scary story on train-hopping
Public Terminal
Here'a sobering story of what can happen if you jump a train:
Adventure and wanderlust -
danger and death on the rail
by James Hibberd for the
Austin American-Statesman
1/15/98
It's the last night of October, and there are endless opportunities for
Halloween fun and
late-night intoxication in Austin. At Liberty Lunch, Green Day is
playing. On Sixth Street,
revelers pack the bars. And on every residential block, partygoers are
laughing. But at the
railway crossing at Fourth Street and Lamar Boulevard, three young men
have elected to
spend their holiday sitting on steel train tracks. They quietly stare
up at the glowing City of
Austin power plant sign, as they wait to hop a moving freight train.
They hear a horn a little after 10 p.m. A train is approaching from the
north, which narrows
their possible destinations to San Antonio, Laredo, Corpus Christi, and
all the railyards and
sidetracks between.
They hide in the bushes beside the tracks and quickly put on their
backpacks (containing
water, beef jerkey, flashlights and, in a '90s touch, a cell phone.)
After so much boredom, the
sudden excitement is overwhelming. They can't see the train yet, but
they can hear the brakes
whine as it prepares to cross the river and they can feel a weighty
rumble.
Freight trains are commonplace, so much annoying rusty scenery. But for
these three, this
time, this train is different. Because this is the train they're going
to risk their life to board. And
if they're successful, they have no idea where the train will stop.
For trainhoppers, this is Halloween fun; this is late-night
intoxication.
As it turned out, there would be no Halloween trainhopping for the
twentysomethings at
Fourth and Lamar. When the train rounded the corner, they quickly
realized something was
wrong. It was too fast, too short, too shiny; it was...an Amtrak.
Unrideable. At least without a
ticket. They went home disappointed, but having learned the first and
only rule of riding the
rails: there are none. No hard and fast rules, no schedules and no
guarantees.
According to police and railway observers, surprising numbers of
students and young urban
professionals are hopping freight trains for kicks, particularly on the
West Coast and the
Pacific Northwest.
"There's a lot of people you'd characterize as mainstream, Disney World
for vacation, they'll
ride the train for a weekend."
Statistics from Union Pacific show the number of regional trespassers
escorted off railroad
property has increased from 3,600 per month in 1996 to 4,000 per month
in 1997. But these
figures are potentially deceptive as the railway doesn't differentiate
train joyriders from migrant
workers and transients.
No one can deny, though, that thanks to a slew of flattering Web sites
on the Internet, a
couple of how-to books and a smattering of new independent films, the
age-old practice of
trainhopping is receiving an unusual level of national attention.
RUNAWAY TREND
"It's one of the last red-blooded adventures in America," said Duffy
Littlejohn, author of the
1993 guide, "Hopping Freight Trains in America." "I think people derive
a genuine sense of
self-worth from riding. You're beating the system."
Not always. A judge recently fined Littlejohn $50 for trespassing on
railroad property. He
claimed the small fine is an example of how the illegality of
trainhopping is merely "one cut
above a parking meter violation." But Littlejohn did have the benefit
of solid legal
representation: himself. Littlejohn is a lawyer and a former San
Francisco assistant district
attorney.
How does he reconcile promoting a potentially fatal, illegal activity
with his career in the legal
system? First Amendment privileges, for one. And he says the safety
tips given in his book will
help prevent trainhopping accidents.
Obviously, Littlejohn's book isn't responsible for introducing the
practice. Freight train
jumping, or hoboing, was first popularized during the Great Depression
as a cheap means of
travel for migrant workers. Transients, migrant workers and illegal
immigrants still make up the
vast majority of riders, but some hobos have nice cars along with a
garage to leave them
behind in. These are 'sport trainhoppers', and they aren't required to
be a Mark Twain, Jack
London or even a Duffy Littlejohn to publicize their freight riding
adventures.
A Web search on "train hopping" finds sites such as "The High Tech
Hobo", "Introduction to
Trainhopping" and "North Bank Fred's Freighthopping Page". These pages
and their links to
other hobo resources provide detailed descriptions of where to hop
trains ("Catch out of
Austin at the Fourth Street bridge over Lamar Blvd"), describe which
cars are easiest to ride
("Empty boxcars are kings of the road"), how to avoid getting caught
("Unless they've got me
dead to rights actually riding...I just say I'm some guy who's nuts
about watching trains") and
other helpful hints ("When the train is moving do not - repeat DO NOT -
attempt to urinate
out the open boxcar door".)
