Heat and Brakes

The Summer of July 1950 proved to be a hot one, and even more so for the workers and engines of the California Western. Despite this though, they kept on going delivering their logs from the forests and on occassion, taking other freight along the tracks. But still, tempers can flare up, especially when they have to deal with the Northwestern Pacific Railroad.

Since their railroad's opening, the Northwestern Pacific had quite the interesting amount of steam locomotives. They ranged from American class engines all the way to the shays. The latest engines in the fleet were engines with four front wheels and six driving wheels. They had a wide variety of numbers, and considering they were the largest engines on the railroad, they often looked down on others, especially those of the California Western.

One warm morning, even before the sun had come up, Shay #2 was coming to the junction with a log train. Engine 178 was waiting for her, and as usual, looked over to her with a smug look.

"Getting tired are you old girl? Take my advice and go to the scrapyards, since all you're good for is scrap."

"You can insult me all you want, but I'm not going to sink to your level old boy," she said firmly. "I'm just as useful as any engine."

178 snorted, "oh give me a break, you're not that reliable. None of you engines from the Calfornia Western are reliable. If you had more of our class mates, or even our wheel arrangements, you could actually prove yourselves. But you can't, cause all you have are weak useless engines. Now, enough of this chit-chat, give me my cars and get out of my sight."

Shay said no more and once uncoupled, went off to a nearby water tower. 178 chuckled as he was coupled up and took the cars away.

"Young engines these days, they need to learn to show respect," she sighed to her engineer, who nodded in agreement.

Now of course, we know that the California Western does have it's own steam giants, which came in the form of 46 and Warren, but the Northwestern Pacific engines don't see them all that often, so they didn't believe the California Western had any of it's own giants. Still, Shay wasn't going to get into a barging compitation, so she collected some empty flatbeds and went back to the yards.

Upon returning to the yards, Shay found Warren having a small conversation with No 41, an engine from the Sierra Railroad.

"Top of the mornin' Shay, you look like you've been talking with 'em NorthWesterners again."

"I wouldn't call some engine barging about their own fleet a talking session Warren," and she quickly told him and No 41 about 178.

"That's a joke right?" snapped No 41. "I mean come on, we have more powerful engines than they do. Heck, I'm a 2-8-2 and Warren is an articulated engine for crying out loud. If I was there, I'd give that engine a real show of who's better."

"Oi, that's not a good idea me lad, you'd just end up in trouble and who'd look foolish there?"

"Warren's correct," said Shay. "It's better to let an idiot be an idiot, his own words will come back to bite him in the smokebox one day. Besides, no offence old friend, but you don't look fit enough to show off your skills."

No 41 coughed, "it's just the blasted weather getting to me, nothing this old engine can't handle."

"I really hope that's the case, or we'll lose our second 41."

As the day wore on, the heat was becoming unbearable to deal with. Engine crews were told to stop every so often and take a break from working with the engines. After all, the last thing they needed were crew members passing out and the trains run out of control.

When Shay #2 returned to Willits, the connection with the Northwestern Pacific, she found 178 looking smug, "ha! Nothing to it for a strong locomotive like myself, or any engine with my wheel arrangement. Now get off that train and I'll take it to Schellville."

Shay said nothing and was uncoupled. As her engineer uncoupled her, she noticed that 178's crew were checking his brakes over.

"Is everything okay with your brakes?" she asked with concern.

"Oh yeah they're fine, they've just been running hot moreso than usual," smirked 178. "But it's nothing compared to an engine like myself."

But judging from the crew's worried faces, Shay didn't believe 178. "You're not riding your brakes hard are you? In this hot weather, you could easily melt them down to nothing at all."

"Don't be stupid, brakes can't melt, they're made of metal for goodness sakes. Now shut up and get out of my sight."

"Okay fine, you don't want to listen to reason and common sense, I'll let you go on, but don't say I didn't warn you."

In spite of his crew telling him to rest for a bit and cool his brakes down, 178 insisted on showing Shay #2 how much better he was. In the end, they gave up and allowed him to couple up to the flatbeds of logs.

"Melting brakes, what silly garbage comes out of your mouth old timer," chuckled 178.

Shay watched as he puffed away. "He won't make it to Schellville today," she said to her engineer. "I fear he may land himself in trouble." Her engineer and fireman could only agree.

"Melting brakes, whatever next," chuckled 178.

