Nostalgia & History > 8444-3985 to Sacramento for Railfair 1981

After chasing the 4449 it was an all night drive to Carlin, NV and chase west.

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We, 6 members of the 3985 Restoration Committee, lived on that silver diner bunk that trip and provided the over the road maintenance help for the two locomotives. That night at Carliin Don Ringstadt and I knocked the fire and cleaned out the ash pans while the others lubed and worked the two locos over. We had two guys from the Cheyenne Derrick crew to cook for us, Herb and Peewee.

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY

Bob3985 Wrote:
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> We, 6 members of the 3985 Restoration Committee,
> lived on that silver diner bunk that trip and
> provided the over the road maintenance help for
> the two locomotives. That night at Carliin Don
> Ringstadt and I knocked the fire and cleaned out
> the ash pans while the others lubed and worked the
> two locos over. We had two guys from the Cheyenne
> Derrick crew to cook for us, Herb and Peewee.

How did you handle the coal? Not too much readily available in the area. But maybe 35 years ago it was different.

The coal was prepositioned in coal cars along the way and they had Ohio cranes to transload the coal. Note that we did have a short train with two locomotives so we did not use the coal as much had we had a full train.

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY

Pardon my ignorance but did the 844's cab have a slight angle to it back then or is that just my eyes playing tricks on me?

Buttons2013 Wrote:
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> Pardon my ignorance but did the 844's cab have a
> slight angle to it back then or is that just my
> eyes playing tricks on me?

Correct, as did many of the UP FEF class locomotives in their later years. The cab on 844 was corrected during the 2000 thru 2005 complete boiler rebuild, which included a new firebox.