What rankles some site visitors, however, are the descriptions.
"Nothing feels quite like it; you are on top of the world," raves one
site. Another says, "The
sounds were amazing - there was the rhythmic crashing of the train, the
squeal of the air
brakes, the wind howling through trees (and) our hooting in triumph at
having caught a train."
Posts like these prompted former trainhopper Eric Jackson, a
40-year-old California software
engineer, to publish an anti-trainhopping page
("http://www.amplifiedintelligence.com/DeadTrainBums.html"). He
believes most Web-head
hobos don't have enough experience to recognize the dangers involved.
"There's a lot of bad information out there. You click on a Web page
and it talks about the
thrill of adventure and the open air. But what you're doing is going
into the world of the
homeless and mentally ill", Jackson said.
That the Web promotes trainhopping to the masses is probably the only
gripe shared by
trainhoppers and those who deride the practice.
"I love freight riding so much and I love the culture so much and I
have awe and respect for its
history," said Bill Daniel (rail name: Bad Mouth), a 38- year-old
trainhopper who hosted
Funhouse Cinema at the Ritz Lounge. "The fact that it's on the Internet
and the fact that it's
getting totally popular as the yuppie-bungee-jumping-sport breaks my
heart."
Interested in hobo graffiti and folklore, Daniel started trainhopping
in 1987. He was especially
fascinated by a particular graffiti tag: a cowboy wearing a large hat
dubbed "Bozo Texino." He
found the image in boxcars, campsites and freight yards throughout the
country.
Already experienced as a commercial photographer, Daniel shot film
footage for seven years
for a travelogue titled "Who is Bozo Texino?" and recently received a
$1,200 grant from the
Austin Film Society to help finish the project. Although he's glad most
of the shooting is
complete ("Riding trains and trying to shoot at the same time is
crazy," he said) his formerly
personal and archaic subject is now as prevalent in the independent
film world as on the
Internet.
A documentary titled "Riding the Rails" debuted at last year's South by
Southwest Film
Festival, and another film titled "Hobo Jungles" is being shot in the
Northwest by filmmaker
Sarah George. And Daniel says a third film focusing on trainhopping
punk rockers recently
debuted in New York.
Competition and publicity from the other trainhopping films he can
handle. The Internet, on the
other hand...
"To me, freight hopping is this thing you find out about," Daniel said.
"You discover it because
you're outside, because you're trespassing, because you're inquisitive,
because you take risks.
And the opposite of that is logging onto the Internet."
YOUNG URBAN UNPROFESSIONALS
Of all the characters one might meet in an open boxcar, the Yuppie Hobo
is the most
despised. While other part-time riders embark on long trips between
major metropolitan hubs
for scenery and travel, these weekend warriors often opt for quick
aimless jaunts, going from
HBO to hobo and back again, just for the experience. In some cities,
there are enough
professional 'bos to form a club, such as the notorious Arizona Combat
Railfans. ACR
members plot sophisticated maneuvers involving a mobile ground crew,
radios, cell phones
and, once, a private jet for the sole purpose of commandeering a
boxcar. They videotape their
exploits to view later and critique like Monday Night Football.
Most professionals who ride are a bit more subtle. Brendan Guilfoyle
(rail name: Freight
Doctor) is a 31-year-old former UT assistant professor who wrote his
mathematics doctoral
thesis while riding the rails and then posted his experiences on the
Internet
("http://rene.ma.utexas.edu/users/guilfoyl/index.html"). "You see a
different side of America,"
Guilfoyle said. "You pass through all these ghost towns that have been
abandoned and
wilderness areas that are completely untouched because the highway goes
to a different area.
No billboards, no 7-Elevens, none of the disgusting manifestations of
traveling in the U.S."
Guilfoyle has since returned to his native Ireland where he says
trainhopping doesn't exist.
"Freight trainhopping isn't popular anywhere where there's an adequate
passenger rail service,"
he said. "In America, Amtrak is a joke. It's really just for tourists."
Sport trainhoppers, though, are also tourists. They are foreigners
traveling to a hazardous
environment who want to leave unscathed. On their vacation, they
quickly discover
trainhopping is not for those accustomed to dependable transportation,
as freight trains don't
have schedules and often make unpredictable stops. During one of
Jackson's freight rides
through Nevada, the brakeman halted the train and disconnected an
apparently malfunctioning
boxcar. Jackson was hiding inside and was left sidetracked and stranded
among the Joshua
trees.
"I couldn't comprehend that they would leave that one car in the middle
of the desert," he said.
