Chapter 9

0227 1/9 - 0510 1/9: Plow Extra One

There was fire burning each side of the Rock's cab as Bud pushed it for all it was worth through the driving snowstorm...

The Rock's whistle woke Bud from his nightmare. He looked over at Penny, who was sitting unconcerned at the throttle. From the sound, the GP-7 was plugging along much like always; there wasn't a fire pursuing the train through a snow-covered forest.

"Where we at?" Bud asked as he stood up.

"Just blew for the 919 grade crossing," the brakeman replied.

Bud looked around. It was still snowing and blowing just as hard, and he really couldn't see very far in the grey light of this stormy dawn. From what he could see, the Rock was pushing through the snow reasonably well. They were carrying a healthy load of power, but not an excessive one. He noticed that the wind was blowing past the Geep in the direction the train was going: John was keeping their speed less than that of the wind.

Best of all, they were passing the County Road 919 crossing, and were almost back to Spearfish Lake! Bud couldn't help but approve of what John had done. "You've done well for your first time at bat. Had any trouble?"

"There were a couple of cuts that were a little tough a few minutes ago, this side of the swamp, but we punched right through them without adding much power."

Bud's watch told him that he'd had almost an hour of sleep. "Good job, John. Somehow or other, I'll figure some way for you to get a break.

John smiled in the dim light. "Oh, I'm good for a few hours, yet, if you can't come up with something. If we can't relieve Walt the next trip, I'll steal an hour or two on the way back."

John had the right to hang it up hours before, and was keeping on, even more illegally than Bud. The desperate need for them had kept both of them sticking to their jobs, but how long could they go on, planning for a possible hour or two of sleep hours away?

They had been trying to support the firemen in Warsaw for less than a day, and there was no telling how much longer they would have to keep it up. The fire could go on for days if the storm kept up. Somehow, they'd have to continue to tough it out, until the storm let up or help arrived, somehow or another.

During the predawn hours, Fred Linder didn't waste much time in turning the collection of bus flatcars into his rest train.

He started by persuading the nearly collapsed Archer to move an empty boxcar to the head of the scram train. The forty year old, forty-foot boxcar had been left on the Warsaw Oil Company siding months before and forgotton about, but once it was made part of the scram train, Linder moved the National Guard field kitchen into it.

The fire chief put a crew, under the leadership of Skip Peterson, the school bus mechanic, to work at the chore of converting the school buses into a rest train while leaving it a scram train. The first bus had most of its seats removed. These were replaced by tables and chairs taken from the school; the impromptu dining hall was soon capable of seating about thirty people in only moderate discomfort. Almost immediately the dining bus was packed, and it stayed packed around the clock with an ever-changing relay of people. Some wit took a chunk of soap and wrote "WARSAW DINER -- OPEN 24 HOURS -- FIRE SALE" on the windshield of the bus, while the kitchen boxcar began to turn out a bland but always-ready bill of fare.

The rest of Warsaw's school buses were loaded onto the empty flatcars that Plow Extra One had left behind, and most of the buses were turned into sleeping quarters by the simple expedient of throwing planks taken from the lumber yard across the seat backs. A hundred people at a time could find space to sleep, and the buses could be converted back to hauling people in a matter of minutes by simply tossing the boards back out into the snow. Here, too, the quarters were inadequate and uncomfortable, but they proved that they would make do by being crowded from the beginning by tired firemen and Warsaw locals.

Jim Horton had hoped to keep the rest center in the school as long as he could. There was more space there, the cooking facilities were better, and the school was vastly easier to heat. But, it was not to be. He was supervising moving a reserve of food from the school when he smelled the pungent smoke from the still burning hopper cars filling the halls. There were people sleeping on the floor all over the building, so to get them out in a hurry he hit the fire alarm.

Like it or not, after that the scram train was in business. It would take a big wind shift to move it from its position on the main line east of the fire, but if it shifted, the train could be moved away.

Plow Extra One was now crawling up to the state road crossing outside of Spearfish Lake. Bud yanked on the whistle cord, even though it seemed unlikely that anybody would be on the state road, then turned to his brakeman. "It's time to be thinking about switching around for the next trip," he said. "What I guess we want to do is to go past the east wye switch, then right back down to the piggyback ramp."

"If they've already got flats loaded, that'll put the empties on the wrong side of the full ones," John replied. He thought about it for a moment and went on, "But what the hell. If they are, we'll move them. We'd probably have to, anyway."

