See Part 1 here.
See Part 2 here.
See Part 3 here.
See Part 4 here.
See Part 5 here.
Back home again
While a rotary had now made its appearance at the Colorado Railroad Museum, a volunteer to fetch the Mexican engines in exchange for 191 still had not. This was the first of many mishaps along the journey to get No. 191 back home to Colorado. Months drifted by with no bites on the volunteer line when Bob finally found his man. Whether he wanted to or not, it had to be himself.
In November of ‘72, with his carpet bag and an assortment of tools stowed in the Gutbuster Chevy Carryall, Bob turned the key in the ignition and headed for Mexico. Knowing that he had to quickly resurrect his fluency in Spanish, Bob tried to read through a couple of Spanish newspapers and magazines that he picked up at a stop in El Paso. He also worked on his pronunciation by verbalizing Spanish signs along the road as he sped down the highways. Despite the work ahead, he comforted himself in the knowledge that one thing he loved would be in large supply: Mexican food.
Just under 900 miles later, Bob and the Gutbuster arrived in Chihuahua, Mexico where the next mishap occurred. To begin with, temporary three foot gauge track had to be laid between the engine house where the two locomotives were stored and the nearest standard gauge track with its waiting gondolas, since the narrow gauge railroad’s track had already been pulled up. This temporary track also had to be laid over top of a 2.5 foot gauge electric mine line in between the two, all of this adding significant time and expense to the job. The next part of the plan was to steam up one of the two engines and use that one to pull the other out of the old engine house and then push it onto one of the standard gauge gondolas after which it would steam itself up and into another one. As if this was not enough of a challenge, the transfer needed to be done in time to clear the electric mainline before the regular ore train came through.
After days of work to put down track, the gondolas were finally lined up, and one of the two engines was steamed up to push the other into its gondola before hauling itself into the other. Before the steaming engine could even pull itself or its partner to the loading site, it ruptured some flues, rendering the loco useless. More time was lost. Eventually, they convinced a mine truck driver to pull the two engines out using a cable attached to his dump truck. A diesel locomotive from the nearby smelter then did the work of getting the engines up onto the gondolas. The work took them to midnight of the final day. Thankfully, all this, including the removal of the temporary track, was done in time to clear the mainline for the morning’s ore train and the now two-week process was at last complete. Finally, on December 15, the two engines were billed out on the Chihuahua al Pacifico, one off to Golden and the other to Wisconsin.
And this was just the beginning of the difficulties. The next mishap occurred two months later on a very cold February 1973 day in Rhinelander, Wisconsin after the coveted Thunder Lake locomotive arrived. The logging prodigal, still perched in its gondola, was placed on a spur of the Soo Line Railroad a few hundred feet away from 191’s display spot, but it took close to seven days to make the anticipated switch in the nearly constant snowy weather. The primary problem was that four decades of sitting out in the open, in addition to the treacherously cold weather during the move, had done a number on 191’s moving parts and her wheels simply would not move.
As a curious side note, while the workmen attempted to get 191’s wheels moving, a construction worker lit a cigar and tossed the match in the firebox. Whether he knew it or not, a fair amount of garbage was inside, apparently discarded there regularly by the park’s cleanup crew over the decades. The lit trash caused light smoke to curl out from the long-dead engine’s stack for several days during the moving process from which some local residents wrongly assumed the engine had been steamed up.
Despite their efforts through the frigid temperatures and blowing snow, nothing seemed to get the engine to roll. At last, a final decision was made. The crew greased up the rails and slid her with a winch, wheels locked, onto the lowboy trailer. After the stubborn engine slowly slid off her 40-year home, she was maneuvered on the trailer around trees, electric poles, and serpentine roadways to reach her waiting gondola. After almost a week’s worth of work, ex-Thunder Lake locomotive No. 5 was at last in her place and No. 191 was moving west by rail towards home.
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