Tales of the Rocky Mountain Division Jim Curran and Phil Dahl, Part One
By J. A. Phillips, III, with James M. Fredrickson
Originally Published in The Mainstreeter
The Quarterly Publication of the Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association
Jim Curran and Phil Dahl, Engineers
Jim Curran went firing in 1941, only to be drafted a short time later. Under the agreements of the time, he came back to Missoula in '45, a promoted man. He retired from Burlington Northern in 1984, having spent his entire working career on the Rocky Mountain Division. Phil Dahl joined the NP as a caller in 1949, went firing a year later, then went to the Korean War. Caught up in the post-war slowdown, he wasn't promoted until 1959. When the division was spun-off in 1989 he moved to Whitefish, where he retired from BN in 1993.
Thanks Fellas!
Were there quite a few Missoulans who came back from the war and went into engine service? Curran: Oh I'd say 20, anyway. There was quite a few. Of course, after we left, they started defferin' all of 'em. There were a lot of guys that just hired out and just stayed here durin' the war and didn't have to go. It was the same every place, I suppose. There wasn't a deferment when I went, but later. When I got on the train goin' to Butte, when I got drafted, the old timers were sayin' "They won't take you, you'll get deferred." I'm wavin' good-bye goin' off to the service and they're sayin' "They won't take you, you'll get deferred." Thanks fellas! Dahl, Sr.: I didn't go to his war, I went to the Korean War. I started out as a crew caller in 1949... Curran: Quite young, you might add. Dahl, Sr.: Quite young, well I was 19 in 1949, that was March of '49. August of 1950 I was a crew caller and Harry Larson, the roundhouse foreman, had been informed by me that I wished to go firing. I was going to college at the time but I was willing to sacrifice a quarter of school to earn enough money to get married on, and one day Harry Larson and the old man, the Master Mechanic, come out of Harry's office in the roundhouse... Curran: Is that Carlson? Dahl, Sr.: Old Ed Carlson, who talked with a lisp, anyhow Harry said "You better catch the old man if you wanna go firin' today!" and I headed out the back door of the roundhouse to walk with him over to the Master Mechanic's office. He had me fired about four times we got over to his office, he had a bad experience with a previous call boy and he didn't want anything to do with me. I followed him right into his office and he says "Oh go thee Fred," that was Fred Dodge, the clerk, "Go thee Fred and get your paperz and fill 'em out!" he said, and slammed his door. Before I was done with that caller's shift I was up on the hill takin' a student trip.
Qualified By Phone
Curran: Did you ever do any hostling? I never hostled a day. You were supposed to, but I didn't. Dahl, Sr.: Oh, I did a lot of hostling. That MacInnes wouldn't let me get away with it any longer. I was playin' the gag about how I was not qualified to hostle. I was workin' the extra board and they'd call me extra to go hostle, "Oh, I'm not qualified to hostle." I wasn't on the qualified list. Finally one night MacInnes, the night roundhouse Foreman, called and said "Phil! You're gonna hostle tonight!" "Well Mac, I'm not qualified..." "I hereby qualify you!" he says, and hung the phone up. What qualified you for the different types of service? Curran: Well, there'd be a Road Foreman, or a Traveling Engineer that they'd put ridin' with you, and they'd check you out. Is that true for hostling? I can't imagine a Road Foreman spending a day with a hostler to see if they knew what they were doin'. Dahl, Sr.: They qualified by telephone! The part of it was, the first thing I did was get in trouble. I had to take a Mallet, I don't remember the number of it, out of the Mallet house, across the turntable and set it out to go. The orders were to turn the air pumps off in the house, that's the first thing a hostler had to do when he got on a steam engine to take it out of the roundhouse was to reach up over the boilerhead there and know where to find the valve that turned on the dynamo, the steam pumps were electrically generated.
So anyhow, I kicked the brakes off, the wheels were chocked in the roundhouse so the engines couldn't run away, so I was sitting there with the engine brake valve in service position and it made a little pssht! When I put it back to running position there, no big deal on the throttle, you just needed enough to make her inch out, you know, I didn't have all that much steam sitting there in the house anyway. But I went right on out on the turntable and right off the other end. I put the entire tender of that Mallet off into the cinders, and talk about miracles, I pointed her the other way and that tender came right back up on the turntable. I couldn't do that again in a million tries! Curran: Along the same lines, there was always somebody runnin' through the end of the roundhouse. I don't know who was doin' it, but you'd get down there and go to work and there was somebody'd run though the wall with a steam engine. How many times did that happen while you guys were workin'? Dahl, Sr.: I can remember two specifically, I remember them real well. Blind George, remember old George the machinist? He needed a move on a GP-9, and those old steam engine mechanics, like George was, were totally lost when they got around them diesels. The diesels were about as simple as could be as compared to a steam engine, but they were lost around them. The air brakes in particular 'cause they couldn't comprehend multiple unit air. Steam engines didn't have multiple unit air. And old George put the Geep through the wall, that's the reason for the door that ended up in the back of the roundhouse. That was George's door. He made that door there.
