Re: C&TSRR: #19 Not Taking Water at Cumbres in '75 . . .

Earl Wrote:
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> 0503 has never had any sort of restroom. So I
> guess one needed a strong constitution to ride
> this train..

There was also no domestic water tap at Cumbres that would be needed to fill the water tanks on the regular restroom cars.

> Tank is right about the carefree carpentry work
> opening up the boxcars. The rear car's chainsaw
> work is not very straight.

I would be very curious to know how they crewed these trains, my guess would be just an engineer plus a conductor, with no fireman. Here is #19 departing the summit, from Russo's photo: notice this side of the cab appears to be empty, without a fireman:



In 1975 there was no pool of enginemen from which they drew to operate trains, in fact there was only one regular engineer (Rich Braden, visible in the photos of 483 at Sublette). Yet the regular schedule was a two-day with an eastbound to Antonito on the first day, followed by a westbound to Chama the second day, three times a week. On Saturday-Sunday the trains were usually long enough to require doubleheading to Cumbres eastbound. Who ran the helper, one might ask? This was done by raiding the shop crew for half a day, which in the summer was typically Bernie Watts with Dave Rusconi firing.

So then who ran the Pineapple trains? Here is Russo's Sublette pic which shows the engineer in the other side of the cab:



Can't make out who this might be, but I'm wondering if the helper crew also ran the diesel by making a mad return dash up the Pass by car after putting the helper away in Chama.