Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online

Chapter 8

0014 1/9/1981 – 0319 1/9/1981:
C&SL Snowplow Extra One
Lordston Northern Extra 9608

“Goddamn it, no,” Ralph McPhee swore. “I haven’t got enough power to pull half of Camden up there with me.”

“But think of all those poor people taken from their homes,” the Red Cross woman simpered. She’d pestered McPhee from the minute that she had heard of the attempt to make it to Spearfish Lake and Warsaw. “They need food, they need blankets, they need clothing . . . ”

Ralph McPhee was no executive. Part of the talent of an executive is to say no, make it stick, and not hurt feelings at the same time. McPhee did not have this talent.

“Those people you’re crying about are all safe and sound in Spearfish Lake. If you’d had a lick of sense, you’d know that by now. What they need is to have their homes saved, and I can’t help with that when you’re bothering me all the time. Now go tend to your fundraising and let people who work do some good.”

The Red Cross worker hung the phone up in disgust. In the ramshackle little cubbyhole at one end of the abandoned loading dock in the Camden engine shed, McPhee swore again. He had to be everywhere at once, trying to get things going for the relief train that Ellsberg needed, and every crazy bastard in Camden seemed to think that they had to talk to him, when all he needed to do was railroad. He even needed someone here in the shop to answer the phone while he and his old-time buddy, Harold Stevens, were out in the yard trying to get things set up.

McPhee and Stevens had been friends for more than half a century. McPhee had never gotten beyond the eighth grade; his family was too poor. He had been able to get a job as a section hand on the Decatur and Camden back before it absorbed several other lines and became the Decatur and Overland in the years before the depression. After a few years he had become a fireman, running engines that were a whole lot like the former Gulf, Mobile, and Ohio 9608 that stood in the back of the engine shed. He’d stayed with the D&O all that time, even during the depression when his low seniority on the fireman’s list kept him from working for weeks at a time. He’d put in over fifty years with the D&O when he finally retired.

The short, grey-haired man with the still-sparkling eyes found retirement to be even more boring than he ever could have imagined. When Bud Ellsberg had come looking for someone to switch cars a few hours a week, Ralph and his widower friend Harold had jumped at the chance. Ten or fifteen hours a week proved to be enough to keep two men in their seventies happy; if that wasn’t enough, they had often driven over to Lordston to help Bill Lee take care of the 9608, and occasionally run it. When a windstorm had flattened Lee’s old engine shed the summer before, McPhee, knowing of the extra space in the C&SL building, was able to make the connection.

“Maybe we’d better wait for the people to get here from Putnam before we try to do any switching,” Harold said. “Besides, we’ve got to get started on the 9608, too.”

“Can’t fire her up till we tow her outside.”

“We got lots to do to her before we get a fire in her. Tell you what. I’ll go get started, and you stay with the phone.”

“I ain’t looking forward to that,” McPhee replied. “Every idiot in Camden thinks that they’ve got to go with us. First Channel 3 has been bugging us all evening, then when Ellsberg said, ‘OK, let them go,’ then Channel 8 thinks they’ve got to send a bunch of people, too. Can’t really say no to one and not say no to t’other. Then the newspaper thinks they’ve got to send someone. And every time I turn around they call us from Spearfish Lake again, and it’s ‘Bring this, don’t bring that.’”

The door of the ramshackle building opened and a line of men came in. McPhee recognized one of them: Gene Ballard, a youngster who’d broken in as a diesel fireman with him, back in the early sixties sometime. The rest of the people he didn’t know, but this had to be the bunch coming from Putnam Yard.

“Hi, Ralph!” Ballard called. “Long time, no see.”

“Good to see you again, Gene. We ain’t nowhere ready to go yet, but the coffee’s hot.”

“What have you got to do yet?”

“Damn near everything,” McPhee admitted. “If you can help, there’s a lot to do.”

“Sure thing. That’s what we came for.”

“Any of you guys know anything about steam?” McPhee asked.