"But they did."
Rail riders summarize the trainhopping experience as 99 percent camping
and 1 percent
skydiving - long periods of boredom and roughing it, punctuated by a
few moments of terror
and exhilaration. In "Slacker," Richard Linklater rambles an
angst-ridden monologue about
how every decision switches you into an alternate possible reality. If
true, trainhoppers live the
ultimate slacker fantasy, where all decisions are relinquished but one:
whether to hop the train.
Once boarded, alternate realities give way to fixed train tracks and an
unseen hand decides
your destiny at every rail switch. People make a million everyday
decisions; perhaps they are
attracted to surrendering control to an unstoppable steel rocket.
"It's a total absolute rush, the whole thing; that's why it's so
addictive," Daniel said. "It's hitchin'
a ride on all that steel, all that power, all that history. It's crazy,
it's scary and it's..."
He paused.
"It's totally, butt-ass dangerous."
A SLOW TRAIN
Newspaper headlines from across the country:
"'I came out lucky,' says boy trapped 8 days in train car."
"Fantasy journey ends in another train death."
"Man killed in train-hopping accident." Bebe Allen is the Texas
coordinator of Operation
Lifesaver, an organization dedicated to promoting rail safety. She
reads and collects
newspaper clippings of railway accidents from around the country.
"Trainhopping doesn't make sense!" she said. "It's like playing on the
landing strip of an
airport."
There are lessons to be learned from these newspaper headlines, but
trainhopping joyriders
either think tragedy could never happen to them or derive their rush
from realizing it could.
The most recent statistics from the Federal Railroad Association say
train- related accidents
were responsible for 471 rail trespassers deaths in 1996 (not including
rail-highway
intersection accidents). Sixty of those deaths, up 11 percent from the
previous year, occurred
in Texas.
Nobody needs these numbers to know playing on a freight train is
dangerous. But few realize
how deadly rail riding has become in recent years. Even die- hard
trainhopppers admit the
practice has become too risky for casual riders.
"It was always dangerous, but these days trains run a lot faster, they
go farther and there's less
places to ride," said Buzz Potter (rail name: Night Train), the
president of the National Hobo
Association.
There isn't one isolated threat - and that's the problem. A modern
freight train is chaos theory
on rails; there are too many deadly variables rolling about to monitor
and control. For
instance, the phenomenon known as "slack action," the violent
freight-car crashing produced
by lengthy modern trains as they pick up and let out connecting slack.
These shockwaves roll
like homicidal dominos back and forth through the line of freight cars,
sometimes hard enough
to cause a derailment. Experienced trainhoppers often will lie flat on
the floor to avoid getting
knocked around like the ball in a spray paint can. "Have you ever been
in a car accident?"
Jackson asked. "It can feel like that."
Daniel put it more bluntly: "You could be sittin' there having a
picnic, and next thing you know
slack happens and you can impale your head on a bolt."
But that's only one variable:
You get into a car loaded with scrap metal or lumber and snuggle into
one end. All is fine until
the brakes are tripped and the car's contents do a 30 mph shift right
into you.
Or you climb into an empty, open-topped grain carrier and slide down
the sloping interior to
the bottom. Your last thought as your legs pop through the trapdoor and
onto the speeding
tracks is utter surprise that the railcrew forgot to lock the hatch.
Even the traditional royal carriage of trainhopping - the empty, open
boxcar - is no longer
secure. The Web has accounts of boxcar trips that turned into a "living
hell" because of violent
slackaction or riders getting locked inside. One news report tells of a
terrified young
trainhopper who had to have his fingers pried off a railcar safety rung
at the end of a
particularly turbulent trip because he couldn't, wouldn't let go.
"The risks involved are not worth the thrill," said Union Pacific
conductor Doug Smith. "A train
is an industrial environment, and it's also our work environment. It's
dangerous enough without
throwing in more variables."
Still, according to longtime trainhoppers, the biggest threat to modern
hobos isn't the
machinery at all. Illegally traveling between police jurisdictions in
an environment where gory
accidents are common, there's opportunity for robbery and foul play.
Enter the Freight Train
Riders of America, a rail gang suspected of hundreds of trainhopper
murders, robberies and
assaults.
"You go out there with a good backpack, good clothing and good food,
and these hardcore
types don't mind meeting up with you," said detective Quackenbush,
whose pursuit of hobo
gangs led to the arrest of a trainhopping serial killer. "If you're out
in a freight car in the middle
of nowhere where there's one of you and five of them, they'll work you
over like piranha and
throw you out the boxcar. And who's gonna know?"
