|
Oct. 09, 2006
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
OFF
THE RAILS
Reporter
finds workin' on the railroad takes nerves of steel and a good brake
Nothing happens when I push the gray metal lever, the one
feeding air pressure to the engine brake.
"We're going pretty fast here," says Jim Potvin, 61, lead
engineer for the Southern Nevada Railway.
Our train is barreling west out of Boulder City station at 24
mph, 4 over the speed limit, and the reason is sitting in — and
nearly wetting — its driver's seat. Two minutes ago, as we crossed
the Veterans Memorial Drive tressel, I pushed the same gray lever
too far to the right.
"Watch this notch," Potvin warned me back at the station. "Don't
go any further than this notch."
To get certified as an engineer on this excursion line takes 200
hours of training, by the way. I graduated engineering school after
20 minutes.
Quickly, I yanked the lever back to the notch, but the damage was
already done. We're now full-diesel ahead down a 2 percent gradient.
"The brakes didn't take," Potvin says as his lucky fuzzy dice
tumble off the windscreen. Sufficient speed, incidentally, will
derail us onto U.S. 93/95 by Railroad Pass, which is a mile ahead
and closing.
The Southern Nevada, running regularly since 2004, hugs the
tracks laid in 1931 to haul materials and equipment to the Hoover
Dam construction site. It's not a historic re-creation of that train
— this is a diesel passenger, that was a steam freight — but its
all-volunteer crew of 30 is clearly reviving a different age.
"Trains are the backbone of this country," Potvin said earlier,
before he surrendered control to the little engineer that
couldn't.
"I used to drive three miles out of my way to see a train."
Potvin, who drives a freight for a local gypsum mine during the
week, is one of 50,000 engineers still working on the railroad in
the United States. They start out at $60,000 to $80,000 a year for
livelong days of eight to 12 hours.
"The only life I've known is railroads," he said. "When my two
older brothers and I were kids, we'd ride the Hiawatha from Seattle
to Milwaukee."
Potvin began restoring — and, later, driving — the engine we're
in 10 years ago. The former Union Pacific No. 844 hauled freight
around the Midwest from 1963 until it was retired in 1988.
"You've got a crossing coming up here," Potvin warns.
In addition to flirting with potential derailment, I'm also
contending with reports of four-wheelers illegally cruising the
River Mountain Loop bike and pedestrian trail, which the tracks
intersect.
Engineers need to constantly scan ahead for obstructions. These
can include animals, rocks and debris — in addition to hobos, train
robbers and damsels in distress.
"You're a funny guy," Potvin says sarcastically, adding that he
almost decapitated someone with this train four years ago.
"We didn't see him," Potvin says. "A lot of homeless people live
in the hills, and they like to lay at the web of the rail because
the snakes won't bother them."
But the absolute worst thing an engineer can spot on the tracks
is a vehicle.
"I've jumped off many trains," Potvin said earlier. "That's why
I'm still here."
Before retiring from the Burlington Northern in 1987, Potvin did
cross-country runs pulling 198 cars and 32,000 tons of coal at 60 to
90 mph.
"If you had an emergency on the track," Potvin said, "it took one
full mile to stop." (When asked if anyone was ever killed on one of
his ejector-seat runs, he replied, "I don't like to talk about
it.")
Potvin tells me to tug on the whistle handle and sound out the
standard crossing warning — two long toots, followed by one short
and one long. Today, this also is the signal for "Run for your
lives! Clueless reporter at the wheel!"
By the way, if you noticed the error in that last sentence
(trains don't have steering wheels), you know more than I did coming
into this gig. So why the (long toot) are they letting me do
this?
Their motive isn't so loco. They need publicity. Only about 20
passengers board during each of the Southern Nevada's three Saturday
and Sunday runs from April to December. (Most are parents and
grandparents with toddlers who, because of "Thomas the Tank Engine,"
think that real locomotives are 3 inches tall and speak.) But the
train's five 1911 Pullman coaches can seat about 250.
At the Railroad Pass Hotel, Potvin reports, some employees don't
even know where to send guests who inquire how to board the train
that passes right behind them.
"This is crazy!" Potvin exclaimed earlier. "Nobody ever rides
this train."
But exposure isn't the only problem. This train doesn't really go
anywhere. In 1961, developers removed the tracks running nine miles
east from Boulder City station, down to the dam. Then, in 1993, the
westward tracks were blacktopped over where they cross the highway,
because of increasing automobile traffic. What's left is a 3.5 mile
stretch, over which the 844 rolls in reverse, then forward, since
there is only one set of tracks and no room to turn around.
Help may be arriving, ironically, in the form of the very
infrastructure that killed the passenger railroad in Las Vegas: a
highway. If Boulder City manages to raise the estimated $350 million
to $450 million to build its proposed Boulder City bypass, the
tracks could be reopened beyond the blacktopped area, since Highway
93/95 would become a less-traveled side road, rail officials say.
That would free up 22 miles of clear coast down to the main junction
by Mandalay Bay. (Well, the coast isn't exactly clear. The first 11
miles from the junction are still owned and regularly used by the
Union Pacific. But the other half of the tracks belongs to the city
of Henderson, which has in the past expressed willingness to share
right-of-way.)
Back on our runaway death train, Potvin calmly reaches for a
lever he didn't prep me on. It's called the train brake, and it
applies a separate tank of air pressure evenly across every car on
the track. (The engine brake I broke works only on the engine car.)
"We're doing fine," Potvin says, which is only true because he's
sitting three feet away from me and knew what to do. We've slowed to
16 mph.
Fans of black-and-white mystery movies also would have known
about our second backup stopping system, the emergency brake
(although I can't vouch for its effectiveness, because I drive with
my car's on all the time by mistake).
We were never in any real danger — that is, until the day's
second run, when I stop the train at the blacktopped tracks and Potvin appears to seriously consider a suggestion I make as a
joke.
"That signal block is still active," he says, craning his head
out the window. "If we approach it, the warning bells and lights
will still go off and stop the traffic."
Potvin is considering the construction of his very own Boulder
City Bypass.
"I know I can go through the blacktop," he says. "This baby would
be smoking black, but I could go through it."
Now this would get the Southern Nevada some publicity.
"Nah," Potvin says after a minute, directing me to start back in
the legal direction.
"I just put in for my railroad retirement," he says, "and I want
to enjoy it."
Fear and Loafing appears every Monday in the Living section.
Levitan's previous adventures can be found at
www.fearandloafing.com.
| 
Watch
the video...