“Hell no,” the younger man replied. “I’m the oldtimer here, and I never worked steam. What in hell do you want anyone who knows anything about steam for, anyway? I thought we were just going to take your engine and ours and the plow up there.”

“More than that, now. There’s a bunch of people and a bunch of stuff to go up to Spearfish Lake with us, so now we’re taking the old 9608 there to haul a second section.”

Ballard snorted. “Whoever dreamed that up is crazy as hell. That old teakettle probably can’t pull weeds. What’s so important that they want to try to use it?”

McPhee was a bit insulted by Ballard’s remark. After all, it had been about as much his idea as Bill Lee’s to use the old 2-6-0. “Well, mostly the Camden Fire Department is sending over a couple of their big trucks and a bunch of people to help them out up there. Then, there’s a boxcar load of other fire equipment that they’re sending, and about half a boxcar load of odds and ends. None of that stuff has got here yet.”

“How many people are we taking?”

“Don’t know for sure yet,” McPhee said. “Maybe forty.”

Ballard was amazed. “You aren’t planning on putting forty people in the crumb wagon, are you?”

“Naw, no way. When Miz Ellsberg called earlier, she told us that they’d taken the people out of that little town up there in school buses loaded on flatcars. I guess what they can do, we can do. They’re gonna send us over a school bus.”

Ballard shook his head again and replied, “What a lashup. I suppose we’d better get started. What first?”

“Suppose we’d better get the engines going. When we get the diesels out we’ll want to drag the 9608 outside so we can get a fire on her grates. Couple of you guys can help Harold with that.”

“Any of you guys want to play with the smoke wagon?” Ballard asked. With a “what-the-hell” attitude, a couple of brakemen went to join Stevens.

A bit miffed at Ballard’s latest disparagement of the highly polished excursion engine, McPhee went on. “Gene, I suppose you know the yard here. Once the diesels are going, hook onto the plow outside and plow out up to the loading ramp. Then yank two empty boxes and three flats offen Track Three, and shove the flats up to the loading ramp. While you’re messing with that, there’s a gon load of coal back on Track One somewhere. Couple that onto the back of the 9608.” The phone rang again. “That’ll keep you busy for a while,” the old man said as he headed for the hated device. “Get back with me when you’ve done that.”

As the Decatur and Overland people began starting the two engines, they heard McPhee’s voice echoing through the cavernous old building. “Hell, no! I ain’t got power enough to drag half of Camden up there with me. They need gas masks up there, yeah, but there ain’t no way we can take that many people or that much stuff. You National Guard people want to help, though, you can send us over a bunch of field rations and sleeping bags and stuff for us in case we get stuck somewhere on the way.”

The Spearfish Lake Hospital was a small one, and not usually very busy. Even with the slug of patients brought down from Warsaw on the train, things were quiet in the early morning hours. Duty nurse Ann Hartmann was quietly making the rounds, just checking on the people. She took a look into the nursery, where the new little baby boy was sleeping. Even though the parents had named him “James,” everyone on the staff was calling him “Stormy,” even his mother, and it looked like a name he’d be stuck with for a lifetime.

Most of the other patients were asleep, and the nurse moved lightly down the hall, so as not to wake them. From several doors away, though, she could hear the coughing coming from one of the rooms, and she thought she’d better investigate.

The patient turned out to be one of the firemen brought down from Warsaw. He had a nasal cannula up his nose to supply him oxygen, and even from a distance, the nurse could see he was having trouble breathing. As a first measure, she thought she’d better increase his oxygen supply. She checked the flow meter on the wall: it read “zero.”

“He must have turned it off,” she thought, but when she checked the valve, she found it on. “Must be a blockage in the system,” she thought, but the tube seemed all right. Disconnecting the hose, she cracked the valve on the wall – but nothing came from it.

She checked the other oxygen outlet in the room. Nothing. Somewhat more alarmed, she went across the hall to a room that was unoccupied, and checked the oxygen valve there. Still nothing.

