Right you are Cokerman...
The Farmington run involved lots of "spot time" while cars were unloaded, switched, etc. That resulted in lots of overtime, something that all railroaders live for. Old heads tell me if the NG had to deal with the current 12-hour law, it wouldn't have worked at all.
Jim Pearce told me of the long shove move into Farmington. I don't recall the details, but I think it involved a facing point move into Farmington, picking up the empties inbound, shoving them ahead to town, then spotting the loads headed back to Durango.
He did say Farmington water was foul. Dispite loading the tender with water treatment "Nalco Balls", the boilers foamed. He said he rarely got out of Farmington with out taking some water. He would tank up in Bondad headed south, switch Farmington, then take only enough water to get back to Bondad. Sometimes they missed thier guess and had to drop thier train north of Cedar Hill and run for water. He told of a winter time trip with a 470 (common winter-time power to Farmington because the roadbed got real soft). They were headed home with a big train. He had a green fireman who managed to to slug the engine with too much coal. They were dragging about 60 cars. They had to stop near Flora Vista to blow up steam, shake the fire down, and get the water up in the boiler. He got to about 4 miles from the tank when the injecter sucked the tender dry. As he was beating the engine hard, he had no choice but to stop, cut off and run for water.
I guess running for water was a more forgivable sin than dropping the fire. At least it wasn't as hard on the engine.
