A Ride on the Jupiter

On K's last day at the Spike, he did a lot of things "for the last time." He had a list of emotional, symbolic, and ritualistic things in his head that he wanted to accomplish. One of those was riding both of the locomotives from the engine house to the last spike site. I had been on the 119, but had never ridden the Jupiter, so K and I left the VC, admired the blooming yucca, and walked down the tracks together to the engine house, noticing the multitudinous mice and voles darting around as we approached. It was a perfect, beautiful, sunny day arranged by God to add to the overall sendoff for Ranger Ken.


Can we ride?


K and Engineer Ron.


Loading coal on the 119.


Wood stacked on the Jupiter.


Volunteer Fireman Bruce throwing the switches (or whatever you're supposed to say, I'm not a railroader, ahem).


Engineer Ron and his PPE (Personal Protective Equipment, in this case...ear plugs, we all had them in our ears!).


This, My Friends, is called doing a Blowdown (letting off steam--you'd be surprised how many ordinary words and phrases in our language stem from the railroad).


Volunteer Fireman Bruce working hard. It is not an easy thing to get a steam locomotive down a track. The action is constant. One thing I enjoy is listening to the engineer and the fireman communicate with each other. They are always calling out what they see and confirming it, what they are about to do and confirming it, etc. When one says something to the other, the other says "Thank You" and then repeats what was just said so the understanding is there. Kind of like saying "10-4" over a radio. K was the bell ringer. Everybody has to have a job when they ride the locomotive so my job was "photographer."


Guages. They help you to know when it's time for a Blowdown.


Did I mention it gets pretty hot in the cab? I've eaten a hotdog cooked on this locomotive!


Put another log on the fire!


Engineer Ron being super safe as always. He is fanatical about tracking people, their location, their habits of movement, and all that ("three on the ground, one on the stand"). He will not move his locomotive until all safety concerns are resolved. There's a difference between park rangers who are safe and those who aren't so safe. Obviously, I appreciate the really safe ones.


There's my K ringing the bell of the Jupiter! Let me tell you, I rang the 119's bell once and got criticized for not doing it well enough. It's tougher than it looks--you have to find a groove. On top of that, K still manages to stick his head out the window and wave.


Ranger Val recording K and his locomotive duties. K's coworkers were filming and photographing him all day, as if they would never see him on the face of the earth again!