Tales of the Rocky Mountain Division Jim Curran and Phil Dahl, Part Two
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.
I'll Remember That Forever
Curran: The Rocky Mountain had some older switch engines that were hand fired. One we had in the yard here, I think the last one in later years, it seems like that steam engine was the one that did all the work. The diesels be idlin' and settin' there and the steam engine be out there chuggin' away, doin' the work. Dahl, Sr.: You mean that 1201 out in the yard? The 1201 was comin' down through the yard with a string of cabooses, gettin' ready to service some more trains that were coming, and they're not expecting another train to head in on 'em, which a train did. It was was doin' about 25 when it hit the 7004A, B, C and D, that's when the NP still kept the combinations together. I remember that afterwards whenever I got on a 7004 unit, whether it be A, B, C or D, you'd look at the floors you could see where they had little ocean waves in 'em. Curran: We used to have an old engineer who used to say "When you come into a switch you'd never want to use sand, because they can tell how far you went by."
Dahl, Sr.: I'll remember that forever, too.
It Paid To Look Sideways Once In A While
Just for starters, just how is it to handle a train back in the days of steam up from Missoula to Evaro? What are the rough parts of the line? Curran: Going through the sag, what we called "The Sag," (less than a mile west of De Smet on the Evaro line). Then, right after it you're in a sharp curve, I think it's a 35-mile an hour curve, 35 wasn't it, goin' out of the sag, goin' west? Dahl, Sr.: Thirty. Thirty-five on the other side of the hill, 30 on this... Well, the entire hill was 30 miles an hour. There was a scary one comin' down that mountain that I'd forgot about, too. The NP was testing something, they greased the rail, oiled the rail up for several miles, way up above the sag somewhere on Evaro hill. George Calouri hit the same thing and had a pretty good scare. Comin' down that hill at normal speed, you'd get the dynamic set up just right and the air set just right so you could have your feet up and relax and watch the scenery, pretty soon Swoosh! and away you go! On greased rail! What does a sag do to train handling? Dahl, Sr.: You have to handle it! (Chuckles) Curran: You do. You try to keep it stretched so it don't come in and slap you, you have to know right where to go after 'em to work 'em around that. Dahl, Sr.: I used air on 'em all the time. I didn't get too many steam engines over there, but I used air on 'em all the time. Goin' west, I used air through the sag. A lot of guys would criticize you for using air goin' uphill but dammit it wasn't uphill, the sag went downhill, temporarily. There was a major accident coming out of that sag. Ol' Les was the helper, and he and the road engineer didn't get their operations synchronized, and there was quite a bit of slack, apparently, the guy on the head end figured he was goin' too fast for the track back there, he shut off. Les was back there about the time when you really start goin' to work on 'em again 'cause you're comin' out of the sag. He went to work on 'em and they got a massive-type run in that dumped the train. Les got time over that one, but it wasn't really his fault. So how was it from Evaro down into Paradise, running-wise? Dahl, Sr.: The track? The curvature was easy, so you could go down there pretty fast without too much trouble, although, you could tip a train over down there, as old Bob found out. Ironically, I shouldn't admit this, but he tipped that train over at a speed that was normal for me with a light engine down there. He was doin' 50 miles an hour I guess and wasn't paying any attention for whatever reasons, and the fireman was brand new, first trip over there and he was running the engine. He was probably a promoted man, but he was gettin' pretty well down that hill and he was still in eight throttle and he didn't realize just where he was at. Once it gets rolling, that rolling inertia is awful hard to bring back under control again. In fact, practically impossible. Curran: Across the flats up at Evaro it kind of levels off and unless you know where you're at and shut off, then you drop right off, and with a heavy train they go right after you. They were late to slow down I guess, before they knew what was wrong. I had one too, going down from Evaro to Arlee, I didn't have much luck gettin' control of it. Especially in the winter time when the air's pretty bad. You get a thrill if you get above your required speed limit. If you had to make a meet up there on the hill, where was the preferred place to do it? Dahl, Sr.: Actually freight trains rarely met, 'cause there wasn't anything long enough. We're talking about sidings that hold 30 cars. Nagos (the half-way point of the 2.2 percent grade climbing to summit at Evaro, six miles west of De Smet, it's counterpart on the western side of the hill is Schley) had a siding, but it was for passenger trains. As a matter of fact you would