Re: July 5, 1925: a long day, for fireman Koopman

ElStumpee, I just did some of that math stuff and after alowing 5 min. for each depot stop 10 min. for Prarrie, plus the 20 min to clean the screen and build steam, the average speed works out to about 19MPH, which would have been no problem for the 50. I think it is safe to assume that they ran a lot faster on the tangent areas with minimal grade. Jim Grigsby said that Floyd Carpenter told him that Raferty Flat was called Rapidy Flat by the SVRy crews. There is also a story about one of the SVRy engineers speeding with the 50 between S.Baker and the Bowen Valley and he hit someones bull on the track. The story is that they hit the animal so hard there were pieces of bull comming in the cab window etc. etc. yuck. The engineer got fired over that one I guess. We know 19 and 20 would cruise up around 35MPH. SVRy had 8 sections for it's 80 miles, so in the hey day track was probably pretty well maintained despite jokes to the contrary.
Sure hope you can make it back soon. I think maybe you are the guy to take your insulators and install a new ph. line along the present ROW. I wonder where we can get 10 miles of iron wire? Did Jerry tell you he thinks he may have found out which enigne the tender tank we found came off of?