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

Chapter 15

1107 1/9/1981 – 1353 1/9/1981:
C&SL Snowplow Extra One

“What the hell happened?” Fred Linder asked Kuralt after roaring over on his snowmobile. “We thought that this steel building could stand off sparks from the yard fire.”

“It could,” a glum Kuralt replied. “It did. But when we were loading the ammonium nitrate, we spilled it all over the place. I had the stuff that we spilled outside covered up with snow, I thought, but then I think a spark hit near the south door, and there was fire all over the place just like that! Everybody’s OK, though.”

“I hate to say this,” Linder told Kuralt and Chip Halsey, who had joined them. “But yesterday, we pretty well agreed that if this place caught we were just going to have to let it burn. We’ve still got a slim chance to save something of the paper plant. This place is gone. About all we can do is try to keep it from getting too wild while we’re protecting the downwind exposure.”

All three of them knew the next problem downwind was the Warsaw Oil Company. There was perhaps a two hundred-yard safety margin, and with the wind shifting it might not be in the danger it would have been in a few hours before. Linder told the two that he’d send the Kremmling department over to set up protection as soon as they arrived. Until then, they’d have to hope for the best.

As the fire chief turned to go, Halsey asked him, “Fred, we’ve still got that main storage tank west of the fire, and it’s filled with anhydrous ammonia. Do you think maybe we should valve it off?

Linder could have kicked himself. He had ridden past the huge white tank with ANHYDROUS AMMONIA lettered on it a dozen times or more, and hadn’t given it a second thought. The ammonia wasn’t flammable by itself, but when freed in sufficient quantities it was poison gas. If that tank got hot enough to burst, the explosion could throw a mixture of liquid and gaseous ammonia all over the west part of town. “How long will it take to get the tank empty?” he asked Halsey.

“Don’t know for sure, since it’s pretty cold,” the plant manager replied. “About all we can do is open the valves, get the pump going, and let it boil off. Might take hours, and short of building a fire under the tank, there’s no way to hurry the process.”

“Let ’er rip,” Linder replied. “Thank God there’s not much downwind for miles, and I think the tank is far enough over that it won’t bother the railroad much. I sure hope Ellsberg remembers to wear his gas mask the next time he comes up this way. We ought to warn them if we can.”

Amazingly enough, Plow Extra One seemed to be running reasonably well as it crossed the plains near Hoselton. The Burlington rumbled along, running about as well as it ever had. Bud was telling Sloat about the normal gauge readings when Walt broke into the radio circuit, calling from the Milwaukee. “Message to you from Linder, Bud. He says to make damn sure that everybody on board has got face masks or gas masks on. The fertilizer plant is going now, and they’re venting ammonia from the big tank.”

“Will do, Walt. I’m stopping right now. Did you get that other car of ammonium nitrate out of there?”

“Yeah,” the Milwaukee’s engineer replied. “But it didn’t do a whole lot of good.”

Once he had stopped, Bud carried the message back to the way car. It had turned out that the stop at Hoselton hadn’t been necessary at all. The tiny town had stripped itself of people. Every Hoselton man, fireman or not, who could make the trip had ridden snowmobiles up the tracks to help out where they could.

It did make for a couple minutes of a break. When Bud got back, Sloat was warming himself in the Burlington’s cab. “How’s it going up there?” Bud asked.

“Ain’t no better,” the mechanic replied. “The snow’s just as bad as last time. The wind maybe shifted a bit, but the plowing’s just as bad. How’s this thing running?”

“Seems all right so far,” Bud replied. “With this scrap heap, you never can tell for sure. I still wish we hadn’t had to take her. If this thing craps out, they’re stuck in Warsaw with all the engineers away from the Rock. Maybe Walt could tow us in up there, but there’s no way he and the Milwaukee could get us back to Spearfish Lake.”

“Yeah,” Ed agreed. “We’d just have to wait for Ralph.”

