No time was wasted in reading the train orders and making the required air brake test, and I whistled off and notched open the throttle within fifteen minutes after 965's arrival. I was fully qualified at this time and Kearns and I always changed off half way over the road, so it was my turn to be the engineer for the first hundred miles to Bassano. I rolled the train slowly past the conductor and tail end brakeman as they inspected it for any defects such as broken wheel flanges, dragging brake rigging, unstable loads and any number of other things that could have caused problems later. The head end brakeman was watching back around the long curve as the locomotives started up that steep hill that started just across the Bow River bridge at the end of the station platform, and within three quarters of a mile from the starting point he hollered 'high ball!' I opened the throttle up the rest of the way to 'position eight', wide open! The speed didn't increase much because of the grade until the station at Redcliff was passed then we got up to around thirty mph. The freight train track speed for the Brooks subdivision at that time was 45 or 50 mph and that wasn't attained until west of Bowell at mileage fifteen where it was really downhill to mile 24, nearly to Suffield. That subdivision was built for fast running and 965 was a fast freight with a four and a half hour schedule for the hundred and seventy seven mile trip so the speedometer had to be well up there (over forty five) most of the time if that train load of Christmas presents were to arrive at the stores in time for the last pre Christmas sales.

Bob and I changed off at Bassano (now he was the engineer and I the fireman) and I remember taking the siding at Cluny (mileage 116) for the east bound No. 2 the 'Canadian'. While we were there the section foreman, who maintained a home in Calgary but worked Monday to Friday in Cluny, asked for a ride into the big city. Of course we agreed because those guys were the salt of the earth and our lives depended on the excellent way they maintained the track that we traveled over every trip. He settled down in the second unit which had three seats just like the engine we were riding. I went back there to have a visit with him and turn the cab heaters on and at that time he also asked me if I could give him a ride to his home when we arrived in Calgary if it wasn't out of my way. It wasn't, so I agreed. He told me that the reason that he didn't drive to and from his working point, at Cluny, was because of the chance of being caught in a snow storm and also that his wife needed the car in Calgary in order to get to stores etc. with two small children.

At Gleichen we crossed over to the Strathmore subdivision, which was the CPR's original main line in that part of Alberta (now abandoned) and as the locomotive leaned to one side going around the first curve, the engine in the unit we were on quit cold'just like that! When I went back and opened the engine room door, it sure was quiet, I isolated the unit and cranked it over, after making sure that there was diesel fuel showing in the return sight glass, and it caught right away. I sure wondered just what had caused that engine shut down and before long I was to find out! Leaving Namaka the engine quit again and this time I couldn't get it started. There was no fuel showing in the sight glass above the pump. I tried removing the fuel filters but that didn't work. That unit was out of diesel and that was it, thank goodness the second 'Geep' behind us was doing its stuff.

Well now the train sure slowed down with a two unit train being pulled with only one unit. We just barely made it up into the town of Strathmore where we stopped right in front of the depot. There we woke the agent-operator up, it was past eleven, and asked him to phone the Imperial Oil Agent and ask for a couple a hundred gallons of diesel fuel charged to the CPR. Within a half hour a large tanker truck drove up and I spotted it beside our dead locomotive and the driver placed a large nozzle into our empty tank and started to fill it while I watched his pump meter. I didn't want the CPR to get charged for more fuel then he supplied. Soon the meter showed that we had received two hundred gallons so I told him that we now had enough to get the train into Alyth (Calgary) and his reply was 'You guys woke me up in the middle of the night and there was a thousand gallons of diesel fuel in my tank and you are getting the whole dam works!' That was OK by me cause it wasn't going on my credit card and besides, that truck driver was a hell of a lot bigger then I was.

With the diesel fuel signed for and the lead Geep now running well on that farm tractor fuel, Bob started train 965 up the hill out of Strathmore and soon it was up to top speed for the uneventful 32 mile run into Alyth where we arrived and yarded the train, put the two Geeps on the shop track and, along with our passenger from Cluny started for our homes. It was well past one a.m. by this the time as I stopped in front of the section foreman's house in the part of east Calgary called Bridgeland and he insisted that I come in and have a drink of home made Italian wine with he and his wife. I declined but he insisted so it was to be one small glass !

Not a chance, however! After all it was almost Christmas. He filled up a good sized tumbler with the heavy dark red brew and brought out a bowel of anchovies in tomato sauce to nibble on. In a few minutes his wife went back to bed and I thought that I was going to be able to leave but just then his younger brother, who lived with them, came home and nothing would do but to fill the tumblers up again and talk about how the Italians had suffered, at the hands of the Germans, during the past war.

It must have been two a.m. when I was able to get away from there to drive very carefully home. Thank goodness there were no police breathalyzer road checks in those days or I would have failed it for sure. It was straight to bed for me and when my wife woke me around ten in the morning she asked why I'd left our old car on the street' (I had tried three times and still couldn't get it into the garage) When I explained and then complained that I had the biggest headache of all time she just said that it served me right and that I should have known better.

I learned one thing though and that is that home made Italian wine (vino) is dynamite and that I wasn't ever going to try anything like that again. My engineer sure gave me a bad time when told him about my experience the next trip.