The Last Zephyr, page 5
“Back up!” Larry yelled. He assumed rocks were still coming down and that their only hope was to go east, to get as far away from the cave-in as fast as possible.
“I’m on it!” Christina yelled right back. She didn’t know what the status of the train or track behind her was, but she knew she didn’t want to stay where they were. The engine slowly began to roar louder as the RPMs of the diesel engines increased. Amps rose on the meter. The locomotive had never stopped rocking even after it hit the wall of rocks. Nothing could be seen outside the windows of the cab through the dust. The feel of the engine didn’t jive with the indications on the gauges.
“Come on, go!” Christina thought in a panic. Then panic turned to a terrified feeling, like sinking deeper underwater with no way to reach the surface. The feeling was caused by a little light that had come on. The implications of that light were devastating. WHEEL SLIP.
Her heart sank. Larry felt like he would throw up. Amps kept building up—over 1,000. Another light: SAND. Helplessly, the two looked at the gauges. When steel wheels slip and begin to spin on steel rails, adhesion drops to near zero. If the wheel slip didn’t stop real soon, the train was hopelessly stuck. If they couldn’t find a way to move the train back, they and the more than 200 people on board were most likely going to be crushed by more cave-ins or suffocate in the cloud of dust.
On the lead unit, the one Larry and Christina were sitting in, the front axle was barely touching the rail. Rocks from the cave-in had wedged under the traction motor housing of the front bogie. The rear truck didn’t have enough adhesion to the rail to pull the front wheels of the locomotive off the rocks and shove the entire Zephyr backward up a 0.8 percent grade at the same time.
All eight wheels of the lead unit began to spin in place. Radar told the onboard computer that the train was not moving. The speedometer told it that the wheels were turning. The incongruity triggered the programmed response: Light up the warning to engineers and apply sand to the wheels.
“Bite!” Larry yelled. Bite is what railroaders call it when the powered wheels grab the rail and move, rather than spin in place. The speedometer read 10 mph.
“We aren’t moving—the wheels are just slipping,” Larry said with a hint of reservation.
Christina slammed the console with her fist. “Back up, damn it!”
She feathered the independent brake lever, the control that applies brakes to the wheels of the locomotives only. Suddenly . . . scrape, pop, drop! The train lurched backward!
Nick was running through the baggage car on his way to find out what had happened to his engineers when he was thrown face first to the linoleum floor by the sudden rocketing backward of the entire car. He got back on his feet. The train was moving—but it was going east!
Who’s watching the shove? he thought.
Without taking the time to think about it, he began instinctively falling back on twenty-nine years of rules, classes, and experience on the rails as a response to the confusing menagerie of sensory inputs that didn’t make sense. He started running in the opposite direction to protect the end of his train that was moving blindly backward.
As wheel slip was detected, both locomotives automatically gritted the rail below the struggling wheels with sand. Finally, enough bite was achieved on the second unit to pull the lead engine’s front truck off the rocks and shove the Zephyr to relative safety in the eastern end of the tunnel.
The clouds of dust visible in the headlight started to blow backward, like it was being sucked into a vacuum. “We’re moving!” Larry was gripping the arms of his chair so tightly, his fingers dug into the black vinyl.
“The whole train must be on the rail,” Christina said with a relieved voice, choking back tears.
“Don’t worry about speed, just get us out of here!” Larry commanded.
“I’m giving it all we’ve got,” Christina said, as if to tell Larry that she didn’t need orders from him. She knew what she was doing. She didn’t know what was happening to the tunnel, but she did know how to handle the engines.
None of the crew understood why the tracks and tunnel, the very foundation of their world, were convulsing. They were all in a fog, trying to react and catch up with circumstances they had never encountered before. A light passed by the cab window. It was a tunnel emergency refuge point.
Oxygen—we might need those bottles if this dust gets much worse, Larry thought. Never mind that, he decided in his head. It’s more dangerous to stop—we’ve got to keep moving. He kept his thoughts to himself.
Speed increased. “We’re doing 30 mph!” Christina yelled over the roar of the engines. She smiled, seeing that the air was clearing. They were escaping certain death by cave-in. Her emotions were pulling at her like she had never felt before. She wanted to hyperventilate in fear, but her mind was determined to stay focused on the primary objective: get her train, her crew, and her passengers out of that hellhole as fast as she could.
There will be time for losing it later, she told herself.
She pushed the throttle forward. Notch 7,6,5,4, IDLE. They were going backward blind at 45 miles per hour through a tunnel that might have collapsed into a solid wall of deadly rock.
“God help us!” Christina said in what was for her more of a real prayer than a catch phrase.
“So far so good!” Larry replied.
“Just hang on,” she told Larry.
Finally the odd rocking of the earthquake subsided. The movement of the train started to feel “normal” to the crew. Relief was creeping into the thoughts of the engineers as they made sure they kept control of the train.
“We might have dodged a bullet,” Larry said.
James, Brewster, and the rest of the VIPs in the Silver Sky found themselves suddenly leading a move eastward. They were monitoring the radio transmissions (as all well-versed rail fans do). They knew the peril they were in.
