Spike nodded pleasurably while the young man began an amusing shimmy of his narrow hips inside the cold, cubbyhole mouth; a move more reminiscent of someone hiking up a 400 ton girdle, than entering a piece of machinery.
“It’ll really mean something to your old man, knowing that you pitched in, kid.”
But, with only his face now visible from the furnace, Jim paused.
“Tell you what. Let’s just keep it to ourselves.”
The brakeman puzzled.
“Sure. If you want. But why hide it?”
“Because I want to be just another pair of hands, helping out. No one special, okay?”
“You got it.”
Jim gave his shoulders a last twist and disappeared into the empty firebox, his voice echoing out, in lament.
“Well, come on, Spike! You gonna make me wait all night? I know you’re old and slow, but geez!”
CHAPTER 29
Performance trial day.
Not many miles east of Mayhew, a husky new diesel locomotive met the dawn. Its fluid levels were verified by a flock of factory technicians, who then made a final cosmetic grooming of the engine’s brilliant, tricolored paint scheme. One climbed inside the machine’s office-like cab to initiate its easy start sequence.
The man addressed an array of control panel switches and corresponding indication lights. He confirmed that the independent brake was in its full, locked position, then ran a quick check of the locomotive’s numerous electrical systems.
Satisfied with the awakening flash of monitor bulbs and alarm bell chirps, he opened the engine’s test valves and set a thumb to the START button. A powerful motor cranked a few times, jolting the locomotive to life as easily as the family car. With oil pressure and ground relays reading okay, the diesel’s starting procedure was complete. It could now be left to idle and warm up, awaiting delivery to the Mayhew freight yard, a few hours hence.
2982’s firing process had begun much earlier and was far more intricate. It started with a half-filled boiler and firebox shoveled a few inches deep in coal. Scrap lumber was tossed on top, then splashed with dirty kerosene, left over from roundhouse maintenance chores.
A lit signal fusee touched off the blaze and high pressure shop air was ducted to the stack. This would suckle the infant fire with an artificial draft, until its flames grew strong enough to venture alone through the many yards of cold furnace steel. The long wait for steam began.
Four hours later, 2982’s boiler reached a simmering 150 psi and the machine slowly started to awaken. Its cross-compound air pumps began their intermittent puff and hiss. The steam driven dynamo high atop its mighty back was ready to spool up. Emitting an out of place jet age turbine whine, it would supply the engine’s electrical needs of 36 volts, DC.
2982’s injectors were primed. Under way, they would siphon off its tender’s swimming pool volume at an evaporation rate of six pounds of water boiled for every pound of coal burned. Translated, roughly 88 gallons and 122 pounds per ton mile, would create the 20,000 pounds of steam pressure racing hourly, through the engine’s arteries.
But no moving of the locomotive was considered, until every air, electric, and steam appliance was checked. Brakes, bell, headlight, and sanders were all given their turn. Its triple safety valves were permitted to vent, while the attending hostler, none other than Sunday Guzmán, did a walk-around inspection.
Sunday then opened the engine’s dank piston cylinders to the atmosphere. Flooded with fresh steam, their cold steel would be thoroughly warmed and any condensation, bled off. This single step was the most critical before moving. It concerned a basic law of hydraulics regarding the non-compressibility of fluids, that was well respected by the leagues of scientifically-unversed engine men.
They knew nothing of its discoverer, Blaise Pascal, and might be hard-pressed to even pronounce his name. But to a soul, all understood the damage which chilled cylinders could impart to the rotational mass of an un-warmed engine - either buckling its pair of stout, five inch thick piston rods with their very first pump, or blasting free its anchored cylinder heads, like nothing more than champagne corks.
Only with all of these criteria satisfied, was the reborn locomotive deemed fit to move. A first piston stroke mated its three foot thrust with the eighteen foot circumference of its driving wheels as the famished 250 ton machine rose in test of its legs.
