My immediate reaction is "what on Earth possessed him to do that?". Everything I've heard indicates that driving American freight trains is a hellish job.
He’s been driving trains since the late eighties, mostly on the East Coast mainline, so I am guessing that he got a bit bored of going between London, Leeds and Newcastle? He’s somehow got the green card (maybe married to a US citizen), somehow he’s landed the role, so he’s thought ‘right, time to play with some bigger trains’ and transferred across the Atlantic.
I’ve already stated how I saw my first Amtrak train, the South West Chief, so this is how I saw my first freight train.
My then girlfriend, now my wife, and I decided to do LA and Las Vegas. Naturally, we decided to go a bit further and do the touristy thing of the Grand Canyon, staying two nights in a motel in the town of Williams, Arizona. I saw that the station was about five minutes walk from the motel so I had a stroll over. I saw a magnificent looking steam engine and classic carriages belonging to the Grand Canyon Railroad Company or something.
I asked the Stationmaster or whatever he was in my best British accent if there would be any interesting trains rolling through. He replied in a mid western drawl that if I was willing to ‘get my butt out of bed early’, there would be a big freight train through at 06:16am.
I set my Casio watch alarm for 06:00 and tried to get quietly dressed, but my girlfriend opened one eye and asked where I was off to? I said I had an appointment with a freight train so she just sighed and pulled the duvet back over her head.
As I strolled to the nearby track, I could already hear the distinctive train horn in the distance waking up the whole town. I saw the track was unfenced which is unusual in the UK and parts of Europe so I found a safe place to stand as I enjoyed the spectacle of a four engine freight thundering past me, horn still blaring.
First thoughts were ‘my, this is big compared to our European freights. Double stacked containers, box cars, tanks, and semi piggy backed trailers all in the consist. I lost count but I reckon there was at least a 100+ cars. It took several minutes to pass and I thought how big are the yards or the passing loops to accomodate such a lenth of train? What happens if you trip a hot axle box detector and have to walk back? Most of all, what happens if a car derails? How does the engineer know something is wrong before tearing up a mile or two of track? Anyway, it was very impressive. If anyone can hazzard a guess where that freight may have been going from and to in 1993 to pass through Williams, it would be interesting to know.
Since then, I’ve seen a few more freights, mostly in Florida while on vacation. It’s still great to hear the ding ding ding and see the flashing lights of a railroad crossing and hear the distinctive horn of an approaching American freight.
Again, thanks for further replies and advice. I’ll give a Brucie Bonus (if you live in the UK you’ll know that term from a once popular game show), to anyone who can correctly identify the airline my wife flies for, based on the fact that the course she is attending is held at the crew training centre in Chicago, she is based at London Heathrow, and we live in the Netherlands.
Aviation, the world of long distance commuting to work.
