So in the end of October, I drove about 5k miles in a large circle around the mid-west US, and didn’t write a thing about it. Yesterday, I worked on the train, went 13 miles, and I’ve got a story. Go figure. :) I do have comments about my long drive, and I’ll post them.. someday.
Yesterday, however, was amusing. The first 5 hours or so went completely uneventful. Standard “Santa Train” run, with a whopping 50 passengers. Got back to town on-time, passengers de-boarded. Since it was Monday and the shop was coming up to take down one engine and two cars to work on them, we had to break up the train, put it in the siding, turn the engine that was staying, and move the one that the shop was taking down to the siding where the cars were. Sounds easy.
And in fact, it should be. And it was. There was just a few funnies that occurred..
First, using the north engine, we disconnected the south engine and took the train down to the switch to the house track (depot siding). Switch thrown, back the train onto the house track. Make it to within 20 feet of the power cord before running out of room - our display box-car was in the way. So connect up the box car’s air, take out the chocks, disconnect the car’s power plugs, release the hand brake, and push it (along with the rest of the cars) another 20 feet. Connect Land power, set all handbrakes, disconnect north engine. We all pile on, and head north about 2 miles to the Wye. Turn the engine around, we head back south to the depot.
Now, we’re all chatting it up in the cab, and as we come around the last corner, it suddenly goes dead silent. There’s a bright light down the track. An oncoming train?! we all think, and then after a pause, our engineer says, “I must have left the headlamp on.”
D’oh. So, we get up closer, and yeah, he left it on. Okay, that was amusing. But wait… it gets better!
I get up and head out the front of the cab to get down to a switch I have to throw. As I close the cab door, a gust of wind blows my hat off, up and over the cab. Crap. There goes a good hat. I climb down and wait at the house switch. The engine putts through, rather slowly, and as the end of the engine passes me, I see my hat, hanging on the knuckle. Reaching in, I pluck it from the engine and slip it back on. Noone ever knew. That made my day. :)
So, I align the switch, erect theblue flag, set the derail, and head down to the wood siding that the south engine was going to go into. (The rest of the crew was tieing down the north engine and walking up to the south engine.) I throw the siding switch, and walk up a few feet to stand at a grade crossing signal for the engine to come down from the depot. As I stand there, I hear a loud ‘ping’ from the other grade signal. Sounded like someone threw a stone at it. It looked OK tho, and there was no-one standing nearby. (Other than myself, of course.) After a minute, the engine starts coming down towards me. About 30 seconds before hitting the crossing (about 10 seconds before the signals activate), the gate on the other side falls off! The frigging thing just.. falls over! The ‘ping’ was the shear bolt holding the gate on. The wind must have snapped it right then. So the engineer slams on the brakes to the engine as the signals are activated, and stops about 10 feet from the fallen gate. Having run over there, I radioed up to have someone come down and lift up on the weights(*) to make it possible for me to push the gate back to center. The engine passed, and before the gate raised back up (so it wouldn’t fall again) I pulled it back over to the side.
So, for the last hour, it was a rather amusing day. :)
(*) - For those of you curious, here’s tech info on how those gates work - there are weights on the other end from the gate, and they’re counter-balanced to put about 10 pounds on the gate’s side. If power is cut, the gate will fall. When a train comes, in short, power is cut from the motor, and the gate falls down. (Some other things happen, but AI won’t get into it now.) The shear pin holds the gate perpendicular to the road. It’s supposed to break in the case of an automobile hitting the gate. Because of this, high winds can slowly wear away at the pin and cause it to break as well. When it breaks, the gate’s still attached to the arms, it can just swing in a 180-degree arch from the base. When the pin broke with the gate raised, the weights were too heavy, so that the arm didn’t fall, and I couldn’t push the gate back over. I needed someone to lift up on the weights so that I could swing the gate over back across the road.
There. More information than you ever wanted to know.