When Bill Daniel goes on the rails, he says, it's like preparing for
battle. "You're at war,
basically," he says. "I've had people get on cars with me and been
stuck with them for 10
hours. And I wouldn't go to sleep."
Another factor is alcohol. Trainhoppers say riding the rails is
intoxication itself, and once high
on the train you're apt to take additional risks. Trainhopping accident
victims, such as Brian
Anderson, 26, of Cincinnati, Ohio, can testify that combining the
physical intoxication of
alcohol and the mental inebriation of trainhopping is potentially
fatal:
Brian and three friends are up for a some Labor Day fun and
midafternoon intoxication. It's a
beautiful September afternoon in 1991, and Brian is getting drunk with
some old high school
pals at a party. But the music is too loud, so they go outside and walk
along the nearby train
tracks.
A freight train comes along, and Brian wants to hop it. None of them
have ever hopped a train
before, and later they describe the act as purely impulsive, just
something to do before the
downtown fireworks show.
Brian runs alongside the train toward a freight car ladder, not knowing
this would be the last
time he would ever run. The train is crawling along at less than 10
mph, and that's a big part of
the temptation. Nothing about it seems dangerous: it's too slow to
register as a threat.
Brian grabs the rung and pulls himself up. No problem. Two friends join
him. The fourth,
Mike, decides to stay behind.
Holding onto the ladder is cool, someone decides, but standing on the
top would be better. So
the three climb to the roof and stand victorious on the conquered train
as it weakly chugs
along. They are masters of the universe, kings of the castle. But
Brian, watching his friend on
the ground getting further away, decides to trot back along the top of
the freight line. It
certainly seems safe enough; the cars are spaced only about a foot and
a half apart. Moving
quickly down the line, he falls into a rhythm - step, step, step, step,
hop, step, step, step, step,
hop.
He jumps from one car, to another, and to a third and fourth. The next
car is a different model,
but he doesn't know that yet. Step, step, step, hop...in the air he
notices that the top of the
next car slopes inward and a four-foot gap has opened beneath him.
Brian falls between the cars and lands almost square in the middle of
the track. Almost, except
for his right leg, which pops outside the rails and is quickly severed
above the knee. Brian lies
on the tracks as the train rolls by above him, trapped.
His friend Mike sees the accident, runs up and yells at Brian through
the passing machinery:
"Lay still, lay still!" Confused, Brian tells him to shut up, and he
tries to push himself off the
ground. The next car whacks Brian on the back of the head and knocks
him out. In a way, the
knockout is lucky: it gets him to stop moving around. In another way,
it isn't: the strike pushes
him forward, his right arm falls across the rails and, like his leg, is
cut off.
The police arrive quickly, but the train is still rolling over Brian. A
cop yells into his
walkie-talkie for someone to stop the damn train, but it keeps grinding
along. The police and
Brain's friends have to wait and watch Brian's ordeal for several more
minutes because, after
all, the train is moving very slow.
Brian's mom was told her son would not survive. But he did. Today he
manages a Cincinnati
mortgage company and gets by with the help of a prosthetic. But
still..."It completely changed
my life," he said. "The way I eat, the way I tie my shoes, the way I
brush my hair, the way I
drive. I've had to learn to write all over again with my left hand. I
was lucky; I guess God
wasn't ready for me."
He doesn't keep up with news about trainhopping; it's not a topic that
holds any interest for
him. He was startled to hear about its newfound trendiness. His
reaction was short: "I think
they're completely crazy."
Wormburner
> Of all the characters one might meet in an open boxcar, the Yuppie Hobo
>is the most
> despised. While other part-time riders embark on long trips between
>major metropolitan hubs
> for scenery and travel, these weekend warriors often opt for quick
>aimless jaunts, going from
> HBO to hobo and back again, just for the experience. In some cities,
>there are enough
> professional 'bos to form a club, such as the notorious Arizona Combat
>Railfans. ACR
> members plot sophisticated maneuvers involving a mobile ground crew,
>radios, cell phones
> and, once, a private jet for the sole purpose of commandeering a
>boxcar. They videotape their
> exploits to view later and critique like Monday Night Football.
>
Wow, Notorious? A bunch of mostly 40 year old guys sitting around, drinking
beer, watching trains, and launching barrels.
Doug Smith
Wormburner wrote:
> Wow, Notorious? A bunch of mostly 40 year old guys sitting around, drinking
> beer, watching trains, and launching barrels.
