|
Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
|
|
Wes Boyd’s Spearfish Lake Tales Contemporary Mainstream Books and Serials Online |
Chapter 10
0322 1/9/1981 – 0837 1/9/1981:
Decatur & Overland Snowplow Extra 3217
Lordston Northern Extra 451
At a minimum, it would take some welding to get the rotary snowplow going again. It might have been possible to scrounge up a piece of metal of some kind or another somewhere on the train, but Cziller was sure that there hadn’t been any welding gear included in the tools that had been loaded on board. “We obviously can’t fix it here,” he told Hottel and Anson, and DeTar, who had by then joined them.
“What do you think?” the conductor asked. “Back to Lordston, or go clear back to Putnam?”
“I don’t want to go back to Putnam,” Cziller replied. “You remember what that stretch from Atlanta was like. The way it’s blowing, it could be packed too tight to get through by now. Even if it isn’t, it’s a hell of a long way. We’ll lose hours, maybe as much as a day if we go back to Putnam. Spike, that’s not all that difficult to fix, is it?”
“Don’t know for sure,” the mechanic replied. “Probably hanging a new weight on there ought to be simple enough. Bringing the wheel to a balance, though . . . well, it might be fairly simple, and it might not be. My guess is that if we got the size of metal about right and the location same as before, it ought to be pretty close. Maybe close enough to fake it.”
“Harry, do you know if that little tourist outfit at Lordston has any shop facilities to speak of?”
“Don’t know for sure,” the engineer replied. “You’d think they would have something or other if they work on that steamer up there, but they rebuilt it down in Camden, I know. But they won’t be open. That’s a family operation, and they probably haven’t been at the shop since the storm started.”
Cziller’s attention was diverted by the sound of a snowmobile coming up beside the train. “Now what the hell would anyone be out in this shit at this hour on a snowmobile for?”
The snowmobile came to a stop by the little group of men standing beside the plow. “Got trouble?” the driver asked as he got off the machine.
Cziller walked over to him, and the other trainmen followed. “Yeah, we’re trying to get up to that fire in Warsaw, but our plow is busted.” he said. “Threw a balance weight. You from Lordston?”
“Yeah,” the driver said.
“Is there any place we could get some welding gear to work on it?”
“Well, the driver said, “You’re welcome to run it into my shop.”
“Your shop?” Cziller asked.
“Yeah, my shop,” the snow machine driver said. “I’m Bill Lee. I own the Lordston Northern . . . well, the part of it the bank doesn’t own.”
Cziller ached to ask just why Lee would be out on his snowmobile on the rail grade when it was pushing four in the morning, but decided that it wouldn’t be the right time, just now. “Sounds good to me,” he said, still wondering why Lee had shown up at that precise instant.
“Look,” Lee said, “It’s about five miles back to Lordston. I’ll run ahead of you and make a couple of calls, get some people out of bed.”
“If it’s all the same to you,” Cziller said, “If you’re going to run on the tracks, I’d just as soon you were behind us. West of us, I mean.”
“That’s what I meant,” Lee said. “Except when we get to the county road crossing, I’ll go down the road and get ahead of you.”
“Let’s get moving,” Cziller agreed.
Lee turned to his snow machine, which was still idling, while the railroad men climbed up to the cab of the 3217. Once in the cab, Cziller told DeTar, “I want you to be spotting out the back, even though you can’t see much. That doesn’t mean trying to get your money back from the section gang.”
“Hey,” DeTar protested. “I may be twenty bucks down, but I know better than that.”
Lee was nowhere to be found when SX 3217 pulled to a stop outside the Lordston Northern office, but his daughter, Diane was.
Diane Lee, Bill’s daughter, had a sweet smile. She was perhaps twenty-three, small and slender, with long red hair that fell past her shoulders, and a sweet voice. Cziller hoped that his brakeman, Bruce Page, wouldn’t see her; he’d be lovesick for the rest of the trip.
“Dad headed back on down the tracks to Meeker,” Diane explained. “He wants to try and catch the 9608 there.”
“The 9608?” Cziller asked, puzzled. “What’s that?”
