Chapter 12

0327 1/9 - 1023 1/9: Plow Extra Two
Lordston Northern Extra 9608

Hours before SX-3217 was stuck in a snowdrift north of Coldwater, another lighter, lesser-powered Decatur and Overland engine, leading a train of much less power, was similarily buried behind a somewhat larger snowplow, many miles to the southwest.

Just the same, it was stuck. The combined power of the 1478 and the much smaller Camden and Spearfish Lake 303 couldn't move themselves while coupled to the C&SL's "little" plow.

Gene Ballard was waiting in the cab of the 303 as the loom of the 9608's headlight materialized out ot the darkness of the storm, wondering all the while what the old man would say. Ralph McPhee stopped the old Lordston Northern steam engine only a few feet behind the stranded Plow Extra Two.

McPhee didn't say much. He climbed down from the open cab of the steamer and surveyed the situation. The plow was out of sight, and there was snow wrapped around the nose of the D&O SW-9. He nodded his head and said, "Yep, Gene, you stuck her, all right."

Ballard was relieved, in a way. He had been expecting the old man to pitch a fit. When he'd fired with him, twenty years or more ago, McPhee had been on his ass all the time. "Yeah, I'd say we backed off a little too far on that one. What do you think we ought to do now? Drain the engines and back off to Camden with the steamer?"

The old man snorted. "Why, hell no." You ain't that stuck. One time, years ago, we had five engines the size of the 9608 here stuck in Grant's Cut, up t'other side of Warsaw, and we got 'em all out. We'll back off the consist a ways and hook on the 9608 and see what happens. While we're backing it off, clear off the tracks behind the 303."

Ballard was convinced that the 9608 couldn't be much help. He wanted to say something, but thought better of it. The old engine had gotten the rescue consist this far, so it obviously could do some good; and who was to say that a few more horsepower on clean tracks night not do the job? It was worth a try.

It only took the two old men a few minutes to back the rescue consist up a quarter of a mile, then return and couple on to the stranded engines. Crews returned to both the diesels, then McPhee ordered, "OK, back 'em down easy."

The two diesels began to bark. McPhee's experienced hands opened the throttle of the old steam engine, and steam began to fill her cylinders. The old Baldwin had been built years before the day of electronic gauging; nobody had ever dreamed of wheel slip alarms, since they hadn't been needed. The exhaust of escaping steam and the sound of the wheels on the track were all that a halfway decent engineer had needed in those days for such things. When the wheels of the old 2-6-0 began to slip, McPhee backed off on the power, added sand, and increased the power again.

Slowly, grudgingly, the three engines began to move backward. It was only a matter of a few feet that was needed to free the engines and the plow from the grip of the snowdrift, but McPhee backed them off a hundred yards before he stopped. Again, he climbed down from the open cab of the steam engine and walked forward. Ballard came out to meet him.

"Told you so," McPhee said.

"Damned if you weren't right," the younger man replied.

"Probably won't be the last time we have to do that before we get there."

Ballard looked back up the tracks at the snowdrift that they had just escaped from. "I've been thinking about that," he said. "I'm wondering if we do want to go on. There's going to be a hell of a lot of stuff like that, until we get past Thunder Lake, anyway. The wind has got the whole damn lake to pick up speed and pick up snow. Then, when the wind gets up to the tree line here, it dumps it. It's going to be deeper than shit and windpacked, to boot. We've got miles ahead like that thing we just got out of, and God knows what after that. I just don't think that we've got the punch that it's going to take to do it."

The old man thought for a moment. Ballard did have a point. There was no doubt that it was going to be hard going. But, McPhee didn't like to give up easily once he'd set his mind to a task. One quick try and giving up just as quickly didn't count for much. "Let's poke at her for a while yet, Gene," he said. "I don't think that the 1478 and the 303 have got enough power and weight between them to get the plow so stuck that the 9608 can't pull them out."

Ballard wasn't convinced. "That could take a hell of a long time," he told McPhee.

"It'll take till spring if we don't give it a try."

"Well," Ballard conceded, still not convinced. "I suppose it won't hurt to hit it a few more times to get an idea of how bad it'll be when we really get out in the open behind the lake."

McPhee nodded. "Tell you what," he said. "I'll ride with you in the 1478. It'll give me a better feel for what we're getting into. I'll have Harold back the old girl up to give us some room."

A few minutes later, the Baldwin had reconnected with the rescue train, and Plow Extra Two charged the drift where it had been stuck.

