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[Unpublished]
Engine 618 is alive. The behemoth breathes quickly and deeply through the steam chests on each side. In and out. In and out. When the steam pressure on the engine becomes uneven, the air pump on the left side kicks in, thumping, chug-a-chug-a. The fireman feeds it more coal, directly into its belly. It roars with delight. He clears the ballast of the boiler with the pulling of a creaking lever, sending hissing steam out of the steam chests, twenty feet on each side, like a giant sneeze.
Born in 1907 at the Baldwin Engine Works in Pennsylvania, Engine 618 is being readied to make its first run of the day down Provo Canyon. The spur line ran all the way from Heber City to Provo when it was built in 1899 to ship out cattle and sheep and bring in supplies. It was abandoned in 1967 shortly after U.S. 189 was routed through the canyon. Now the rails carry tourists halfway down the canyon, terminating at Vivian Park.
The steam pressure within the boiler is up to 175 pounds, enough to take off down the tracks, says Joel Thompson, the engineer. He twists an old iron valve, blackened by coal dust from nearly a century of use, and a geyser of steam and black smoke shoots up out of the locomotive’s smoke stack in the front. The grayish cloud rises high into the air, then falls back onto the black iron of the engine, which is so hot that the water vaporizes back into steam.
A steam locomotive is very simple – far simpler than the internal combustion engine in today’s automobiles. Coal is shoveled into the firebox. Flues funnel the heat from the firebox through the boiler. The water turns into steam, producing pressure, which is then piped from the steam dome on top of the boiler to the steam chests. Here, the pressure expands inside a piston, whose movement pulls and pushes the main drive rod that is attached to each of the wheels. At the very front of the locomotive is the smokebox and smokestack, through which the flues exhale the gases and smoke from the fire roaring in the firebox.
For the moment, the locomotive is coupled only to its tender, which is a car that holds the coal and water tank. Each trip down to Vivian Falls and back, some 32 miles, will expend as much as 4000 gallons of water and 1 ton of coal.
The two are facing the vast engine shop, in which the other locomotives owned by the Heber Valley Historic Railroad are kept. In front of the station fifty yards away, the passenger cars are being loaded for a nine o’clock departure.
“Conductor, this is 618,” says Joel into the microphone of the modern radio on-board.
“Go ahead,” responds the conductor, Lyle Sigurt.
“We’re going to move out onto the train,” replies Joel.
“Do you need help moving back?”
“No, I think we can do it on our own.”
With that, Joel slides the throttle forward and the train begins gliding smoothly away from the engine shop. The throttle controls how much steam enters the steamchest and thus how quickly the piston moves.
We approach Lyle standing next to the switch with his arms raised parallel over his head. When the locomotive has passed the switch, he drops his arms and changes the switch to allow us to move towards the station and couple with the other cars.
Joel stops the locomotive by cutting the throttle. He flips the Johnson bar, which determines in which direction the locomotive travels, moves the throttle forward again a bit, and we creep towards the passenger cars.
Lyle walks along with the locomotive, helping Joel to discern the distance to the cars. When we near them, Joel reduces the throttle until finally there is a muffled clinking of metal.
Lyle moves in to couple the locomotive to the cars with hoses, wires, and couplings. The brake pads on the cars are held off the wheels by the steam pressure from the locomotive. If the pressure is cut – for example, if a car becomes uncoupled on a steep grade – then the brake pads will engage and the car will come to a quick stop. An electric generator in the locomotive also provides power for the cars.
The entire episode of readying the train was caught on film by no fewer than a dozen spectators, attracted by the liveliness of the locomotive and its crew.
When Robert Arnesen, the fireman, descends from the engine to check over the locomotive one last time, his work is followed closely by onlookers of all ages. He lugs around an old oil jug, the kind made of tin with a long snout.
“In the 30’s, they came up with ball bearings, but before that they used brass wedges,” says Robert. The axels of the giant wheels are surrounded by brass wedges, creating forms into which Robert pours oil of a neon green color. The pools of oil keep the axels lubricated and reduce friction between them and the wedges.
Robert climbs the ladder back into the cab of the engine to check on the fire burning within the firebox.
“One time, the fire blew out on me clear to the ceiling,” he recalls. “I opened the door and before I could hit the latch to close it, the fire backfires. I hit the deck as fast as I could.
“This was years ago, back when we used to be too hasty. The pressure was down to 50 pounds. There was too much coal and not enough oxygen, so it had to get air from somewhere, and that happened to be from the cab.”
A rumbling sound approaches the locomotive. A diesel locomotive with one man at the helm passes by to retrieve the caboose that he will attach to the back of the train.
“One guy can drive that thing; it’s not nearly as dirty,” says Robert. “That locomotive was made in 1953 for the Army. It has a V16 diesel engine inside it that you just start up and drive away.”
“618 – Radio check,” says Joel into the radio.
“Let’s highball it!” responds Lyle with enthusiasm. Back when humans, rather than computers maintained railroads, the station operator signaled a train that it could depart by raising a stick with a ball over his head.
The air pump kicks into action again after Joel moves the throttle forward, sending pressure to the steam chest. Chug-a-chug-a breathes Engine 618. I think I can, I think I can, it says slowly.
“Come on, let’s go,” shouts Robert indiscriminately at the fire as he shovels in more black coal.
Joel sounds the whistle with two medium shrills followed by a long shriek, announcing to the Heber Valley that this train is leaving the station. |
