Chapter 1 – Remembering The Past

' When I first arrived and was placed on this here sidin' I hoped that I would be restored to steam someday, but after sittin' here on this sidin' for five years that hope had long faded away and I thought this would be where I would rust away into nothin' and be forgotten by history. I had never been so wrong in my entire life.'

It was a cool crisp morning, the morning sun had just started to shine through the treetops onto the dew covered grounds around the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie Washington. It was the start of April, the beautiful flowers planted in the flowerbeds in front of the museums main building were in full bloom and honey bees were flying around pollinating the flowers and gathering pollen to make their sweet honey. A mother robin was standing in the grass, looking for a thick juicy worm to take back to her hatchings for breakfast, but then quickly flew away as the sound purring engines and rubber tires filled the air as employees of the museum drove up to park in the employee parking behind the main building.

Soon the buildings of the museum started to come alive with activity as the employees set to work cleaning windows, sweeping floors, watering the flowers, and dusting off the fixtures. The engine house was coming to life also as the crew began to oil, clean, and fuel up Andrew, Snoqualmie Valley Railroad #4024, getting him ready for the days work. Andrew is a Baldwin RS-4-TC who operates on the Northwest Railway Museums five mile common carrier railroad, the Snoqualmie Valley Railroad, pulling tourist trains from Snoqualmie east to North Bend and back again. By now it was around nine o'clock in the morning and Andrew was just starting to wake up as the shop crew were just finishing up oiling and cleaning him up for the days work. "Well, about time you woke up" Said a voice as a man in his mid thirties walked into the engine house. He looked up at Andrew who then looked back at the man sleepily, " Well good morning to you too Alex." Yawned Andrew as he was still just waking up.

" Come on now, get that sleep out of your eyes, we got to go get your coaches to the depot still." Explained his driver as he climbed up into his cab.

" I know Alex, I know." Said Andrew sleepily, and with a push of a button Andrews supercharged V-12 Caterpillar D397 engine roared into life with dust and some other crud shooting out of his exhaust.

" Sorry about that." Said Andrew as the crud blew out from his exhaust.

" Its not your fault Andrew, after all its been a good two months sense you were last fired up." Sympathized Alex as he released Andrews brakes, eased his throttle open, and slowly rolled Andrew out of the engine house. Andrew squinted as the warm morning sun hit his face, the sun was now just starting to appear over the tops of the trees as Andrew went down the line towards the depot at a nice easy pace.

Soon Andrew was pulling into a siding just before the depot, he was then coupled to a string of six old Pullman coaches. With care he pulled the string of coaches out of their siding, gently shunted them over to the depot, ran around his train, and then back down onto his coaches slowly and easily as he gently coupled up to them. It was now ten o'clock and Andrew was idling nicely at the depot, waiting for the day to start, usually people didn't start showing up until eleven thirty or so.

" So Alex, anything I should know about for today? Like someone showing up or something like that." Asked Andrew as he sat idle.

" Yeah, there's a journalist from the local paper coming here to do a story."

" A story on what? One of the old timers?"

Alex nodded, " Well to be more accurate, a story on Christopher."

Andrew was a bit puzzled, Christoper was an old geared logging steam locomotive, to be more precise Christoper is a class C 65-3 Shay locomotive who was built August 29th, 1904 making him the second oldest surviving class C shay in world, he thought 'why would anyone want to write a story on him? Sure he's the second oldest shay of his class in the world but what else is there?' Andrew pondered on the subject for a bit then asked his driver, " Do you know what the story is going to be about?" Andrew wanted to know more on the subject.

" From what I remember being told yesterday, its going to be on his history, which railroads he worked on and what not. I guess its because the preservation society has finally raised enough money to have him restored to steam." Said Alex as he tried to remember what he was told at a meeting the day prior.

Andrew smiled, he was glad Christopher was going to be given a chance to steam again. " Well good for him, he deserves it as old as he is."

" Yes, he does." And no sooner then Alex said that a Brunswick green Buick pulled into the depots parking lot and a young women, most likely in her early twenties, stepped out of the car wearing a pair of blue jeans, tennis shoes, and a light gray jacket. " Now who is that?" Andrew asked as he watched the women step out of her car while holding something in her right hand. " Your about to find out, here she comes now." Alex said as the two of them watch the young women walk over to them.

