A Railroad Saga... (add to it)...

Ed Stabler Wrote:
Few people were stirring at daybreak that morning in 1893 in the small, somewhat dreary community of Burning Switch, Montana. A short, southbound mised train made it's smoky way out of the canyon north of town and stopped to take on water at the dilapidated, ice-coated tank just across the track from the old boxcar which served more or less as a depot. Billy Thompson, making his first pay trip as a newly promoted engineer, eased down from the cab of the little Baldwin 2-8-0, oil can in hand.....
To Which I added:
and began inspecting and lubricating his new charge. He had taken promotion the previous summer but only recently, with the retirement of J. D."Stinky" Smith and G. B. "Jelly Belly" Moore taking a regular turn was he able to bid off the Firemans' board and on to the Engineer's Extra Board. Here he was on his first Pay Trip.
The Hog was a getting a bit long in the tooth, having been built almost 20 years earlier, but to him it looked like the finest machine ever to come out of Philadelphia. He wished that he had a photographer to record this moment, but they were expensive and he was still on Fireman's wages until he completed this trip. He saw that his fireman was....