The following is a true story. It happened at the Colorado RR Museum in May of 1974.
We (Fred Oster, Dave Dean, Joe Chafee, Paul Tomer, Rick Tancredo, Jack Campbell, and I) fired up the #346 on a Saturday in May for the second steam up of the year. The first steam up that year was in February. The February steam up had been the first time I had been on a live steam locomotive since I was a small boy in Telluride in the summer of 1951.
During the February steam up I got to fire the engine almost all day on Saturday and I Sunday I got to run it two times. The track at that time was a “U” from down near the entrance to the parking lot to up in back about 300 feet beyond “No Agua” tank. On my first run under the watchful eye of Ken Scheer I did just fine. On my second run I came down the hill too fast and Ken was afraid I would turn over a rail approaching the three way switch but I didn't and everything was OK.
In May Ken was not there so the “ experienced steam men” were Fred and Dave who had been around for a few steam ups. On Saturday everything had gone fine. On Sunday someone either Fred or Dave had started the engine backing up on the 4% grade just below the cut and spun the drivers resulting in a shower of cinders. Although no fires were set Bob Richardson also occasionally known as "SOB" (Sweet Old Bob) was mad and yelled at Fred and Dave. They got mad and walked off.
I was then nominally in charge as I was the oldest among the remaining crew. Of course having already run the locomotive once on Saturday, twice in February and knowing the tricks of turning on the lifting Edna injector I knew "everything" as only the young and cocky can. We had been doing switching on Saturday and that morning so there were several moves that needed to be made before we could put the locomotive away. I declared myself Engineer, Rick fired and Jack, Joe, and Paul handled the switches with Jack as foreman since he knew were everything was supposed to end up. Now for those of you who have never run a C-19 the engine is deckless and the cab is small and cramped. The easiest way to run is by sitting in the window with your head outside and your hands inside.
We had probably about an hour and a half or two hours worth of switching to do to get everything where Jack wanted it. Shortly after we started it started raining. Getting a signal, putting her in reverse, whistling off, grabbing some throttle, kicking off the air, making the move, getting a signal, setting the air, stopping at the right place, setting out the cars and going for more. The old girl ran beautifully and everything went amazingly smoothly even though I had literally only run a steam engine three times before.
Do you remember how in the old “Roadrunner” cartoons how Wiley Coyote would run off the edge of the cliff when chasing the Roadrunner and he would be doing fine until he looked down. Then down he would go splat. Well pretty soon I realized I didn't really know how to do it that well but it didn't seem to matter. My hands and body kept right on doing it as though I had been doing it for years. This went on for well over an hour. I had the very eerie feeling that someone, maybe the old engineer from Telluride who had put me in the cab of the locomotive back in 1951 to keep from running over me, had seen that I was in way over my head and had come to save me again. “You sit in the window and give me the use of your hands and we'll get this job done” he seemed to be saying.
The next day after everything was done and the locomotive was parked and cold I went back out to the museum and put my right glove on the throttle and my left glove on the brake handle. Now usually when you take your hands out of your gloves they collapse and lay flat. This time they didn't , instead they stayed inflated as though there were invisible hands in them. I took three pictures that day with my old Contaflex camera. One from the gangway looking into the cab and two from on the ground. They all show the inflated gloves and one of them has a light streak in the middle of the frame where a person would have been if he was standing at the controls.
I have the slides packed up somewhere in a storage unit here in Chama. If I can find them I will try to scan and post them. I don't believe in ghosts and I am not sure I believe in guardian angels but maybe I have one.
The above is a true story, go figure.
John Bush