make a meet there a lot with a passenger trains. One and Two, which in later years was the Mainstreeter, met in Missoula normally. But if one of them was late they'd make a meet right there. What was about the longest train you'd be running in the steam era? Dahl, Sr.: Oh, 5,000 feet was a long train, wasn't it? Any train that was pretty near a hotshot would be about that. What were the hotshots that the NP was running back in those days? Curran: There was the J, that wasn't very hot. It was a real dog. Dahl, Sr.: Six-oh-three... Six-oh-one, well, that was a little later. Six hundred and 601 was the hottest thing we had, for a long time. That was in diesel time. In steam times it was 603. Was 602 hot? It was never really hot in my time. Fruit train! The fruit train was the hot train, an eastbound fruit train. It moved pretty well. Then there was the cherry train, when it was in season. If it come from the west, it might be 25 cars. If it come out of Polson, why then it wouldn't be that big, maybe a dozen cars. Curran: But it'd have plenty of power on 'em, and we'd move 'em just about like a passenger train. Dahl, Sr.: In the steam days, anything that was hot would have a Z-6,-7 or -8 Mallet, or a big A, occasionally. Big As weren't good mountain engines because they were a little too slippery. They did fine back east, but a little too slippery here. Like passenger? They were fantastic! Diesel-wise, anything ran there, whatever was convenient. Curran: I think too, if you were on a helper you'd get stuck in there at Nagos. When you were running in helper service what were you doing to keep up with the guy one the head end? Just trying to anticipate his moves, or... Dahl, Sr.: You've got to be thinking the same thing he does, pretty much. Even though you couldn't see where you were goin', back behind a box car there, you had to know where you were at, so it paid to look out sideways once in a while. And then you'd have a whole bunch of helper service coming both directions? Dahl, Sr.: Both directions, 'cause the mountain was 2.2 on both sides. Curran: Most of the helpers were used between De Smet and Arlee, but once in a great while the dispatchers would send 'em on down to Dixon. There was a helper district and a pusher district. We had a pusher district from Dixon to Arlee (17 miles of .67 to one percent grade) and a helper district Arlee to De Smet (20 miles of 2.2 percent, with ten miles going up and ten miles going down, the route between Evaro and De Smet being considerably more difficult, with 17 curves of nine degrees or tighter). If you went out of your assignment the union agreements said the NP had to give you an extra hundred miles. Or you'd get back to your home and they'd give you to the end of the day, too. Curran: The 2.2 starts pretty good once you get around that big curve there, two miles out of De Smet. Dahl, Sr.: The old boys on passenger'd come down there and have that thing doin' 75 or 80 miles an hour, with passenger the speed was 35 down there, and they'd have her up 75, 80 miles an hour down there, set their air for that curve, slide around it and turn her loose again. How long would it take you to get over the 100 miles from Missoula into Paradise, over Evaro? Dahl, Sr.: It depends on what kind of an outlaw you were. You could do it in an hour and forty-five minutes, or less. Would they double you back the same day, or would you usually lay over in Paradise? Dahl, Sr.: If you had time to go and you were first out and the train was there you'd double back, yeah. Curran: Sometimes there was a train waitin' for you, and other times you had to wait 16 hours.
The Officials Never Got Close
Did you ever have any kind of troubles with snow? Curran: The NP had, what'd they call that? Spreaders! You could put wings out, too, but that was more for the yard. It was amazing what big drifts you could plow through. You'd hit them at 50 miles an hour or so, great big drifts. Dahl, Sr.: There were spreaders and then flangers on the engines. I can recall one of the S-4s had a flanger on it. Howard Day and I were an extra crew and we went from Missoula to Paradise over the Low Line and back Paradise to Missoula over the High Line doing nothing but running this S-4 with a flanger. Evaro hill is not that bad for snow. I can recall coming up the De Smet hill with an F9-type engine with the sand box right under the cab windows there. With paper cups, we'd dip it into that sand box, get a paper cup of sand and go down the ladder and pour it on the rail. Brakeman on the other side doin' the same thing. We got her up the hill. De Smet's not much of a hill, but if you've got too much of a train and not enough power, then it's a Hell of a hill. Curran: At Evaro in the wintertime when it was 20 or 30 below and you had too much train really, than you should have, the officials never came close, did they? They wouldn't ride with you. As long as you got in got in there and got in safely, the officials didn't care. Sometimes you wouldn't realize you had too much train until you got going down the mountain.
