Rebuilding Legends
The scream of a train whistle can be heard for miles. In Williams, people have been hearing this call since the town was founded over 100 years ago. Many in town continue to prosper in this old style livelihood.
"The steam engine was the tool to develop and industrialize the West," said Sam Lanter, chief mechanical officer for Grand Canyon Railway.
Each day, one of the Railway's locomotives faithfully pulls the train 130 miles to the Grand Canyon and back. To make this possible, the Railway has had to purchase and rebuild a fleet of historic locomotives. For the past 14 years, the train cars and engines of the GCRy have been cared for, repaired and refurbished by the GCRy crew.
"Steam engines are over 150 years old and evolved from a little tea kettle," said Lanter, who has been in the railroad industry for more than 20 years. "They are not complicated."
The railway employs an average of 50 people in the maintenance shop, who work in three shifts. That number includes eight full-time welders, electricians, boilermakers, machinists, laborers and painters. Two hired mechanics also maintain 35 company trucks in a corner of the shop.
It takes that many people to complete all the projects the railway undertakes, Lanter said. For example during 1999, the crews refurbished eight passenger cars. During 2000, the railway started another major undertaking - the rebuilding of the trucks or the base of the wheel carriages the cars sit on. Each costs around $25,000 to rebuild.
The GCRy crew recently finished installing new end doors in the vestibules and installing new couplers and draft gears on all the Pullman cars, Lanter said. Plus, one car got new aluminum windows. He said this car is being used as a test car to see if the lighter windows should be installed in all the cars.
To accomplish all the work GCRy tackles each year, crews have access to $500,000 in machinery. One example of a high-priced tool is the quartering machine, acquired from the now defunct Norfolk Southern steam operations in Birmingham, Alabama.
"If we didn't have this, we couldn't maintain our steam engines - it's one of two in the nation," Lanter said. "We have a lot of specialty type tooling."
Lanter said a lot of time is spent finding parts at auctions, but he said if they can't find a part, they just make one. The crew also has access to a complete machine shop that includes a milling machine, lathes (including a wheel lathe), a radial drill and a horizontal boring mill.
A big component of the repair shop is the 80-ton drop table with an inspection pit that is capable of handling a 90-inch driver wheel. Lanter said without this piece of equipment, his crew would have to jack up the engine or car to get the wheels out.
Currently, the GCRy has five upgrade cars that include two dome cars and a 1947 Observation Platform Lounge Car that was recently converted into a luxury parlor class car at a cost of more than $500,000 by the Railway.The "Colorado River" and "Anasasi" are both stainless steel cars that date back to the 1950s. The Railway also features a cafe car which is a souvenir and snack car, 18 ex-Southern Pacific Harriman-style coach passenger cars that date to 1923, eight diesel engines - six are functional, and three steam engines including Engines 4960, 18 and 29.
The restoration of Engine 29 started in January 2000. The locomotive was placed in service in the summer of 2004 after three and a half years and a cost of more than $400,000. Lanter said the crew could rebuild the engine in six months, but with all the other repair work going on GCRy can only devote a small crew to the project.
The biggest project the GCRy has undertaken was the rebuilding of ex-Chicago, Burlington & Quincy 2-8-2 No. 4960. It was purchased by GCRy in 1989 but it wasn't until July of 1993 that work began on the steam engine, which took three years, 80,000 man-hours and $1.6 million.
Come take a ride on a living museum - the Grand Canyon Railway.
