On Time

by Paul Kozerski

  “Completely honest? With no information withheld from it?”

  A quick surge of resentment swelled inside the young clerk.

  “Again, I have no idea what you’re talking about. And after being awake for three solid days, I’m too tired for riddles. So, if you’ve got something to say, spit it out.”

  The pair gauged each other in a critical silence. Appearing satisfied, Dee dismissed Jim with a curt sweep of his head.

  “Forget it. Go on.”

  Again alone, the yard boss gathered his thoughts. He then flipped a switch, connecting his desk phone to the paging system. The grounds outside crackled to life.

  “Attention all Mayhew workers! Gather up at the yard office immediately for a company announcement.”

  Dog-tired crews paused to listen and eye each other. Ready to drag themselves home, they instead, assembled in morgue-like silence for whatever fresh batch of bad news might be in store.

  But, this time DeLynne’s manner was curiously animated; oddly jovial. He scanned their ranks from atop the tower deck, gesturing explicitly to a distant Joe Graczyk.

  “You, there, man number 5728. You might as well come right up here. Front and center. This is your day to shine.”

  A curious murmur stirred among the spent crowd as it obligingly parted for its equally baffled, comrade. With Joe properly situated at center stage and rapt yard workers looking on, DeLynne spared a last, disbelieving glance at the vile company memo. Capping off a breath, he steeled himself to announce its bitter proclamation. But, not before venting a hint of personal contempt.

  “Well, it seems that we here have got a man of letters among us. And one who believes in jumping the entire and proper chain of command, as far as dropping his thoughts in the old suggestion box.

  “I’ve just learned that seniority number 5728 recently took it upon himself to send a letter to the CC&S headquarters about keeping the Mayhew yards a steam hub. And today, a formal dispatch arrived in response, from the Chicago offices of this company and Mister Chester Zacharia Phinnesey, top dog of motive power.”

  A buzz of speculation stirred fresh life into the exhausted crowd.

  “The reply,” Dee continued, “states that 5728’s letter has certain merit. In that regard, the company has allocated time and dollars for a one-to-one comparison of a steam road engine against a comparable diesel. They will be matched in an overall efficiency test on the Prairie Division of this railroad.”

  Joe numbed to a quick throb in his temples. Was he hearing right? Downtown had actually read his measly letter? He looked on, as stunned as any of the admiring eyes that fell on him from the surrounding crowd, among which, those of his son shone the brightest.

  Atop the tower platform, DeLynne completed his statement.

  “Three weeks from today a dynamometer test has been authorized. It’ll pit a new Electric Engine Company, road switcher against a comparable steam locomotive from the existing CC&S roster. One, which man 5728 would be offered to personally drive.

  “If he agrees, 5728 will be given an appropriate paid leave of absence from his normal duties for a chauffeured tour of the entire Prairie Division. This will let him find and select an engine that he feels will best do the job. Also, machining services of the downtown repair center will be available to aid the local Mayhew roundhouse in any necessary maintenance required to put the selected steamer on a par with its diesel counterpart.”

  Dee’s gaze bored straight through Joe. His voice sharpened to a slashing, personal dare.

  “Do you accept the challenge, sir?”

  Still in mild shock, the word challenge registered obliquely to Joe. What was this guy implying? A joust? A duel? And all caused by a moment’s silliness.

  Given the option, Joe would’ve taken the entire matter back. But, too many eyes were on him now. Besides, there was no walking away from Leplak’s impudent tone.

  The steam engineer gathered strength with a growing nod.

  “Yeah. Yeah, five-seven-two-eight will do it. And he don’t need any fancy car to haul him around, or time off his regular job, Sonny. You just get him engine, two-nine-eight-two, the Lima Berk and he’ll make your run for you.”

  DeLynne replied in curt deference.

  “Very well. You’ll also be able to hand pick your crew from anyone qualified in the division. So, if you have any special . . .”

  Today was Joe’s turn to interrupt.