“If Ralph gets through,” Bud corrected. “You told me yourself they were going to have a hell of a time getting past Thunder Lake. Last we’d heard, they’d gotten stuck and they were barely at Thunder Lake. Those guys have had enough time to get their gas masks on. Let’s at least get there.”

Sloat climbed back into the cupola of the plow. Bud sounded the whistle, and the Burlington began to move.

The last few miles into Warsaw went reasonably well, since the tracks were more or less into the wind and there hadn’t been that much drifting since their passage a few hours before. As the train got closer to the town, it was obvious that there was trouble there. Now, the driving snow was filled with smoke, and there was something in the smoke that stung the eyes as it leaked around Bud’s gas mask through his beard stubble. The Burlington didn’t like the polluted air, either, for Bud sensed that it was running rough. Knowing where he was and the engine he was driving didn’t help his tension and exhaustion one bit.

Finally, the short train passed out of the smoke from the burning fertilizer plant, and Bud thought that the engine seemed to be running a little better.

The wind had gotten around enough to make it somewhat uncomfortable near the unloading ramp, for the heat and the smoke from the burning plant were filling the air around the tracks. Fortunately, this time the train’s consist was small, the handful of people on board made short work of unloading it.

Once the two flatcars were empty, Bud backed the GP-7 back out onto the main, and ran it up to the Plant Street crossing, where it would be more protected, sitting nose to nose with the Milwaukee.

“We haven’t got too long, Ed,” Bud told his mechanic. “If you can’t figure out what’s wrong with that thing and fix it in, say, an hour, then to hell with it. We’re just going to have to go, anyway, and I want you with me. I’m going to try and get some sleep in the meantime.”

Bud couldn’t have had much sleep, for it seemed that he had barely laid himself down on the cab floor when Ed and Frank and Walt were climbing into the Burlington’s cab. As he strove to wake up, Frank thrust a cup of coffee from the kitchen boxcar into his hand. The warmth and aroma of the coffee made him somewhat wakeful, if groggy. “Get it fixed?” he asked.

“Nope,” Ed told him. “I’m afraid it’s going to be a shop job, and maybe not even our shop. There’s no way I can tear it apart here to find out what’s wrong, and we may not even have what it takes in Spearfish Lake.”

“Whatever it is,” Walt added, “Seems to be located down beyond the bus bar. The rear truck is still all right.”

“I think,” Ed qualified.

“So you’re saying no change,” Bud summed up. “No front truck, and the rear truck is working until it goes bad, which could be now or never.”

“That’s about the size of it,” Ed agreed. “Walt, you want to be real careful about shoving too much power to the rear truck, or you could burn out the traction motors or blow the bus, what with the front truck not drawing.”

“Guess that means we’d better get a move on,” Bud replied. “Wouldn’t want to get caught up here.”

Walt spoke up. “Before you go, Bud, I’d like to plow out to the east a ways, and leave the Milwaukee right in the middle of the scram train. With the wind shifting to the north, we might have to run east. There are more people in this town than there are gas masks.”

“That means we’re going to have to move the scram train down into the siding by the plant to get past it. That’s not going to be too healthy.”

“We can risk it for a few minutes,” Matson said. “I already talked to Fred Linder about it. The scram train will just fit onto the siding if we run around it with the stuff you’ve already got. That way, we can do it in one move. We’ll just have to tell the cooks to set out the coffee and stew for a few minutes.”

The last statement mystified Bud, who had yet to see what Linder and Jim Horton and John Pacobel had done to his scram train. “You’ll have to see the setup they’ve got here for yourself to believe it,” Matson explained. “Twenty-four-hour food service, although the food is as terrible as you’d expect from an Army cook, and a rolling bunkhouse. All it lacks is hot and cold running water.”

Bud had been sitting all this time. Now, he stood up and said, “Well, if we’re going to do it, let’s get it done. The track is crapping up behind us. Ed, you take the east end, Frank, the west. Frank, when we get to plowing, I want you to ride with me. I’ve got a couple things I need to talk to you about.”