" Hello there, my names Kate, I work for the local paper and I'm here to get a story from one of the steam engines here." She smiled kindly as she went on, " I was told his name was Christopher, do you know where I can find him?"

" Yeah, he's on the sidings with the other logging locomotives, his siding is right up against a small road that runs along side the sidings. He's easy to spot out, just go on down that way past the shop and those ol' sidings are just past it." Explained Alex as he pointed down towards the shops.

" Alright, thank you."

" Your welcome, and have a nice day miss Kate." Alex said kindly.

" Yes you too." replied Kate as she set off on her walk to the old sidings.

It's bit of a walk to get to the old sidings from the depot but Kate didn't mind. Once there she looked around at the engines that were there and, like Alex had said, it took her only a couple minutes to spot out Christopher, who was sitting sound asleep in the morning sun on his siding. She walked over to him and looked up at him, she had been told he was 106 years old this year but was surprised to see that he had a face that looked to belong to an engine half his age! After a couple of minutes of looking at him she then gave his pilot a gentle pat hoping it would wake him. " Come on now, time to wake up ol' boy." she said to Christopher. The only reply she got from the old engine was a 'leave me alone and let me sleep' kind of groan.

" Wake up please." Kate said persistently, " You are Christopher right? The class C 65-3, Shay built by Lima in 1904?"

"...Who wants to know?" Christopher asked sleepily.

" The person who's trying to wake you up."

He opened his eyes sleepily and looked down at person who was interrupting his sleep. As he thought, the voice belonged to a young women. He saw she was holding a notebook and a pencil in her right hand, then he asked in his old voice, " What is it yeh want youngin?" As he looked at her, now a bit more awake.

" My name is Kate, I work for the local paper hear in Snoqualmie and I am here to write a story about your life up till now."

" Really is that so? Well then youngin, yah better find yourself a comfy spot to sit down 'cause this is gonna take a while." Christopher said kindly with his old wise smile.

She soon found herself a comfy spot on the ground and sat with her legs crossed, opened her notebook to a fresh page, and looked up at him ready for the long story that was to come. He smiled still, " Well lets see here, where should I start this here story at? Ah I know, lets start at the beginning. The date was August 29th 1904, the day I rolled out of the Lima locomotive works. I was built for the Newhouse Mines & Smelters in Utah, which later became the Copper Gulch & Sevier Lake Railroad and I their number one." Kate was writing in her notebook as she listened intensely, trying her best to get every detail, as Christopher continued.

" I'd tell ya more about the place but the only things I remember about workin' there is that it was hard, borin' work. I worked there for six years until 1910 when I was sold to the South Utah Mines & Smelters, in Salt Lake City, Utah. My job there was to haul loaded ore cars from the mines to the foundry, where the ore was refined and used for many things." He looked down at Kate and saw she was writing in her notebook.

She looked up at him after a couple minutes and asked, " What happened after you worked there?'

" Well, I worked there for five years or so. Then in 1915, I was sold to the Cramer Kay Machinery Co. in Newhouse, Utah, where I worked until they got an engine who was better suited for the job. So then I was sold to the Eastern Railway & Lumber Co, later to be the S. A. Agnew Lumber Co, in Centralia, Washington, as their number 1 in 1916. That was when my career as a loggin' locomotive started off."

" What was it like working for them?" Asked Kate intriguingly.

" It was wonderful, the scenery of the line was breath takin', and I enjoyed working there for the first couple of years until..." Christoper sighed lightly

" Until what?"

" Well you see, bein' that I was a second hand engine to them, sometime around 1918 they started assignin' rookie crews to me who were in need of training. They knew the basics of operating a locomotive but they were out of practice sort of speak, they would oil and grease me like they were taught to do but when it came down to them cleanin' my boiler tubes, I was lucky if I had my tubes cleaned once a year."

Kate looked up at him after writing some more in her notebook," That must have caused a lot of issues to arise."

" Oh believe me youngin' it did, they were to darn lazy to bother with doin' it. Over the years a thick layer of baked on soot formed inside my tubes 'cause of it and made it harder and harder for me to steam properly. It got to the point where I only just had enough strength to do my work, but that all changed in the spring of 1928..."