  “No need! The guys riding shotgun daily will be just fine.”

  Dee fended the slight with a pointed glance, then looked toward nearby Domingo Guzmán.

  “The engine house will handle whatever necessary transfers are needed?”

  “You bet it will!” Sunday bellowed.

  “Then, the matter is settled.”

  DeLynne shoved the dispatch at Jim and spun on his heels. But, the matter was far from over. Disappearing back inside his office, the man was already hatching plans of counterattack and revenge. Three weeks was plenty of time to set his own trap. He’d figure some way to play his bait, same as for any river cat. Let 5728 get a taste of blind victory. Then, just snag and reel him in, like the ordinary sucker his kind was.

  Outside, the yard audience hovered quiet for a time, as subdued as when their closing had been announced. Except, a swell of quick energy thawed from today’s silence. It gathered strength, erupting in a cheer equaling that long ago one, when word of the war’s end came down.

  A tidal wave of coworkers converged on Joe. He felt hands of praise slap his shoulders, bounce off his back and playfully throttle his neck. The men’s steps, flat-footed and weary for so long, now re-inflated with a new and hopeful vigor.

  Heads raised high and voices sang in tribute.

  “Way to go, Joe!”

  “Bet the little jerk choked on having to read us that one!”

  “You give it to ‘em, Joe!”

  “Yeah. Give it to ‘em good!”

  But Joe Graczyk wasn’t feeling like any kind of champion. The sole purpose of his letter had gotten blown completely out of proportion. Now, word would be carried back to homes, neighbors, and across the entire town, building hopes and making him into the leader of a cause, when the only kind of leader he felt anything like was maybe a Judas goat.

  CHAPTER 27

  Engine 2982’s homecoming was far from glamorous. It merely reported in late one dreary night, at the finish of an ordinary run. Separated from its train of empty reefers, the locomotive was guided onto the service track. There, its fire was dropped and boiler drained. Nudged across the yard turntable, it was then pushed into roundhouse and left to cool down. Tomorrow would start a complete health check.

  Gazing at one’s filthy pelt, the average person couldn’t fathom what rolling mass of contradictions made up a steam locomotive. For all of their power, capable of rushing thousands of tons across the landscape at breakneck speed, engine 2982 and her sister machines were governed by the strictest and most delicate of operating realms.

  Heady engineering laws, such as the radius of oscillation, center of percussion, and polar moment of inertia, all made specific claims within the arrangement of husky beams, rods, and eccentrics seen whirling down the track. And before any steam design could ever leave the drawing board, a staggering maze of exact mathematics and precise machining had to be ironed out.

  Each component within a steam locomotive’s power generating side had to be assured of working reliably in a hostile environment of heat, cold, dirt, and severe, erratic loading. Each also had to clear, as well as perform in conjunction with, the many other parts orbiting fiercely around it.

  Additionally, the powered sides of a steam machine required that all of the running gear on one, be quartered in relation to the other; that is, set precisely 90 degrees ahead of. For even if both sides were properly timed, but the right was not situated in a designated
advance of the left, the mighty engine would not budge.

  Running hard steel wheels against hard steel rails was another liability. With a constantly rotating contact point barely the span of a dime, only adhesive force, the frictional pairing of an engine’s weight and power to the tracks supporting it, was all that kept things in motion. And comically, the same energy capable of propelling a mile long train, could stall helpless as a hog on ice, if encountering even a mild grade where the ascending rails had been doused with lard by some mischievous farm kids.

  In its most basic irony of operation, a steam locomotive also functioned contrary to the law of thermal convection. Heat might rise directly throughout the universe, but not in a steamer’s belly. There, a blaze hot enough to puddle iron was baited to travel horizontally, instead. Captive flames were siphoned along for 80 feet or more by drumbeats of distant exhaust and only then, were freed to follow their natural inclination.

