Cab Ride In An Ailing E8A May 2nd, 2010 Part 1

SCORE! ! ! My first ever cab ride, and it's in of all things, a Black Widow painted E-unit! The unit is Arizona Eastern E8A 6070, which was originally built as Chicago & Northwestern 5029B. On May 2nd., 2010, I went up to Globe, Arizona to ride the Arizona Eastern's Copper Spike passenger train which runs from the old Southern Pacific depot in downtown Globe out to the Apache Gold Casino, about six or seven miles southeast of town. I had arrived too late to catch the first train of the day so I bought a ticket for the second train and drove out to get video of the train leaving the casino on its return trip to Globe. I arrived at the casino at the same time as the train and parked so I could get photos and videos. After about a half an hour (which was longer than the train was supposed to stay there), a truck with 2 mechanics pulled up to the unit and they climbed aboard. Seeing that they had opened up the side door about midway down the side of the unit, I went in closer to see if I could see the the unit's prime movers. As I was there I began talking with one of the mechanics and he said that the unit's rear engine wasn't able to load. After discussions between the mechanics and the engineer and the conductor, it was decided that the second train would be canceled and they would leave one of the three cars there at the casino and return to Globe to drop off one car in the consist and return to the casino to pick up the passengers who detrained there earlier to gamble. Since the engines were running and I wasn't trying to be a pest in the way, I only heard bits and pieces of the conversation. As the engineer was returning to the cab I asked him if I had heard correctly that the second train had been canceled, which he confirmed was true. He knew that I had already purchased a ticket for the second train, so when he got back up into the cab, he called down to me and asked if I wanted to ride back into town with them. My response was "sure", so I started back towards the train cars to get on board. That's when he called down to me again and said that he meant in the engine! 10 seconds later I was up in the cab and we were rolling and I was rolling video! One of the mechanics was also riding back to town to try to diagnose the problem which was later found to be a broken electrical contactor about the size of a pencils eraser.
With the way E-units were designed, they have two V-12 567 series prime movers onboard with each suppling electrical power to the two traction motors on their respective end of the unit. With the rear engine on this unit not being able to load, that left just the 2 traction motors of the front truck to do all of the work of moving the train back over the steep grade to Globe. That is why it was decided to leave one car behind at the casino and take the others back to Globe and park one before heading back for the passengers and the other car. Two of the cars are of the heavyweight era and weigh in the area of 80 tons each with the more modern Superdome pushing at least 80 tons also. That's asking a lot of just two traction motors being fed over a thousand horsepower and nearly as many amps! So the load was lightened and everything went well.
Just a note: I did not ask the crew about getting a cab ride, I was invited into the cab for this ride. Also you'll notice that this was over a year ago. That's because I wanted to have Engineer Earl Knoob's permission before I posted this video. So I have to thank Earl for his hospitality in letting me into his "office" and for his permission to show him at work. Also there are nearly 8 more minutes of this ride that is shown in part 2, along with Earl and the mechanics trying to troubleshoot the problem while sitting at the depot. Thanks for watching and reading this long winded explanation of what happened that day! Please rate this video so I can have some feedback.