They gained a little ground this time. Not much; perhaps fifty yards. This time, when the nose of the 1478 was buried in snow, it wasn't so deep that the combined power of the two diesels couldn't back out. The snow was hard-packed by the wind here, and the plow tore it loose in chunks. A fine white power of snow enveloped the engines and the plow bit in again, for yet another fifty yards.

Ballard had the engines charge again, and again they gained some ground. For a distance, they were able to keep moving through snow that was slightly lighter, slowly giving up their speed as the encompassing snow robbed the plow train of the momentum that was carrying it through the drift.

They backed off. It seemed as if there was a chance that they might be able to get through if they just kept pecking away at it.

The next time, they charged harder, backing off well past the point where they had been stuck the first time. This time, the plow train's charge carried them nearly a quarter mile. "See, I told you we could make it," McPhee said.

"It's still going to take a hell of a long time," Ballard replied. "It's taken us fifteen minutes to gain a half a mile or so. That's two miles an hour."

"That's faster than sitting in Camden," McPhee snorted. Ballard shrugged and signaled for yet another run at the snowdrift.

The diesels bellowed again and began their rush. The plow hit the windpacked snow, and for a hundred yards or so it pushed snow as well as it had done on the run before. Then, the snow began to thicken, and Plow Extra Two jolted to a stop.

Ballard called for reverse power. The engines just roared, and the wheel slip alarm in the 1478 began to sound. Ballard hit the sand, but this didn't help much. "Stuck again," he told McPhee.

The old man shrugged. "Bound to happen sooner or later. I'll call Harold."

Once again, the old relic from another era came forward to the stuck engines, and vindicated its existence. As the three engines backed out of the snowdrift, McPhee called his old friend on the radio and told him, "Don't get too far away. We'll probably need her again. It feels right good that I talked Ellsberg into letting us bring her."

The next hour or so was brutally hard on both man and machine. McPhee was finding it hard to put up with the sudden, jolting stops and the diesels charged again and backed off again, gaining but a few hundred yards at each run in the thickly blowing and drifting snow. The next time they were stuck and waiting for a retrieve from the 9608, Ballard said to the old man, "Why don't you stick with the Baldwin, where it's more peaceful. I kind of think that we've got the hang of it."

"I think I might take you up on that," McPhee replied. "You're doing all right. You got to just keep pecking away at it."

It was a lot colder for McPhee in the familiar cab of the steamer, but the ride was better. "How's the old girl running?" he asked Stevens.

"No problems," his friend replied. "Guess she showed she still has something left."

"Darn right. Ballard hasn't said a bad word about her since we pulled him out the first time."

"Served him right," Stevens agreed. "Do you suppose we ought to go back and get the consist? We've pulled out a couple miles on it."

"Mightn't be a bad idea at that. How's the water doing in this old girl, anyway?"

"It's holding out pretty well. I went back a few minutes ago and checked the tender."

As the engine slowly backed toward the waiting consist, McPhee got to thinking. It could easily take all day to get to Meeker, north of Thunder Lake, the nearest place ahead that they could expect to get water. True, the fire department could run a hose to the lake, cut through probably three feet of ice, and then pump up lake water. That would do if it came to it, but it was obviously a hell of a lot of work. It would be a lot easier to hook up to a hydrant in Moffat, and since the water that they had couldn't be expected to hold out to Meeker, it might be a good idea of back up to the little town before the track snowed in behind them. McPhee called Ballard and told him of the idea.

"Sounds reasonable," Ballard replied from the 1478. "While you're at it, see if you can come up with some sand, too. The sandbox on this thing isn't big, and we're using a lot."

"I'll try," McPhee said. "I don't know where we're going to get any, or how we're going to carry it, but I'll see if I can come up with something. We're going to be a while, so you be careful."

It was only a few miles back to the little town, but it was hard going for the old Baldwin to back the relatively light load that far; the track had been snowing in behind them, and it was drifting up rapidly. It was still before dawn when the way car stopped at the crossing in the center of town.

One quick call to the town's fire department was all that was required to get the water that was needed to fill the tender. "It'll take us a while to get over there," the man from the fire department responded.

"Don't need you to come at all," McPhee told him. "We brung our own hoses. Brung our own fire department, for that matter."

"Fine. I really didn't want to go out in this weather, anyway. I suppose you'll be using the hydrant over by the lumber yard?"

