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Show It took a day to clear the portals and several hours more to dig out the trains which by now were locked in deep drifts. Finally, around 2000 hours on Thursday night, 24 February, both trains proceeded through the tunnel. They passed the little town of Wellington ( about 1/ 4 mile from the west portal) and were put on parallel sidings approximately 400 yards beyond the town. The drifts were now so deep that only the tops of the telegraph poles protruded. The main line had again been closed by a large avalanche at Windy Point, covering the tracks for 900 feet to a depth of up to 25 feet. During Thursday night, a small avalanche 50 feet wide had released from the bank above Cascade, crossed the tracks where the trains had been parked hours before, and swept away the cook shack into a ravine. Two men were killed. The 55 train passengers had eaten all three meals at this cook shack on the 24th. On Friday, 25 February, passengers waded through the snow for breakfast at the hotel at Wellington. Some stopped at the depot and sent telegrams to their relatives. The delay not only irritated the healthy passengers, but the several ill people on board suffered increasingly as each hour of snowfall passed. Mothers were at wits end to contain the children who now had been cooped up three days. Late in the afternoon, the rotary crew reported they were sure they could have the slide cleared by Saturday morning. The conductor passed the word through the train. Passengers asked why the train couldn't be moved back into the tunnel, but the conductor calmed them, stating the train was now at the safest place on the mountain. The trains had not moved on Saturday, 26 February, and the storm continued to rage. The avalanche at Cascade and those at Windy Point had the trains blocked in both directions. New avalanches hampered efforts to clear the tracks, and one of the double rotary snowplows was now disabled between two slides. Some of the passengers again urged that the train be backed into the tunnel where it would be safe from an avalanche. However, others objected because they were afraid drifting snow would block up the portals. Also, coal smoke would foul the air in the tunnel. During the afternoon, the telegraph lines went dead, ending communications both east and west. For five days the crews had worked to the point of collapse, clearing and re- clearing the slides under the personal direction of the railroad's superintendent for this division. But now the line was blocked tighter than before. Saturday night a " committee" from the passengers met with the railroad superintendent, urging him to move the train into the tunnel or onto other spur tracks closer to the tunnel. The superintendent refused, citing that the tunnel was cold and damp and the smoke and fumes would be unbearable. The passengers couldn't walk to the hotel to eat because the tunnel had water running on both sides of the track and there was no way to get food from the hotel to the train. He also pointed out that the hill above the spur tracks was even steeper than the one above where the train was now parked. He assured them that the train was in the best possible place, and that relief rotaries were on the way. |