He Had His Soft Spots, Too
Were there any sags along the lower line? Curran: Yeah, yeah. (Chuckles) Are you trying to say that the whole thing was just one sag? Curran: We used to call that 'The Snake.' Dahl, Sr.: There was the "Cyr Sag," (between Plateau and Cyr, roughly 25 miles west of Missoula) and then there was Happy Hollow on down towards Superior (Healy and Cedars, 55 miles west of Missoula). That Cyr sag was a fairly major one. Curran: It was. There was a lot of curves and they had one 15 mile an hour curve (Immediately west of Rivulet, 45 miles from Missoula) and a lot of the engineers back in the days of steam, they would get the engine around it and widen on it and the caboose was on its own. It's still 15 there, isn't it? Dahl, Sr.: That's still 15. Actually, that first curve out of Rivulet wasn't all that bad. We used to come around there quite a bit faster most times. You come bouncin' around there real first, it's a quick curve. Scares the wits out of some people.
By golly I'll back up one on this, here. This same area where we were talkin' about, this 15 mile an hour curve, incidentally, it was made into a 10 mile an hour curve, because of that harmonic rocking rule, the railroad didn't want trains going 15 miles an hour, trains had to go 10 or 20, they couldn't go 15. The story that used to come out about it was that the strata of the rock sloped toward the river and the officials were just plain afraid of it, that if there was too much hard pounding from heavy loads going around there too fast that it might work the whole cliff loose and lose the entire grade.
Anyhow, when the NP first built the railroad to Wallace it was a race to get it done, because they didn't want the OR&N comin' through and get the right of way. So in the rush the NP made these massive rock cuts and so forth and this cliff hanger railroad through these hills here. It went around the outside of these hills and to this day you can still walk out there and see the old trestle work from around 1890. They didn't have those cuts that are down there today. You can't see them from the track, you have to kind of walk out toward the river and be careful that you don't fall off. What is it, 200 feet down to the river? It kind of makes people nervous 'cause you look straight down at this thing.
There was a major slide just west of Westfall, about seven miles east of Superior, in March of 1954. It picked up box cars and carried 'em like matchboxes about 75 or a hundred feet down to the river. The whole cliff let loose, and the story that an old Roadmaster told me was that the cliff at Westfall had a block of glacial ice in there and that was why the NP could never steady that thing, 'cause it had moisture coming at it from the inside all the time. It's a real bad slide area. Was that the only bad part of the line? Curran: Bud hit all those rocks coming out of the tunnel (Tunnel 6, two miles west of Rivulet, 46 miles from Missoula). Dahl, Sr.: Bud got 'em in the tunnel! Kenny hit one when I was firing for him, and Caruso tipped some engines over at the same place Kenny and I hit that big slide. He tipped over four F9s. The NP had big massive slides down on the cut-off, too. Curran: At one time there was a lot of red blocks down there, especially in the spring. Of course there were rock fences, and that helped some, but sometimes the NP had pretty good size boulders on the track. We hit one that put a hole in the side of the cowcatcher, knocked a hole in that. Dahl, Sr.: The first trip that engine 7000 made through Missoula, 7000A, B, C, D. Curly Brown was the hoghead and I was the fireman, a brand spanking new engine, and it was almost too much for Curly. F9s did jump right out when you pulled the throttle out when they were brand new. We got down on the first curve below the bridge at Huson, (West of Frenchtown, 22 miles from Missoula) kind of a clay bank down there with a right hand curve, where the builders should have went straight across but instead they curved into the bank there, and a great big ol' sandstone rock had rolled down there. We put one awful dent in that brand new engine's pilot. Old Curly, he sort of laughed and shook back his head "Ha! Ha ! Ha! I fixed yer Goddamn engine!" he says. If you broke your leg he could laugh about it. He had his soft spots, too.