"Might as well," McPhee told him, thinking. The mention of the lumber yard gave him an idea. "Do you think you can get someone out to open up the lumberyard? We hauled a carload of mason's sand in bags up here not all that long ago. Now, we need a couple ton ourselves."

"I can call him," the fireman said. "It'll take him a while to get in. He lives out in the country, and he'll have to ride in on his snowmobile."

After he hung up the phone, McPhee looked at the way car, lit by one of the town's street lights. Might as well give the passengers a break, he thought.

The last few hours had been boring for them. For the first few miles out of Camden, it had been something of a novelty to be pulled along by the old steam engine, even though they couldn't see or hear much of it. Once the steamer had left the consist and went on to pull Plow Extra Two from the first snowdrift, it had gotten boring. As soon as McPhee appeared in the way car, Sally Keller snapped, "What are we sitting here for? I thought we were going to Warsaw?"

"Trying to, ma'am," McPhee replied gently, but loudly enough for everyone in the car to hear. "It's been kind of slow going for the plow train, and we've just been sitting back and trying to give them some room to work. We came back here to water the engine and load some sand before the track snowed in behind us. We're going to be here for a while, until the man gets here to get us some sand. I noticed that there's a little restaurant open across the street, so anybody that wants to can go over and get a bite. We're going to need some help to load that sand, so when I blow the whistle on the engine, I want everybody to come back to the train, and I'll want the men to help carry sandbags. You'll probably have half an hour at least to get something to eat and drink."

It was nearly an hour before a stream of men, each carrying a fifty pound bag of sand on his shoulder -- some of them carrying two -- began to stagger from the lumber yard along a hundred yard path to where the train waited. In the meantime, McPhee had put some of the firemen to topping off the coal in the tender from the supply in the gondola. The sandbags were laid along one side of the gon in the space thus cleared, and were covered with a tarp to keep the sand from getting wet.

All of this was a slow process, and in the middle of it McPhee realized it had been more than an hour since he had heard from Ballard. Readily solved; he went to the 9608's radio and called ahead to Plow Extra Two.

It proved that they weren't doing too well. "It's been slow," Ballard replied. "We've gained maybe two or three miles since we saw you. The going is really bad, here. The snow is really packed, and we're only getting maybe fifty yards at a crack. We don't dare try too hard, since we don't want to get stuck at all. We're clean out of sand."

"I'm a-bringin' you some," McPhee told him. "We got a couple ton loaded right now, and I can bring more. Best be thinking about it, since we ain't likely to be able to back up here again."

"Better bring all you can," the younger man told him. "It'd be a hell of a lot better to have it and not need it than it would be to need it and not have it."

McPhee had barely gotten off the radio when Milt Johnson, the fireman, walked up to the rear platform of the 9608. "That's about it," he told the old man. "And just as well. We don't have that much space left on the coal car."

"Turns out we're gonna need more," McPhee replied. "Just keep on hauling it for a while. When you get that hole in the gon filled, start loading it anywhere you can. There's mebbe some space left in the boxcars, and if we need to we can pile it on the flatcars. Have somebody bring about five or ten bags of it up here, too. We might as well top off the sand dome on this engine while we're at it."

Nearly six tons of sand had been loaded by the time McPhee called a halt. "That's a hell of a lot of work in this weather," Johnson commented.

"Couldn't be helped," McPhee told him. "We need the sand. How'd you like to ride up front? I'm going to have Harold and one of your people that's been firing take a break, so they'll be room."

Johnson accepted immediately. He'd been aching for the invitation, for the old engine fascinated him: it's not the kind of invitation one gets every day.

Shortly, the 9608 with the rescue train was rolling north. Johnson stood to one side as a Camden fireman shoveled coal, and McPhee peered ahead into the storm, his hand on the throttle. "Thanks for helping out back there," the old engineer said. "Your guys did a good job."

"Not just my guys," Johnson commented. "Almost everybody pitched in, doctors, EMTs, those guys from Channel 8, even a couple of nurses. There's one gal there that would grab up two bags at a time and head off like she was carrying a baby. Couldn't get that asshole Chamberlain from Channel 3 off his dead ass, though."

"That figures," McPhee replied, reaching for the microphone to call ahead to Ballard. "Gene, where you at?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," the lead engineer from the plow train called. "I'd guess we've made good maybe five or six miles since we got stuck the first time, but all I can see out here is snow. No mileposts or anything, so it's anybody's guess to be sure."