And Smitty replies:
Hey, Worm, look at it as recognition! It's like when we shut the doors
in passengers' faces when they don't show up on time prior to
departure. If they curse at us and make obscene gestures, we just say,
"We got recognition!! ALL RIGHT!!!"
Andrew Mueller
like Sipowitz on NYPD Blue. :-) :-) Andy
Eric Jackson
In article <6f0opj$q...@newsops.execpc.com>,
Doug Smith <mus...@execpc.com> wrote:
>Wormburner wrote:
>
>> Wow, Notorious? A bunch of mostly 40 year old guys sitting around, drinking
>> beer, watching trains, and launching barrels.
>
>And Smitty replies:
>
> Hey, Worm, look at it as recognition! It's like when we shut the doors
>in passengers' faces when they don't show up on time prior to
>departure. If they curse at us and make obscene gestures, we just say,
>"We got recognition!! ALL RIGHT!!!"
The same article also quotes you Doug.
>> "The risks involved are not worth the thrill," said Union Pacific
conductor Doug Smith. "A train
is an industrial environment, and it's also our work environment. It's
dangerous enough without
throwing in more variables." <<
So I guess that you deserve some recognition for your contribution
to this subject as well.
BTW Please don't visit my web page if your a professional
railroad worker for a while. It has pictures of real
trespasser fatalities on it now, and while I do feel that this
material might be appropriate for people surfing the web and
maybe thinking about hoping a train, it might be to disturbing
for railroad workers.
One of the things that I am working on right now is learning
how to rate my pages for violence so that people who don't
want to see this stuff can screen it out.
But yes WormBurner there seems to be a wealth of articles about
whats on the world wide web. I don't understand why anyone
would want to read to much in the print media about train
hopping these days.
Most of the material in this article is pretty unusable for
my web pages except for the one Drug and Alcohol related story
included at the end.
About the boy traped in the box car. When did this happen?
where did it happen, what were the details.
See a lot of these stories in the print media don't really
seem to have a lot of new information.
For example I was down in the roseville yards today, and I
was talking to this one 22 year old guy that was dressed
in punk garb, and had a ring in his nose. He had a couple
of good stories.
First rumor has it according to Casey that Roger the bull in
klamath falls, had his daughter raped by some FTRA boys and that
now he is totally on the rampage.
Casey had reciently recieved a tickit for riding in tucon, but
since he is a real tramp that just travels around from place to
place he did not really give a *&^%&&*&, and I don't really
think that the tickit was really going to catch up with him.
Another sad story, a member of the home guard in roseville
had just gotten a big chease gormey plate with a bunch of
different cheeses on it and different things and had sat
down to eat. According to Casey, these two guys just of a
train attacked him and beat him almost to death, taking his
cheese tray, a pack full of dirty close, and 37 cents.
They guys that attacked him claimed that he was ",messing with
the FTRA"
Some one else reported an injury accident in dunsmuir. Apparently
three people were riding into Dunsmuir when the bull started spot
lighting the train. The train was going to fast, but one of the
more inexperianced members of the group paniced and jumped off into
the soft gravel. After running a few steps at a super human speed
he fell down hard. Luckey for him he fell away from the wheels
this time. So he made it out if this with just some serious abrations
and contusions rather than having a limb amputated and bleading to
death.
I have been working on some more tastefull pages that start with
the URL
http://www.amplifiedintelligence.com/TrainHoppingDanger.html
and these pages are intended to list the mechanical dangers involved
with train hopping.
Wormburner you might be especially interested in the page
http://www.amplifiedintelligence.com/GrainCar.html
Actually there are only two different pages that contain offencive
material. These are the
UnderTheWheels.html page and DeadTrainBums.html so its a good idea to
look at the link that your going to before you go to it.
Wormburner you might be interested in knowing that I have added a
navigational tool so that you can see all of the pages that I have on
combat rail fan related material. If you click on that SP logo it
will take you from one Combat Rail Fan page to the next.
I have another page,
http://www.amplifiedintelligence.com/TrainHoppingWatch.html
that contains some good searh materials, as well as a partial
site map with warnings.
UP professionals might be interested in having a look at
http://www.amplifiedintelligence.com/WhatTheProfessionalsSay.html
You can click on the UP logo on this page to read a lot of information
that is appropriate for Professional railroad worker reading.
