Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Oh Noes, teh Railroad iz Wurking Mee!

Finally, I do a day of work. Never before have I really appreciated how long it takes to get from one place to the other. And I drive across South Dakota on a regular basis.

I was put on a train to go to Adams, Wisconsin from Minneapolis, Minnesota. This is about a 200 mile trip by rail, and according to Google it is about a four-hour drive. There is a catch, however.

The train can only go 30 miles an hour pretty much the whole way.

Urk.

So, around 3:00 I show up at the yard office, eager to work with only a vague description of the man I'm supposed to meet. After about 15 minutes of asking people who they are I find my trainer. We take a special taxi that serves only the railroad over to Minneapolis to load up on a train, and it is about 4:00 when we start to "actually" do work.

We get our crap together fairly quickly, and are ready to leave the terminal by 4:30 or so.

At 6:30 we are allowed to leave the terminal. Report delay to dispatch and carry on.

Now, up until this point I had been running around flipping switches, riding on the outside of the train, and, you know, "doing stuff." Naturally I figure that the actual trip will also involve this, "stuff."

Naturally, I am wrong.

At 10:00 or so I get out to flip another switch, only I don't have a key to unlock the device so the other guy does it anyway.

Now, the trip wasn't unpleasant. But it is a bit like staring at a painting for twelve hours while some burly men shake you violently. Mostly you see seemingly the same track surrounded by the same trees in front of you for a while. Sometimes the train turns, and it is like looking at the painting from an angle. Sometimes there is some podunk town that surrounds a bar like a pack of wolves, and that changes things up a bit. But mostly it is the same view all the time. This situation is worsened by the dark of the night.

Also, the train is surprisingly bumpy. It either shakes or rocks back and forth incessantly. You get use to it pretty quick, but it is a little surprising at first.

The most harrowing part of the adventure, however, is rivers. Railbridges are typically high over the river with no sort of structure to speak of. It is just the tracks and a few feet of wood on either side. At night you can only see the ground you were on, the bridge, and the ground you soon hope to be on. Everything else is this dark abyss ready to swallow you whole. Also, the train starts to rock back and forth or shake and you start to feel like you are going to die.

I'm sure the view is quite lovely during the day.

Around 2:30 we pull into the station at Adams and tie up, then we get driven to a Motel 8, and the town is so small that the guy who drives us to the motel also gets out, goes behind the counter, and checks us in. It was quite quaint, actually. And by then it is 3:00 and I'm pretty fucking tired.

So, mind numbing boredom aside, it went pretty well and I am 180 dollars richer.

Now I get to do it again tonight to get home.

Woo...