2982 ambled into the faint, new daylight, pausing to feed and drink at the yard’s coal tower and water plug. When replete, 50,000 pounds and 22,000 gallons would additionally ride atop the rails. The locomotive would then rest at its true fighting weight of nearly one million pounds.
Sunday next rolled 2982 to a far spot of ready track. There, technicians waited to string it with test gauges. It would then be left to quietly simmer, awaiting the day’s road test and a chance at saving the very turf it rested on. Lesser engines traipsed about in the growing light, all conducting their appointed duties on lower pressures, weights, and fuel needs. But, in the superheated realm of mighty 2-8-4 road engines, it was 2982, who reigned the towering Tyrannosaur, among the herd.
CHAPTER 30
Zero hour neared and Joe Graczyk sat tracking the kitchen clock.
Having risen at his usual, 4 a.m. time, he’d loitered about the house ever since, idling away, while a good chunk of purposeful day was already squandered. Now, streams of taunting sunlight invaded his space. Their obscene, joyous rays only made the man even more irksome and he began drumming restive fingers.
“Joe,” Sarah finally begged. “Will you please quit fidgeting? You’ve been like a caged lion since you got up.”
His eyes never left the clock’s ponderous march.
“So, why do I feel more like a trapped rat? And can that damn time move any slower? Not due at the yard until nine o’clock. What normal person goes to work at that hour?”
Sarah’s eyes swept toward a click of heels coming down the attic steps. Its door opened to son Jim. Entering the room, he first winked at her, then furtively grabbed a package stashed behind the toaster.
“Morning,” he greeted Joe.
The man gave a preoccupied nod, but sat unaware of anything more, until Jim extended a hand.
“Pa.”
Joe looked up, baffled by the offering.
“Huh?”
“A little something from us on your special day.”
Joe received the parcel and slowly peeled away its gift-wrapping. Beneath, was a sharply pleated, new, denim cap. He grasped its stiff bill and swept an absent hand about the headband. But, like so many other things, Joe wasn’t much for special occasion items. Though he offered a thin smile of thanks, the gift sank forgotten, to his preoccupied lap.
His actions weren’t totally unexpected, wife and son sharing a common sigh at the man’s response. Taking up his bagged lunch, Jim did tarry a few moments longer. But Joe didn’t pick up on his son’s personal bid either, so Jim tacked a smile in place and started off alone.
“Okay, then. Guess we’ll see you at the yard, Pa.”
Joe nodded.
“Yeah.”
The door closed and Jim was gone.
As usual, Sarah was left to address the aftermath.
“Joe!”
He flinched at her tone.
“Huh - what?”
She chased a glance after the just-closed door.
“Maybe you’ve got a lot on your mind. But, would it have hurt to walk with Jimmy to the yard, today? Our son is proud of you and what you’re going to do.”
Joe weighed the matter with a raised brow. Just as quickly, he dismissed it.
“Might not look right. Especially on a day like this; company and union together – in cahoots or something.”
“For Pete’s sake.” She moaned. “You’re family. What should they expect? That you live in different house
s?”
Sarah indulgently let things pass and the couple returned to a joint silence. But, after another quarter hour Joe could stand no more. Getting to his feet, he instinctively reached down. For the first time ever, his fingers swiped through empty air. No lunchbox handle awaited.
“Not there,” reminded Sarah. “Remember? No cab food today or tomorrow. The company’s feeding everyone.”
Joe sighed, reminding himself.
“Right. Right. No dinner bucket.”
She did offer his normal Thermos bottle, full of black coffee.
“Don’t know about in between, though.”
The woman stood before her man in a jostling, final inspection. She straightened his collar and forcibly arranged Joe’s new work cap atop his head, while he pawed the air in feeble protest.
“Why all the fuss?”
“Because a man needs to look extra good on a special day like this.”
“You mean at his hanging?”