We had another one in Missoula that was a classic. MacInnes, the night roundhouse Foreman, and Tommy Bennett, a machinist who was a buddy of Mac's, and it transpired, MacInnes came out of the roundhouse and he lined the table for this stall and then he walked into this stall and fired up the F9-type locomotive. It took more time to do it in those days 'cause we had to open all the test cocks and blow the moisture out, and this was after they pulled the hostlers off, otherwise MacInnes and Bennett wouldn't be doing this. But anyhow, he was working on getting this engine fired up and Bennett, not having any idea where Mac was, come out of the roundhouse, and he lined the table for another stall, and he goes in and proceeds to get another unit fired up. In the meantime MacInnes gets his fired up, goes up in the cab, pulls the throttle, without even lookin' back, roared right out on that table, only the table wasn't there. Kerploomp! Curran: And this MacInnes he's talkin' about is a real good man. Dahl, Sr.: Oh yeah, a super-railroader. A great guy. Boy, he couldn't take no kiddin' about that either. I started to kid him about it one day after it happened, well, during the same shift for that matter, and "One more word out of you, Dahl!" Curran: No, he wouldn't take no kiddin' about that. Dahl, Sr.: That took care of that!
They'd Still Be Workin' Up There
Who were about the best engineers to work for out here? Actually, I've got a better question. Not only who were the better engineers to work for, but were there engineers that were preferable to work for on certain runs? Dahl, Sr.: I'll give you a prime example. I fired vacancy on the Polson Local, when we still had steam on it, with a nice old guy, but he couldn't run an engine to save his butt from Hell. I had to get back and strip down the tank just to get to Paradise. And when Paul Geis was on it, that was Paul's regular job, we'd have coal left over when we got to Paradise. Curran: On steam engines, you were supposed to let the lubricator cool down a little bit before you'd fill 'em, and sometimes if you filled 'em a little soon they'd kick back, with all this oil and stuff. Paul Guise, he didn't use gloves, we had those big gaunts', he just had a little waste in each hand, he was a tough old boy wasn't he? Dahl, Sr.: A lot of those guys were real nice old guys, but they wouldn't necessarily be as conversant with the kids. I suppose that the guys that I enjoyed firin' for most were the guys that were in Jim's category... Just a little bit ahead of you? Dahl, Sr.: Well, nine years ahead of me... Curran: Ten! Ten! Let's get that right! I was born in 1920, you were born in 1930... Let's straighten that out! No, but a lot of them old engineers too, they wanted you to stick with 'em at the other end of the line and everything. They took you under their wing, didn't they? Who were some of the old heads who were runnin' when you first hired on? Were they still running when you guys came back from the war? Curran: Jack Mooney, he was an old timer and old Charlie Clarkson and Eddie Case, though they weren't considered old when I hired out. Mooney, Geis, Charlie Reinke, Jumbo McClain. Some of 'em were still running, some had gone. They didn't greet us, the old timers, with open arms. Like me, the NP just hired me off the street, and the older engineers weren't too friendly towards us. Some of 'em were, but some of 'em were ornery old devils, weren't they? Dahl, Sr.: There was one thing that I noticed, that the real old guys wouldn't let us younger guys touch a locomotive, unless you were actually promoted. And of course promotion was slow in coming. For you guys it was fast, but for the guys later... It was nine years for me. Curran: I fired for old George quite a bit. He let you run the engine. Dahl, Sr.: Old George? I fired passenger for George an awful lot. Never touched the engine. I can remember one day we were standing at the depot as the Mainstreeter was comin' into town and George was on it. He waved at everybody and they waved back as he went by the depot. I started watchin' these red plungers, the accelostats on the axles that come out and pop in, out and pop in. Old George is up there settin' way too much air, the accelostats on the axle were kicking the brakes off, and he went an entire train length past the depot before he got stopped. He got on the platform just laughing. Oh God that was funny you know, how could that happen? How do you tell a guy that? He wasn't 70 was he, when they put the rule in? That probably was in the, let's see, 1958 is when they put the compulsory 70 year old retirement in. Curran: He must have been. He hired out when he was real young. He used to brag about how he hired out when he was 15, he was callin', a crew caller, and he lied about his age. A lot of the old heads were big old boys when they hired out and got away with it. Especially like some of the old timers on the helpers? They were way past 70 when the diesels came. They didn't wanna quit, that's the best job they ever had was on the diesels, as compared to steam. It's clean and all that, out of the weather. They'd still be workin' up there if they let 'em. Dahl, Sr.: Old Dick Graver was rumored to be, I don't know if it's true or not, up in his 90s. I'd almost believe it. Other real old men who were working at the same time said that when they first hired out that he was a very old man then. Curran: He was a bronc buster and he used to get in fights when he was way up in years. At their house they still had the old range, they cooked on a wood stove and all that kind of stuff. He was a tough old boy.
