Railroaders' Nostalgia > Better Go Get That - Part I:

More of the trials and tribulations from my days on the commutes (Amtrak/Caltrain), seems we managed to have mis-haps and step in it on occassion on this work train job we had, for the most part the majority of the screwed up moments ended in no harm or foul and a good laugh aftewards.  As I may or may not have mentioned, this job was more of a local switcher/road job combined with work train duties as we had nights we would run transfer trains to the UP, make set outs and pick ups a long the line and lots of switching and then do our support stuff three of the five nights the job worked.  This particular event involves working on the #1 main track at Burlingame, just north of the station, well right at North Lane there is/was a short siding which was once a house track that connected all the industries in the area.  At any rate we had to switch out some flat cars that night between the main line and the siding, setting out empties and taking out the loads, the caboose was behind the engine and I had told the engineer and conductor lets kick it to me and give it a good kick since it's slightly uphill and we'll catch it and tie down near the crossing so we would have room to work between the main and siding.  We also had a trainee with us that night, who was ahead of me and behind the conductor in senority, but he had never learned the job so he was shadowing me.  I explained to him what we were going to do, and we were ready, here comes the caboose, I look at it ready to mount and at the last minute I pulled away, it was just going too fast.  The traineed tried too, but failed, he was a big guy like me, so here we go running down the platform chasing the caboose, as North Lane is activated it goes over and is approaching South Lane and as I'm out of breath having already chased it for about 20 car lengths I got on the radio and said "you guys better go get that".  So here goes the two engines with the conductor riding on the steps zipping by us, it had gotten over four crossings before they caught it just on the other side of Peninsula Avenue.  Thank god too because the track was out of service just a 1/2 mile ahead, well there was no track so that would have been a hell of a mess had that caboose shown up out of the blue!  The other think was thankfully all the crossings were functional and did their job.  I had become quite good at mounting the caboose using the curved grab iron as it was intended for, but it was going well over 15mph I would estimate and took me by surprise.  We laughed later as a crew because there were two drunk Latino gentlemen sitting on the bench at the station, and they had missed the last train, so they heard the gates going down, they got excited, instead it was a caboose flying by, two fat guys and then a pair of engines.  

It was something out of the Keystone Cops, hard to believee that was 15yrs ago.

Anyways, if you think was something, Part II is even better and since the statute of limiations has expired I can talk about it <g>.

Doesn't Amtrak have a rule against kicking cars towards guys who are too "muscle-bound" to catch them? I think it's right after the one about not walking down a hall with your hands in your pockets. Or something.

EO

Man -- That was FUNNY!  A real classic.
Those 2 drunk guys realy made the story!

I enjoyed your story so much that I really
can't wait until Part II.

(I know this "bimps" this thread up to the top
for those folks who have TO set up by most
recent reply -- but you told such a great story
that a leetle encouragement to tell Part II was
in order, I thought.)

TIA!