Railroaders' Nostalgia > my own raincloud

We all know how having bad luck can paint a picture of a man having his own rain cloud directly over him while his surroundings are sunny and dry? Well one evening last spring that really did happen to me.

Working at the ethanol plant our one move that night was to take a small cut of 16 loaded hoppers off the loadout track and shove them onto a yard track and couple them into more loaded hoppers. After pulling clear of our south ladder track and lining our switch I got on board the last car to protect our shove. Immediatley I noticed a very dark cloud forming above me but the sky to the west and east was clear and sunny actually.

I radioed my enginneer to start shoving back good for 20 cars and it started to rain, however it was only raining on top of me hanging off the side of this hopper. My engineer 16 cars behind me wasn't getting any rain. What's really funny as our shove down the yard track was about 30-40 car lengths that we traveled my rain cloud kept following me down all the way till we made the joint but nowhere else did it rain. Strange but true.
JC

Posted from Android

Sounds like Joe Btfsplk from Li'l Abner.

Bob W.

JasonCNW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> We all know how having bad luck can paint a
> picture of a man having his own rain cloud
> directly over him while his surroundings are sunny
> and dry? Well one evening last spring that really
> did happen to me.
>
> Working at the ethanol plant our one move that
> night was to take a small cut of 16 loaded hoppers
> off the loadout track and shove them onto a yard
> track and couple them into more loaded hoppers.
> After pulling clear of our south ladder track and
> lining our switch I got on board the last car to
> protect our shove. Immediatley I noticed a very
> dark cloud forming above me but the sky to the
> west and east was clear and sunny actually.
>
> I radioed my enginneer to start shoving back good
> for 20 cars and it started to rain, however it was
> only raining on top of me hanging off the side of
> this hopper. My engineer 16 cars behind me wasn't
> getting any rain. What's really funny as our
> shove down the yard track was about 30-40 car
> lengths that we traveled my rain cloud kept
> following me down all the way till we made the
> joint but nowhere else did it rain. Strange but
> true.
> JC
>
> Posted from Android

Back in the days that I would go miles to get "that"
picture,would that happen.All my friends called me
"a fair weather photographer"

Uncle Joe
Seffner,fl.