"Look, if there's a fire department waiting, we're going to want to do a fairly fast turnaround this trip. Let's get the switching done and the consist set up for the next trip, then why don't you drop me at the office and run this rig on up to the engine shed and get it fueled up? Can you do that?'

"Yeah, sure. No problem."

"Good, when you get up to the fuel hoses, tell Ed that I want to see him in the office."

The flat cars at the piggyback ramp proved to be loaded. The Blair Volunteer Fire Department had arrived in Spearfish Lake not too long after Bud had left on the last run. The vehicles had been loaded onto the cars and tied down. Bud could see through the snow that another fire department had arrived, and was sitting in the parking lot waiting for the arrival of the empty flat cars that Plow Extra One had brought from Warsaw, "Guess we'd better see what they've got to go," Bud told Penny, reaching for the radio.

"You girls awake in there?" he asked.

"I am," Kate replied after a moment. "Betty's asleep, now."

"Good enough. What's that fire department that's waiting to load?"

"That's the Lynchburg people, plus some stuff from Blair that we didn't have room for. We've got about five flatcar loads."

"We didn't bring that many emptys with us. We've only got three empty, but we can get another if we unload the bus flat we brought," Bud apologized. "If you can, refigure the loading to only take the major units. Take everything they can, but have them leave utility trucks and the like, if it comes to that. If you don't know how to do it, don't worry. I'll be up to the office in a few minutes."

It was only the work of a few minutes to get the loaded flats away from the piggyback ramp and replace them with the empty ones. Then, John took the Rock up Track One, left Bud at the office, and headed for the engine shed.

"Who's running the 101?" Kate asked as soon as Bud was into the office.

"John."

"I didn't know he knew how to do that."

"Well, to be truthful," Bud replied, "I didn't know it myself until a little while ago. That kid is going to make a short-line railroader yet. Did you get something worked out for loading Lynchburg?"

"I think so," Kate replied, "But you'd better check it."

Bud glanced at the sketch she had drawn on the back of an envelope. Once he took a second to figure out that she had to draw a sketch of each flatcar, then draw the Lynchburg units sizes over it, it made sense. "Looks good to me," he told her. "Give Tefke a call on the radio, have him unload that Warsaw school bus. Our passengers are going to have to make do with truck cabs and the way car again. Have Tefke load like this once he gets the bus off. It looks like we're going to make a short-line railroader out of you, too."

"I wouldn't want to do it every day," she replied. "But, I feel like I'm helping. I can't ask for much more."

"Let me tell you, Kate, I wouldn't want to do this every day, either. This has been one hell of a day. Why don't you call over to Rick's and rustle up some breakfast for you and John and me?"

Bud looked up when he felt a blast of cold air, to see Ed Sloat walking into the office. "So what's the word on the Burlington?" Bud asked.

"Still lousy. I think you could run her now if you had to, but she still needs to be dried out some more. I had her going an hour or so ago, and she was showing some life."

"The heaters are doing the job, then?"

"Yeah, slowly."

"If we towed it dead in train to Warsaw, do you think it would pull afterwards?"

Ed shrugged. "I wouldn't want to depend on it."

"Well, then, I guess we won't take it this trip. If we got up there with it running at all, it probably wouldn't be any stronger than the Milwaukee. I suppose John told you about that?"

"He did," the mechanic replied. "I couldn't figure out anything from what he was saying, though."

"He didn't look at it. Walt and I kind of poked through it, but we couldn't make heads or tails of it, either. Can the heaters on the Burlington pretty much take care of themselves?"

"Not really, but all they've got to do is to be checked every now and then. I left Tefke watching them for a few hours while I went home and got some sleep. He managed to cork off a bit while you were gone the trip before last."

"Good," Bud said. "Look, I want you to go with me this trip. Take a few tools and whatever you think you might need to figure out what's wrong with the Milwaukee, and maybe fix it. That'll leave at least one of us halfway fresh. You mind doing that?"

"No, that's fine. I was thinking of suggesting it, anyway. Roger can keep after those heaters."

"All right. Go get those tools together, and tell John to come up to the office here and grab some sleep on one of the cots when he's done fueling. That way, he'll be here if something comes up. I'll meet you out at the fueling dock when I've got everything ready here. I'm going to go over and check the loading."