“That’s our steam engine. We’re storing it for the winter in the Camden and Spearfish Lake’s engine shed in Camden, so we can keep the Alco here. The C&SL is trying to run a plow train north from Camden, and they took the 9608 with them to carry relief supplies. Dad didn’t want to let that trip get past him. Anyway, he told me to do anything we could to help you out. What can we do for you?”
“Well, Miss Lee, what we need is to have someone get some welding gear and do some welding on our plow.”
She smiled again; Helen of Troy must have had such a smile, Cziller thought. “I really don’t know how to weld that well,” she said. “But there’s a tractor mechanic right up the street who has a portable welding rig. If your people would like to pull the Alco outside, you can run your plow into the shed while I give him a call.”
“That would be a big help, Miss Lee.”
“Oh, call me Diane. Tell your people that the Alco starts hard, like any Alco, so be sure to have the APU warmed up before you even try to get it going.”
Cziller agreed and started for the door, thinking that for a sweet young kid she sure seemed to know a bit about the dirty side of railroading. That really seemed out of place, neat and delicate as she was – even after being turned out of bed on this blizzard night. But she was the owner’s daughter, after all, and she worked around the place. She probably couldn’t help being exposed to the greasy stuff.
He went back to the way car, where DeTar had reassumed his assault on coming out even. “Anyone here know how to run an Alco S-1?” the road foreman asked.
Bartenslager stared at his cards for a moment, then said, “I ran S-2s a while.”
“Good,” Cziller replied. “The little lady says to pull theirs out and leave it running, and we can work on the plow inside.”
“Might as well do it,” the engineer replied. “They’re dealing me nothing but shit, anyway.”
Fixing the plow proved to not be as quick as Hottel had thought that it might be. It was an easy job for Ken Sawyer, the tractor mechanic, to cut a piece of iron to replace the missing weight, but with the plow in the shop it seemed wise to go over it a little more thoroughly. It was well that they did, for they found a crack in a blade down near the hub, and there were other loose pieces here and there.
“It’s going to take hours to reweld everything right,” the tractor mechanic told Cziller. “Then, I guarantee you, when we get done the son of a bitch won’t balance up. Your man Hottel tells me that balancing that thing is kind of a process of guess and change, guess and change.”
“Look, you guys,” the road foreman replied, “The longer we screw around here, the more that little town up there burns. Just do a quick job and we’ll get out of here. We can risk a little vibration.”
“We can like hell,” Hottel replied. “I checked that blade before we left Putnam. It wasn’t cracked then. Just the couple minutes vibration when we pitched the balance weight must have been what cracked it. Unless we go through this thing right, we’ll never get there. We can do a quick job, but you’d better plan on being the one in the cupola of this thing when a blade lets go.”
Every instinct that Cziller had was to press on and risk more trouble from the plow, but Hottel was speaking common sense. That got through. At least here, they had some facilities to work on the plow. If something went wrong farther north, then any fixes would have to be made out in the weather, if they could even reach a place where help was available at all. “All right,” you guys,” the disappointed man told the mechanics. “Fix it right, but make it as quick as you can. I guess I’d better go over to the office and tell Diane . . . um, Miss Lee, that we’re probably going to be all morning.”
The redhead was at work on some bookkeeping, a way to kill some time during these predawn hours. “How’s it going out there, Mr. Cziller?” she asked.
“Call me Steve,” he replied. “It’s not going well. They’ve discovered more trouble. If looks like we’re going to be hours, yet. I hope you won’t mind our keeping you around.”
“No problem,” she told him. “I can sleep later. I’m just glad to help where I can.”
“I’m glad you can help us. It’s hard to just sit around here when we should be making miles to the north.”
She stared out the window at the storm for a while. “Maybe I can help you out some more. We’ve got a blade plow here, you know.”
Cziller brightened. “No, I didn’t know. I hadn’t seen it or anything.”
“It’s around on the far side of the engine shed. It’s not really a big plow. It’s just something that Dad and Ken Sawyer rigged up out of an old boxcar truck and an old blade from a county plow. They had to hang a lot of concrete on it to get it to balance out. It’s not really a very good plow, but you could probably get as far as Rochester with it if you took your time.”
