It was a surprisingly long train for this time of year, at 8,300 feet, but we have also had surprisingly warm weather for this time of year. Usually January is the coldest month of the year, and that cold usually restricts train length to about 3,000 feet. With daytime temperatures well above freezing, and mild nights, the railroad has been able to run much longer trains than usual.
Our trip started off uneventfully enough. We had no speed restricted cars or any cars that required special handling. There were no temporary speed restrictions to think about over the 358 miles, so all we had to remember were several slide zones, but those were five hours away from Anchorage. We all chatted and tried to keep each other awake, and the conductor quizzed me on different rules and operating practices. There was no southbound freight train that night, and we met the coal train within the first 90 minutes, so we had the railroad to ourselves.
As we traveled north, recent rain had made some bluffs near the tracks unstable. This caused the railroad to place some slide zones in service. Those slowed us town a bit once we were north of Talkeetna, but we found everything to be fine in all of the slide zones. Once we started getting into the mountains north of Talkeetna, the snow started to get a bit deeper. There were a few spots where a little of it had slid down onto the tracks, but it was nothing to cause alarm. We crossed the Hurricane Gulch bridge just after 5:00am, and then started down the other side of Chulitna Hill. Just a couple miles later, the trip started to get more eventful.
As we came up on milepost 287, my conductor turned to the engineer and asked if he, in his opinion, thought that using the emergency braking capability of the FRED, on the rear end of the train, would stop a train faster in an emergency than just using the emergency brake valve on the locomotive. As soon as he got the question out, the train went into emergency without any warning. Talk about timing! We came to a stop and the engineer attempted to recover the train from the emergency application.
After a couple attempts, it became clear that the brake pipe pressure was not being restored through the train, and my conductor and I would be going for a walk. We got suited up to go walking through the snow, and grabbed some tools, fusees, air hose gaskets, and air hose retention wires. Then we got off the engine and began walking back to find the problem.
The snow in this area was pretty deep, although the track area had been cleared down to the height of the rail head. On one side of the tracks, the hill dropped off into a river, and on the other side of the tracks, a hill came up from the tracks. We decided to start out on the river side, just so we would be out of the way on the off chance something slid down the hill towards the train. The snow on the river side was above the knees, with a layer of ice on the top. This made walking difficult, because the ice was thick enough that it could not be easily pushed away by walking, but it was not thick enough to walk on top of it. We decided to take out chances on the hill side of the tracks, but that idea was short lived. When we crossed over, we found the snow there to be between waist and chest deep, and it had the same layer of ice on top. So after walking one car length through that, we crossed back to the river side.
After trudging through the snow for an hour, we found the cause of the emergency brake application. A pair of air hoses had separated between two cars. We coupled them back together and the engineer was able to recover the brake pipe pressure. It looked like the air hoses were hanging pretty close to the snow between the rails, so we tightened up the retention wires to get them up off the ground a little more. Once the engineer notified us that he had brake pipe pressure back, we walked back to the locomotive. Despite it taking an hour to get back to the problem, it was only about 20 cars back. The snow and ice had really slowed us down! We were happy it was only 20 cars back, and not 110!
Once we got back to the engine, we got underway again. As we approached the Honolulu siding, the train went into emergency again. This time, the train stopped on a bridge, which had no walkways on it. In January that would not normally be much of a problem, because you could walk across the river below. This January however, it has been so warm that the river was flowing, so walking across it would not be an option. Before we started walking however, the engineer attempted to recover from the emergency application. As we were trying to figure out how we would get across the bridge, he announced he was getting air pressure back, and no one would have to go for a walk. That was a relief! Once he had the brake pipe recharged we got underway again.
For the next few hours, the trip went back to being uneventful. As we got into Denali National Park, it began to get light out. This time of year, the park is pretty quiet, but there were some moose and caribou out and about. We left the park and came along the Nenana River, and headed into Healy Canyon. Just as we started into the canyon, the train went into emergency once again. Again, the engineer attempted to recover the air, but this time he was not successful. Once again, we suited up, geared up, and started walking. This time it only took us about seven minutes to find the problem, and it was the same two air hoses. There was very little snow on the tracks in Healy Canyon, and that made walking much easier!
Since the problem was the same two air hoses, we decided to fix them in such a way that this would not happen a third time! We got some wire off the locomotive, and I had a roll of duct tape. We wired the glad hands together and then tested them to make sure they would not move. Once we were satisfied they were secure, we wrapped the whole mess with duct tape to make sure it would not go anywhere! We let the dispatcher know about the modifications we had made, so that the yard crew in Fairbanks would be aware that they would have to manually uncouple those hoses. By the time we were finished, it was daylight out and the sun was lighting up the canyon. We continued north, although by this time we only had about 90 minutes left to work. The dispatcher told us to go as far as Healy, where another crew would take over, since Fairbanks was still four hours away.
We arrived in Healy just about the same time as our relief crew, and from there we were driven the rest of the way to Fairbanks. We went straight to the hotel to get rested for the return trip. By the time we got to the hotel, it was 1:15pm. Our return trip southbound would normally have gone on duty at 7:30pm, but we were obviously not going to be rested by then!
At 1:30am Sunday, we went on duty for the southbound trip. Once again, the train was going to be late from the start. Just as with the previous trip, the beginning was pretty uneventful. We started with a brief on some of the slide zones we had, although there were fewer than the previous trip. Just like before, we had no temporary speed restrictions and no cars requiring special handling. The train was quite a bit smaller too, only about 5,600 feet long. We got underway and had a pretty unremarkable trip until we got to Healy Canyon.
Healy Canyon is a tight, winding canyon, through which the Nenana River flows. The railroad sits on a ledge several hundred feet above the west side of the river. On one side of the tracks, there is a steep drop to the river, and on the other side is a steep, rock wall that reaches up to the mountains. Because of numerous tight curves, the speed limit through the canyon is 15 mph. It takes almost an hour to cover the distance between Healy and Denali Park, despite being only 12 miles apart. As we were coming through the canyon, we came around a curve and found a boulder sitting squarely between the rails. It was still about a quarter of a mile away when we found it, so the engineer stopped the train short of it. All three of us got out to see if we could move it. It was not huge, about two feet long and a foot across, but it was deceptively heavy! Using a couple bars in the tool closet in the engine, we were able to use some leverage to get it out of the track area and out of our way. Once we cleared the boulder, we were on our way again.
The rest of the trip went pretty smoothly. We had an unremarkable trip the rest of the way to Anchorage, and we made it all the way to Anchorage before we ran out of time to work, although barely. We pulled the train into the yard at 1:25pm, and from there a yard crew took over to break it up.
2 comments:
Great post!
Have you thought about bringing snowshoes on the train? That would make those long walks a lot quicker and safer.
Well I certainly have considered snow shoes since that day! At the time, I really had not given it any thought, the weather has been unseasonably warm in both Anchorage and Fairbanks this year, leaving both cities and much of the area between with little to no snow. We just had problems on the relatively short stretch of railroad that is still covered in snow!
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