Running around the scram train only took a few minutes; it wasn’t long before the two engines were heading farther eastward. Bud needed what power the Milwaukee could add, for once they were half a mile or so past Warsaw the track hadn’t been plowed all winter. Bud expected tough going.

It proved to be tough going, indeed. Once they got past the place that they had plowed out earlier to give the scram train a place to sit, they were immediately into the worst snowplowing that Bud had ever seen. They often had to plow this stretch out in the spring, after the snow had receded a bit, and it was hard going then. But now, with winter at its worst, Plow Extra One only gained ground in short bursts, after backing off to make run after run with the big plow. After the first couple passes, Sloat called a halt; riding the plow was much too rough for safety. They would have to plow ahead blind.

“What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Matson asked while Bud waited for Ed to join Walt in the Milwaukee.

“Did you hear about our buying the Kremmling branch from the D&O?”

“WHAT?”

“OK, you didn’t hear about it.” Bud went on to explain as he backed up.

“Well, if you had to do it, I guess you had to do it,” Matson said as Bud called to Walt, to set the two engines charging into the snowbank again. The banker’s voice rose as he tried to talk over the increasing noise from the Burlington. “It might prove to be our ace in the hole if they don’t get that bridge fixed.”

Bud didn’t answer right away; they were too close to the place where they had stopped on the run before. The two engines gained another hundred yards or two, then bogged to a stop. “OK, Walt, I’ll back us out again,” he called into the radio, then turned his attention back to his banker friend. “That’s only if we’ve got any traffic left. I told Penny the last time he came up here that if they lost the plant, then the railroad was pretty well up the creek.”

“They’ve lost the plant. Linder isn’t ready to admit it just yet, but they’ve lost. Marshall has given up. But we were going to lose it anyway, it turns out.”

“How’s that?” Bud asked as the engines continued to back.

“This is all a big secret, but Marshall let his hair down enough to me this morning to tell me that Jerusalem Paper was planning to close the plant.”

Bud spoke into the radio again. “All right, Walt. Let’s hit her again.” Bud increased the Burlington’s power and said, “Whatever the reason for it shutting down, it’s a disaster to us. I’ve been thinking about it. Maybe we can keep going, but at a lower level. We’ve still got Summit Pit and the rock traffic, and the local stuff. We’ve got the track in fairly decent shape, now, so that wouldn’t be a drag on us, even if we did have to get rid of a couple of engines.”

As the speed rose, Matson replied, “Well, it’s nothing we have to make our minds up about today. Maybe we can, and maybe we can’t. Speaking for the bank, we’d have to examine things very carefully.”

The big plow bit into the snowdrift once again. This time, the two engines managed to keep moving for nearly half a mile before they came to a big, deep cut just before reaching the bank of the Spearfish River. Bud had been dreading this one.

Grant’s Cut had been named after the Civil War general, back in the days when the D&O was still the D&C. Some stubborn, long-forgotten road foreman clearing snow had said, “I propose to fight it out along this line if it takes all winter,” and the tag had stuck.

“I better have a look at this one before we try it,” Bud said into the radio. “We’re probably far enough.” Bud and Frank climbed out of the idling Burlington’s cab and climbed to the top of the plow. It didn’t take much looking to see that the cause was hopeless; the plow was buried to the cupola line.

“That’s a lot of snow,” Frank said.

“Sure is,” Bud agreed. “I just hope the D&O can get through it if they get up this far.”

It took the two engines a lot of power and sand to even pull out of the mountain of snow, but once they were under way back to Warsaw, Bud resumed his conversation with Frank. “The only thing I can see is that there’s still a lot of pulp wood up here. We might be able to swing about the same number of carloadings downbound with pulp that we have now in paper. That’s the end of the upbound traffic to Warsaw, though.”