Thoroughly alarmed now, she rushed back to the nurse’s station to make a call to Hjalmer Lindhalsen.

The hospital’s maintenance man had been asleep at his home not far away when Nurse Hartmann’s call woke him. In but a few minutes, he was on his snowmobile, racing over to the hospital. He knew from what she had told her that there was no oxygen pressure. It had been all right that evening, when he left, and since they’d put in the new liquid oxygen system the previous summer, they hadn’t had any problems at all. There hadn’t been any need in the last few days to use much oxygen, and although Hjalmer made the routine checks daily, he hadn’t noticed anything wrong.

He pulled his snowmobile to a stop outside the big red and white liquid oxygen tank. The winter shouldn’t make any difference, he knew. Considering the extremely cold temperature of the oxygen, a frigid winter would make no difference over a torrid summertime, and while the blowing snow was very uncomfortable, and the wind chill was off the scale, the actual temperature wasn’t that bad.

The gauge on the tank read eighty percent, just like it was supposed to, but the flow meter, he could see in his flashlight, was zero. Suspicious, he went back to the quantity gauge, and tapped it with his flashlight; instantly, it fell off to zero, and Lindhalsen’s heart rate almost did the same. The gauge had been stuck, and there had to have been a leak for some time, somewhere. Whatever it was, it was beyond his capability to fix; they’d have to get a serviceman up here after the storm.

Fortunately, there was a backup: there were twelve bottles of pressurized oxygen, sitting in a storage shed. The Hospital Board had insisted, over Lindahlsen’s protest, that he hang on to them, just in case. Now he was glad he’d lost that fight with them. It only involved the turn of a couple valves to isolate the liquid system and get gas flowing from one of the green bottles.

Lindahlsen went inside and told the duty nurse that she had gas again. “The liquid system’s busted,” he told her. “There’s twelve bottles in reserve. Some of them have had some used so are down a bit, but they ought to hold us for a while.”

“Not if they bring many more toxic smoke inhalation cases down from Warsaw,” she said.

“Yeah, I didn’t think of that,” Lindahlsen said. I’d better call Rod and see if he’s got any ideas.”

The 9608 had a cab that was open in the rear, and the rear was pointed to the east. Snow was already drifting underfoot when McPhee climbed up to have a word with Stevens. “You about ready to get steam up?” he asked.

“Got a fire in her,” Stevens said, “But it’s gonna be a while yet. Everything else loaded and ready?”

“Not by a long shot,” McPhee admitted. “The bus is here, but we haven’t got it loaded onto the flat, yet. The fire department hasn’t gotten here, yet, not to mention all the stuff they’re bringing.” He changed the subject. “Let’s make sure we take some spare batteries for the radio.” Since the LN used their Alco for switching with the D&O or the NCRR when there was a freight car to go over to Haleyville, there were occasionally two engines operating on the line at the same time; thus, the battery radio.

“Thought of that already,” Stevens replied. “I sent one of the D&O guys to get some.”

“How long before you think you’ll have this ready to go?”

“An hour, maybe a little more.”

“Gives me something to work with,” McPhee said, switching on the radio. When it had warmed up, he called Ballard, who was in the cab of the 1478. “You ’bout done with the switching?”

“Been done a long time,” Ballard replied. “We even got that gon load of coal onto the back of the parlor stove.”

“Noticed that,” McPhee said. “We’ve still got a lot to do before we’re ready to go. Why don’t you guys plow out to the north a ways? That’ll give us a running start when we do get this section ready to leave.”

“Sounds good,” Ballard said. “But I thought you wanted us to stay together.”

“I do,” McPhee replied. “But we’ll catch up. You won’t be going that fast. Before you go, stop off by the tank car over behind the engine shed and top off with fuel. I’m pretty sure the switches are all lined your way once you’re past the wye, but you’d better check and be sure.”

“Good enough,” the radio squawked.

“One more thing,” the old man said into the microphone. “You’d better stay in radio contact in case you have trouble and we have to come pick you up.”

