COAL TRAIN--I.(CTSBT)

"C" was for coal train, "TS" for power in the Tennessee Valley, and "BT" for Black Thunder Mine. CTSBT was the proper name of the train, in the way that Broadway Limited, Burlington Zephyr, Super Chief, and Florida East Coast Tamiami Champion were once the names of other trains. Five Florida East Coast Tamiami Champions could not have filled a track beside CTSBT, which was seven thousand four hundred and eighty-five feet long, on this January morning in Marysville, Kansas, and was actually running shorter than most coal trains. There were a hundred and thirty-three aluminum gondolas (hoppers) and five diesel-electric locomotives--three in the rear, two of them deadhead. Replacing another crew, Paul Fitzpatrick and Scott Davis climbed into the lead unit, after sending me up the ladder before them. We had slept at the Oak Tree Inn, a motel under contract with Union Pacific, in rooms that Paul Fitzpatrick described as "darker than the inside of a football." The rooms had been quiet, too, heavily armored against sound and light so that train crews could sleep during any part of a day. For us, the protection had not much mattered. The company's call from Omaha--as always, ninety minutes before reporting time--had come at 5:05 a.m.

Heading north and northwest, we were soon going up the grade to cross the divide between the Big Blue and Little Blue rivers. Overnight, heavy ground fog had frozen in the trees, had frozen on every weed, wire, and bush, so that--two weeks after Christmas--Kansas appeared to have been sprayed white for Christmas. From horizon to horizon, the raking light of the sun shot forth through the ice. Fields were confectionery with thin snow. Our eyes were fifteen feet above the tracks and more than that above the surrounding country. We got up to forty miles per hour ascending the grade.

The train could go that fast because it was so light. It was empty. The five locomotives and the mile-and-a-half length notwithstanding, the entire rig weighed less than three thousand tons. And now Scott Davis, the engineer, said, "I'm going to air 'em out, Paul."

And Paul Fitzpatrick, the conductor, looked through his track warrants to see what restrictions may have been set up ahead. Then he said, "O.K., buddy, blow the dust out of 'em." Not that there was much coal dust left in those empties as we topped out at sixty going down to the Little Blue.

Winds that a train stirs up are not in the conversation with winds that can stir up a train. "If you're pulling empties, a north wind can take you from fifty miles per hour to eighteen," Scott said. In places like Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming, stiff winds have stalled trains. To wreck a train, you don't need a tornado. In Utah, between Salt Lake City and Ogden, winds coming out of the Wasatch canyons and crossing the tracks of the Union Pacific have knocked down empty ballast trains, empty coal trains, and double-stacked-container "intermodal" trains--events known collectively as "blowovers." In the Laramie Range, the Wyoming wind will shoot up a slope and lift a train from below.

"Tailwind, you get a little better speed, a side wind will slow you down," Scott said. From behind the cab windows of a diesel-electric locomotive, wind is difficult to assess. It can be blowing hard and you don't really see it, let alone feel it. "You're making fifty, then you're struggling to make forty-seven. You think, What's the reason? Wind? Or some problem with the train. Your curiosity is wondering why." Passing through towns, Scott looks for flags. He looks for wind socks at airports. But mainly he looks for the sweep of weeds in the ditches, for the legible motions in trees, and, if the weather is dry, for the speed of moving dust. We came to the state line and left Kansas for Nebraska.

Paul said, "Your intelligence goes up ten points when you cross that line. Back there, you go barefoot, screw your cousin, and try to steal something."