In a past issue we ran a feature article by Bill Yeats called Double Heading. We are pleased to augment that article this issue with a couple of photographs that illustrate the concept.
Here is a Floyd Yeats photograph, (from Lance Camp’s file) of a double headed passenger train leaving Field with an “S2” 5800 “Santa Fe” oil burner and a “P2” 5300 “Mikado” stoker fired coal burner with at least a 14 car train climbing the 2-1/2% grade on the “Big Hill”. The Kicking Horse River is below on the gravel flats and the town of Field is just around the corner beyond the tail end of the train.
Page 16 is another Floyd Yeats, Lance Camp photograph of two “P2” 5400 “Mikado’s”, numbers 5441 and 5442 in the 68-car siding at Mitford, Alberta 28 miles west of Calgary. The lead locomotive is carrying green flags above the smoke box for a following section of the same numbered train. The second engine is not required to display the same green signals. They are waiting to meet a superior eastbound train. It was unusual to have two locomotives on one westbound train on this the Laggan Subdivision because together they could pull double tonnage and twice as many cars and that length of train would be too long for nearly all of the sidings. Perhaps 5442 is only double heading as far as Canmore and there will be turned around and return to Calgary with a heavy train of eastbound coal from the local mine.