James called to Alex, “Man the e-brake! They are shoving away from a cave in and can’t see.”
Alex was the only trained railroader in the private car. He threw open the small coffee table top over the brake valve and stared intensely out the back window. Ben had already turned on the big mars light, lighting up the whole tunnel for a hundred yards.
Nick’s race through the train was frightening to everyone on board. Regardless of their questions and panic, they got out of his way, knowing instinctively that his task was of utmost importance at that moment. He was trying to reach the back of the 512 car—the last public coach on the train. Dan was already there. He had the door unlocked and open. The car attendant had been around long enough to know Nick or René would be on point once the train started going backward.
René had been in the diner when the earthquake started. She began to run for the rear of the train just like Nick, once she felt it going backward. She got to Dan first.
“I’m on the rear, we’re good for at least ten cars. OVER!” came a female voice on the radio.
Finally the bold, yet frightened engineers had some visual direction. Larry grabbed the mic from the middle of the dashboard. “Ten cars! Good to have you back there. Can you see through the dust? OVER.”
“YEAH! It’s cleared up,” René transmitted. “I can see ten cars at a time—shove ten! The trouble is the private car. I’ve got to drop down to get on point. OUT.”
René dropped the mic and grabbed the lower rung of the safety bars at the end of the 512 car. She swung herself down.
Brewster heard what she said and ran to open the end door of the vestibule on the Silver Sky. He got it open right as René finished lowering herself through the narrow space between the bottom of the bi-level walkway and the top of the private car diaphragm.
“Ten cars again number 5. OVER!” It was Nick. He had made it to where Dan was guarding the now opened end of the train. He gave a car count while René tried to get through the Sky.
René rapidly weaved her way by the private bedrooms, past the bar below the dome, and up into the lounge area in the rounded end of the fancy train car. Everyone in the car was staring at her with scared expressions as she ran to the windows.
“René is on the point number 5. Shove ten. OVER!”
Before the engineers could answer, a different voice cut in on the transmission. “Omaha to train number 5, can you hear this radio? OVER.”
Inside Moffat Tunnel, the railroad has a series of radio repeaters that allow transmissions from the dispatcher on a specific tunnel frequency. The dispatcher’s voice was trembling.
Larry answered, “Number 5 here. We are alive and moving east as fast as we can—the freaking tunnel is caving in. OVER!”
The dispatcher’s response sounded dismissive to their message, considering the monumental implications of what Larry just said.
Instead of addressing the cave-in, the voice coming from the UPR dispatching center in Omaha said what was required by an urgent memo: “Listen closely. We have a national emergency. Apparently, Yellowstone National Park has just completely blown up. Authorities are telling us that all trains must immediately depart main tracks if at all possible and stop. Everyone west of the Mississippi River is to take whatever cover they can find. Be prepared for the possibility of very hot and toxic fallout of volcanic ash. OVER.”
Forty-eight mph. Christina moved the throttle to dynamic braking SET UP by instinct. The Zephyr had crossed back over the apex of the Moffat Tunnel. They were going backward downhill toward Denver. She tried to swallow, but her throat was paralyzed.
“Ten cars again, shove. OVER,” René said in a shocked tone.
“Train number 5, the dispatch center is being evacuated. I’ve got to go. Just . . . OVER. Oh my God . . . ”
The crew in the tunnel could tell that the dispatcher, their only link to the outside world, was suddenly completely distracted, mixing words and absent from their conversation.
“Dispatcher, you want us to stop right here in the tunnel?”
The radio made no reply.
“Dispatcher, you do realize the tunnel is caving in on us?”
Larry’s tone of voice was clearer than his words. We ain’t stopping!
Finally the dispatcher’s voice could be heard again. “Guys, this is bad—the pictures on the live cam monitors . . . my family . . . I’ve got to go. I am so sorry. Good luck. I’m so sorry.”
“Good for ten more cars number 5. OVER.” René tried to stay focused on the immediate job at hand, which was getting the train out of the tunnel safely.
“Ten. Roger,” Christina was trying to process what she had just heard. Larry and Nick were doing the same thing.
“Where is the emergency brake valve?” René asked Alex, who looked like the one to ask.
“Right there,” he said, pointing to the lever connected to pipes inside a fancy curved encasement next to the rear door.
“Come in, dispatcher,” Larry called.
No one answered. He repeated it three times to no avail.
“Clear for another ten cars. OVER.”
“Ten,” Christina replied.
Several seconds passed. Christina held the train speed steady at 45 mph.
“Ten cars again,” René called out, a little less sure of herself than before. The signal far ahead was red.
“What in blazes is going on?” a loud voice yelled in Nick’s direction as he tried to see through the dark tunnel from the coach car. He was rapidly trying to think through the situation.
More voices and questions started coming at Nick like a slow building riot. “Are we in trouble?”
“Is this as bad as it feels?” The cadence and volume of passenger voices grew.
Nick did not turn to acknowledge them but stayed focused like a laser on the job at hand. He knew René had the point. So he pushed his way to the middle of the car and downstairs to the PA. He would try to calm the passengers.
