COAL TRAIN -- PART 1 surrounding country. We got up to forty miles A REPORTER AT LARGE per hour ascending the grade. The train could go that fast because it was so By John McPhee light. It was empty. The five locomotives and The New Yorker. New York: Oct 3, 2005, Vol. the mile-and-a-half length notwithstanding, 1, Iss. 30; pg. 72 the entire rig weighed less than three thousand tons. And now Scott Davis, the “C” was for coal train, “TS” for power in the engineer, said, “I’m going to air ‘em out, Tennessee Valley, and “BT” for Black Thunder Paul.” Mine. CTSBT was the proper name of the train, in the way that Broadway Limited, And Paul Fitzpatrick, the conductor, looked Burlington Zephyr, Super Chief, and Florida through his track warrants to see what East Coast Tamiami Champion were once the restrictions may have been set up ahead. names of other trains. Five Florida East Coast Then he said, “O.K., buddy, blow the dust out Tamiami Champions could not have filled a of ‘em.” Not that there was much coal dust track beside CTSBT, which was seven left in those empties as we topped out at thousand four hundred and eighty-five feet sixty going down to the Little Blue. long, on this January morning in Marysville, Winds that a train stirs up are not in the Kansas, and was actually running shorter than conversation with winds that can stir up a most coal trains. There were a hundred and train. “If you’re pulling empties, a north wind thirty-three aluminum gondolas (hoppers) and can take you from fifty miles per hour to five diesel-electric locomotives -- three in the eighteen,” Scott said. In places like Kansas, rear, two of them deadhead. Replacing Nebraska, and Wyoming, stiff winds have another crew, Paul Fitzpatrick and Scott Davis stalled trains. To wreck a train, you don’t climbed into the lead unit, after sending me need a tornado. In Utah, between Salt Lake up the ladder before them. We had slept at City and Ogden, winds coming out of the the Oak Tree Inn, a motel under contract Wasatch canyons and crossing the tracks of with Union Pacific, in rooms that Paul the Union Pacific have knocked down empty Fitzpatrick described as “darker than the ballast trains, empty coal trains, and double- inside of a football.” The rooms had been stacked-container “intermodal” trains -- quiet, too, heavily armored against sound and events known collectively as “blowovers.” In light so that train crews could sleep during the Laramie Range, the Wyoming wind will any part of a day. For us, the protection had shoot up a slope and lift a train from below. not much mattered. The company’s call from Omaha -- as always, ninety minutes before “Tailwind, you get a little better speed, a reporting time -- had come at 5:05 a.m. side wind will slow you down,” Scott said. From behind the cab windows of a diesel- Heading north and northwest, we were soon electric locomotive, wind is difficult to going up the grade to cross the divide assess. It can be blowing hard and you don’t between the Big Blue and Little Blue rivers. really see it, let alone feel it. “You’re making Overnight, heavy ground fog had frozen in the fifty, then you’re struggling to make forty- trees, had frozen on every weed, wire, and seven. You think, What’s the reason? Wind? bush, so that -- two weeks after Christmas -- Or some problem with the train. Your Kansas appeared to have been sprayed white curiosity is wondering why.” Passing through for Christmas. From horizon to horizon, the towns, Scott looks for flags. He looks for wind raking light of the sun shot forth through the socks at airports. But mainly he looks for the ice. Fields were confectionery with thin sweep of weeds in the ditches, for the legible snow. Our eyes were fifteen feet above the motions in trees, and, if the weather is dry, tracks and more than that above the for the speed of moving dust. We came to the Coal Train, by John McPhee / Page 1 of 24 state line and left Kansas for Nebraska. contributed by me. They mentioned approaching landmarks as we entered the Paul said, “Your intelligence goes up ten blocks in which the landmarks would appear: points when you cross that line. Back there, an Indian burial mound, other humps that had you go barefoot, screw your cousin, and try to covered ammunition during the Second World steal something.” War, an immense cottonwood at Mile 188 (a Paul and Scott are from North Platte, redtail was sitting in it), Rosie’s Crossing (an Nebraska, where Paul was born. Scott was unprotected farm crossing). “She raises