Dead Man’s Curve

As a rookie foreman I was assigned the most remote railroad station out in the middle of the high desert in Northern California. The place was called Ravendale. We had a five man crew working maintenance of way on a 50 mile stretch between Susanville and Alturas. There are few roads so most of the work was done from motor cars running up and down the track. The morning ritual was to have a safety meeting at 7am and then call the dispatcher to get the train schedule for the day. The standard timetable called for one train leaving Alturas at 8am arriving out our work location at 10am. This pattern was rarely missed but sometimes they would send two trains in one day with the first leaving at 6am arriving at our spot around 8am.

After climbing a gentle slope west of Ravendale the tracks wind through the mountains for a few miles and then suddenly approach the sharpest possible curve dropping down the steepest possible grade and there you are looking down on a valley at least a thousand feet below. While the drop is not quite vertical, it would take a mountain goat to keep their feet the slope was so steep. This was Dead Man’s curve. Everyone knew it was so named because of the work train collision that took place back in ‘66 and was still frequent topic of lunch fire conversation when I got there in 1973. There were still a few boxcars laying down at the bottom as a testimonial of what can happen.

Like we had done so many times before we drove out to the worksite put the motor car on the track and headed up the hill toward Dead Man’s curve just before 8am. It’s too noisy to talk and for some reason the figure of “8am” kept running through my mind and I finally grabbed the timetable out of my timebox to confirm my worst fears. The train didn’t LEAVE at 8am, it left at 6am and will ARRIVE here at 8am! The panic on my face is obvious as I slam on the breaks and head back down to the nearest take-off where we clear the car with only a few minutes to spare.

We spent the rest of the day looking for purple bottles in the old abandon Chinese work camps while we all counted our blessings. There were many discussions about how we all need to check the timetable for the day as part of that morning Safety Meeting. The other guys on the gang never said a word or I would have surely got some demerits. I still get panic attacks when I think back about how close we came to meeting that train on Dead Man’s curve.