Couch wharf and Colonel Ruckle engaged Goffe as its first engineer. On about the 5th or 6th of May [April 25] it was placed on a barge built especially to serve as a wharfboat at Bonneville and towed up the river to that place and landed.
The track of the portage road was about six miles [four and a half] long, and on the morning of May 10 Mr. Goffe decided to try the locomotive and see how it ran. He was destined to have some queer experiences on that trial trip. "I was just firing up on that morning before making the trial spin," he says, "when who should come along but a lot of the prominent officers and stockholders of the company. There were Colonel, Ruckle, W. S. Ladd, R. R. Thompson, S. G. Reed, Captain Gilman, Put Bradford and old John Scranton, and they all began to clamor vigorously for a ride. 'You'll get dirty/I said, and promised to take them out next day, but O no, they wouldn't mind that; they wanted to ride on the first trip and nothing but the engine would suit them.
"Well, finally I had to consent, so I put the whole crowd in the tender and started out. For the first half mile all went well. But then we struck a little up grade[1] and the Pony began to spit water and smoke out of her stack in a regular stream. There was no cover on the cab then, and all the dirty water and cinders went right back in the tender where they were sitting. I could hear them coughing and blowing their noses, and I knew perfectly well what was taking place but I didn't dare look back and kept her going until we reached the other end of the line. Then I got down and looked at them.
"They were absolutely the dirtiest looking crowd I ever saw in my life. They all wore plug hats and good clothes, and their faces and starched shirts were so black and streaked you could not have told that they ever had been white. They started down to the steamer [Idaho]] to make the most of it and have a spread in honor of the occasion, and Colonel Ruckle turned and asked me to come along. I was dressed in overalls and jumper and replied that I didn't look fit. 'Lord,' he said, 'I guess you look as fit as we do;' so I went along and we had a big blow out.
"Finally they left in the steamer, and I returned to the
- ↑ This would be the rocky hillock since cut through by the Union Pacific, just east of Bonneville.
