ONE AUTUMN DAY (Cont'd)...
So I hot-footed it up toward the standing engines an' as I got closer I could see they had one car behind them?
What what in Sam hill is goin' on here? One thing wuz fer shur... this probably wuzn't good!
Picture: The old EMD covered wagon and its booster engine sittin' on the main...
Not having any idee what this wuz about, I walked over on the hoghead's side of the engine to see if'n I could find out from him what the hold up wuz.
The hogger hung his head out the winder so's he could hear me. Turned out that ol' "Hack" Hawthorn was hoggin'... so I hollered up at him "what's goin' on?
"We got a shore 'nuf mess back there in Buck Holler! Cars are piled up somethin' awful!"
Whoa Nelly... I didn't expect THAT!
"Know'd yet what happened?" I hollered up to him. With that, Hack motioned fer me to climb on up in the engine.
Up in the cab with him, Hack continued...
"We don't rightly know just yet... I wuz bringin' 'em down in style an' things wuz goin' smoother than a baby's butt... then all of sudden bad slack pulled out an' my air dumped on me. We ground to a halt right here where you seen us. Before we's even stopped, ol' Fat Dog (the head end brakeman) had done hit the ground and started back to see what we had on our hands. He used that new "pack set" thing we've got now to holler at me that we wuz strowed all over Buck Holler and had a bunch of cars in the dirt and over the side. The hind end hollered at us on the radio sayin' that they's all good back there, but they took a lickin' when the back half of the train slid into and pounded the front half that was still on the rails. It's mess. A shore 'nuf mess."
Wow... I didn't expect this!
We talked fer just a bit more, and then I climbed down from the cab and decided to pound the chat back into Buck Holler to see what I could see.
Boy howdy wuz Hack ever right!
It was a shur 'nuf MESS back there in Buck Holler! They's cars piled up on one another on Sassafras Knob an' all...
No doubt 'bout it... there'd be no trains fer a spell now! This wuz gonna need what the railroad boys call "the big hook" to come up and get stuff cleared... an' it looked like the MOW was gonna' have to straighten up some track... an' I wouldn't be surprised if some big rip-rack rock would need to be dumped off the side of the curve to help shore things up.
Seein' this, I thought I'd git on back toward the head end... an' maybe go down to the Sweetgum depot to find out what I could from Agent "Tiny" Wright about what would be next. ("Tiny" is anything BUT "tiny". He's a shorter, somewhat... think I'll say "heavy duty" feller... that tips the scales near 300 lbs! Long as I've known him, he's always worn a thick mustache.)
Once I made my way over to the depot... THEN I could see there on the north side of Sassafras Knob that cars had even dumped off the sliding back half of the train and tumbled down the embankment onto the track are that Possum Creek Lumber uses to load their ties and pulp business! In fact, it looked like one of the car's frame got into a Possum Creek Lumber truck!
This was indeed a bad 'un!
Picture: Cars sprawled ever which way over off the side of Buck Mountain, even spillin' onto Possum Creek Lumber's tracks!
Wow. I never in a million years would'a thought I'd see somethin' this bad up here on the Ozark Sub. Shur, I'd heard-tell from the old heads of some of the pile ups that's been on this ol' mountain... but this is the first time I seen a really bad 'un fer myself. Hope I don't see more of 'em!
What a shame. The KC&G wuz just gettin' back up to speed after a bit of a shutdown an' things were lookin' good... but this mess is gonna' be really expensive fer sure. Such a shame.
I wuz out of time... so I didn't stop by the depot to holler at Tiny... instead I needed to pile back into my pickup an' head off for the house. I wuz hopin' I could git back up there in the mornin' and learn more.
To Be Continued...
