Chapter 6

2135 1/8 - 0321 1/9: Decatur and Overland Snowplow Extra 3217

The Camden and Spearfish Lake wasn't the only railroad that was having problems with snow on that January night. More than a hundred miles to the south of the little town of Warsaw, the Decatur and Overland was in the midst of their own battle with the storm.

The storm hadn't been quite as bad to the south of Camden, and it takes a lot of snow to stop a railroad, anyway, as a local newscaster, Nathan Chamberlain had learned: he had done a stand-upper in the storm, live for the six o'clock report, saying that the whole town was plugged up and nothing was moving, only to have a D&O freight with five red and white road units on point go whistling through the background. The D&O's through freights were still running, even though, admittedly, they usually were running late.

To get the freights through took extra power in the face of the driven snow. Fortunately, many local industries had shut down, and it was possible to cancel some way freights and still have a little power left over to run snowplow extras on the major routes.

At Putnam Yard, the D&O's big central division facility south of Camden, movements were slow, since many of the wheeled vehicles that normally serviced trains couldn't make it through the snow. Many of the yard workers had brought their own snowmobiles to work; with them, the Yardmaster was managing to keep some degree of order to Putnam's movements.

Still, the Decatur and Overland was a northern railroad, and such things were to be expected in winter.

Frustrating though these times were to normal operations, Steve Cziller enjoyed them none the less. He was entranced by the drama of trying to run the railroad through the storm's challenges. He recently had been promoted to Road Foreman; in his mid-thirties, he had already held a lot of different jobs in his rise through the railroad's hierarchy. Until recently, he'd been a conductor on the railroad's Decatur division; his new position was something of a transition to a management level, and with his broad and varied experience, he was clearly earmarked for higher things.

Right at the moment, he was inspecting some work that was being done on the tired trucks of an F-unit that was older than he was, trying to figure out if there was any chance of its being used tonight. It didn't look good.

"Hey, Steve," a voice called from the door of the shop office. "The Super wants to see you right away!"

"Jeez, what's he doing, still here?" Cziller asked to no one in particular, then realizing he'd have to find out for himself.

In a few minutes, Cziller was brushing the snow off of himself in the lobby of the administration building, prior to climbing the three flights of stairs to the Division Superintendent's office.

"Hi, Les," he said, "What's up?"

Les Marks got right to the point. "You like challenges, don't you? I've got one, if you're interested."

"Might be," he replied, curious. "You never can tell."

"I just had a call from Bud Ellsberg," Marks said. "You know him?" Cziller shook his head, and Marks continued, "There's a hell of a fire burning up in Warsaw, up on the Camden and Spearfish Lake. It used to be our Spearfish Lake subdivision. You know it?"

"I've been all over it," Cziller replied. "When I was a brakeman, I made all sorts of runs up the Spearfish Lake and Rochester subdivisions. I used to hunt deer up around there, too. That was maybe ten years ago, though."

"Things have changed a lot in ten years," Marks said. "The Spearfish Lake subdividision is now the Camden and Spearfish Lake. It's a little, one-horse shortline with a handful of engines that are older than God. They've been trying to keep the line open from Spearfish Lake to Warsaw so they can haul in fire departments and rescue people, and they've already had one engine die on them. Ellsberg -- he's the honcho up there -- called me up a few minutes ago and asked us to run some power up to him on our Kremmling branch, over on the Rochester subdivision. With the Marshall drawbridge out, that's the only other way onto his iron. Now, the Kremmling branch has been embargoed for dogs years, but in the morning, I'm going to call Decatur and ask them to let us give it a try. Ellsberg has a pretty good argument, and I think they'll buy it."

Cziller studied the map on Mark's wall. The Rochester subdivision had once been much longer, but in the past several years lower-quality parts of it had been abandoned. Once the rails had run north from Atlanta, forty miles east of Putnam, to Lordston. From there, they ran around Haley Lake to Haleyville, then north to Whiteport and Kremmling and finally Walsenberg.

Things had changed. These days, D&O trains left the old route at Lordston and ran down the North Central Railroad branch to Coldwater, then up the old D&O Rochester branch until rejoining the old route at Whiteport. The roundabout route got to most of the old customers, at the expense of half again the distance to cover.

The NCRR branch once had run on to Meeker, but it had been pulled up past Frontier, as had the old D&O Coldwater branch a few miles south of town. The section between Lordston and Whiteport was still in place, but owned by the Lordston Northern, a little steam tourist operation, and the north part of it was unusable due to a grade that had been washed out in a storm a few years before.

"What is it you want me to do?" Cziller asked.

Marks smiled. "I'm assuming Decatur will approve, and I want us to get a running start. If that fire keeps going, Ellsberg is going to be in real trouble by the time we can get there. His people -- including himself -- are all hoglawed, but they're pushing on, anyway. Lord knows how long his machinery can hold out, so it's worth it to push ahead. I need someone in charge of the rescue train that won't give up at the first sign of trouble. We'd look like shit if we made a weak attempt and gave up, and it turns out we were needed bad. Can you handle it?"

"The guy that blows it is going to look like shit," Cziller replied. "If I can take equipment that isn't pure junk, I'll give it my best shot. No promises, though."

"That could cause problems," Marks told him. "The Kremmling branch is in real sad shape. The C&SL isn't exactly a high-iron main line, either. Ellsberg and I agreed that we don't dare use any really heavy units. I thought about maybe taking the F-7 set we've been using on the plow trains."

"That won't hack it," Cziller replied. "I was just down to the power shop. Those old covered wagons are down for the count. If I'm going to give this a try, we've got to take some good power. How about some of those GP-9 rebuilds we've been using on the way freights? They're light."