“I’m sorry, Diane,” he replied, disappointed. “That wouldn’t be much help. We’d get up to Rochester, and then we’d need the rotary to go farther, and we’d have to come back here to get it. Then it would take us just about as long to get back to Rochester, anyway.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” she said. “When the mechanics get your plow fixed, we can bring it to you with our Alco. We can turn the plow around somewhere to have it in front if we have any problems getting back here. If the track drifts up behind you, we’d still have your rotary. We’ll be able to go faster over the track that you’ve cleared, so we ought to come out about right.”
“Diane, your dad raised himself quite a girl,” Cziller replied. “You’ve got a deal.”
As he walked through the storm to the now-quiet SX-3217, Cziller could see the flare of an arc welder in the LN engine shed. Through the howling of the wind, he could hear a hammer banging on the plow, followed by cursing. Things were much quieter inside the last caboose; the storm had barely reached the consciousness of the poker players. The first thing that Cziller heard there was, “DeTar, you’re full of shit. I’m going to raise you a dollar.”
“Soon as you guys get through with that hand, deal the second shift out,” Cziller said loudly. “We’re going to get on the move again.”
“They got it fixed?” Bartenslager asked. He had already folded on a pair of threes.
“Not till later,” Cziller replied. “The LN is loaning us their blade plow.”
“That little sonuvabitch on the other side of the engine shed?” the engineer asked. “I saw it when I went over there to take a leak.”
“What did it look like?” Cziller asked.
“Couldn’t see much, but there wasn’t much to see. Just as a guess, I don’t think it would handle much over about three feet of snow.”
“I didn’t see much of the North Central tracks,” Cziller said. “But I got the impression there wasn’t that much snow on it.”
“Couple of cuts got about that bad,” Anson chipped in. “But what happens when we get on the Rochester branch? That sits north and south, and the cuts ought to be pretty full by now. Once we get back of Rochester, there’ll be too much snow for that plow everywhere.”
“I’ve got a flush, gentlemen.”
“You son of a bitch, Detar.”
Cziller spoke over the noise of the poker game. “The LN is going to bring the rotary up to us when the stupid thing is fixed. If we get to Rochester before they catch up with us, we’ll just have to wait for them there. After all, there was a train through there yesterday, so the branch shouldn’t be that bad.”
“Day before yesterday, now,” someone pointed out.
“Day before yesterday, so what? They should have knocked down the drifts a bit. We’ll never get there if we just screw around here, so let’s get a move on.
In a few minutes, the LN’s little plow was hooked to the front of the 3217. Only when the Geep’s headlight fell on it did Cziller realize how little it was. The C&SL’s little plow would have been a giant beside it. This one was a V-blade plow that had once adorned the front of a county road snowplow, and it had been rather crudely grafted onto a salvaged freight car truck. The whole thing looked even more cobbled up and homemade than did the D&O rotary, if such a thing were possible.
Still, it was a snowplow and it would couple to the front of an engine and move snow better than the pilot blades permanently attached to the engines. Right now, Bud Ellsberg up at Spearfish Lake would have given a very great deal to have it. Mounted on the west end of Plow Extra One, it would have increased his stay time in Warsaw from an hour to perhaps six, or, with the Milwaukee, would have meant that the crippled NW2 could get the standby train out of town, without having to plow the track every few hours.
With the kind of power that the SX-3217 was carrying, there would be no backing up and ramming of snowdrifts. The D&O plow extra would be able to motor right through anything that wouldn’t bury the plow.
The ceaseless poker game was still going on as the train backed out onto the Lordston branch, then changed the switches for the line to Coldwater. Cziller was in the cab of the 3217 with Bartenslager; he knew he wouldn’t be able to endure the agony of riding in back and not knowing what was going on.
It was coming up on dawn by now. SX-3217 plowed away from the direction where the sun should be rising before long, if the sun would be seen through the storm at all this day. According to the weather report that he had gotten second-hand from Diane Lee, that didn’t seem likely.
