Mars Pope, Moab, Utah, Uranium History Series

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MARS POPE II I PAGE 12 those noises. It kept me awake practically all night. You hear noises that really didn't mean anything. If anybody had been on there all the time, he wouldn't have paid attention to things as I did. But after we got our diesel engine, things like that, then it got to a point where a man had to stay awake all the time. Of course, when we got those, why, we first started out with two operators up there. We got one more, and they worked twelve hour shifts. And when we got more diesels, then we had to keep men alert all the time because you had to watch those. You might have serious trouble at anytime, especially when you're running three and four. I always said that anyone could .run this power plant down here. If all your engines had been the same, it would have been different, but we had three different types of engines besides the water wheel. You might say we had four different power plants. We had two engines that was alike and three that were completely different. And then when you throw another extra engine on the line, you ·have to get that up to the exact speed of what you're running before you can throw your switch. If you ran it a little fast or a little slow, that'll shut you down. So the operators had to be pretty well versed in what they were doing, and they were. We had good operators. And like when we'd b.reak down and we'd have to tear an e.ngine down,