"Well you won't have that problem if you stop riding your brakes hard," retorted the engineer, but 178 payed no attention whatsoever. It would've been better if he had.

He was soon passing Milepost 114 'Ukiah', and here's where the trouble began. He had to slow down hard, but his brakes went hard on again. His engineer tried to ease off the preasure, but 178 refused to pay attention. The friction made between the brake blocks and wheels grew quite hot and without them knowing, at the moment, they started to melt. The fireman thought he saw liquid beside the track, but figured it was just from the injectors.

At Cloverdale 'Milepost 85.2', it happened. They had to slow down here, but to the horror of the engineer, nothing happened. They weren't slowing down.

"Hey, are you going to put my brakes on or not?" snapped 178.

"I'm trying, but they're not working!" He moved the brake handle again and again, but nothing worked. They were still puffing along at their original speed, "Now you've done it, we have no brakes!"

"But..." the rest of 178's speech was cut off.

The hot sun had bent the rails to the point that if a train went over them too fast, they could derail. And that's just what happened. Without warning, 178 began to tilt to the side and with a loud crash, landed on his side and skidded along for a half mile joyride before finally stopping.

The engineer was knocked out cold, but the fireman was still awake. He quickly put the fire out, and hauled the engineer out of the cab.

"You stupid engine, none of this would've happened if you had listened to us," he snapped. 178 payed no attention, he felt he did nothing wrong.

Once the engineer had been awakened, they left for Cloverdale where they phoned the manager. The manager agreed to send track-crews to fix the tracks and send another engine to take the train. As for 178, his own words were; "Leave that loud mouth where he is, we'll pick him up when we're good and ready."

Warren was puffing into the Willits junction with a long train, and tailing at the end was No 41, still a little stuffed up but doing alright.

"Thanks for the help me lad, with the heat and this load, it would've taken longer to get here."

"Don't worry about it Warren, we California Western engines look out for each other right?"

Before Warren could reply, they were greeted by a worker, "I got a call from the manager, you're not going to believe me when I tell you this, but he wants you two to take this train and the original train Shay brought in along the Northwestern Pacific."

"What?!" exclaimed the two locomotives and their crews.

"Us? Are you sure about that?" asked No 41. "We're not Northwestern Pacific engines you know."

"I'm aware of that, but all their other engines are busy and old loud mouth, that's No 178, had managed to melt his brakes and derail himself at Milepost 85.2. You have full permission to go down their line."

So with their long train still coupled between them, Warren and No 41 puffed onto the mainline of the Northwestern Pacific.

"Show 'em what we can do boys!" called the worker, then went off to do other work.

By the time the two locomotives reached Milepost 85.2, the track crews had already replaced the rails and rerailed the cars. No 178 gasped, "where did you two come from?"

"The California Western," answered No 41. "They have do have engines like me there, or Warren, who's articulated by the way."

"Still think we don't have big engines me lad?" Warren asked with a sly eyebrow raised.

No 178 went silent for the first time that day. Still, there was no time to waste. Warren coupled up to the long line of flatbeds and caboose, and slowly but surely, they pushed the massive log train down the tracks.

The yard manager at Schellville was surprised to see Warren and No 41 come in with the log trains.

"Where's No 178? I thought he was supposed to bring in this train."

No 41 paused to get his breath back, then answered, "silly fool jumped...the tracks...at Milepost...85.2. Your manager...asked for us."

Warren did the shunting, then once completed, he coupled up to No 41 and the cabooses, and puffed off back to Willits. Along the way, they passed No 178, who was still laying on his side.

"Oh deary me, I hope they don't leave that old boy there," sighed Warren.

"It'd serve him right if they did," smirked No 41.

No 178 scowled at the two locomotives until they were out of his sight. Now alone, he could do nothing but look at the world from his awkward postion. He thought about his words, and about the engines that just took his trains.

"Darn those California Westerners. One day, I will show them who's the better railroad. One day, I will," he snarled. "Once I get back up."

But it wasn't until the heat wave passed on July 29th 1950 that No 178 was finally rescued. His manager spoke firmly with him, "since you need to learn to become a better engine, I'm sending you to work on the California Western. They will show you how to be a real hard worker."

"Fine, I'll take it," he grumbled under his breath, but he knew he wasn't going to like it.

Brakes can actually melt if they are used too long aganist the wheels. Although no event has occured similar to that of the story, the brake blocks melting was partly based on the melted brakes of SP Train 7551 in 1989 before it crashed on Duffy Street.