Things Learned From The Railroad II

1. If you shake anything long enough, it will fall apart, fall off, or shake worse.

Train engines shake quite a bit. Not only do they have really big frikin' engines in them, but the rail isn't as level as would be optimal. This means that if you set anything down on anything it will probably fall off. Furthermore, pretty much nothing will work properly on a train that is aged at all. I have yet to see a train that doesn't have at least one thing broken.

Shaking pretty much sucks.


2. Bridges give you time to think about life.

This is especially true when you are dangling from a ladder on the side of a car 50 feet above the water for 5 minutes.

Here is a general cross-section of my thoughts as I travelled over the Hudson river in this manner:

Gosh it is a long way down.

Damn, the end is far away.

No regrets.

Oh damn, I forgot I regret that.

And that...

And that.

This'll be bad.

Its ok.

I'm sorry.

I love you.

I wonder if moose go to heaven?

Oh hey, I can get down now.


3. Pretty much every light looks yellow in the distance.

Or perhaps there are simply more yellow lights than initially seemed reasonable to me. Sometimes at night it is really hard to know what I'm looking at because there will be the actual traffic signal for my train backlit by about thirty streetlights. Further from the city every barn light looks like a signal warning me in the distance.

Gets old.


4. Everything looks easier when done by someone who knows what they are doing.

Did I mention I'm in training?


5. Running into stuff is awesome.

(Un?)Fortunately, I have not had the experience of running into anything terribly interesting (except the aforementioned pheasant). However, the snow does give running the train a little higher special effects quotient. This is because of the nature of road crossings. They are plowed, and this leaves a big pile of snow on either side of the road. Naturally, there is no reason for a road plow to remove these piles from the railroad tracks. Fortunately, a train is equipped with its own snow plow, which strikes the pile at some 30 miles per hour. This causes the snow to pretty much explode, and you can't see anything for a second or two. Pieces of frozen snow ricochet off the windows. It is pretty sweet.