The Worst Sound There Ever Was
Curran: That used to be somethin' with the guys, the low water alarm would be on and they'd just sneak in. That low water alarm the worst feeling there was, you know there's a safety factor in there, but you don't know how much. It'd just make the hair on the back of your neck stand up when that low water alarm came on. Dahl, Sr.: It was the worst sound there ever was. I hated that one. Now what did you do to battle the low water alarm? Curran: Get water! The injector cuts out or whatever. Dahl, Sr.: You've got to get the injector working, the injectors would break. You had a jet of steam that worked almost on a siphon principle that would go past a stream of water, and this jet of steam would pick up water, and because it was a jet it could penetrate the boiler pressure and add water to the boiler. You couldn't just dump cold water in the boiler when you got 250 pounds of steam in there. No way you'd get it in 'cause it's gonna wanna come out, when you make an opening. Normally we had feedwater pumps that the engineer controlled... On the Z-6s they had a different kind on the fireman's side than on the engineer's side, didn't they? The engines had a straight pull-up one the fireman's side... Curran: Then when you pulled it back you'd prime it, let it prime first and then pull it all out. You couldn't just pull it all back or you'd just hear, what would you hear now? What was that sound? You knew you weren't gettin' water! Dahl, Sr.: Actually, it'd sound like a radiator in an old building that had steam heat. How the injectors make that pump noise? That's kind of what it came out like. If you left it broke too long the steam jet that would normally push the water into the boiler would be pushing water back toward the tender instead. Then that water would get too hot, until it was boiling hot, then you'd try to reset the thing and it couldn't pick it up then. The steam jet had to pick up normal temperature water to make it work. Once it broke you'd have to let it cool for a while. Frustrating. Curran: Especially if the water in the glass is kind of low! Dahl, Sr.: Right. I got off twice at De Smet, once with old Chet, and once with Turk. Turk ordered me off. He was trying to get the injector going, it was a Mallet, we were goin' up the De Smet hill out there and the low water alarm turned on, he got it up by the depot, and he ordered the brakeman and I to get off the engine and get behind the depot. That could have been a major boiler explosion there. Actually, if the guy had any doubt at all I suppose he should have dumped that fire right away and get it over with. But he finally got it on. But with Chet, I says "To Hell with you Chet, you're on your own! I'm leavin'!" You had to know Chet to understand.
I Used To Have Nightmares About That
Dahl, Sr.: When I first run on the Polson Branch, I was a brand new fireman in 1950 and they sent a student fireman out with me, that was steam engine firing... We gathered up everything on the branch and headed back and got stuck in the hole there at Schley. Schley is a station halfway up the other side of Evaro hill, and everybody put their feet up and everybody dozed off and took a little nap. It was a small 1500 or a 1600-series engine, a small Mikado, and we didn't bank up that fire at all. We chow-chowed in there and we probably blew the fire out gettin' in, shut her off and put our feet up, waiting for a passenger train. Well, before long the fire went out. There wasn't a spark. We still had a little steam left, of course, but no fire. Two firemen and no fire! So we raided a bunch of fence posts off the right-of-way fence, we had a big pile of old dry cedar fence posts, and threw 'em in the firebox and stoked 'em up. It didn't take us long to get a fire goin' 'cause the boiler still had steam on it. Curran: I used to have nightmares about that! Dahl, Sr.: About the fire goin' out? Yeah right, it had happened!
That's Not Stretchin' It
Curran: One thing I was going to tell you about the Fifth Sub is that years ago just before you got to Saint Regis there was a lot of fields there and there'd just be a hundred elk out there, that's not stretchin' it. We'd get a lot of 'em, especially at night, if you didn't see 'em soon enough to cut your headlight out. Dahl, Sr.: There was a period of time there where the deer were rampant, too. When I was in the early 'sixties here, '59, '60, when I was firin' for Caruso down there, we'd count deer maybe 120, 130, 150 even, all the way from Missoula to Paradise. Kill a lot of 'em. We counted 27 possible one night, comin' east with an old Geep, heavy, blinding fog, heavy frost-type night. I had to scrape a hole in the windshield to see where I was going, to watch the block signals, just all the way to Missoula, Bang! Bang! Bang! I sure hope they weren't people, I sure hope they were deer. We just made a rough count of 27, 'cause there was a lot of Bang-Bangs that you didn't know were two or what. Curran: One time, which is kind of embarrassing, I was going down into Dixon with a light engine to get a troop train and give them a push up to Evaro, and I got the tires on the steamer hot. As I went around the Polson Branch wye to turn, well it moved the tires over a little bit. They had to call for a machinist to come out and heat the tires up and reset 'em. Here's the troop train sittin' there, needin' a helper! I think the dispatcher had to call another helper out of Missoula. Dahl, Sr.: You'd get 40 years at hard labor for messin' up those tires, too! Curran: But I never got anything out of that, either. I got bawled out by old Carlson, the Master Mechanic, but outside of that, nothin'. Curran: I never got any time, did you? Dahl, Sr.: Never served a day in my life, as an engineer... Curran: As a fireman? Dahl, Sr.:(Bursts out laughing) Curran: You plead the Fifth! I served for 40 some years and I never served any time, and nothin' on my record, but I was lucky. Dahl, Sr.: Yeah, we all were. We pulled some awful stuff.
Author: John A. Phillips, III. Title: Tales of the Rocky Mountain Division -- Jim Curran and Phil Dahl, Part One.
URL: pw2.netcom.com/~whstlpnk/rmcurran.html.