I met Jerry during the last robbery we pulled off with me still part of the gang. At least, I guess you could say we met. Jerry always gave me a look when I used to put it that way, but I don't know how else to say it, really. The Bell Creek Siding Robbery was back in `77. That set up was such a natural, I couldn't figure out why nobody'd ever pulled it off before. Of course, once we'd done it, they fixed the place with a guard so nobody'd try it again and get away with it, but it seemed like we was the first to see how the way they ran the train made everything so easy.
Bell Creek Siding was halfway up the mountains from Les Pubes down in the valley. Every couple of weeks, the night train carried the payroll for the mining camp. The train itself, of course, went on through and down the other side, heading for the delta. The train ran once a night, passing the Bell Creek Siding a little after midnight. Bell Creek was nowhere. The siding was just there for times when they needed to put some worktrain off to the side to let the night train go through. They kept a brakeman there full-time, though, because two months before some drunken pranksters had switched the tracks just before the night train passed and sent it off onto the siding. The engineer was a good man and he got the train almost stopped before it hit the end of the rails. Nobody was hurt, thank god, but the repairs cost the line a bundle. They added a quarter mile of track for safety and from then on they kept a man stationed all the time in the little shack up there. It was a boring job, nothing to do but make sure the switch was turned the right way when the trains came through; they'd put a man up there for a week and then take him off for a month, rotating four or five fellows through like that.
Bell Creek Siding was halfway up the mountains from Les Pubes down in the valley. Every couple of weeks, the night train carried the payroll for the mining camp. The train itself, of course, went on through and down the other side, heading for the delta. The train ran once a night, passing the Bell Creek Siding a little after midnight. Bell Creek was nowhere. The siding was just there for times when they needed to put some worktrain off to the side to let the night train go through. They kept a brakeman there full-time, though, because two months before some drunken pranksters had switched the tracks just before the night train passed and sent it off onto the siding. The engineer was a good man and he got the train almost stopped before it hit the end of the rails. Nobody was hurt, thank god, but the repairs cost the line a bundle. They added a quarter mile of track for safety and from then on they kept a man stationed all the time in the little shack up there. It was a boring job, nothing to do but make sure the switch was turned the right way when the trains came through; they'd put a man up there for a week and then take him off for a month, rotating four or five fellows through like that.