Re: State Line Fill - A headache for the D&RGW and C&TS

This was going to be a bigger job than #19 could handle with a few cars of cinders. Newly painted (by yours truly..) 488 was used along with about 7 dump bottom gons loaded with river rock. We had run one 5-car train, but more - much more - was needed. We found a couple more candidates and spent the afternoon loading them up....


Seems we loaded the cars on far east yard track toward the south end of the yard.


We left the cars on Track 1, up by the water tank that afternoon, with the plan of taking them up the hill then next morning. It had rained hard overnight, and river run rock had a lot of sand in it that soaked up a considerable quantity of water. That soggy morning, we coupled into the cars and drifted back out on to the mainline. The first thing Russ noted was, they didn't want stop very well. It took a good hard set to get them to stop. Russ, kicked off the air while the MoW guy acting as brakeman lined the switch. Russ whistled ahead, opened 488's throttle. 488 took a deep breath....... and spun hard digging 8 nice divits in the rail head. Oooh boy, this is going to be...interesting. Finally, with enough sand on the rails 488 got underway and we began the long slow slog shoving 7 soggy loads of river rock up the hill.


It was real fight. We later figured that the dry wieght of the train would have been about 240 tons. Add some water to the river rock/sand, snotty rail conditions, it got interesting real fast. We stalled only once and Russ managed to get us underway again. I think I put about 3 tons of coal into 488 that morning just getting halfway up the mountain. There was a constant conversation between me and the firebox "I'll take this scoop of coal, you go get me another...."


Yours truly, with the battle over with. Now I remember how I stayed so skinny....