Out at the loading ramp, Roger Tefke was getting the Lynchburg Volunteer Fire Department tied down. All the vehicles were on the flat cars, and it wouldn't be long before they were ready to go. The Lynchburg chief was there, and was a bit upset at having to leave an ambulance and a rescue van behind. Bud agreed that it was too bad, but that flatcar space was at a premium this trip. They'd try to bring the vehicles next time.

Bud looked at the flatcars. They were packed tighter than the first run they had made with the Spearfish Lake Fire Department. Well, everybody was getting more practiced with the loading, he thought. Tefke was having the firemen chain their vehicles down themselves, but was checking every tiedown. Nothing would come loose this trip.

A few minutes later, Bud was back in the cab of the Rock with Ed, going around the wye. The simple way getting the consist into the loading dock had left the plow pointing the wrong way. In the process of turning around, the plow pointed westward out on the main. Bud had Ed get up into the plow's cupola, and he powered the Rock off to the southwest for a ways; he was curious to see just how bad the snow had built up, and just how bad the conditions were that Ralph and his rescue train from Camden would be facing.

The going wasn't easy at all. The Rock and the big plow could handle it for the short distance that Bud went, but just there, the countryside was open, and there was little alongside the tracks to cause them to drift over. The cuts, Bud knew, were going to be a different story, but the nearest one that he could test was California Cut, several miles away. He knew he didn't have time to go that far.

"What do you think?" Bud asked Ed over the VHF. Over the last few years, Ed had a lot more experience with riding the plow than Penny, who had just started the day before.

"That's got to be tough going ahead," the brakeman/mechanic replied. "It's hard to say, but we probably could get all the way to Camden with this rig, but there's some cuts that we'd have to make a lot of runs at. And, you know that section down there by Thunder Lake? The wind whips across that lake for miles, then dumps snow right on the tracks. That would take a lot of punching."

Bud thought. The little plow couldn't do the job that the big plow could. Maybe he was asking too much of his Camden crew. But then, McPhee had more experience than that of Bud and Ed combined. Lots more experience. He ought to be able to realize an impossible situation before he got stuck in it.

"I think McPhee's got enough sense to know when to give up," Bud said into the microphone. "Guess we'd better be heading back. I found out just enough to worry me more."

A few minutes later, Bud yanked on the whistle cord, and Plow Extra one began to move. "Oh, hell," he said to Ed on the VHF. "I was going to have Walt's snowmobile loaded onto the running board. Well, to hell with it. We've done without it until now, so I guess we ought to be able to do without it this trip."

"Good idea, but let's get this show on the road," Sloat agreed.

Once again, Plow Extra One was on the move toward the stricken town.

While the scram train was being jury-rigged for it's purpose, Jay Roberts was feeling lonely and cold, as he stood in the storm, beating on the side of a hopper car to try and get the caked-up DAP to flow into the elevator. It was a lonely vigil, wearing a gas maks and sweating despite the cold. It was a constant routine of inspecting the flow with a flashlight, then poking around in the hopper's gate with the crowbar, then picking up the sledge for another shot at breaking the load loose. In a way, the hopper car resembled an hourglass, with its load slowly flowing through the hole in the bottom. But insted of dry sand or salt, the DAP was coming in chunks that had to be broken up.

After an hour or so, Chip Halsey and Fred Linder came out to the hopper car to inspect the progress. The plant supervisor climbed up to the top of the car, opened a hatch, and in the light of his flashlight studied the contents of the first bin. Back on the ground, he told the other two, "It's doing better than I expected. Just guessing by eye, I'd say it's about two-thirds empty."

"Good," Linder replied. "You can get started loading it pretty soon."

"Not just yet. We've got two more bins to go, then the other car, before we can get the elevator turned around."

"We've got to do better than that," Linder replied. "The longer that stuff sits there, the more chance we have of it getting away from us. How about as soon as that bin gets empty, you start loading it again with your front loader?"

Halsey scratched his head. "It's a good idea, Fred, but that hopper is higher than you think. The bucket on the front loader won't get within three feet of the hatch."

The fire chief was feeling the pressure to get the ammonium nitrate out of town. "We could get a gang of guys with shovels..." he started, then thought better of it. "Naw, that'd take too long, and there'd be no place for them to stand to unload the bucket that high in the air. What we've got to do is to get the loader up in the air farther. How about a ramp of some kind?"

"I don't know what we'd build a ramp out of that fast."

"How about snow? God knows, we've got enough of it. I could get Don Kuralt to bulldoze a snow ramp up to a level where you could fill the hopper bins right from the loader bucket."