“There’s problems with that, too,” Frank replied. “Most of the pulp would go down to the Jerusalem Paper plant in Rochester. That means down the new branch. That makes it good that you bought it, but it’s going to cost a ton to fix it up. It’d be cheaper to go clear around through Camden, but that might run the cost up for Jerusalem Paper to the point where they’d ship the pulp by truck, contract or no contract, unless we cut our rates to the losing point. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”

“Well, maybe we . . . ” Bud started to reply, but the Burlington cut him off as it lurched to a halt, engine still running.

Bud cut the engine’s power as Walt’s voice came over the radio. “What the hell did you hit the air for, Bud?”

“I didn’t touch a thing,” Bud said. “But you’re right, I haven’t got any brake pressure at all. It stopped all by itself.”

Within second, Ed was into the Burlington, and within minutes he had a verdict: “You must have jolted her too hard back there, Bud. The air compressor is completely shot. It tore loose from its mounting, and ruptured an air line. That dumped the air from the tank, and the brakes set when it happened.”

“We can’t even make it the rest of the way back to town?” Bud asked.

“No problem there,” Ed replied. “I’ve isolated the rupture. All we have to do is pump the brakes back up from the Milwaukee, but don’t valve air or we’ll be back where we started.”

A glum group of railroad people assembled in the Milwaukee’s cab in Warsaw a few minutes later. “Well, with no brakes, I guess that shoots that,” Bud said. “No point in starting for Spearfish Lake. I guess we’ve got enough power for the scram train, now. The Burlington’s power and the Milwaukee’s brakes.”

“You or Walt could snowmobile down to Spearfish Lake,” Matson suggested, “And come back with the Rock.”

Bud shook his head. “We’d never make it back. The track will have snowed up too much to make it back without the plow.”

“We could both go down there,” Sloat counseled. “We get the Rock, and maybe I can rebuild the air compressor mount.”

“Can’t do that, either,” Bud replied. “We’ve got to leave at least some power here to move the scram train, not that the Milwaukee could have done it by itself, anyway.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Walt smiled. “You don’t need brakes, if you keep your hands off the air and you get out of here before the track plugs completely. I mean, the track is clear right here, but we’ve messed around enough that once you get a few miles out of town, if you close the throttle, you’ll stop before you could valve air, anyway.”

Matson had been right about Fred Linder when he talked to Bud, for at that time the fire chief still had hopes of saving the paper plant. While the trainmen prepared the crippled green Geep for its return journey, those hopes were fast waning, and by the time the Milwaukee returned from escorting the brakeless Plow Extra One to the edge of town, Linder was giving up hope.

With a heavy heart, he sat next to Marshall in the Warsaw utility truck cab where they had been talking, and picked up the microphone for the truck’s radio to make a desolate call: “All chiefs, all departments. This is Fred Linder. Turn your departments over to your deputies or whoever. I want to meet with all of you over in the dining bus in fifteen minutes.”

Plow Extra One was now just the Burlington, the plow, two flat cars, and the way car, with a couple of low-priority ambulance patients. Once Walt and the Milwaukee had escorted the brakeless train beyond the edge of town, where brakes might be needed, the train was on its own to limp back to Spearfish Lake.

Sloat was riding with Bud in the Burlington’s cab. The going was fairly easy in the first few miles out of Warsaw, but now both he and Bud had more tension to bear. The Burlington, never in the best of health, was definitely sick now. Although it seemed logical that they could make the run back safely without brakes, it seemed a bit much to believe. At least the air pressure the Milwaukee had pumped into the Geep’s brakes seemed to be holding. Isolating the compressor involved closing some valves that obviously hadn’t been used for years. They might have leaked, but apparently not. At least the train had one stop left in it, although it would be a final stop.

Nevertheless, the train was rolling right along. Bud was carrying a lot of power. Maybe too much.

Without wanting to worry Bud any more than necessary, Ed began to inspect the engine’s gauges. Within a few miles, there could be no doubt about it: the traction motors were beginning to short again. They weren’t yet as bad as the Rock’s had been at this point on the last trip, but it had taken the Rock several trips to get this bad.

