Re: SVRy trivia: long sought question answered

John, this was not a "conductors wheel report" but rather a form that I assume was processed at S.Baker for payroll purposes. Train 3 was a sched freight, train 2 was the daily east bound pass. and train 1 was the daily west bound pass. Since I posted the above, I have talked by phone with my freind Bob Bergstrom. During the period that he was SVRR's archivist he researched conductor wheel reports from March 1925 that had both Mikado's 19 and the 18 going to Prarrie. The reports he looked at showed a similar situation to my conductors time report in which the crew and engine did not return to their home terminal of Austin at the end of the day. He was able to see that what they were doing was setting up logistics of a stock train extra. By having the locomotive and crew on site at Prarrie first thing in the morning allowed them to load livestock spotting stock cars and get them moving toward Baker as early in the day as possible. In the reports he looked at the 18 and the 50 were both used to pull an 11 car stock extra. I believe he said it ran as EX50East, but at Dixie summit 50 was cut off and it ran as Ex18east, but was handed off to Ex17east at Whitney. Eng. 50 if I got the story right ran light back to Prarrie to bring train 2 (daily east bound pass.) to Austin. He and I speculated that the extra 2 hours claimed on the crew time report was compensation for having to bunk in the depot or in an outfit car at Prarrie as the crew was based out of Austin.