Taking On Water: The Low Line
Siding-wise, what was between Saint Regis and Paradise? Dahl, Sr.: Right down around the corner was Toole, (77 miles west of Missoula, 19 east of Paradise) it was a long siding, and then down another couple corners is Donlan, (82 miles from Missoula, 12 miles out of Paradise) it was not all that long, it's the shortest one of the three, the third siding was Quinns, which is just five miles out of Paradise. That's where you always went in the hole and got stuck and had to wait when you were trying to get to Paradise. Quinns was a fairly long siding. Quinns could never have been made longer because it had a tunnel on each end. When you guys were going over the low line, where did you have water plugs or water tanks at almost every siding? Dahl, Sr.: No. There was a water plug at Lothrup, (26 miles west of Missoula) not at Frenchtown in my time I don't think. When I hired on I don't think the NP had torn out any yet. Saint Regis (72 miles west of Missoula and the beginning of the Wallace Branch) had the tank with the spout comin' out of it, and Rivulet had a stand pipe. Curran: And a coal dock. Dahl, Sr.: Rivulet was the only coal dock. How often would you have to stop for coal at Rivulet? Dahl, Sr.: Depending on the train, westbound, very rarely, unless you ran a local. The only occasion I can remember stopping westbound, we had a Mallet. It wasn't working all that well, old Turk was the engineer and we had 65 hundred tons with a Mallet, which is a lot of tons with a Mallet. It was probably a Z-6, -7 or -8, one of the three there, they were all the same for train handling. Anyhow, he had to pull the train downhill, the Fifth Sub is pretty rolly-polly. As a result Turk was working steam, a lot of it full bore all the way and we did have to stop at Rivulet to take coal. Sixty-five hundred tons with a Mallet, I don't know what the maximum was, but I can remember with this particular trip we took coal westbound at Rivulet and was it was squeaky, we were real low on coal gettin' to Rivulet with that kind of a train with old Turk. Saint Regis had a tank with a spout on it, and Lothrup had a water stand. The tank sat by the little creek a ways off from the tracks there, and then there were waterspouts back west of the siding switch there. Curran: In the wintertime a lot of those tanks to would get ice just draped off 'em. Dahl, Sr.: Yeah, they got pretty fascinating, to watch 'em. Speaking on wintertime and speaking of Pinky Dryden, we were takin' water at Saint Regis on a local with a W-3 engine and you know when those spouts come off the side of the tank you gotta hold 'em down. If you don't why they'll fly out and water'll go everywhere. Pinky was standing down in the doorway of the head end caboose, just rappin' with me, chattin' away and of course I'm not paying too much attention to takin' water. I let the tank get way too full and when it got too full it lifted that spout right outta there. Fumblin' around trying to get things under control I headed the spout right into that caboose door and I flooded Pinky the whole length of the inside of that caboose. In the wintertime! He had on all this winter gear and here I get him soakin' wet. Curran: He probably wanted to kill ya'. Dahl, Sr.: Boy, when I laughed at him, he really wanted to kill me then! I shouldn't have laughed at him, but how could you pass up laughin' at Pinky? What was the biggest challenge of getting a freight over that line? Dahl, Sr.: Well, if you were conscientious about what you did with the conductor in that caboose, and we lost the cabooses after a while, that was the biggest challenge, trying to maintain the slack in that train all the way down and around, maintain the slack in such a manner that you weren't beatin' the heck out of the caboose. A guy with a Gung-Ho attitude, well then if the conductor's gettin' a good ride all that means is the lading in between is getting a good ride because we've gotta get that lading to the customer because that's what pays our wages, Rah! Rah! Rah! Curran: If the conductor likes you, you did a good job of runnin'. If he didn't like you, he growled and gruff, then you didn't. Dahl, Sr.: Comin' out of Saint Regis with old Henry, "OK," he says, "Phil, I just popped my last tranquilizer. What do I do now?"
Author: John A. Phillips, III. Title: Tales of the Rocky Mountain Division -- Jim Curran and Phil Dahl, Part Two.
URL: pw2.netcom.com/~whstlpnk/rmdahl.html.