It took a few minutes longer than Linder had hoped to get all the fire chiefs, along with Bruce Marshall, assembled in the dining bus. They were a desperately tired bunch of men; even the normally nasty Cliff Sprague was tired into placidity. Harry Masterfield of Spearfish Lake was the last to arrive, bringing Wally Borck from Hoselton with him. “Sorry we’re late,” he said to the rest of the group. “Just as we started to leave, we had another house fire break out, and we had to stomp on it.”

Even six hours ago, this news would have disturbed Linder to no end. Now, all he could do was ask, “What’s your overall situation up there, Harry?”

“Getting worse. The yard just gets to burning hotter and hotter, and the worse it gets, the more trouble we have keeping it out of the houses across the street.”

“How many times have you had fires on the west side of the street?”

Masterfield shook his head. “I’ve lost count. Maybe six or eight spot fires, anyway. We’ve managed to stop all of them without the houses getting too far along, but each one scares the shit out of me.”

“How many houses does that involve?” Linder asked.

“I’m not sure anymore,” the Spearfish Lake chief told him. “I know one house has been on fire three different times, and we’ve stopped it each time. Next time we get a spot fire, we might not get it out at all.”

“You’ve done good in hanging on without much help,” Linder said, and turned to the other chiefs. “I’ve pretty much been around the plant for the last few hours, so I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s going on there. Cliff, Vern, Miles, Ron,” he said to the Walsenberg, Blair, Albany River, and Lynchburg men, “Do any of you guys think we’ve got a ghost of a chance of stopping the fire in the plant building before it burns to the ground?”

Three of the four chiefs thought the cause was hopeless. Vern Houghton, from Blair, was only a little less pessimistic. “If the wind were to quit right now, we might be able to save the south side of the building, but even if we did, I don’t think there’d be any value left in the place.”

Every one of the firemen looked at the white, wordless manager of the paper plant, who nodded, but said nothing.

“I got one more piece of bad news,” Linder went on. “You all know that we pumped the water tower dry last night. We’ve been running straight off the town pumps since then. Thank God there isn’t anything else in town that’s using water. Jim Horton, one of our village councilmen, has been over at the village water pumping station since the plant fire got going. There’s three big pumps there that have been giving us every drop of water we’ve used so far. Horton says that one of the pump motors, the biggest one, has a bearing that’s running red-hot, no matter how much oil he tries to shoot to it. He’s afraid it’ll seize if we shut it down. We talked it over, and we’ve decided to run it till it drops, and keep trying to service it while it’s running, but we could lose it at any time. If that happens while we’re in the configuration we’re in now, we’d be in a world of shit.”

This news was greeted with looks of dismay. The lack of water had been a problem since early morning; this would cut by more than a third the amount available.

With words wrenched from his mouth in protest, Linder went on, “Much as I hate to say it, we’ve got to give up on the plant. We might as well do it orderly now and take all the equipment we can, rather than wait a while and have to do it without enough water for protection.”

“No question about it,” Sprague agreed, and the others added their approval.

More businesslike now that the horrible decision had been made, Linder laid out the next moves. “The real big sore spot that we’ve got right now is that if the fire from Yard 4 gets past the Hoselton and Spearfish Lake departments, we could lose the town, so we’ll put the main effort there.

“Blair and Lynchburg were the last to arrive at the paper plant, so they should be the first to take up. Blair goes to Railroad and Main to protect the school exposure. With the wind veering to the north, there’ll be a lot of embers over there. Vern, set yourself up to use water off the Railroad Street main, but I’ll want your grass truck to support Warsaw.

“Lynchburg goes up to the north end of the yard fire on Winter Street, and ties into the Second Street main for their water. Spearfish Lake should contract to the south, and tie into the Third Street main. Harry, I know you’ve got a pumper working off of Second Street now, but if you just kind of swap with Ron, you should be OK. You guys can work out how you do it. Hoselton just holds their position.

