Great summary , Earl . The 50 mile run to Farmington , NM was a favored trip of the "old heads" with big seniority .The crew owould take an engine and caboose to Carbon Junction ,about 2 miles below the depot ,and hook on to a Farmington-bound train of loads ,mostly drill casing ,well equipment and drilling mud . The good news was that you got home that night .The bad news was switching in Farmington especially after natural gas was being developed in a big way from 1950-56 . At one time this branch was the most profitable onthe D&RGW system . In response the D&RGW ,(typical) added only one little siding, in front of the Baroid Corporation ,in Farmington. Baroid paid for it .Lots of cars were spotted on the mainline about a mile or two north of the depot ,in front of Ullman-Heath(a big oilfield supplier) and General Electric(another supplier of motors and well equipment) . This often required shoving up to 90 cars from Aztec to GE ,about 10 miles ! Switching in Farmington took hours ,with cars waiting to be unloaded ,empties and incoming loads . Younger men hated it and even seasoned conductors would simply get confused and stop ,and try to sort it all out mentally . There were other curve balls . While checking cars as to whether shippers had unloaded them yet , brakemen had to look for drunks around the cars ,especially around Rez payday ,the 1st and 15th . The water at Farmington Tank was considered the worst on the system because it caused foaming ,so engine men tanked up at Stateline Tank(Bondad) and would try to get back to the same tank(40 mile round trip) .Sometimes they didn't make it ,and I heard some stories about some very close calls . At the time the D&RGW would give a crew 60 days off for dropping a fire because of water emergencies ,so that was avoided at all costs . One story involved a crew taking water at Stateline ,then starting an injector with a rope on the handle ! The days were dawn-to-dusk affairs pushing on 16 hours . Also there would be the occaisional drunk who would stumble out of an empty boxcar at Carbon Junction wondering how the hell he got there ! When the weather got too hot down in Farmington ,the old heads would bump other trainmen to work on the Silverton .