hell if born in Ogallala, fifty miles west. In the you block it.” language of the railroad, their “turn” is North All through the morning, we met loaded coal Platte to Marysville and back. They make the trains -- on Track 2, coming the other way. run at least ninety times a year -- now and Five in the first two hours. Seven miles of again, but randomly, together. They know coal. In the loaded coal train CNAMR, we had every siding, every crossing, every movable- come down the day before from North Platte point frog, every rising and descending grade. to Marysville, two hundred and fifty miles. Train crews don’t just go off in all distances and directions, like the pilots of corporate CNAMR was on its way from North Antelope Mine, in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming, jets. Train crews work locally on memorized to a power plant on the Meramec River, a track and terrain. To get a coal train from, Mississippi tributary close to St. Louis. In say, northeast Wyoming to central Georgia, Union Pacific hieroglyphs, the destination you would need at least eleven different always comes last. Our CTSBT would fill up at crews. The central figure in such an odyssey Black Thunder Mine and emerge as CBTTS. is not an engineer, a conductor, a dispatcher, a trainmaster -- the multiple, replaceable, In the cab of a coal train, imagine the and redundant human beings -- but the coal difference if the coal is there behind you. train itself, which, power and payload, end to Trains that carry automobiles, mixed-cargo end, will be integral all the way from mine to “manifest” trains, and intermodal container destination, no matter who is in or around it, trains can weigh as little as four thousand or whose tracks it is running on. tons. CNAMR weighed nineteen thousand tons. When loaded coal trains lengthen out to Paul’s thumbnail sketch of Kansans was in a a mile and three quarters, they can weigh as category with his profile of ranchers in much as twenty-three thousand tons. Nothing Wyoming, another of the six states that frame heavier rolls on rails. Diesel power on its own Nebraska. He described a public hearing at could scarcely budge that kind of weight. The which a Wyoming official outlined a proposed program for the sterilization of coyotes. A diesel engines inside locomotives are there to generate electrical power. Separate electric rancher lifted his hand, and said, “We don’t motors turn each of the six axles. To move want to fuck the coyotes, we want to get rid the throttle to Notch 1 and start up such a of them.” thing is to wait for perceptible motion. Soon We heard the screech of wheels slipping on after Notch 2, the pressure of acceleration the morning frost. The sand light came on in comes into your chair and begins to run up front of Scott. He depressed a plunger, your back. Move the throttle to Notch 3, and releasing sand. We saw an eagle where Paul you may feel that you are driving the North had seen a bobcat in summer. We ate smoked American Plate. trout, the result of a fishing trip that Paul and Scott had made together. We ate an excellent Paul said, “It’s a touch.” piquant meat loaf that Scott had brought Scott said, “You feel the train in the seat of from home. And we ate reconstructed turkey your pants.” breast in Subway sandwiches, sheepishly After Notch 4, even your underwear can feel Coal Train, by John McPhee / Page 2 of 24 the train attenuate. By Notch 5, you are you play a final long chord that begins to fade beginning to develop an interest in whatever exactly when you nose over the crossing. With might be happening a couple of miles ahead. so much to do, your hands are almost always Notch 8 and you are flat out -- minding the touching something on the console. But if you loaded speed limit, fifty miles an hour -- and let fifteen seconds go by while you do nothing thinking ahead at least one county. Below at all, the alerter will let out a full-scale Notch 1 are two neutral stages -- called Set pentatonic scream. The alerter is the modern Up and Idle -- and below them are the eight version of the “dead man’s pedal.” The old notches of the dynamic brakes. Across the engineers had to keep down that pedal or dynamics, you can feel the coal pressing on their trains would screech to a halt. Now the your back, feel the train condense. There alerter screeches, and goes on screeching like could be an off-the-wall analogy to a twenty- a smoke detector, until you come to and speed bicycle but it does not immediately force it to shut up.