“Warsaw will keep its own connections for the time being, and will try to cover Lynchburg as they fall back. Once that’s done, Warsaw falls back to the southwest a bit, and will just try to keep the plant from going too quickly. We’ll be taking water off the Railroad Street main, but we’ll need the Blair grass truck for a booster.

“Walsenberg and Albany River are on the cooler side of the plant, so they shouldn’t have too much trouble. What’s the status of the fire in Shed 1 now, Cliff?”

The Walsenberg chief yawned. “We’ve only been after it with a one and a half, but we’re gaining on it a little.”

“Good,” Linder replied, and went on, “That’s the son of a bitch that started this whole mess. Albany River is in the worst mess equipment-wise of anybody, so they’ll be a while picking up. Cliff, you cover them until they’re out of there. Miles, once you’ve picked up, go over to Plant Street and cover Walsenberg pulling back, then go on over to Plains Street, set yourself up as a roving backfield to the yard fire, and sort out your equipment. You can tie one engine each into Second and Third Streets. That gets everyone away from the plant.

“Kremmling stays where they’re at on the fertilizer plant fire. Everybody with me so far?”

“Not quite,” Sprague complained. “Where does that leave us?”

“Get to you in a minute, Cliff. I’m doing this from memory and I don’t want to send anyone to three different places. Your grass truck, and Kremmling’s, goes to the chemical dump at the roadside park south of town. They’ll cut a hole in the ice of the river and set up two lines to fill tankers. Albany River, Blair, and Kremmling: if the situation around you gets hot, you can use your connections to mains, but for the time being I want you to work off tankers, so maybe we can get a little reserve water into the tower. Cliff, that goes for you, too, once I get you to where you’re eventually going . . . ”

“Wherever that might be,” the dour man broke in.

Linder smiled. “Cliff, I’ve been saving this for you since you’re shorthanded. I want you to set up on Plant Street on the far side of the shed from where you are now. Try to knock down that shed fire a little, to get it out of our hair. More important, I want you to get into the south side of Yard 3 enough to get up to those goddamn hopper cars. Once you can reach them, take a pike pole, open the hatches, and flood the stupid things. You don’t have to overflow them, but drown that stinking fertilizer and that’ll get everybody but Kremmling and Blair off of face masks. Once you’ve done that, go over to Main Street and set up a second reserve line.”

Linder smiled, the first time in a while, as he finished up. “Once you get set up over there, you’ll be the first reserve called on. It’ll be damn strange to have a reserve at all.”

By the time that they were crossing the Spearfish River swamp, Bud was fully aware of the fact that the Burlington was losing power. “Shorting again?” he asked his mechanic.

“Looks like it,” Ed replied. “I’ve been watching it for a while. We ought to be able to make it in, though. Maybe.”

“Goddamn scrap heap,” Bud muttered. He reached for the radio and tried to reach Spearfish Lake. He should have known better; they were down in the hole, radio-blind from the office. He turned back to Ed. “Soon as we can get through on the radio, I’m going to have Penny start buttoning up the Rock.”

“Good idea,” Sloat agreed. “He knows how to do that.”

Bud could still run fast through the swamp, and he was pushing the Burlington hard. Here, the snow wasn’t too bad, but the throttle position didn’t indicate the engine’s speed, which was far less than Bud would have liked to have seen. The ascent out of the swamp was agonizing to both the engine and its crew, however. The Geep clearly didn’t have a lot left in it, but once on top of the grade Bud was finally able to make his promised radio call.

Plow Extra One was barely crawling as it crossed the pine barrens. The crippled engine was only able to gain speed very slowly, and Bud hoped that he would have enough power to make it through the hard cuts that he knew were coming up.

The first cut staggered the increasingly feeble Burlington. Once the engine reached the clearer track on the far side, it was barely moving. The speed was recovering from the blow very slowly – hardly enough to notice.

For a moment, Bud wondered if he ought to back up in an effort to get up more speed for a run at the second cut. He never got a chance to make up his mind.

Just at that moment, the engine lurched to a stop, its diesel as dead as if it had a heart attack.

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