Those that choose to work for the railroad have many stories about their adventures. Long-time volunteer Vern S. is one such railroader. He told his story to Rob G., and this story was originally published in the February 2004 edition of The Sounder.
Vern S. operating one of the Museum’s locomotives during Day Out With Thomas 2007.
I hired out on the Northern Pacific in April 1956. I chose the NP because NP still used steam locomotives. After I worked a few runs as a student fireman, the railroad cut the fireman board. The railroad couldn’t have student firemen working while more experienced ones were getting cut, so my NP career ended after one week. Luckily I had heard that the Great Northern was hiring, and before long I was firing again, this time on diesel and electric locomotives.
The GN was planning to abandon electric power in early July, but the changeover was delayed by repair work after an engineer ran through the closed doors of the Cascade Tunnel. On July 31, 1956, I waited with my crew in the cab of electric GE Class W-1 #5018 until train 4, the Western Star, left Skykomish, clearing the main line. My train, the second 402 freight, entered the main around 11:30 p.m. for an ordinary and uneventful run to Wenatchee. When we arrived in the yard, the yardmaster came out and told me we would go down as the last electric freight train through Stevens Pass. Unaware I had been making history, I ran back to the cab and gathered up all the train orders and every other scrap of paper related to that run. But it wasn’t the only time I made GN history.
In 1957 I was working the roundhouse at Interbay, where I gathered locomotives each morning and took them to King Street Station to make up the passenger trains. The roster included an ill-fated pair of E7’s built for the 1947 debut of streamliner equipment on the Empire Builder. Their two-motor trucks didn’t give adequate traction in the tough mountain passes the Builder negotiated, and the railroad quickly reassigned them to less glamorous duties hauling passengers between Seattle and Portland.
One ordinary morning at 6 a.m. I lined up the turntable as usual, sat down at the control stand, and notched up the throttle. As I pulled on to the turntable, I felt a horrible jolt. In an instant, both locomotives sat on the ground, right across the turntable.
The general foreman came running out. He yelled and yelled at me. I protested my innocence. “I don’t understand what happened,” I said. “I did everything as usual. I lined the turntable and…” This only got me in more trouble. I was not supposed to line the turntable myself; that job belonged to another person assigned as my hostler helper. The foreman continued yelling, but it made no difference. With the turntable blocked, the roundhouse was out of service for the rest of the day, and the railroad had to scramble to find power to substitute for the engines trapped inside.
Vern during Santa Train 2004.
Luckily, I didn’t have to work the next day. The roundhouse was back in service, and my relief worker came in and dutifully had his helper line the turntable. A few minutes later the other hostler derailed the same two locomotives in the same place. Subsequent investigation showed that the turntable’s brake system had a leak that allowed the table to slip out of position. The derailment had not been my fault at all, but I can still remember the foreman’s yelling.
Only one of the stalls in the roundhouse had a window behind it. I often wondered why the Great Northern had bestowed this honor in such a seemingly random fashion. Could there be a story behind it? Perhaps some quirky but influential engineer demanded sunlight, or a confused contractor misread the blueprints. Unfortunately, I would learn the answer on a typically cold, wet spring day in 1957. I was hogging an SW1 charged with pushing a Geep to the roundhouse. The engine glided nicely into stall 16, but as I tried to stop I learned an important lesson about braking on wet rails. The heavy Geep had no desire to stop, and it just dragged my much lighter switch engine along as it crashed through the rear wall of the roundhouse. The same foreman came running out, and this time he yelled at least twice as loud and twice as long. After workmen cleaned up the mess, and the foreman finally stopped yelling, the railroad sent a crew to repair the wall. They made the gaping hole into a window, and the mystery of the other roundhouse window was solved!
