Well, I left everybody hanging with the end of my last story, the Cascade Tunnel adventure. The adventure continued even after my conductor, Chris, and I left our freight train inside the 7.9-mile-long Cascade Tunnel after the ventilation failed and hurried our light engines to daylight — and fresh air.
Once outside, Chris and I took about a two-hour breather at the fan house and got a nice tour. I had never been inside before. The fans were powered, if I remember correctly, by an EMD 645 diesel engine running the generators that power the tunnel’s ventilation fans. On the day our train approached the tunnel’s west portal, the fan house was struck by lightning, the backup generator automatically started, immediately failed, reset, and failed again. There was, I recall, a manual reset, made by the fan house operator who had to drive over from his home as he was not on duty.
The Division Superintendent showed up to check on us along with the Terminal Manager from Wenatchee. They looked a little nervous. When Chris and I indicated that we were feeling okay, they relaxed.
In the meantime, the fan house operator got things working, closed the tunnel door, and ventilated the bore for about 2½ hours.
We had a safety brief (as they call it now) with the management team on site. We agreed to go back into the tunnel and retrieve our train up to the Distributive Power Units. We slowly backed our light engines into the tunnel to recouple on our train. Once we made a hook, I shut down the locomotives. Chris made the coupling on the air but did not cut it in, I would do that once he uncoupled the DPUs. Chris walked down to the DPUs to the cut. With the power shut down and tunnel clear, now that the ventilation working properly, we were not adding any exhaust at least up to the DPUs.
Chris then climbed aboard the DPUs and called me on the radio to tell me that he had the angle cocks closed on the brake line.
While I waited for him to return to the head-end power, I walked back and cut the air in. Chris walked back to the headend and when he was safely aboard, I started pumping the train air back-up.
When we arrived at the fan house for the second time, we were ‘dead,’ having reached our maximum of 12 hours on duty. A Dog Catch crew was called and waited for us, as Chris and I headed for Wenatchee in the crew van. I heard later that a second crew was called at Wenatchee with light power to bring out the rest of the train. I’m sure Burlington Northern’s Scenic subdivision looked like a parking lot during and after over adventure.
Our train that fateful day included hopper cars of aluminum ore. Cargo of this type needed special attention. From the Special Instructions at the time, “Eastward trains between Scenic and Berne before entering the west portal of Cascade Tunnel No. 15 will advise the dispatcher if they have aluminum ore, and the dispatcher will activate the tunnel circuit which will open the louvers, relieving pressure on this train.”
This was done to lessen the pressure change, with the result of less aluminum ore escaping from the loaded cars. As I understand it, when the tunnel door went up and the pressure changed inside the tunnel, the aluminum ore was so fine it would get pulled out of the bottom of the cars, resulting in the ore building up between the rails from the tunnel door downhill to about bay 3.
When EMD introduced the “Super Series” system on the GP50 and SD50 models, they used a radar doppler system, this radar would sense the aluminum ore and drop the load on the traction motors. The wheel slip system had a tough time with the ore. When my former employer called EMD about it, EMD suggested sweeping up the aluminum ore would be extremely helpful.
At this point in my career, I was still five years from being promoted to engineer. During July 1985, I was working a summer vacation vacancy as the regular conductor on the Hill Work Train. We were working with a Yard sweeper. A machine with a track broom on the operator’s end and conveyor belt that fed into an air-dump car behind the sweeper. When not on duty the sweeper was parked on the MOW track at Scenic. Our work train went on duty at Skykomish and traveled up the hill cab-hop (light power and caboose) to Scenic. Upon reaching the MOW track at Scenic we would retrieve the Sweeper and air-dump. Once we had things together, we would shove to the east end of the Cascade Tunnel. At the work site we would cut away from the sweeper and air dump, then drift down to bay 5. After an hour or so, the sweeper operator would call us to come up and pick up the air-dump. While the sweeper and operator took a break, we would drift west to the west portal and outside to Scenic to dispose of the ore. Once the car was empty, we returned it to the sweeper and waited for another load. In all my years the work trains were my favorite jobs. Fun times indeed.
Read more from Engineer Michael Sawyer here.
