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Show Wingovers AU The News That's Fit To Print - From The Delta Airport. By Dick Morrison TAKE OFFS AND LANDINGS . . . Killing two birds with one stone is one thing, and downing seven geeus with six shots is different .'iniv in rf(rma Thoo u,l,a. Tnnv miles ahead. That really held us up. The word spread among the passengers that we'd be stalled for hours, and we were. There was a compensating feature fea-ture for me, though. I and a fellow fel-low traveller named Jerry Need-ham, Need-ham, of Ingleside, Neb., walked up to the front of the train and we fot to talking with the engineer and fireman. A. H. Connell of Mil-ford Mil-ford was engineer, and J. B. Ogden former Lynndyl resident who now lives in Milford, was fireman. Connell Con-nell and Ogden let us climb into the cab, and showed us how the control.", are operated. Then fire-man fire-man Ogden treated us to a personally person-ally conducted tour of the three unit locomotive. This was a most interesting diversion. The locomotive was a Alco-GE, of 6000 hp. Each unit contained a ?000 hp. V-16 diesel engine. The drive, of course, is electric. Ogden described the steam boilers which provide the steam used for heating cars, for cooking in the diner, and for hot water in the wash rooms, mong other uses. These are diesel oil burners, with electric arc igni-tors. igni-tors. He showed us the big GE generators gener-ators which generate power for the drive motors and the auxiliary generators which furnish juice for lights and the outlets into which passengers can plug their electric razors. Back in the cab, Needham and I both availed ourselves of the opportunity to pull the cord and toot the whistle. What fun! I'll bet there isn't a boy under 90 who wouldn't like to pull that cord. About noon No. 9 was rolling again. ag-ain. If the others passengers were bored stiff, Jerry Needham and j I had had the thrill of a lifetime. operates under CTC - - which is ! the railroad man's term for IFR. ' Just out of Barstow we passed No. 104, the City of Los Angeles I heading east. Then we eased onto , the Santa Fe tracks and snaked through the night down Cajon pass across the coastal plain, and into the LA Union Station - - ten hours late. It had been a great ride, I and I wouldn't trade the ten hour i delay for the time spent in the locomotive, and the chance to pull I the cord. I No matter what the other pas-' pas-' sengers thought about it. J Edsel Crafts and Dwight Moody were aboard No. 9 that morning, ' for Caliente. If they got there late for work, well, they work for the UP and at least they got on early enough. Donald Brown, brother of Jo ( Anne Stewart, of Hinckley, was among the local passengers on the late No. 9,. He is serving an LDS mission, and was bound for San Berdoo. Callister and Leo Burraston did on a wild goose chase over Holden ! last week. Eager Beaver Bob Nich-! Nich-! ols almost got more than he bar-! bar-! gained for, too, when he agreed inadva.nce to pluck the geese for the feathers. All of which brings us to the point of recalling that old minstrel joke, "How do you get j down off an elephant? You don't get down off an elephant, Mistah tones, you gets down off a goose." Golden Black made a flight out ! northwest Sunday in search of some cattle that had strayed from the Black Ranch in Tooele County. Coun-ty. Last week's storm brought in an F-51 which was grounded at Delta , Tuesday through Fridry on account ac-count of icing conditions. It was based at Hill Field. A B-26 burned rubber and damaged dam-aged its nose wheel when its pil- ; ot, seeking shelter here from the storm, overshot the east-west runway run-way and skidded off the west end, last Thursday. It was repaired and took off again the next day. The most valuable pay load the Aeronca Sedan ever carried was flown out to Bishop Springs Dec. 3rd. The cargo consisted of two cans of diamonds worth $11,000. Such diamonds are used in the oil well drilling out west. THE ROAD TO NOWHERE . '. . Made a trip to LA last week and came home chock full of fresh impressions of Hollywood, the AMA convention, the International Airport, the stormy sea, and the works of a diesel locomotive. It is with this last item that I want to deal here and now. The UP's Oity of St. Louis, which wh-ich is known to trainmen as number num-ber 9 when it's going west, is a pretty good train when it isn't late. It pulled out of Delta on time at 12:37 a. m. and made Mil-ford Mil-ford in nothing flat. Then things began to happen. A coupling broke on the mail car, and it took two hours for a switch engine to pull it to the roundhouse, turn it around, ar-ound, and couple it to the rear of the train. This, of itself, was not too bad, but when No. 9 reached Crestline, about sunrise, she was sidetracked sidetrack-ed and the signals set against her. It developed that a freight had derailed above Brown, some seven One gets tired of sitting in the seat all the time, and as the train moved onto the Mojave desert straightaway; I walked forward and stood in the vestibule between coach and baggage car. It was the next thing to riding the blinds. It was dark outside. A few stars shined, and a quarter moon moved along the horizon of desert hills. Cars crawled along the highway like ants. Here was no hushed, soundproofed soundproof-ed coach ride. We were rattling along at a fast clip, the wheels clattering over the rail joints faster fas-ter than you could articulate the clackety-clacks with your tongue, beating out a mechanical rhythm like a Gene Krupa drum solo; mile after mile after mile; inexorable, repetitive, monotonous, maddening as Ravel's Bolero. At long last the rhythm of wheel on rail slowed ever ev-er so little; the engineer had eas-. eas-. ed the throttle ahead, and No. 9 was drifting into Yermo. Yermo is the end of the line, if you don't count Daggett. "The road from Nowhere to Nowhere". That's what they call the UP. Council Bluffs, Iowa to Yermo, Calif. Its trains go into Chicago on Northwestern tracks, and into Los Angeles on Santa Fe tracks. The road to nowhere - - but just the same it's one of the world's greatest railroads; one of the best managed and best operated. It owns the strategic middle route across western America. Probably no road runs finer trains. And through this part of the route it |