Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
I’ve been reading a lot about trains lately. I’ve written a long series of historical pieces on the Rawlins to Ft. Washakie stage line, and how the arrival of the Union Pacific opened up the Sweetwater River Valley and then its neighbor to the northwest, the Wind River Valley.
The Chicago North Western finished off the settlement of Fremont County, bringing eastern ideas, modern technology, and people to the once sparsely populated land of the Eastern Shoshone.
It brought me back to my fleeting experience with rail travel.
When I was a little kid, we lived off base on a two-acre plot of land my mom and dad purchased along the main highway connecting the town of Blytheville, Arkansas to Blytheville Air Force Base. Wild blackberries grew along the tracks. Each summer, we’d walk along the tracks and fill buckets of berries, occasionally stirring up a cottonmouth snake, which my dad always quickly dispatched.
One day, my grandma and grandpa were visiting from Mariana, a hundred or so miles to the south, and grandpa pulled a nickel out of his pocket and put it on the tracks. There was an afternoon train that ran every day around 4 pm. Sure enough, the train rolled by, and grandpa and I walked across the highway looking for the nickel. We found it, triple its original size at least.
It was my first lesson in the power of trains.
A few years later, we were visiting my other grandparents, Eugene and Clara Gasser, in Riverton one summer. Dad had to fly back to Travis Air Force Base near Fairfield, California a few days before us and mom decided it would be fun to ride the train west to Sacramento where he would pick us up.
Grandpa Gasser drove us to Rock Springs, where we boarded a westbound train for Sacramento. I was just 12-years-old, but the memories of the vastness of the Utah mountains, the stark glow of the white sand of the Great Salt Lake in the evening distance, and later, the sun rising above the Sierra Nevada Mountains as we crossed from Nevada into California remain vivid.
A decade passed before I rode another train, this one the subway in Washington, D.C. The Metro is a marvel. There aren’t many things done correctly in Washington, but the Metro is an exception. It’s fast, efficient, inexpensive, and well-maintained. It is a marvel and the best way to get anywhere in the city.
While in D.C. I took a passenger train from Union Station to South Station in Boston. It clacked along at a reasonable speed, exposing the dirty backyard of the eastern seaboard in the process. The people were less than exemplary. A few commuters, living their lives behind the Washington Post, or doing crossword puzzles to kill the time on their trip home each day, a trip they’d repeat in the other direction in 10 hours or less. But it was an eye-opener.
Sue and I had taken a quick three-day vacation to Washington, D.C. in June of 2018, deciding to take the Amtrak from the Connellsville Station east of Pittsburgh to Union Station.
The “Capitol Limited” (passenger trains always have cool names) arrived two hours late for unspecified reasons on Friday morning, but we quickly forgot the delay as we settled in for the type of traveling experience that was once common in America. Spacious seating, a dining car, an observation deck and rural scenery with just a taste of Appalachia rolling by outside.
We were viewing the original Declaration of Independence at the National Archives on Sunday afternoon when Sue’s phone began to buzz. The recorded message told us our train had been canceled due to debris on the tracks. This message arrived at 1:47 pm with our original departure slated for 4:05 that afternoon.
A short while later, approximately 200 passengers gathered to listen to Jerry, a tall spokesman for Amtrak, repeat platitudes on how hard the company was working for a solution.
The solution came in five tour buses that would take us to Pittsburgh; if you wanted to go to one of the other six stops between Union Station and Pittsburgh, you were on your own.
After three hours of delaying tactics and negotiations between Bus4Hire and Amtrak management, we were taken to the bus depot section of Union Station.
Trains, buses, and rental cars dot the huge facility along with shops and restaurants of all styles.
We pulled away at 6:47 pm. All seemed well. Our driver was nervous from the start. Hector was a local tour bus driver, but had been roped into emergency service in driving his coach to the Steel City.
At 8:10 pm, I recognized the telltale thwap, thwap, thwap of a tire disintegrating, followed by a cloud of burning rubber that filled the coach. Several of the passengers began to panic, but the driver quickly found an off ramp, and we all exited the bus near the Myersville exit.
Hector was helpless, he had never changed a tire in his life. Ralph, a jovial 24-year Amtrak veteran originally from Haiti, quickly pulled out his cell phone and began to call corporate. Neither of these guys had ever seen a blowout before and didn’t know how to change a tire.
I volunteered, telling them if they had a jack, a tire wrench, and a spare that I could get us back on the road.
Hector opened a storage compartment, and Ralph beamed as he pulled out the tire, yes, a tire, not a spare. It was just a tire, no rim attached. They both looked surprised when I told them this wouldn’t work. There was a sign near the end of the off-ramp advertising a pair of service stations, and I suggested that Ralph call one and get a service truck out here to mount the tire.
90 minutes later, an exasperated Ralph looked at me and said, “Finally, they agreed to get a truck.”
The “they” was an argument between Amtrak and Bus4Hire on who would pay for the repair.
A converted bread truck with a sign reading “Grimm’s Auto Rescue” rolled up behind us a half hour later.
An energetic 30-something guy named Jim, looking like an extra from Rambo, quickly assessed the situation.
“Where’s the spare?” he asked. I showed him the tire, and his demeanor dropped a few notches.
His Harbor Freight compressor wouldn’t start, and finally, with the air filter removed and a steady stream of starting fluid, it coughed to life.
He had Hector drive the bus forward a few feet onto a couple of 2×6’s to get a little extra height, then easily lifted the coach with an air jack.
A heavy-duty air wrench removed the tire and rim, and I helped Jim start to remove the old tire with a pair of long pry bars and a 12-pound sledgehammer. A little WD-40 made the process easier, and we repeated the process in mounting the new tire.
The tire kept slipping, so Ralph and I stood on the tire as Jim worked a bar around until it fell into place.
An air chuck couldn’t inflate the tire, and a compressed air “bead blower” that blasts air inside the tire didn’t work either. Jim was getting frustrated, but I knew an old trick. “There’s a chemical solution,” I said. Jim grinned and pulled a can of starting fluid from the truck. He was way ahead of me.
It’s not an approved technique, but a blast of ether and a match can quickly mount a tire.
Jim sprayed the fluid and lit it, but it only popped a little.
“You’ll need more than that,” I said.
Jim twisted some dry grass into a long wick, then sprayed a double circle of starting fluid around the tire.
Woooffff…pop… came the sound as the tire sealed around the rim.
A few minutes later, we were back on the highway, rolling into a 2:15 am arrival in Pittsburgh.
Just a little extra excitement and a taste of home on a nice three-day getaway.
And yes, I plan to ride the train again.