We were heading south from Fairbanks. That meant
we were heading home to Anchorage for our two days off. Normally we would
travel from Anchorage to Fairbanks and spend the night there. It was a
12 hour trip north then 12 hours south the next day. After all those hours
on the train we were happy to be heading back home. It was fun and we all
had a great time on the train, but it was also work so getting home was
a good feeling. About an hour and a half north of Talkeetna a bolder had
fallen and was on the tracks ahead of us. It almost touched rail to rail.
A pretty good size boulder. We could have been there for hours waiting
for some equipment to move it. We weren't near a road. It took the
engineer, fireman, breakman, conductor ( I remember it was Harry Ross),
two waiters and me to move that rock out of the way. Harry radioed ahead
that the rock was as big as Denali, but we moved it.
© 2002 Paul Zoller