Train

Starsky

Every kid I grew up with, girls and boys, wanted a train for Christmas when we were five. It was all because of Johnny Yves, too. He'd had a train for his birthday two months before the blessed holiday, and since his parents were rich, he didn't just have a train. He had the tracks and the buildings and the drawbridge and the decoupling station and the little guy unloading barrels.

All the bells and whistles. All top of the line.

Everybody got to watch him play with his train set at his birthday party, green with envy. And then we went home and wrote out our letters to Santa, describing everything we wanted. Right down to the model number.

Guess who got a train for Christmas…

Johnny Yves. A Zephyr.

The rest of us got socks and underwear.

What I wouldn't have given for a pair of dry socks and underwear the day I finally drove a train.

An old steamer they called Dear Betsy had been running tourist excursions into the mountains. Hutch and I were undercover, me as a conductor and him as a steward, keeping an eye on a set of very expensive jewels that were being transported on that train.

The owner had expected bigger, burlier and more numerous company and wasn't too happy that only Hutch and I were assigned. I think, in the end, he got over it.

Hutch pretended that it didn't matter to him that we might each get a chance to drive Dear Betsy, but I could tell the little boy in him was delighted. Personally I took to the controls like I was born to them. The engineer was a sweet old guy named Tommy. He'd been driving trains since the time of steam, and hated diesels. Said they were taking the art and beauty out of train travel.

As we climbed into the mountains I had to agree with him. The trip was a dream. There was a ski lodge at the top of the mountain that was hosting the jeweler's convention. We'd be up there for two days, then head back down and see the jewels and the owner to the airport. Terrific!

Who would expect a gully washer and a mudslide just an hour after I had taken over the controls? I, of course, handled it like a master.

Hutch

Starsky was panicking. His knuckles were white on the controls, and he was grinding his teeth. Every few seconds he'd snap at me to stop shoveling coal. It'd taken a lot of convincing to get him to understand that we needed the steam. It was the steam that was powering the brakes. The brakes were the only thing keeping us from careening down the mountain backward.

The fireman normally assigned to Tommy had been sick for half-a-day before the storm started. Sick enough that Tommy had been concerned he wouldn't handle the final up-hill haul to the ski lodge. Starsk and I had been trading off on the job, Dave drooling over Tommy's shoulder any time the old man offered a mini-engineer lesson.

Then the storm started and Tommy got sick. I'd been on the shovel and had radioed to Starsky, the both of us getting Tommy out of the cab back into one of the cars. Thirty minutes later we'd noticed the wobble. I don't know how Starsk spotted it through the rain, but he slammed on the brakes and the train rattled to a stop. The tracks sixty feet ahead were buried under rubble.

That was the first time Starsky yelled at me to stop shoveling.

"We can't make it through that." He'd said.

I'd agreed, breathing hard. "We'll just have to back down."

"Back down!?"

"Yeah...down, backwards. Just...throw it in reverse."

"Wha- would you stop shoveling! How?"

"Tommy told ya...didn't he? Just throw that lever there...and uh...and that one."

Starsky

Hutch clearly didn't realize how many levers there were in front of me. I knew where the throttle was, and the brake. I knew where the lever for steam release was and the emergency stop cord. The whistle. The bell. Reverse had never been mentioned. "That's the brake….that's the throttle...that's-"

"What?" Hutch shouted, throwing off my process of elimination.

I grabbed one lever I wasn't sure about with my right hand, kept my left on the brake and yanked. The door to the firebox closed with a loud clang making the both of us jump.

Lightning flashed across the sky a second later and I looked up to see that not only were the tracks covered in mud and debris, but it was moving. A slow wave of sludge heading down the tracks toward us.

I opened the fire box and yanked on another unfamiliar lever.

Nothing bad happened so I eased off the brakes until I felt the engine bump against the coal car.

"Ha! There, ya see, reverse!" I shouted, feeling the tightening of my chest release a little. "Knew it all the time."

