A locomotive is, next to a marine engine, the most sensitive thing man ever made



Spring never came to Alaska without one last cold snap from old man winter. So February morning was bone clatteringly cold. Snow hung in the trees, buildings, ground, and roadbed of the Nome railroad yard. Thick clouds of steam could be seen rolling out of the stacks of the locomotives as they prepared for the day ahead. The little switch locomotive or “Yard Hog” as she was called, was already busy. A string of loaded cars slid out down one track, and a string of empties took their place. Bales, crates, boxes, jars, carboys, frails, cases, and packages flew into them from the freight-houses as though the cars had been magnets and they iron filings.

The Yard switcher was rolling forward pulling a line of flats loaded with lumber. Suddenly, a husky brake dog who was standing on the back foot board, pulled the pin, and a yard dog opened a switch ahead; the little locomotive turned up it like a rabbit as the yard dog snapped the switch behind her, and the long line of twelve-foot-high lumber the little locomotive was precisely pulling jolted on into the arms of a full-sized road-loco, who acknowledged receipt with a dry howl.

The switcher was pushed forward a foot at a time; whirled backward, the locomotive’s rear drivers clinking and clanking, a quarter of a mile; jerked into a switch (yard-switches are very stubby and unaccommodating), bunted into a Red D, or Merchant's Transport car, and, with no hint or knowledge of the weight behind, started up anew. When the load was fairly on the move, three or four cars would be cut off, and the yard hog would bound forward, only to be held by the brake. Then she would wait a few minutes, watching the whirled wands of the yard dogs in the swirling snow, deafened with the clang of the bells, giddy with the vision of the sliding cars, the brake-pump panting forty to the minute, the front coupler lying sideways on the cow-catcher like a tired dog's tongue in his mouth.

Balto nodded as the switcher rolled past. Pulling his brown coat up to though off the cold, He stepped over the rails…nothing more then iron bands jutting from the snow, and walked over to the Yard office. As district manager, he was in charge of the Nome to Nenana section. Nome was the end of the Line for the Western, Outbound, Louisiana, and Florida RR (which went nowhere near either of those final named places)…and the beginning for supplies heading into the isolated northern towns. Nome was like a trading post, an oases locked in a frozen desert.

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Dusty sat in the cab of her locomotive, #3; an 1800s Ten Wheeler bought second hand from the “Nenana Northern” Railroad. She wore a warm fleece over a blouse and trousers. Her Fireman, Kaltag, a yellow and white chinook held his scoop gingerly after depositing another coal load into #3’s firebox.

The Husky remembered all she had ever heard of landslides, snow-piled boulders, blown trees, and Icy rails. She had just gotten promoted to a road engineer, the 4-6-0 monster was twice the size of the little switch engine she used to run, and that didn’t make this first run any easier. At each jarring bump she believed an axle had smashed, and she took the eighty-foot bridge over the Nenana River without a guardrail like a cat on the top of a fence.

She looked back at her chagrin, a Maintenance Of Way train with a derrick and a work equipment was coupled to a line of boxcars coming east from Nome. Her fireman noticed her staring at the MOW equipment and laughed.

“What are you laughing at Kaltag?” Dusty asked.

“Oh, the Empire State must learn to wait, And the Cannonball go hang! When the West-bound's ditched, and the tool-car's hitched, and it's 'way for the Breakdown Gang.” Kaltag sang in a catchy little tune.  

Dusty smiled. Kaltag was an awesome fireman. Always willing to help her out, she even thought he might have had a crush on her.

She turned and paid attention to the rails outside. A bit of snow stuck against the glass of the headlight and threw a flying shadow on the track, which looked like two small black lines against the pure white of the freshly plowed snow.
Suddenly an arm wrapped around Dusty, pulling her from the seat, she had barley enough time to struggled on the wooden floorboards of the locomotive’s cab when she felt the needle going into her shoulder, and her vision become blurry.

