Bringing 315 Down

John,

The pix and videos of 315's first run with a load looked great. I was wondering about bringing the 315 down Hermosa grade light on the initial test run to Rockwood. Did you guys fit a drifting throttle on the engine? Perhaps with the much lighter engine, coming down on the engine brakes only is not a problem.

Thinking about that reminded me of a time many years ago when you and I had run a helper turn to Cumbres, I think on 487. While sitting on the porch of the section house eating our lunch, with the engine parked at the water plug, you happened to notice that the retaining nut and thrust washer were sheared clean off the left side eccentric crank pin. The rod was still in place, but I was afraid it might come off the crankpin on the return trip to Chama, so we disconnected the pin at the link foot and removed the eccentric rod. That meant we had to come all the way down on the engine/tender brakes only. We took it nice and slow, but the tires got pretty hot. I think we parked at Lobato for a while to let things cool down a bit. I don't remember if you can drift all the way into the yard from the bottom of the 4% with a light enine, but I don't remember getting dragged on into the yard. I do remember being up late that night machining and installing a new eccentric crank pin and thrust washer. That was in the days when we didn't often have a backup locomotive available for the next day's run.