Ballard laughed. “More than likely we’ll have to be the ones to come and pick you and that old trash fire up.”

Stevens looked up from the 9608’s boiler. “He keeps badmouthing this old girl,” he said to McPhee. “I don’t want to wish him ill, but I’d sure like to see this old girl yank his ass out of trouble.”

When McPhee walked back into the engine shed, the phone was ringing again. He was prepared to say “no” again, but this time it proved to be Kate Ellsberg, calling from Spearfish Lake. “We just had a call from the sheriff,” she said. “They’ve got a shortage of medical oxygen at the hospital here. The supply is down to next to nothing. I gather that they want you to gather up all the medical oxygen you can get your hands on and bring it with you. Upton says do it, even if you have to leave some firefighting equipment behind.”

“How much does he think they need?” McPhee asked.

“He didn’t say. I didn’t talk to the hospital directly, but the sheriff said to bring all you can get your hands on.”

“Miz Ellsberg,” Ralph sighed. “I hate to say this, but I don’t have any idea where I’d round up something like that at this hour.”

“I don’t either, Ralph. But for a start I’d call up the Red Cross and see what they can do.”

McPhee spent a few minutes working up his courage once he was off the phone with Spearfish Lake. The way he had told off that woman earlier, she probably wasn’t ready to give him the time of day. Might as well get it over with, he thought, dialing the phone for Sally Keller, the woman he had talked to earlier. “This is Ralph McPhee from the Camden and Spearfish Lake Railroad. You still want to do something for those people up in Warsaw?” he asked.

“Are you finally going to let us take food and relief supplies after all?” she sniffed haughtily.

“That’s not what I’m calling about,” he said as gently as he could manage. “I’ve just had a call from the office in Spearfish Lake. They need medical oxygen up there, and from what I gathered, they need a he . . . an awful lot. The woman in the office said they were almost out of it.”

“How much do you need?”

“They didn’t say,” McPhee told her. “They just said, ‘Bring all you can get your hands on.’ I’ve got about half a box car left, and I could find more space if I had to.”

“How much is half a box car?”

“It’s a space, oh, eight by eight by twenty feet.”

“That’s an awful lot of oxygen. There may not be that much in all of Camden.”

“Tell you what,” McPhee said. “We’re going to be ready to go in about an hour. If you can fill a third of that space with oxygen, you can have the rest of it for relief supplies.”

The woman hesitated. “We’ll have to send a Red Cross representative, too.”

McPhee was relieved. Space for one and the relief supplies was a reasonable trade for the oxygen. “I can let you have space for one,” he said. “We’re going to be overcrowded as it is. Get it here as fast as you can. The longer we fiddle here, the longer it’s going to take to get up there.”

As McPhee hung the phone up, he became aware of someone else in the little office. He prepared to say “no” again. “And who might you be?” he asked.

“Lieutenant Johnson of the state fire marshal’s office. I’ve got the Camden Fire Department detachment that’s going to Warsaw.”

“Glad to see you, Johnson. I was beginning to wonder if you was going to get here at all.”

“It took a while. They took a couple people from each station, rather than just strip one station. By the way, call me Milt.”

“How many people you got to go, Milt?”

“Twenty was all you said to bring, so twenty is all we brought. We’d sure like to take more.”

“I’d like to take more myself,” McPhee replied. “But we’ve only got so much power, so we’ve got to keep the load light. What equipment you got to go?”

“When they called from Warsaw, they said what they needed real bad was snorkel trucks and air compressors. We brought two snorkels, a truckload of hose, some four-inch booster pumps and two diesel air compressors. Those are on trailers, so they’ll have to go on flatcars with the trucks. And we have every spare air pack in Camden. Rounding up all that stuff is what took us so long.”

“How big are those trucks?”

“They’re just about the biggest equipment Camden’s got. They’re about fifty feet long. They’ve got arms that reach ninety feet in the air and shoot water.”

McPhee nodded. “How long are the compressor trailers?”

