Blog Update

No really...this is actually an update on the blog, not just a lame title crafted at 1:39am!

I am working on a few updates, and adding pages to the blog.  I'll try not to published stuff until it is finished, at least enough to make sense, but bear with me if funny stuff happens over the next few weeks.  It is a work in progress.  Basically, what is happening, is I am combining two sites.  I have had this blog for quite a while, and I have had a second website, hosted by Google, and I have decided to put the two together.  The main reason for this is because I have thought many times that it would be nice to have a blog with that website, and a website with this blog.  Well, I really do not have the time to maintain two sties, as you can see by the infrequency with which I update this blog, so it makes the most sense to just combine them here.  Why here?  Simple, I like the tools and layout better!

I'll publish a more relevant life update later, hopefully this week.  In a nutshell however, things are going well. I still work for the railroad, and I am in training to be an engineer, which means right now I am actually operating freight trains.  That has been keeping me pretty busy, and I anticipate it will keep me busy through the rest of the summer and into the fall.  I will be done training at the beginning of November.  Anyway, because of the late hour, I will talk more about that later.

Living the Dream, and a few Nightmares

If you ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, most will tell you that they want to be a firefighter, police officer, train engineer, or pilot.  I was the same way when I was a kid, and most adults will admit to having wanted one of those careers at some point in their lives too.  However, most people "grow up" and get "real jobs," sitting in a boring old office in front of a computer screen, which I guess that is fine if they like what they do.  But some of us never really grow up, and we go and get the job we wanted as a kid.  When I was a kid, I wanted to be a railroader most of the time, although at different times I also wanted to be all of the above, plus a garbage man, doctor, veterinarian, mailman, construction worker, car mechanic, and numerous other things.  I still want to be a pilot, although just a recreational one, but that is a different story.  As a kid, when I thought about all the various careers I thought I wanted, they all seemed pretty glamorous and interesting.  People who worked in those jobs seemed like they really led an interesting life.

As I got older, I began to realize that there was reality besides all the glory.  Firefighters, for example, put their life on the line regularly, and really are quite underpaid for their services.  That career, as much as I appreciate those that do it, began to look less appealing to me.  Doctor and veterinarian seemed nice, except they required more schooling than I could comprehend, and they involved blood.  I never have liked either of those!  Police officers keep the community safe, but they too take risks to ensure the well being of often ungrateful people who curse about the officer who wrote their last traffic citation.  Being the guy everyone hates, but also the guy everyone depends on and expects to help them started to seem less attractive.  Being a mechanic still seemed interesting, but more as a hobby.  I took a few classes on mechanics in high school and quite enjoyed them, but primarily as a hobby.  By high school, working for the post office or sanitation department sounded rather dull, and construction management was what I finally decided to study in college.  I still thought railroading and flying sounded interesting, but getting a pilot's license seemed prohibitively expensive.

Twenty years ago, though I said I wanted to work for the railroad, I had a hard time imagining it would ever happen.  Actually, I was pretty sure I would never grow up, and that grown ups had never been kids.  I never completely believed my dad when he told me stories from his childhood.  I was pretty sure he had always been an adult!  The stories were good, and I believed them, just not the fact that he had been a kid once!  As I got older, I did realize that flying or railroading, as awesome as they seemed as a kid, would still have good days and bad days.  Every job is like that.  Occasionally, as I see kids wave to me in the engine, I think about when I was quite young, and Dad used to take us to the local railroad yard, or just the tracks at the end of the street, and we would wave to the train crews, who always seemed so friendly up in the cab.  Those train crews always seemed to be living the dream.

As life would have it, I ended up in the cab, and now I am the one waving to kids and their dads along the tracks.  I am the one "living the dream" now.  Some days it really feels like I am living the dream, as I go to work on warm, sunny, summer days, and put my feet up and open the window and get a pleasant breeze through the cab.  Other days I wonder what I was dreaming, as I do walking inspections of trains in muddy yards, as the rain falls sideways and a cold wind blows!  In any case, I certainly cannot complain that I do the same thing every day!  That is one of my favorite things about working for the railroad, every day has new challenges and surprises, and it really never gets boring, even if the weather does get lousy.