Nick’s voice was heard throughout the train. “Folks, this is Conductor Nick. Obviously, we are experiencing an emergency. The crew is working feverishly to get us to safety. Please, everyone MUST stay calm and seated, and allow us to do our jobs. We have some of the most-experienced train crew members and engineers in the system. We will work the problem. Just please give us space and keep calm. We will give you all the information we have as soon as we can.”
The ability to multitask is something Nick could do well—speak and think about something different at the same time without missing a beat. While he was calming people with his PA announcement, he made up his mind on what to do.
“Stop the train number 5. OVER,” Nick called out on the radio.
Christina slammed the automatic brake handle to full service, being careful not to go too far and place the train brakes in an emergency stop, which would have required three minutes to recover from before they could get moving again. She was afraid Nick was seeing more rocks falling.
The thought that she was going to die finally got to her. She started tearing up. She realized her emotions had her gasping for breath. She looked at Larry in fear, hoping for some kind of reassurance. She saw the older man with thirty-eight years of railroading experience smile as if to say, “I know.” She saw the tears on his face too. There was comfort in that moment of shared terror.
Nick’s radio transmission was different. His tone was decisive, but not alarming. He was choosing to take charge and pick between hopeless choices. The track was clear, no rocks or damage from the earthquake at all. There wasn’t even any dust from the cave-in, which was now several miles west of where they were. He had never been great in high-pressure situations. Suddenly he faced more pressure than he ever dreamed of. But it was no dream; it was a nightmare, and it was real.
The train slowed rapidly.
“Crew brief,” Nick said into the radio. He had not made the decision that the train would stay in the tunnel, only that they would talk about it and decide together.
“Is the track clear?” Larry was clearly impatient and scared, on the edge of panic.
“Track is clear; the air is clear. I just think that we have time to decide if we should go outside, or shelter in the tunnel with a whole mountain protecting us. OVER.”
“Are you kidding me? What if there are more rocks falling?” Larry was almost yelling into the radio.
Christina turned to Larry, tears still on her face. “Maybe Nick’s right. He knows a lot about geology. He knows more about Yellowstone and eruptions than we do.”
Christina wanted out of the tunnel as much as anyone, but if Omaha was evacuating the dispatching center, the place they call “The Bunker” that could withstand an F5 tornado, it must be really bad out there.
Larry, like everyone else, was scared. But he had always been able to handle the heat and keep his cool. He thought he’d seen it all, but this was way beyond anything he ever experienced before. His mind was racing through the options. Nothing was a sure bet. In fact, no choice seemed any good at all. He had to assume the world outside that they had left just a few minutes ago—a world of incredible beauty and life, was gone, or soon would be. Larry figured they should get the train out of the tunnel and then come back in if it got bad out there. He radioed Nick with his thoughts.
“Larry, if the ash cloud gets here, we won’t have time to get back in the tunnel and shut the gate. Volcanic clouds travel at up to 600 miles per hour!” Nick said it with certainty.
In fact, he wasn’t too sure about the speed of the ash plume, but he knew it could really move. He also feared blast debris—balls of molten rock falling from above at supersonic speeds.
Larry could tell by the tone of Nick’s voice that he was confident in his assessment. Larry worried that if he and Christina tried to keep shoving the train out of the tunnel, Nick could use the emergency brake handle in the train cars to force a stop. No need to have a further discussion. He knew what Nick was suggesting, and he knew what had to be done. They would stop, inspect the situation, and then shove out of the tunnel when all was clear.
The train stopped. “Shut the engines down; do it fast. We have to preserve the air in here. OVER.”
Nick’s transmission was too late for Larry. He was already pushing the red button that shut off both locomotives.
“Tie off the hand brakes,” Christina said into the radio.
“Roger,” Nick said.
The engine RPM meter read zero. The main engine of the 313 had rumbled to silence. Within seconds, the 309 went quiet as well.
Larry had shut down the oxygen-guzzling locomotives in record time. The Moffat tunnel was eerily still.
Christina centered the reverser switch and placed the parking brake lever to the APPLY position.
Oh God, let this be the right decision, she prayed.
Chapter 9
Chaos
“Calamity and calm tend to chase each other.”
—CB
The brief moment of quiet was shattered by the ratcheting of hand brake chains as Nick started securing the train. René did the same on the Silver Sky. Nick decided that only three brakes were needed by rules with the 0.8 percent grade on the tracks inside Moffat Tunnel. After he tied the brakes on cars 512, 511, and 510, the magnitude of his passenger problem came into focus.
René had gotten off the Sky at the vestibule steps and was starting toward the 512 car when she heard the starting of a diesel engine behind her. When the Museum had the Silver Sky renovated, they added a self-contained HEP diesel generator that automatically came on thirty seconds after power from the locomotives was shut off.
“Kill that engine!” she yelled back up into the car.
Brewster, James, and Harry scrambled to the control locker. Sean was already there. He hit the red HEP Emergency Shut Off button. The engine in the undercarriage of the Silver Sky sputtered to a stop. Only floor lights remained on inside the tail car of the train.