Johnson scratched his head for a moment. “I didn’t really notice. They must be twelve or fifteen feet long, counting the tongue.”

The flatcars that McPhee had – the same ones that Bud had brought down on SLCR 21 the day before last – were only sixty feet long. But there was room left on the school bus flatcar, and the trucks could probably overhang a bit. It was time to quit horsing around. “You got your people over at the loading dock?”

“They’re all over there. There didn’t seem to be anybody in charge over there, so I came over here.”

“Well, let’s go over there and get things going.”

There wasn’t any sign of the D&O people at the loading dock. McPhee asked around and concluded that they had gone with the engines plowing the track northward. That left the two people trying to help get the 9608 going. Still, there were a lot of people milling around in the darkness at the loading dock who could be put to use. There were two TV crews with trucks and a good many more firemen than were supposed to be going north. A city plow had cleared out a parking spot near the consist, and there were several cars and three ambulances. Johnson told McPhee that Camden Receiving Hospital had put together a crew of doctors, nurses and emergency medical technicians to help relieve the hospital in Spearfish Lake; they had a lot of medical supplies. “I hope all these people don’t think they’re going,” McPhee told Johnson.

“No. A lot of them are off-duty firemen that I called over to help load some of the stuff.”

“Glad you did. It looks like we’ve got to load more stuff than I thought. I’ll tell you what; set your people to loading all your loose equipment in that first boxcar. That one’s all yours. We’ll put the National Guard gas masks and the other stuff that they’re a-bringing in one end of the second one. Put any luggage and medical supplies in that one, too. Any medical stuff that would freeze goes in the way car. The Red Cross is supposed to be over here after a while with more stuff, and I promised them half a box car. Once you get that going, get back with me and we’ll try to sort out all these other people and your trucks.”

“Are you Mr. McPhee?” a tall, distinguished-looking man in a parka asked.

“I am,” he said. “And you are?”

“I’m Nathan Chamberlain, of Channel 3 News. Look this way, please,” he said, pointing to one side. “You must have seen us on television.”

“Wouldn’t know,” McPhee replied. “Never watch Channel 3.”

“Before we get this interview going,” Chamberlain went on, unperturbed, “When do we load our crew truck?”

“I said you could take a crew,” McPhee told him. “Didn’t say nothing about a crew truck. I got trouble enough trying to figure out how to load what we gotta take. Keep your crew down to a couple people, too. We’ve got a lot of equipment that’s got to go. That doesn’t include TV people.” McPhee thought for a moment, then went on, “Say, aren’t you the son of a bitch that called Bill Lee last evening?”

“I called Mr. Lee over in Lordston, yes.”

“Well, frankly, Mr. Chamberlain, I don’t give a good goddamn whether you go or not after going behind my back like that. My boss said I could take TV people if I had room, not that I had to take them. As far as I’m concerned, take a couple people, but we’ll load the Channel 8 people first.” McPhee turned to check on the flatcar space, leaving the reporter in a strange condition: speechless. The cameraman, who had been running the video camera all through this episode, knew that this was one news bite that would never make it to the air, but would get played in the newsroom over and over again.

Milt Johnson came over. “It’s good to see that guy read off for once,” he said quietly. “He’s a pain in the ass at every fire we have.”

“Felt good to tell someone to go to hell.”

Johnson changed the subject. “Have you figured out how you want us to load these vehicles yet?”

McPhee eyed the flatcars. “Well, the bus would go first, I guess. It wants to go all the way up to the end of the flatcar. Put an air compressor on the flat with it, then the other air compressor on the end of the next flatcar. Then, if you take one of your snorkel trucks and stick the front of it right up against the air compressor and let the tail of it hang over the end of the flatcar, it ought to go all right. That leaves room for your other snorkel truck on the last flatcar.”

“We’re going to have to tie those vehicles down, somehow or another,” the fire marshal said.

“Right. There’s truck tie-down chains on those flatcars. If your people can’t figure out how to use them, I can show you.”

