mechurchlady wrote:That sounds like you have had prior experience.
Twice. Neither was my train, but let me tell you about one of them. Warning: this one gets a bit gross.
A friend was a school teacher, which means he got laid off for three months every year. He filled this gap by working for the railroad, in this case the Southern Pacific, as a fireman on their steam locos. (Yeah my friend's old. So am I, what of it?)
One day he was firing on one of their "cab forward" engines. These locos were so long that they had hooked them up backwards so the cab was in front. A little boiler plate for a wall, a couple of windows, and you had not just a better view of the track, but a pretty cozy cab for winter operation.
But this wasn't a winter day. It was a nice spring day. Just the sort of day when shepherds brought their flocks down from their winter pastures for shearing.
Just the sort of day the *stupid* shepherds used the railroad right-of-way to move their flocks!
Imagine if you will, a railroad track in the high sierras. Cliff going up on your right, cliff going down on your left, and just enough room in between for a train. Now add about a mile's worth of sheep and a heavy fright train who comes around a curve at full track speed to discover the sheep.
The three men in the cab shouted, "What the..." and "Holy sh..." and "Get down!" all at the same time. The engineer put the brakes in emergency, but it was the steepest downhill grade on the railroad and very soon the rails were covered with wet wool and sheep guts, which were both quite slippery. All they could do is cower behind that boiler-plate wall and hope none of the sheep broke through the windows.
The train finally came to a stop about sixty miles down the canyon. The crew got out to look at the engine, to see if all was okay, and quickly got right back into the cab. Have you ever smelled burned wool? Have you ever smelled burned mutton? Can you imagine both of them, plus the sight of semi-identifiable sheep parts all over the lower half of a big locomotive?
If so, you're sick enough to belong here!
The only way to avoid the stench was to get the train back up to speed and keep going, which they did all the way into the big yard in Roseville where they jumped off as soon as they could and lit running so the roundhouse crew wouldn't know who had brought in such a mess for them to clean up.
To this day, my friend won't eat lamb, won't wear wool, and won't go anywhere near Roseville.
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