"I'll leave that up to you and the dispatcher," Marks brushed off. "You can take the best around that's suitable. I want you to get organized and get going as soon as you can. I'd say that you want to take two full crews, a couple of diesel maintainers, and a shitload of spare parts."

"With all that bad track, maybe we ought to take some section workers, too."

"Good thought. Make sure you take enough food and stove fuel in case you get stuck somewhere and we can't get to you until the storm is over. We had a run down here from Rochester yesterday, so the track shouldn't be too bad that far. After that, you'll have your hands full."

Cziller's next stop was in the dispatcher's office. The dispatcher, John Desmond, was notoriously tight with power. "I could let you have that F-7 set that's over in the power shop," he told Cziller.

"I just went around with Marks about that. Those old covered wagons won't get out of the yard under their own power. We've got to have good power. We were talking about some of those rebuilt GP-9s."

"You think I've got power to piss away, in this storm? I've even got switch engines on road runs and you want to eat high off the hog! Damn it, I'll talk to Marks myself about this!" He stomped off to his private office and slammed the door.

A couple minutes later he was back, somewhat more subdued. Maybe he did call Marks, Cziller thought. Desmond studied the power assignment board for a moment, then said, "Look, we've got 3217 and 3259 coming in on DPY-A in an hour or so. They're GP-9s. I can let you have one of them."

"One stinking engine isn't going to help those people in Warsaw much," Cziller replied heatedly. "I heard on the radio, and I heard from Marks, that they're running with their backs to the wall, trying to keep a bunch of castoff old junk running to save the town, and all you can say is one Geep. How about both the Geeps and the F-unit set?"

"Oh, all right," Desmond surrendered. "Take both the Geeps. I can't let you have the Fs, too. I've got to have something to send out on Dippy-A, sick trucks or no sick trucks. It's got three SD-38s, and that ain't enough. What else you want?"

"I'm taking an extra crew and some other people, so I'll need two crummys. I need them earmarked now, so I can get them loaded with tools and supplies."

"Way cars, I got a lot of, especially with the way freights not running. Take, uh..." Desmond glanced at the availability board again "... 14039 and 14071."

"How about a plow? I need the biggest one I can get my hands on."

"I was hoping you wouldn't say that," Desmond replied. "All the big plows are out on plow trains."

Cziller neaded a healthy plow or the job was over before it started. "We've got a seventy miles of track that hasn't been plowed all winter. Pilot blades are not going to cut it -- we need something that can move snow. Is there anything coming in in the next few hours that we can get?"

Despite his surly manner and tightness with equipment, Desmond really wanted to help. "Well, there is one thing, and it's right here in the yard, but it's up to you if you want it."

"What's that?"

"A few years ago, the car shop rigged up a rotary plow. They thought it would be good to clean out cuts and the like. We don't use it much; haven't used it this winter at all. You can't go real fast with it, but in really deep shit on light rail, it's the way to go. It throws snow like something you've never seen."

Cziller brightened. "Something like those out west, powered by traction motors off a B-unit generator?"

"Naw, it's nothing that elaborate. This is strictly homegrown. Just a great, big snowblower, powered direct drive from a D-8 Caterpiller diesel. I'll have the yardmaster dig it out of the dead line for you."

There was something there that didn't sound too good to Cziller. Despite Desmond's sales talk, there was a warning in his tone of voice. "I still want a blade," Cziller said, "But I'll take a look at it."

Cziller went over to the crew calling office to arrange for volunteer crews, and it took a while. By the time he got back to the power shop, the rotary plow had been pulled inside and a small crew was working on it.

From a distance, the plow looked brutally effective. Closer up, it's homemade genesis became apparent. In the remote past, it had been a forty-foot boxcar, but the old box had been shortened and its roof lowered. It now housed a bulldozer engine, driving a blade that looked like a giant fan. On top sat a cupola for the operator, not that he had much to control beside the engine's speed and the moveable steel chute that could control the direction the snow was thrown.

A great big snowblower, to be sure; Cziller had used one of a normal size a few hours earlier to clean out his driveway. Somehow, though, this obviously cobbled-up monstrosity inspired even less confidence than if he had planned to take his home snowblower in the front of the plow train.

"Ugly bastard," he said to the man who seemed to be in charge of servicing the plow. "I wonder how many wrecks it took to get parts for it."

"Quite a few," the man admitted. "She's not pretty, but she does move snow. And she's strong. I know. I helped build her."

"You going with us on the rescue train?"

"Sure am. The name's Spike Hottel."

"Spike, are you real sure that thing is going to keep running for maybe a couple hundred miles?"

Hottel scratched his head. "It ought to. They haven't used it enough to keep everything loose. Its real problem is that it's under-powered. We wanted to build it out of a wrecked switcher, but that fell through. The Cat is a second best. Everybody has always wanted to push it too hard through deep stuff, and the engine bogs down. It'll go pretty good through light stuff, but in the really deep stuff, you've got to take your time."

"Glad to have you along," Cziller replied. "It'll be good to have someone who knows something about it."

Cziller assembled his crew in the second of the two cabooses while they were awaiting the arrival of their motive power off of DPY-A. The last hour had been hectic, with people coming and going all over the place. In that time had managed to arrange for the train and to man it, get the food, fuel and tools that he wanted stored on board. All the promised people had shown up. There were now fifteen people in the car; two engineers, two conductors, four brakemen, two mechanics, four section workers and himself. Now that he had them all together, he felt that he ought to say something about the job ahead.