I adjusted the throttle and let go of the brake, wincing as the wheels and the rails and the whole engine complained.

"The clutch!"

"What?"

Hutch leaned in close to my ear and said, "The clutch."

"What clutch?"

"You didn't use the clutch."

"It's a train, you dummy, not a semi."

My partner was drenched by rain and sweat, leaning wearily on the coal shovel while he clung with one hand to the roof. "I'm pretty sure Tommy said something about a clutch."

I eased the throttle and started to apply the brakes again, counting levers and trying to guess at which one might be a clutch, if an engine had one, which I was sure it didn't.

"Look there's no clutch. That's the throttle, that's the brake, that's the-oaf!"

We hit something. Or something hit us. The engine rocked and the cars behind us jolted. Vaguely I could hear the screams of frightened passengers distantly behind us.

I activated the brakes fully and clung to the window, leaning out into the pounding rain. Blocks of light were scattered across the side of the railroad cut, shining through the windows of the cars. Each car looked like it was still firmly seated on the tracks. The curve of the cut prevented me from seeing the caboose.

The slow ooze of the mudslide was making its way into the shaft of light coming from the front of the engine. Before long we wouldn't have a choice about which direction we were traveling in. My heart was in my throat and I felt dizzy staring at the mess of levers that was, only an hour earlier, relatively familiar to me.

"Clutch...if there was a clutch I'd know about it..."

"Starsky!"

I heard the metallic scrape of the shovel against the cascade of coal in the hopper. Hutch was feeding the fire again, more frantic than before.

Never mind the clutch, I thought. We'll go backward in neutral if we have to. I operated the levers that I understood and the wheels spun, then caught on the wet rails.

Hutch

The slow mud slide had become a torrent. California was known for its unpredictable rain storms and the damage they could do, especially following a drought. Where there was one slide I knew there would be more. I'd felt more than a few impacts against the cars behind us and the hopper itself.

Getting clocked behind the ear by a falling stone convinced me that we had to move.

I started shoveling and with hunched resolution, Starsk threw a few levers. We were moving again. This time Starsky held the throttle in one hand and the brake in the other and stuck his head out the side of the cab to watch the bottom of the mountain rush up at us.

I shoveled coal and thought about the spectacularly fiery explosion we were going to end our lives in. Not with Starsk at the wheel of his treasured Torino, and not at the hands of some vengeful maniac, but in a steam train of all things.

When was the last time that a steam train had crashed in anything but the movies? And how many people survived that crash? As I bent for another shovel full of coal I thought about the diamonds that this coal would never have the chance to become. Jewels that we were supposed to be safely seeing to the top of the mountain.

The day had started out clear and beautiful. Sun, cool mountain air, everything that I remembered and loved about my childhood in the mid-west. There had been plenty of pleasant railroad cuts and side tracks that-

A side track…

"Side track!" I shouted.

Starsky

"What?"

"Side track. We go down far enough, we can get the engine onto a side track and out of this cut."

My partner, Kenneth Hutchison, was the planning type. He liked to ponder and then have a burst of eureka and build the machine and set it in motion. Don't get me wrong, plenty of his plans had gotten us out of jams. But there was a time when planning wasn't as good as just getting the heck outta of a place.

This side track idea sounded too much like a plan we didn't need. I tried to ignore him, focusing on the rush of rock and trees and brush and rain screaming by on either side of us. But Hutch wouldn't let up.

"Starsky, slow 'er down."

"I do that, we end up a mud sculpture."

"As long as we're in this cut we're a target for anything coming off that mountain." Hutch insisted swiping at his neck. There was blood there that I hadn't noticed before, but I didn't dare take my hand off the two levers controlling our rapid descent.

"Who's to say a side track isn't gonna get us into just as much trouble?"

"I think that's a risk we're going to have to take."

"I don't remember any side tracks!" I insisted, my voice cracking a little as a result of the shouting we'd been forced to do. The rumble of the debris was like an earthquake, and that's not a word that I use lightly.

