My Railroad, My Rules

I was eight years old, and I owned a steam locomotive. Not metaphorically. Not an electric train model. Not a toy that ran on a loop around my bedroom. Nope!

I owned a real live working snorting moving coal-burning steam locomotive on real live railroad tracks with a real live engineer and fireman.

Her number was 476 and I was totally in love. You'll have to forgive me if I wax sentimental. She was beautiful and as far as I was concerned, she was mine.

She was actually owned by the D&RGW Railroad, the Rio Grande, which operated a daily tourist train from Durango Colorado to Silverton Colorado.

Durango was only a short Greyhound bus ride from my home and my parents brought me to ride the train three or four times a year.

I walked around the railroad yard. I looked at the passenger cars and cabooses. I waited in line to buy my ticket. I jumped up and down when the conductor punched my ticket.

But most of all, I watched MY locomotive steam out of the roundhouse and couple up to the train.

I was eight and life didn't get any better.

I always waved to 476's engineer. One day he offered to let me climb up into the cab. I was understandably in railfan heaven. I climbed halfway up to the cab.

Then I stopped. For the first time I was in the place I had always dreamed of. And I panicked.

There was real fire in the firebox.

I couldn't force my feet any farther up the ladder. I was frozen torn between my fondest wish and reality. You see, I'm deathly afraid of fire. My heart races. My mouth goes dry. My ears start to ring. I get tears in my eyes.

So I climbed back down the ladder. My father thanked the engineer and explained. Then he walked me to the canteen car and bought me an ice cream bar to calm my nerves.

21 years later, a new owner purchased the Rio Grande and all its equipment, including 476.

The D&RGW had numerous times threatened to close the line, to tear up the tracks, to cut up the locomotives for scrap metal.

The railroad was saved, preserved for the future and named as a National Historic Landmark. That deserved handstands and celebration. 476 was still waiting for me in Durango.

But the new owner promptly started changing things. That, I will make myself perfectly clear, was sacrilege. I had rules about MY railroad.

476 was built to burn coal... period. Not cruddy slimy oil from a retrofitted tank in the tender.

Bridges were supposed to look like bridges had always looked. Not strengthened with larger girders and shiny new rivets.

Rails were supposed to be 65 pounds per yard, handed down from other parts of the D&RGW. Not 85-pound steel fresh from a mill in Colorado Springs.

And fresh rock ballast under the ties was heresy. Ties were supposed to rest on a dirty roadbed with grass growing between the rails, just the way God intended.

The train to Silverton was supposed to be pulled by 476. Not those upstarts brought in from other railroads. Sure they were larger and hauled more passengers.

But come on, really! My eight-year-old's reaction was essentially: Excuse me? Who authorized this?

In those intervening years, I grew up. I had a family and chores. I washed laundry. Then I threw it in the dryer.

Throw is the wrong word. I shoveled it into the dryer. I treated it as though I was feeding coal to the locomotive to make steam.

Shirts in the left heel at the rear of the imaginary fire. My wife's dresses in the center. More shirts in the right heel. Pants in the left toe just inside the firebox door. Socks in the front center. Underwear in the right toe.

Our clothes always came out dry and ready to fold.

In my twenties, I thought 476 was done for. I was on the train to Silverton when we stopped suddenly. We waited. The train didn't start moving.

We waited. There was activity near 476. A lot of train crew running around.

We waited. I realized 476 was in bad shape. It had broken down. Dropped a side rod. Wasn't going anywhere.

When the train following us arrived, a decision was made that we would be hauled backward to Durango.

I remember being devastated as we moved away from 476, leaving her stranded on the tracks behind us. My inner eight-year-old started to cry. They were abandoning my locomotive.

Late that night, after we set up our tents in a campground near the railroad, I heard a whistle, as a work train headed north to rescue 476.

I breathed a sigh of relief. She would be repaired. Life returned to normal.

In railroading, proper terminology is important. Here's an example: It's called the Law of Western Railroading, very scientific.

If something breaks, you get a hammer to bang it back together. If that doesn't do the job, you get a bigger hammer. And then a bigger hammer.

As I watched the train crew trying to make 476 run again, I heard the banging of a hammer. Soon a crewman returned to the toolbox and got a mallet. A few minutes later, he came back for a hand-held sledge called a single jack. It's about the length of a forearm and has a large steel head.

When they finally brought out the full-sized long-handled 35-pound spike mallet, I knew that 476 was not going anywhere.

I had just experienced the Law of Western Railroading in operation.

The new railroad started running winter trains, taking tourists up the canyon to play in the snow.

In D&RGW days, snow was the enemy. It piled up in the ten miles south of Silverton, leaving the town marooned for weeks at a time. The snow always heaped so high that in order to open the line, they literally had to dig tunnels through the snowslides. That was an expense they didn't repeat very often.

Eight-year-old me, in my 20-year-old body, screamed "This is wrong. You can't take these trains into the snow. Why didn't you ask me if it was even possible."

Turns out they didn't go all the way to Silverton. They stopped at a small resort that usually closed in the winter but was miles south of the snowslide area. They served hot chocolate.

I told my family that I don't want a funeral. When I die, I don't need a memorial service. I don't want flowers or a grand sending-off reception.

I just want them to take my last remains down to Durango. Take the urn out into the railroad yard. There, amid the lubricating grease and a century of cinders, I want them to shake out my ashes.

I want to be eight-years-old again, feeling the warmth of the steam locomotives passing over me. I want to hear the clanking of couplers and the scrape of coal shovels. I want to be close to 476 as she gets ready to pull the daily train north to Silverton.

I can't think of anything as close to heaven as that.