I get asked a lot, by my non railroader friends, and often their children, what it is like to work for the railroad.  Most of them see me as the guy that does what every kid in the world wants to.  In some of the quiet, night time hours, when little is happening and I have a little time to think, I have thought about all the things I could possibly tell them about railroad life.  There are so many things that go on besides the "dream" that kids imagine it is.  In many ways it is one of the scariest, most stressful jobs I have ever had.

I could tell them what it is like when you are running on some really beat up old track, and the locomotive is rocking rather badly.  I could tell them what it is like when that rickety old track finally gives under the weight of a 392,000 pound engine, and it leaves the rails, and the ride really starts to get wild.  Even at a low speed, the first thing you think about is how out of control the situation is.  You feel completely helpless, because there is no way to stop the engine or control where it goes.  The seconds seem like hours, and all you do is wonder when it will stop.  When everything does finally stop, and the dust settles, you look around for a second, and then hop off the engine to see what the damage looks like.  Even though the engines are still upright and in the track area, something just looks very wrong, kind of like looking at a beached whale.  It looks out of place and awkward.  The rails are bent and twisted in all sorts of weird angles, making them resemble paperclips more than railroad tracks, and all that is left of ties is a whole lot of splinters.  As you take in the situation, you just think how happy you are that it is not your responsibility to clean up the mess!

Derailments are just one of the extras to "living the dream," and fortunately I have managed to miss most of them, and none have been serious at all.  A much scarier and more stressful extra involves grade crossings.  As the train approaches a crossing, the gates light up and descend across the road, and bells ring.  Additionally the horn and bell are sounded on the locomotive.  Yet it is relatively commonplace to see vehicles dart around the crossing gates, right in front of an oncoming train.  Some dart around as the gates start down, and there is still enough time for them to get by before the train gets to the crossing.  Others dart across at the last second.  Sometimes larger vehicles surprise you, and dart across the tracks.  I could tell people about the time the driver of a tanker truck decided he could make it across the tracks and badly misjudged the timing.  The cab of the truck made it across, which is perhaps the only reason he survived, because a 17,000 ton coal train takes well over a mile to stop from 50mph when it is headed downhill.  When you see a tanker in the crossing, you think the worst.  Fortunately it was full of water.  The trailer was hit and split in half, sending the rear two thirds spinning off into a field.  The front third, still coupled to the tractor portion went flying and landed in a ditch.  Much to everyone's surprise, the driver not only survived, but only had a few minor scratches and bruises.  He was one of the lucky ones.  It is people like him, and the many others that dart around the gates, that give most train crews regular nightmares about their job, and mostly about crossing incidents.

I could also tell people about the crossing with an elementary school nearby, and about the time we watched in horror as a teacher led her class of about 25 second graders across the tracks after seeing the gates start down.  At 30 mph, a train simply does not stop before the crossing once it is close enough to activate the gates.  In desperation we did the only things we could do: keep blowing the horn, ringing the bell, shout at them knowing they could not hear us, and go to emergency braking.  Fortunately those children were a lot smarter than their teacher and most of them waited, and actually waved to us.  We had to stop to pick up cars there anyway, and when we did come to a stop, both the engineer and I had a several choice words for that teacher. She seemed slightly embarrassed about having two people, who looked young enough to be her sons, yelling at her in front of her whole class and a coworker, but otherwise she really did not seem phased by the incident.

When people, especially kids see us, and think we must be living the dream, they never think of the "extras" we get for it.  I never thought of it when I was a kid.  Sometimes people ask what railroading is like.  Usually a few thoughts run through my head on what I could say, but ultimately I tell them it is great.  I really enjoy my job, and I usually make that pretty obvious.  I mean, they pay me to play with trains!  It just does not get much better than that!  I encourage kids to pursue it if it is something they really like, and I always fail to mention the "extras."  I think it is better to let them keep dreaming.  Reality will catch up with them sooner or later anyway.