Snowplow Extra Chapter 1
| Snowplow Extra | |
|---|---|
| Chapter 1 of 24 | |
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| Time frame | 0720 Jan/8 - 1006 Jan/8 |
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Location
Characters
Summary
January 8th 7:20 AM to 10:06 AM.
Bud wakes to snow, and thinks about the train he has to run to Warsaw. His accountant, Betty, rings up asking for a lift in. Betty is really the one running the day to day office business. John, Bud's brakeman is already there and has started clearing snow. Les Marks from the Decatur and Overland Railroad rings up asking if Bud will look after one of their small engines for a while, before admitting that one of his work crews has disabled a drawbridge, cutting the C&SL Railroad off from the railroad network. Bud is angry as this could put the C&SL out of business, yet it was totally out of his control. Warsaw was also snow bound, so nothing much was happening at the Paper Plant. Clay Whitehall goes to check a faulty overhead door, whilst there wasn't any production he could get to lesser jobs. When he gets there he opens the warehouse to find it is on fire.
Bud is thinking back to how he came to leave the grocery business and set up the short-line C&SL Railroad, with the backing of the local bank president, Frank Matson. They took goods from the D&O at Camden, then ran them to the small towns in the Spearfish Lake area. Bud had started as a brakeman, and learned how to operate the railroad from a retired engineer called Adam Howland. The other staff included a couple of retired D&O crew McPhee & Stevens.
Bud calls up Walt Archer to not bother coming in. Then he and John start to set up to plow the track. In Warsaw, the paper plant manager Bruse Marshall is by the switchboard when the call for fire comes in from Clay. The fire siren goes off, but the fire chief, Fred Linder can't find the snowplow driver, so they are having problems getting to the plant, one of the firemen, Don Kuralt gets out his bulldozer to get them there, so it takes half an hout for the fire department to respond. The fire appears contained, until some hopper cars nearby start to smell, and they find out that there is fertilizer in them, and that logs stored for pulp had started to burn too.
