BY LOUIS R. SAILLARD PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR
O
N FEBRUARY 20, 1978, I WAS WITH the crew of a southbound Michi- gan Northern Railway (MIGN) 18-
car freight near Elmira, Mich., 60 miles south of Mackinaw City. Our locomotive was leased Chesapeake & Ohio GP9 No. 6088. Behind our live Geep was a dead MIGN Alco RS3, ex-Chicago & North Western No. 1617. In fact, all members of the railroad’s locomotive fleet were then dead with electrical failures of one kind or another. The tonnage moving over the 245-mile MIGN that day was behind one of a pair of leased C&O Geeps. The train crew’s task that winter af- ternoon was to double the train, most- ly overhead lumber, up the 1.4 percent grade and reassemble it at the Elmira siding. The temperature was in the 20s and the sky was overcast. There was a foot of snow on the ground and it was packed into every surface and walkway of the Geep. The cold trailing Alco was virtually covered with the white stuff. I pushed the snow away from the cab
door and broke out of the 6088’s cab into the late afternoon chill at Elmira. With a snowplow extra also working the rail- road, and men busy around the clock, Michigan Northern was short of crews. Our conductor, Paul Benson, was mak- ing one of his first trips in train service, and I walked the train with him during the brake test to help any way I could. Returning to 6088’s cab, I pulled one of
the Cokes we had iced in the snow on the engineer’s walkway, and found it frozen. Snow had penetrated my boots, so I sat on the fireman’s seatbox and draped my damp socks over the cab heater. Engi- neer Alex Huff (also MIGN’s Vice Pres- ident of Operations) studied my shabby state from across the cab and remarked with a smile, “Welcome to Michigan.”
45
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74