  The strapping brutes were likewise, governed by a strict firing process. For though undetectable to the naked eye, the radial and linear expansion of a pressure vessel on the ready track might well be three or four inches larger in girth and length, than the same machine, if setting stone cold on a winter’s eve. And uneven heating meant irregular strains tugging at myriad rivets, welds, gussets, and stays that kept the explosive genie of high pressure steam bottled within.

  That genie was also a thirsty, jealous one. And centered in plain sight on every engine backhead, a bolted plaque defined its arena. The plaques were simply inscribed, water level. But, their two words screamed a fatal warning to all the world.

  Though, the boundary separating blast furnace heat and insulating water was in places, just fractions of an inch thick, a delicate balance existed between the two mediums which forced a testy, Jekyll and Hyde kinship on the very domains giving a steam locomotive its life.

  Contrary to general belief, boiler explosions weren’t caused by over-pressure, but insufficient water. Should one’s operating level fall below the inconspicuous, yet stark liquid minimum, the steel work containing it would quickly turn buttery soft and fail.

  All of the heated water, though still below the ultimate pressure rating of a healthy boiler, would suddenly find itself stronger than its weakened jailer and break free.

  Resulting boiler explosions ranked on a par with artillery fire. The vented pressure instantly expanded to several thousand times its liquid volume and tore the failed area free of its riveted anchorage. A gap generally remained between the engine wheels and tender after such a blast that marked the recent location of a lost cab and crew.

  Pieces of shrapnel weighing hundreds of pounds were documented as landing well over a quarter mile from their blast site - the pressure cooked, minced bodies of respective enginemen sometimes requiring scoop shovels and rubber-lined baskets for recovery. Few survived such trauma and were better off for it.

  The advent of fusible dump plugs had thankfully made new generation boiler explosions rare. Yet, for reasons other than safety, the days left for machines like 2982 were numbered.

  Even with modern boiler efficiency ratings set at a phenomenal 80%, the best reciprocating machines were still burdened with a paltry mechanical value of merely 10%. And the very weather itself, conspired against a steamer’s performance.

  Power to tonnage matchups in sustained frigid temps could downgrade the operation of a given locomotive from 5% at the freezing mark, to 40% or more at continuous, below zero temperatures. Translated, this meant a need for more, shorter, and profit losing, trains.

  As it had been with the dinosaur, so too, had the modern steam locomotive evolved to its ultimate and grandest form. No better operation, thermal economy, or mechanical value could be wrung from it.

  Unfortunately, it was a complete lack of all those complexities and limitations, which comprised the exact premiums found in the diesel-electric foe.

  CHAPTER 28

  For as many times as Jim had made this same walk, tonight’s hike to the roundhouse was the only one to ever hold a notion of dread. From his very first visit here, riding atop his father’s muscled shoulders as a toddler, the wonderfully cavernous place had always represented a dependable old friend. It was something forever cozy, secure, and permanent. Eternally cool in summer’s wilting breath and snug against winter’s fierce bite, the approaching rampart walls offered a castle-like barrier to the variables of an indifferent world lurking just outside.

  Mammoth, olden structures like this had a character and grandeur found nowhere else. They were deeded to a private membership, manned by a league of men mostly homeschooled in the intricacies of steam, air, water, and sand delivery systems. And within its walls those same men flawlessly performed a vast assortment of running maintenance on an unending parade of spent engines.

  Among its elect, the Mayhew engine barn also served as a general social center. Here, all nature of editorial commentaries abounded. Ball scores, boxing matches, gas mileage, and the philosophy of women, were all fair game. Here too, the world’s deepest problems were stripped bare, dissected, and solved with an acuity that put the best UN emergency session to shame.

  The place was permeated with a lingering scent born of the hundred-thousand locomotive layovers made here. Their decades of coal smoke had been absorbed into the very fiber of its thick, old-growth timbers and glazed the ceiling wood in a unique amber patina, the shade generally found only in the most sought after antique furniture pieces.