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“There are thousands of miles of un-known, un-touched, and unseen land, just feet from the edge of the roadbed. You have to be unbelievably stupid to think we know everything that is out there”



 
Aleu stood beneath the great black hulk of iron and steel which bared the nameplate “Texas” The mighty boiler towered high above her in the snowy darkness like the body of some horrible antediluvian monster, and the steam rushed angrily from the diamond stack, as though the great animal were fretting under the unaccountable delay, and longed again to be off, rending the tempest with its iron snout, and awakening the sleeping hills and hollows of the great untamed north with its hoarse shriek. She smiled and patted the cylinder heads. The locomotive was of the old 4-4-0 class, with a mahogany red cab and deep green boiler topped by a burgundy diamond shapes stack and a big box headlamp.

“You’re a fine fiddle big boy,” she said to the locomotive. She stood wearing her jacket closed up and work jeans, her tail flicking back and forth. Apparently oblivious to the 40 below temperature. Aleu climbed into the wooden cab of the 4-4-0-steam locomotive, and watched the lantern attached to the highball single raise up to indicate a clear passage.

With a low moan from the whistle, she threw the throttle open, and pushed the Johnson Bar into the last notch. The great machine seemed suddenly animated with a demoniac energy, and soon they were shooting through the black, snow-beaten night.  The track was illuminated for scarcely fifty feet, and the night yawned beyond like some engulfing abyss. Behind him, a string of flatcars loaded with machinery bound for Nome fallowed obediently.

Aleu was in her element. Coming home to Nome Alaska. She had spent almost a year in-between Colorado and Nevada, and was eager to head back to her father and mother. She smiled when she thought about her quite little hometown.  

She was rudely shaken out of her lethargy as the train struck a slight curve half way down the grade. The locomotive shied like a frightened steed, and shook in every iron muscle. The flanges shrieked against the rails, the cab swayed and cracked, and the very earth seemed to tremble.

“Careful up there!” Aleu barked to her locomotive. Running without a fireman, she had become accustomed to voicing her emotions on her iron steed. She always referred to her assigned locomotive as “he” and in the male gender. She grabbed the whistle cord and let Texas’s low wail echo once more across the Alaska tundra. She rounded a bend and started up the line as it paralleled the frozen Nenana River.

Suddenly, from around the corner, she saw what looked like a train. But it was high on a hillside on the opposite end of the river. And was slowly moving backwards, with all lights extinguished. Aleu knew the line ran to the old gold mines of the Kenneth Mining Company. But Kenneth had closed out and moved east to the Yukon when gold was discovered outside Dawson.

"Thats strange.” She said. The grabbed the cord once again and gave a succession of quick blasts. The locomotive crew had to hear…but the other train stayed silent.

Texas turned and started crossing the river. Aleu closed the throttle and leaned out the cab window. The roar of the train crossing the bridge was defining. And below her was the frozen ice of the river, which seemed to glow red in the firelight from Texas’s firebox.  

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Balto was frantic. This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t believe it was happening. He paced back and forth in the telegraph office.

“Wire Isloosa again, see if the #3 passed.” He said to the telegrapher, who was an old human.

“Sorry Balto, but they reported that she never passed. In fact, the train that was fallowing her reported in without any problem.”

Balto looked at the clock. That train was an hour late.

Just then the door opened and a brown and white Husky stepped in.

“Balto, #47 just arrived.”

“Thanks Ralph.” Balto said and headed out into the snowy night.

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The railroad line came into Nome via Main Street. It then cross the town center axis before splitting into the Railroad Yard, so the citizens of Nome where not worried at all when Texas came rolling out of the clouds of snow. He rolled to a stop by the depot, bell ringing. The flakes of snow falling in his headlamp where beautifully illuminated before disappearing out of the beam. Balto walked up to the locomotive, just as Aleu was climbing down the stirrups.  

“Papa!” she yipped and she ran up to hug him. The father and daughter stood in this embrace for a moment, before both turning and walking into the depot.

“Hello Aleu, its great to see you again.” Balto said as Aleu dropped her grip into the wooden floor of the waiting room. A clock audibly ticked off the minutes and the wind howled outside accompanied by the ragged