While McPhee and the Camden Fire Department people were getting the flatcars loaded, Ballard’s Decatur and Overland crew were out with the two diesels, plowing the tracks to the north. The tracks were more or less crosswind, and they had been drifting over for almost two days since Bud Ellsberg and John Penny had taken SLCR 22 north.

The two engines did not have much more power combined than did the Rock, up in Spearfish Lake, and their total weight was much the same. The C&SL’s little plow was much less efficient in the deep drifts than the big plow that Bud had on the Warsaw run, and it made for slow going. Where the big plow stood up so high that it took a man in the plow’s cupola to see what was ahead of the train, the little plow was small enough that it didn’t need an observer. It was possible to see over it from the cab of the 1478. The problem with the little plow was that it couldn’t chew through drifts as deep as the big plow could handle. When it hit a drift that was deep enough, snow would come right up over the top of the blade. Ballard and his crew were pushing as hard as they could, and they weren’t even to the first little town up the line before the nose of the 1478 was caked in snow to the point where the running boards were carrying tons of it.

The 1478 was in the lead, and it was followed by the much smaller 303. (While Bud and the people in Spearfish Lake knew the little forty-four-ton GE as the “Chessie,” McPhee and Stevens, with their D&O heritage, weren’t much on nicknaming engines.) Neither of the engines was equipped to run multiple unit with the other, so both of them required a crew on board. Being of such different sizes and makes, the operation of the two engines was far from smooth at first. There was a good amount of jerking and jolting and bumping as the little plow banged into a drift, exploding snow into the air and caking yet another layer onto the 1478’s red and white paint.

Their speed was not great, but in an hour they were halfway to the little town of Moffat, where they would be near the limit of their radio range. Under McPhee’s orders, they couldn’t go farther than that. “Think we ought to give the steamer a call while we still can?” one of the spare engineers asked Ballard.

“I suppose so,” the senior man replied. “Might as well find out if they’re coming at all.” He reached for the radio and called, “Extra 9608, this is Plow Extra Two. Are you guys on the move yet?”

He had to call a couple times before Stevens’ voice replied weakly, “Not yet, but we’ve got steam up and we ought to be leaving before long.”

“We’re getting out of range,” Ballard said. “If you need us, give Putnam a call on the yard frequency and have them call us on the route frequency. They should be able to reach us for another hour or so.”

For such a small engine, the steamer’s whistle was amazingly deep-throated and melodious to those who had become used to the metallic blatting of diesel air horns. It was the sound that McPhee had grown up and grown old with, and as the sound came through the blowing snow it carried the message that the engine was under power and would soon be ready to go.

It had taken longer than McPhee had hoped to get the vehicles tied down and to get the equipment loaded. The oxygen from the Red Cross hadn’t arrived yet, and McPhee had about made up his mind to leave without it if they didn’t show up by the time he was ready to go.

The 9608 panted steam into the storm as it pushed its cowcatcher up to the way car and coupled on. “Looks like we’re going to have to go,” McPhee said to himself as he walked up to the old museum piece to tell Stevens to back the consist up to where they could run around it. After that, they would back out to the wye and be able to head north with the whole train in proper order.

Stevens was waiting for him. “You know, Ralph, we really shouldn’t have these guys firing,” he said, referring to the D&O men who’d helped him get the old engine ready and fired. “After all, they’re supposed to be the relief crew for the diesels.”

“Suppose you’re right,” McPhee replied. “But if we’re going to let these guys go, we’re going to have to see if we can get some of the riders to help. You and I are just going to have to ride herd on them.”

McPhee walked back to the bus flatcar, which was by now filled with Camden firefighters. He called out to them, “Any of you people here think you can be a fireman?”

This statement was met by a chorus of hoots from the passengers. As the yells and catcalls died out, McPhee went on, “Good, we need some people to poke coal at the old steamer that’s gonna pull this train.”

As the little crew was climbing up to the cab of the 9608, two National Guard trucks roared up out of the storm. “You guys the train for Warsaw?” a driver yelled.

