OCR Text |
Show Byways and Backwaters . by Pat Whitfield Heber Creeper: for unexpected adventure the steep grade, borne metal chocks . were placed just behind the cow catcher to aid in aiming the untracked pairs of wheels back onto the track. Now a steam engine is a massive thing and you just can't jack it up and drop it into place. It takes a certain finesse to pop those drivers into position once they're unseated. A challenging but not impossible task and one seldom seep nowadays. So there was a substantial crowd of spectators to cheer the train crew in their herculean feat. ' - Back it lip. Release the built up steam compression with a mightly whoosh! Put it in forward and onto the chocks. Maybe. For two hours the process went on, with a few false starts, ' a couple of near successes and finally! the second set of drivers connected. But not the ffont ones. Still they tried but the cowcatcher interfer- red with the front wheels making contact. Throughout the train, spirits remained high. Everything in the snack bar was declared free so no stomach-growling marred the wait. For action, there was the up-front effort to get the engine back on the rails. No one on the crew complained com-plained or growled. Just general good humor along with the concern that the passengers should be kept happy. And between the munchies and maneuvering, maneuver-ing, most were, 1 almost hated to see the big diesel come to pull us up the grade and ease our front wheels onto the track. For me, it was a Heber Creeper ride to long remember. Though unplanned, the derailment de-railment added a special something that most of us won't soon forget. An adventure!! When I think about my own reasons, for riding the Heber Creeper, they're usually pretty low key. To entertain out of town guests. To enjoy the ever-changing scenery from Heber' s lush .green farms through Deer Creek Reservoir's sloping sage-clad shores to the absolutely, awesome backdrops back-drops of Provo Canyon. A peaceful, contemplative trip puntuated only by the momentary rowdiness of a staged holdup. Until the last. trip. , : Not too many of us nowadays can claim the experience of a train derailment, derail-ment, especially with a cheerful, backward glance. But now I can. Last Saturday was a tropica Heber Creeper weekend with busloads of tourists arid carloads of families perched on the wooden seats and benches of the openair cars and comfortably com-fortably settled in the padded pad-ded cushions of the closed cars. The only untypical thing was the weather with great grey clouds hovering, low. threatening to ungorge themselves onto the summer-parched earth beneath. Somehow, they added a sense of drama to the day -- a portent of adventure, perhaps.-. . . At any rate, the Creeper rolled along its route un-splashed un-splashed by raindrops until the turnaround in Provo Canyon at Bridal Veil Falls. Then it poured proverbial buckets, dampening only ; dies but not spirits. With e engine rotated from aft to fore, the return trip began with most souls choosing the shelter of the enclosed cars. Up the canyon we chugged. chug-ged. Steam Engine No. 36 laboring mightily to pull its load up the sharp grade. Suddenly, at Deer Creek campground just below the dam and before the trestle a jolting ; lurch, a stomach joggling but brief backslide and then, a stop. The same downpour that had drenched us so thor- , oughly 'down the canyon had caused some hillside gravel to slip, blanketing the tracks I with an oozy slime and forcing the first two sets of the engine's driver wheels off the tracks. And putting all of us on the tracks of a new adventure. J As derailments go. it was a gentle one with no harm done except to lengthen the trip. And the learning experience of how to rail a derailed engine more than compensated for the minor inconvenience. Within seconds, crew members started shoveling the tracks clear and the engineer backed the train downhill a way because of |