Sarah thumped her hands on Joe’s burly shoulders and harshly studied him. Theirs had never been a relationship of candy or flowers and like right now, he could be damn stubborn. Still, in the tandem work-a-day world of husband and wife, she loved the guy fiercely.
“Hey, Buster!” She ordered. “Look at me. And you listen up!”
He did.
“No one is expecting you to be Superman out there. You just go and work your job the best you can, same as every day of your life. If something special shows up, deal with it as you see fit. And remember, whatever happens, we’ll handle together, like in anything else that’s ever come our way. Now go out there and run that train, Mister Engineer.”
A sliver of gratitude thawed in the man. He gently pressed his lips to the woman’s forehead.
“Na rasie, matka.”
CHAPTER 31
Joe had never seen such a gathering of suits. The first wave of high-level downtown boys was already landed at the yard and had set obvious claim of ownership to the place. Their strutting about in a lordly throng didn’t endear them to the engineer. But, it was all new to Vint, who stood gawking, like a first-timer in the big city.
“Careful your jaw don’t hit the ground.” Joe advised.
Vint shook his head in awe.
“You ever seen such a thing, Joebie?”
Graczyk squinted at the growing circus.
“Only been to a couple freak shows in my life. But this sure qualifies as best.”
He dismissed the crowd and craned toward the ready track. There, twenty specially loaded boxcars, with a dyno unit in the lead, awaited connection to their power.
The performance laboratory was a sort of modified passenger coach with a stubby cupola on its head end. Coated in a low maintenance shade of drab, military green, it sported bay windows, bubbled observation ports, and a clutch of roof mounted anemometers. Something in it reminded Joe of the ungainly, first generation army tanks he’d seen lumbering across a long ago Europe.
He swept his gaze further about the yard.
“I’d guess that to be our train. But I don’t see no engine.”
“Still in the roundhouse, maybe.” Suggested Vint.
Joe rubbed his lucky coin.
“No problems, I hope.”
“You have a chance to see how she turned out?”
Joe rolled his eyes.
“Heck no. Sunday wouldn’t let me anywhere near. ‘Bad luck,’ he kept saying. ‘Bad luck.’”
“Me too,” answered Vint. “But, just look down yonder.”
On an adjacent track stood their diabolical opposition. The diesel locomotive was an EEC, Model SS-15. It was the newest, special service version of that company’s prize-winning road switcher design and set all gussied up for the occasion.
Builders generally used a slick sales pitch of painting demonstrator engines in the livery of their intended client. But, since the CC&S had no specific colors, other than black locomotives and rust red cabooses, their test machine, numbered for the year as Special 1955, was painted an eye catching, silver gray. Complimentary, polar white and jet black piping ringed it. The manufacture’s deltoid company logo was stenciled beneath each cab window, with ELECTRIC ENGINE COMPANY, branded across its flanks in blood red.
The locomotive was powered by a hallmark, 878-E, supercharged, V-14 diesel engine and marking time, the 60-foot-long rectangular brute burbled in a low and confident idle that dared contradiction.
As with all car-body-styled road switchers, the machine was plug ugly. Sporting easily manufactured straight lines and right angles of mass production, it had the personality of a log-splitting wedge. Its broad, slab sides were reminiscent of a rhino’s hide, rippling with industrial deck plate, louvered panels, and thick, wire mesh grids. The only components remotely familiar to old school enginemen were some standard railroad grab irons, bolted to its nose, flanks, and rear. Yet, something in that same, total lack of beauty looked to be all business.
Vint dismissed the machine as he approached with Joe.
“One ugly duckling. And take a gander at those colors - decked out like some Kansas City pimp. All it needs is a gold watch chain hanging to its knees.”
He stooped to inspect the shrouded undercarriage.
“Heard-tell they only got 40-inch wheels under them fender skirts, Joebie. Forty inchers, against our sixty nines. How can they get anywhere with stubby legs like that? We’ll dance rings around her!”