  A moist, familiar bouquet of lubricants reached out to Jim, while still at a distance. Aromatic oils, sulfated greases, and plain old, rendered animal fats, all served specific lube needs aboard a steamer and together, comprised the core scent of railroading. Their aroma flashed him back to his initiation here as a youngster.

  On that long-ago day he’d set hunkered low with his brother and father in an inspection pit, bracketed by a mere rail width of four feet and looking on, while a half-million pounds of indifferent locomotive was ponderously nudged to a resting place just inches overhead. Under their dad’s proud and watchful eye, neither of his sons panicked. And after a brief time, both were retrieved from between the engine wheels by acolyte shop hands, who plopped ceremonious dabs of initiating grease on their young noses as having become formal iron hogs.

  Arriving today, though, Jim wasn’t sure of his relationship to the place anymore. At best, it looked uninviting; filled with a deep melancholy of the times that made him feel even more alien and alone, a traitor afoot on the road’s union run property.

  He halted beneath the broad arch of widespread doors. His knees locked and his resolve nearly failed. Setting his chin, Jim forced himself, daring and uninvited, into plain view of what might well be an enemy camp.

  Ahead, CC&S engine 2982 rested as a cold and dissected carcass. It was penned in the lucky Number 7 maintenance stall and rigged with various jacks and slings. Blocks-and-tackle fixed it in place, an assortment of huge crossties and the yard’s heavy duty forklift, set at key bracing points.

  The engine’s unbolted smoke box was sprung wide. Cylinder heads were uncorked, their piston bores empty. Portions of running gear were already off and in the midst of being dismantled for machine-truing, downtown. The heavy black cables of portable shop lights snaked all through the locomotive, as a small force of determined workers conferred, wrenching away on its road-weary carcass.

  But, with Jim’s blatant appearance, all labor stopped and the festive chatter died.

  Like a grazing herd gone to full alert, the heads of everyone in the work party snapped erect. Neither hostile nor hospitable, a dozen neutral faces silently considered the familiar intruder.

  Jim expected as much in the way of a reception and drew strength from his purpose. He cleared his throat and declared the simple reason for his presence.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  His petition seemed to fall flat before the
gathering and no one replied. One figure then scooted out from beneath the locomotive’s grease-caked belly. Pensively scouring his filthy hands with a shop towel, Sunday Guzmán first regarded the men at his back, then pondered their uninvited guest.

  “Well now, who is that I hear talking? Huh? Is that little Jimmy Graczyk, come to call? Why, it sure is! Isn’t it?”

  Jim quietly endured the jibe while Sunday went on.

  “So, you wanna help wrench? Golly, I dunno. I suppose a salary guy crossing union shop craft lines is something that might be overlooked in a volunteer sort of way. But, are you sure that those soft, lily-white office worker hands could handle the job? After all, we wouldn’t want anyone getting a splinter or blister and then filing a grievance against us.”

  A few mirthful snorts punctuated his ribbing. But Jim stood firm, repeating himself, louder.

  “Like I said - besides being a handy target for wise-assed comments - is there anything I can do to help?”

  A smile thawed on Sunday’s face. He smacked a dirty paw hard against Jim’s clean hand and squeezed, baptizing it in filth.

  “Welcome home, kid.”

  The wall of stiff masks instantly warmed to approving smiles. Any reservations associated with the young Graczyk’s unintended fall from grace melted away. The prodigal son was fully received, back into the fold.

  Immediately, it was on with business. Spike’s baritone voice thundered down from the engine cab as he displayed a heavy riveting gun.

  “Hey rookie! Snuffy and me could use some help up here, bucking new stay bolts! Not afraid to climb inside a teeny-weenie, itsy-bitsy firebox, are you? It’s mighty small and tight in there! And you might get dirty - or scared.”

  “At least I can still fit inside, you big galoot!” Jim fired back.

  He snatched up a balled shop rag flung down from the grinning brakeman. Jamming it in a hip pocket, Jim deftly bounded up the cab steps and nonchalantly dropped to his butt on the filthy-slick engine deck.