“Sure are,” McPhee yelled back. “What you got for us?”

“Oxygen and relief supplies from the Red Cross.”

McPhee was impressed. Sally Keller may have acted like a twit, but it was an impressive feat to pull that much stuff together in the time she had, at that hour of the night. “Second boxcar back,” Ralph yelled. I’ll get us some people to help move it.”

Within a minute or two, a string of Camden firemen and other workers were helping to move the truckloads of equipment into the half-loaded boxcar. A good portion of the load was long green bottles of medical oxygen, and it did nearly fill a third of the remaining space in the boxcar. The rest of the load was as promised: cased food, blankets, cots, pillows, tentage, stoves, even several bundles of snow shovels.

“Mr. McPhee?” a shrill female voice whined. He turned to find a fat, fortyish woman. “I’m Sally Keller from the Red Cross.”

“Miz Keller, I got to hand it to you. I never thought you’d find that much oxygen that quick. We was just gettin’ ready to go.”

“It’s good that we got here in time, then. Where do you want me to ride?”

“Are you going?”

“Of course I’m going. I’m the Red Cross representative.”

“Look, Miz Keller, you got to understand, this ain’t a regular passenger train. We got a few places to haul people, but they ain’t very comfortable. We don’t know how long it’s gonna take to get us there. All we can do is punch our way along until we either get there or get stuck.”

“I understand,” she replied. “I’ve got to see that the equipment we’re donating is put to proper use, so I’ll go.”

“Just so’s you understand,” McPhee told her. “You might as well ride in the way car.”

“The WHAT car?”

“The caboose. I’ll see you later,” he said, noticing that the last truck was nearly empty. “We’ve got to get moving before the track ahead of us drifts up behind the plow train.”

For thirty years and more, the 9608 steamer had mostly been a survivor. Now, at least for a moment, and perhaps for the last time, all those years of survival had a purpose.

Up in the windblown cab of the engine, Ralph McPhee and Harold Stevens felt a breeze of their youth. McPhee drove the engine through the deepening snow while Stevens tried to give the two firemen a short course in being firemen of another nature. McPhee only ran her about twenty-five miles an hour, since the track wasn’t good for much more, and she wasn’t much faster than that with a load, anyway; the engine’s owner, Bill Lee, had prudently set the safety valve rather lower than it had been set in the engine’s youth. Still, right at that point there wasn’t much snow on the track, the track was relatively level, and the load was light. Like a piece of machinery much younger in years, the engine rods pushed the drivers along as the old machine pressed northward on her mission of mercy.

In spite of the darkness of that early hour, the misery of the howling winds and the blowing snows of that predawn hour, word of the 9608’s coming had somehow reached the little town of Moffat, fifteen miles up the track from Camden Yard. As Harold Stevens and the firemen/firemen struggled to keep the fire within her hot, a small knot of people turned out in the little town to see their heritage pass once more, desperate mission though it might have been, to hear the deep-throated announcement of her coming through the blizzard. They could hear the steady chuff-chuff-chuff of her pistons expelling steam, see the drivers power her down tracks where no steam engine had moved for a quarter of a century or more, and to remember her as a part of that era when railroads were the only sinews that bound the nation together, before being just faltering, uninteresting pieces of industrial machinery that blocked the roads occasionally.

Had he thought about it at all, the romance of this snow-blown mercy mission would have been lost on Ralph McPhee. He had a job to do; what the engine’s passing might mean to someone watching had nothing on what the engine was pulling might mean to some other, more desperate people. By the time he was passing through Moffat, he was beginning to wonder just how far ahead the two diesel engines and the plow might be. He knew that they had a pretty good lead, but they couldn’t be plowing snow as fast as he was going; he had to be closing on them. He had been trying to get them on the radio for the past several miles, without success.

Finally, Plow Extra Two called him and asked where he might be. “Just passing through Moffat,” he replied.

“Better slow her down,” Ballard told him. “We’re down where the track comes out onto the shore of Thunder Lake, and we’re stuck.”

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