The going was easy for the first few miles, on the ground that the rotary had covered earlier. Bartenslager took the speed right up to the thirty miles per hour limit on the decaying old main line, and held her there until he reached the spot where the rotary’s balance weight had been thrown earlier.
The plow train roared right on past the spot with its speed hardly slackened. Bartenslager added another couple of notches to the 3217’s throttle, and both of the Geeps roared louder with the increased resistance. The speedometer stayed stuck around thirty, and snow flew impressively from the front of the plow.
“This is more like it,” Cziller approved.
“Want to get this over with so I can get back to the game,” the engineer replied. “I had a hot streak going. DeTar had about cleaned out the section gang, but I was starting to take money from him.”
This was by far the best that SX-3217 had done so far. Cziller was impressed with Bartenslager’s firm, but gentle throttle handling and his aggressive manner of charging the snowdrifts, and it made him want to kick himself for not leaning harder on Desmond to find a blade plow for them.
The lights of Coldwater loomed through the snow refreshingly soon. While the switch onto the Rochester branch was being dug out, Bartenslager got to go back to the caboose for a hand, but soon they were heading north on the Rochester branch.
The going was harder here, as predicted. The tracks lay crosswind, and they had drifted up badly since the passage of the freight from Rochester two days before. It could sometimes be seen where the bladeless engines had gouged through the snowdrifts, but there were only occasional traces. Even out in the open, the snow was much deeper than it had been on the Coldwater tracks, and progress was slower.
Even so, SX-3217 pushed on north at the kind of speed that the rotary had allowed before. The rotary had chewed steadily at the snow, but here, the speed varied greatly. There’d be an easy section, and Bartenslager would throttle down while the speed rose. Then, the snow would deepen, sometimes to the point where the plow blade was almost buried. Then, the speed would fall off, in spite of increasing power. Sometimes the deep sections would go on for hundreds of yards, and the plow and the 3217 would shake and bounce with the stresses that the uneven snow put on them.
It was inevitable that sooner or later they would reach the limits of the plow’s capability. About a quarter of the way up the branch to Rochester, just before dawn, it happened.
It came as they neared the end of an easy section. Cziller was relaxing at the moment, but he heard Bartenslager mutter some obscenity. He got up and looked out the cab window. In the single headlight on the front of the Geep, the drift ahead looked worse than they had seen before.
It was too late to stop. Their speed was much too great, and the drift was rushing down on them. Bartenslager tried the next best thing under the circumstances: he reached out for the throttle and increased power. The two Geeps bellowed and charged the drifts harder. Their combined several hundred tons carried them a good distance through the deep snow, but they weren’t very far into it before more than the plow was pushing snow. The white stuff spewed up over the top of the plow, then was pushed aside onto the running boards by the nose of the 3217.
But there was a lot of snow in that cut. Eventually, its weight overcame the combined weight and power of SX-3217. If the snowplow extra had been four or six modern 3000 horsepower engines, dragging fifty carloads of something heavy, the weight would easily have punched the lead engine through the drift – if it didn’t come out the other side much the worse for wear. As it was, SX-3217 just sighed to a stop, engines racing and wheel slip alarms yowling. The plow was fully out of sight, and the nose of the 3217 was buried in the drift as well.
“Sonuvabitch,” Bartenslager remarked conversationally.
“Well, let’s back off and hit her again,” Cziller replied. “Wonder if that knocked any chips off the table?”
“Probably did,” the engineer said. “Right into DeTar’s pocket, I’ll bet.” He transitioned the engine into reverse and increased the power slowly, but nothing happened. The wheel slip alarm began making noise again. He hit the lever to throw sand to the spinning wheels, but that didn’t help much, either. “No luck,” he said.
“Let’s try it from the 3259,” Cziller suggested. “It might be biting better. If it is, you couldn’t tell it with that thing blaring in your ear.”
They clambered back across the two engines to the other cab, unused since the trip had started. Again, the power of the two engines was increased, and again the wheel slip indicator bawled uncomfortably at Cziller.
Bartenslager tried running the engine forward, and then back again, with no more luck. Finally, he idled the engines and turned to the road foreman. “That’s all she wrote,” he said. “What do we try now?”
This work is licensed under a