Eric
Wormburner
On Sat, 21 Mar 1998 10:11:56 -0600, Doug Smith <mus...@execpc.com> wrote:
>And Smitty replies:
>
> Hey, Worm, look at it as recognition! It's like when we shut the doors
>in passengers' faces when they don't show up on time prior to
>departure. If they curse at us and make obscene gestures, we just say,
>"We got recognition!! ALL RIGHT!!!"
Smitty
I thought we had all this hate and venom behind us, am I wrong?
Check around Smitty and you will find that at my station we NEVER did
those things. Many a No.2 was held up while a GI returning to base with
200lbs of baggage was taken care of or an Amish Family was made to feel
welcome on AMT. The doors were never closed in my station.
For that matter NO one has ever been turned away from Shawmut either. They
may not like the music, the occasional lack of trains not that it's the UP,
or the sight of a steel drum making like a Saturn 5, but they have never
been or will be turned away.
Anymore than you haven't done your best at your profession even when you
are dealt a bad hand by the dispatchers, the gods of internal combustion,
or the weather.
Wormburner
_____________________________________
The Combat Railfans of Arizona
Check out our site at
http://www.members.home.com/claygill
_____________________________________
Wormburner
Eric
Thanks for the good words.
I think Smitty should stay away from the PC , or Mac, after those long
tours of duty. Usually he's a pretty good guy, and sometimes I think he
just likes to remind us that RR'ing is a serious business, not to be taken
lightly.
Most of the men I've run into out there are a lot like him, if you ran into
him one on one out on the road and you were acting like a responsible
foamer you would probably walk away thing you had just meet a giant among
men, you know how it is when you run into one of those RR'ers like that.
Doug Smith
Wormburner wrote:
> I thought we had all this hate and venom behind us, am I wrong?
>
> Check around Smitty and you will find that at my station we NEVER did
> those things. Many a No.2 was held up while a GI returning to base with
> 200lbs of baggage was taken care of or an Amish Family was made to feel
> welcome on AMT. The doors were never closed in my station.
>
> For that matter NO one has ever been turned away from Shawmut either. They
> may not like the music, the occasional lack of trains not that it's the UP,
> or the sight of a steel drum making like a Saturn 5, but they have never
> been or will be turned away.
>
> Anymore than you haven't done your best at your profession even when you
> are dealt a bad hand by the dispatchers, the gods of internal combustion,
> or the weather.
And Smitty replies:
First off, you take my reply entirely the wrong way. Oh, well.....
Second, we run an on-time commuter service, not a long distance land
cruise. Is it fair to all of those passengers who pay their fare and
expect us to depart on schedule, to make them wait for a tardy few who
can't get their act together? Sorry, those folks can catch a later
train. I am willing to wait a few seconds for someone who puts an
effort into catching a train, but I almost shut the doors in the face of
a woman at Braeside one day, who frantically motioned for me to hold the
train and then meandered (and I mean MEANDERED!) over to the door after
unloading her kids from her automobile. We are NOT Amtrak. We don't
provide all the amenities, but we do provide safe, reliable service. I
have people all the time who bang on the door for me to let them in, but
once my brakeman has closed those doors, I'm not about to open them up
and put that passenger at risk. He or she can wait for a later train
and be early enough the next time to catch mine. BTW, METRA on all its
lines hauled 75 million passengers last year. I know we hauled a fair
percentage of those passengers on the former C&NW. We must be doing
something right. I'm glad you can afford to cater to the occasional GI
with 200 lbs of luggage or the Amish family. I will do my best to see
that they are comfortable and taken care of, but you have the luxury of
a padded schedule and general expectation that you aren't going to be on
time if your life depended on it. You can just about set your watch by
my railroad.
Someday I might make it to Shawmut, where I am sure I will be welcome.
You are most welcome to come ride my train. Just be on time and have
your ticket.
Wormburner
Smitty
Thanks for the correction.
METRA is some railroad. I don't think there is a commuter operation any
where in the world that comes close. The C&NW operation has always been a
class act.
Doug Smith
Wormburner wrote:
>
> Smitty
>
> Thanks for the correction.
>
> METRA is some railroad. I don't think there is a commuter operation any
> where in the world that comes close. The C&NW operation has always been a
> class act.
And Smitty adds:
No problem. I did forget to make one important point: the folks
running Lake Street Tower are also counting on us to leave on time. If
we don't, that delays other trains leaving behind us, especially at rush
hour. There are 16 tracks in the station, and as each one is vacated,
not only is there an outbound train that needs switches lined for its
movement, there is also an inbound train coming in to occupy the empty
track.