Re: Chama Roundhouse - a Fred Jukes photo from 1906

Dave,

Actually, Eureka did not run out of wood. We had plenty of wood but it was the lowest grade of "death wood." The damn stuff was green and wet and would not burn. We stalled on our way from Antonito heading to Big Horn and had a train full of passengers. It was really embarrassing. Ron Bunker on my crew took a look around and noticed the sagebrush was plentiful and DRY. So we hopped off the locomotive and started pulling up sage and throwing it in the locomotive and tender. One of the passengers (who was from England) came over to me and asked what we were doing. I told him that this was a grand old western railroad tradition burning sagebrush. With that he called to his comrades who piled out of their car and began helping us get the locomotive and tender filled with sage. It was a memorable event !

Anyway, we backed to Antonito and got another load of wood that was drier.

Dan Markoff