Hutch felt his way toward the side of the cab, keeping both hands securely wrapped around something solid. There was no way to casually move around the engine without risking flying off the train all together.

"Slow it down." Hutch shouted again, facing me just long enough to make sure I'd heard him before he looked back to the squares of light chasing each other. I didn't like it, but I eased off the throttle, facing the gauges and waiting for our speed to get to a place where I could apply the brakes without snapping the lines.

The mud and the rain weren't going to slow. Higher up, against the slate gray of the sky I could make out large chunks of top soil breaking off the slope, and snowballing down the hill, taking fledgling trees with it.

"This isn't a good place to stop!" I shouted. At first I didn't think it strange that my partner didn't answer. Then I felt a gust of wind against my back, hitting my neck and sending a shiver down my spine. With it came a spray of mud and the clatter of stones on the cab roof. I turned to make sure Hutch hadn't been hit by more debris and found that I was alone in the cab.

"Hutch!" With the train still rolling I thrust my head through the window and stared at the track ahead, trying to spot the yellow jacket and striped cap that Ken had been wearing. Maybe he'd been knocked out of the cab by something, or had slipped on the slick metal floor. I rushed to the other side of the engine and squinted past the rain and the mud and the falling branches.

Nothing.

My heart throbbed in my chest and past my ears making it impossible to hear anything anymore. I scrambled to the hopper, slapped my hand down on the rail and leaned out in time to get a face full of pine needles. I closed my eyes against the whip of the branches then forced them open again, seeing nothing but cut rock and the sides of the cars behind the engine. They were starting to turn sharply to the right.

I lurched to the other side of the platform and looked back, barely catching the slick handrail that would keep me from flying off the engine. The cars were definitely curving, sharper than I remembered this section of track to be, and they were beginning to climb. The engine was responding with a strained groan and with dread in my throat I went to the throttle, opening it up a bit more. The steam gauge was fine for the moment but I would have to shovel soon.

Shovel coal, get the train to a level spot on this new side track, then go to find my partner. Hope he was still alive. Hope I hadn't somehow been responsible for crushing his body on the train tr-

Side track.

Hutch

I found the switch exactly forty-seven seconds before the caboose would have passed it. I'd been stumbling down the track at a jog, and kept going, using my momentum and body weight to flip the switch. I'd have bet money that it would be rusted and inoperable. That my next few minutes would be spent rushing after the train as it continued its slow descent.

I couldn't have been happier to have been wrong. The train slipped onto the side track like melting butter on toast. I couldn't stop the yelp of victory as the caboose, four passenger cars and the hopper and engine slid past me at a walking pace.

Starsky's astonished face caught my eye as he passed, looking like he'd run over a puppy. I yelped again and jogged toward the train, stumbling over the ballast and fallen rocks until I could latch on to the rail and pull myself up the high steps. Starsky was already slowing the engine and putting on the brakes. By the time I'd caught my breath he turned and squeezed the rest out of me in a bone crushing hug.

"Don't do that to me again." I heard him mumble. When he pushed away from me he took a second to look at the nick on my neck then shook a stern finger in my face and turned back to the gauges.

Both of us were forced into stunned silence as the avalanche of rock, water and fauna rumbled past the filtered light of the engine. It was like watching the earth being born, a volcano rising from the sea, or a new mountain breaking free. The landscape around us changed instantly.

"All because of a little rain." Starsky muttered.

We watched until the pace of the slide had slowed to a crawl, mesmerized by the power and fury of mother nature. I loaded a little more coal into the chute to keep the fire going and Starsky stepped down into the downpour and walked along the side track to the first car, checking on the passengers.

I stayed by the fire, grateful for its warmth, and was almost ready to fall asleep when I heard my partner call my name.

"What?" I shouted, sticking my head out into the cold.

Four cars back Starsky stood with a blanket covered Tommy on the platform of the caboose. My partner pointed emphatically at the recovering engineer then shouted, "I told you there wasn't a clutch on a train engine!"