“Still, it’s got twelve,” Joe cautioned. “And we’ve only got eight.”
Vint was unimpressed.
“And a centipede has a hundred legs. But that don‘t make it faster than a horse. This nag’s got morning glory wrote all over it. Maybe it looks buff, here in the starting gate. But, once we get out on that high iron I’ll bet it don’t have spunk enough to go the distance.”
A pair of EEC sales representatives materialized. Well aware of Joe and Vint being the steam crew, they beamed with predatory smiles, though innocently offering their machine up for inspection.
“Good day gentlemen! Please feel free to step inside!”
Wary of their artful grins, Joe declined.
“No thanks. We’re good.”
But his reluctance only made the suits bait him even more.
“Come on, gents. If you’re curious, don’t just stand around out here. Take a peek. We’ve got nothing to hide and what’ve you got to lose? Strapping railroaders like yourselves aren’t shy, are you?”
The macho trump card was well played and the steam men obliged. Before entering the enemy camp, though, Joe did pause for a moment’s sniping.
“Didn’t I see you two running an arcade at last month’s town celebration?”
But, the pair of seasoned grins never twitched.
Joe’s first steps inside the husky machine were as alien as if setting foot on another planet. It carried the scent of things not logged in his railroading world; freshly sprayed enamel paint and newly molded rubber components. A subtle nip of ozone, borne of its high voltage generators, sifted out from the machine’s hidden vitals. And the self-assured quiver of its idling V-styled engine gave Joe a hint of what Jonah must’ve felt, when stuck in the belly of the beast.
Unlike steamers, here, there was no direct connection to the elements. Maybe feeling a bit confined, Joe still couldn’t label the machine’s vault-like cab as something disagreeable. It was well arranged with easily accessible, single-hand controls. Its pedestal seats were padded vinyl and formed in the style of office chairs. The machine offered its crews superior vision, with a mix of automobile safety glass filling flank-side portholes and actual bulletproof stuff in the windshield. Even more, hidden somewhere aboard, Joe’d heard scandalous rumors of there actually being a toilet.
He lifted a spiral wound booklet from the engineer’s control stand. Its pebbled, mock leather cover fe
lt gravestone cool to his touch. Bold gray letters identified it simply:
ELECTRIC ENGINE COMPANY
Locomotive Operating Manual
MODEL - S.S.
Flipping through some pages, Joe read off random subtitles in a tone of military nomenclature.
“Varying field current. Forward transition switch. Load regulator. Ground relays.”
He looked to Vint.
“Hell, they don’t need engine crews to run these things. They need electricians.”
Joe stiffened to a gathering of voices outside that weren’t there moments ago. Sensing treachery, he dropped the manual.
“C’mon. Let’s get outta here.”
Vint puzzled.
“What’s the hurry?”
Joe motioned across the locomotive.
“Never mind. Just go. Out the other side.”
But, it was already too late. An awaiting trap was sprung and a barrage of flashing camera bulbs ambushed the exiting steam crew.
Their grinning EEC hosts now stood among some company photographers and assorted CC&S staff. A condoning downtown official spoke for all.
“We didn’t figure you’d mind being featured in a newsletter. A goodwill shot.”
Joe eyed the suit and his salesman counterpart.
“Okay. How about returning the favor? Have your diesel boys come over for some pictures of them aboard our steamer.”
But, the salesman spread his hands in a practiced apology, indicating a newly arrived EEC corporate limo.
“Sorry. But as you can see, they’ve just now gotten here and have far too many matters to attend before leaving.”
More careful stage setting was unveiled with the emerging diesel crew. All carried identical travel grips and were dressed in matching tan coveralls that bore their embroidered names on the left breast pocket, with bold EEC logos splashed across the backs.
Their posture was lockstep, like first string players from a well-to-do sports team, set to dispense a home field trouncing of upstart challengers and they were absorbed by a welcoming zone of confident smiles that left the steam crew quickly alone and forgotten.
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