxo Crossing at 430pm. The whole outfit backed to Cresco for the night, 488 took the outfit train back to Chama, derailing outfit 04982 and 488's trailer truck on the soft track at MP 336.1. 488 finally got into Chama at 930pm, tied up at 1000pm, 15 1/2 hours on duty.
May 4, 488 headed out with the outfit train from Chama at 830am, tiptoed across the bad track at 336.1 and arrived at Cresco at 915am. The Rotary outfit coupled together and headed up the hill. Cresco Tank was in service, but its limited capacity (10,000 gal.?) left us short of water. OY got its tanks full, but the engines were "short tanked". At Coxo we were scheduled to coal up at the crossing . When we got there, there were no trucks, so we started to Coxo. At Coxo Curve, the steam pipe for one of the OY's hydrostatic lubricators broke, and the the whole works came to a very quick stop. Someone got video of this. OY was plowing away at 5 feet of snow, when steam starts pouring out of every door and window. Marvin slammed the throttle closed and baled out the door. Everyone gets out and is peering up into the OY wondering what the hell just broke. Finally, Marv found the broken pipe and shut the steam off. By this time, the coal had shown up, so we backed to Coxo to coal everyting up, OY's broken lubircator pipe got taken to Chama to be repaired.
It was after noon before we got underway again. It was slow, hard plowing all the way to Windy Point, where we spent a good couple of hours on the big 10'+ drifts there. The section guys were out there knocking the drifts down so OY wouldn't dig a tunnel in the snow. It was late afternoon when we got around Windy Point. All this time a couple of section hands were shoveling snow into tenders. 497 seemed to need the most attention. As it left Cresco with the least water. As we passed MP 331, 497 announced they were out of water and we stopped.
At that time, my first wife, Carmen, was an EMT in Chama and had close ties to the Chama Fire Department. Someone gave her a ride to town, and she hunted up the Fire Chief and told her the situation. There was concern about the legality of the Chama FD crossing into Colorado, but in the end, they decided to come to the rescue. So, we sat on the side of the hill, while the Chama FD came up and watered 497 and 487. Their tanker could only hold about a 1/4 of a tender, so they had to run back and forth down to where Wolf Creek went under the highway to suck up another tanker full and come back up. All this time we watched the sun sink over the horizon.
Finally at about 900pm, we had enough water in everything to head for the top, plowing in the darkness. We plowed through to the road crossing, stopped at 930pm and backed up so all concerned could get a deep drink at the water plug, then tied up and went home, tieing up at 1030pm, 14 1/2 hours on the clock.
The crews had to have 10 hours off so Wed. May 5 the call time was 1000am in Chama. 488 was cut loose from the train and 487 and 497 spent the day clearing the Cumbres Yard, before heading east managing to get to MP 327.3 (near the upper Los Pinos phone shed) at 615pm. There we called it quits and backed to Cumbres for the night, arriving at 635pm, tieing up in Chama at 730pm. Only 9 1/2 hrs today.
Thurs May 6, called at 730am. At Cumbres everything got coaled and watered, leaving Cumbres at 1045am. At Los Pinos we watered everything from 1245pm to 100pm, and got to Osier at 1:00pm. At this point we headed home. We departed Cumbres at at 737pm with 497 shoving the outfit cars ahead, and 487 bringing the OY and water car home. The soft spot at MP 336.1 had gotten much worse. While 497 and company managed to sneak across it unscathed. 487 and OY had lots of trouble. In the end, we derailed both trucks of 487, both of OY's tender trucks and OY's back truck. We left the frogs underneath OY and rolled her front truck across them as it was about to hit the ties too. There is nothing more character building than rerailing heavy stuff in a 5 foot snow cut.....
We got in at 1030pm, tied up at 1100pm. 15 1/2 hours on duty. I went home and slept for 2 days.
But it was GREAT FUN........
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2020 01:49PM by Earl.
