I haven't posted on my blog for a long time, mainly because I am lazy, forgetful, and sometimes don't care. Most of what is on my mind comes from my job. I am a freight conductor on the union pacific railroad. This is a fun job, one that is in my blood. I am the fourth generation to work for this railroad on my dad's side. My dad currently works as a locomotive engineer on the same set of rails as I work on, which is the same set of rails that my grandfather worked on, as well as his father. the railroad has changed a lot since my grandfather worked on it, but it hasn't changed that much from when my father started in 1978. I am typing this at about one in the morning because i can't sleep.

Lots of fun stuff happens on the railroad. I'm full of stories, which my wife doesn't like to hear, mainly because I forget which ones I've told her, and I repeat a lot.

my dad called my up today to tell me what happened to him on the job this morning. On the railroad, you don't work a fixed schedule. Sometimes you go to work at midnight, sometimes in the afternoon. this morning he went on duty at about two. His run as about s 350 miles, and just as he was about 100 miles into his run, he said every time he hit the throttle fire would come out of the smokestack on the third unit. It then started to spew oil, which caught fire and engulfed the entire locomotive. This is dangerous because a unit can hold 2500 gallons of fuel. I didn't ask him how the fire was extinguished.

sometimes you have to do dangerous stuff when you are a conductor. the most dangerous thing I have ever done happened a couple months ago. At certain locations on the track there are detectors. They can tell if your load is tipping, if you have a hot axle, or if you have dragging equipment. If it detects something wrong, it will come on the radio and anounce the problem and which car it is on.

at 3 in the morning, we went over a detector that told us we had dragging equipment on the sixth head car. It's my job to get my tool kit, and my lantern, and walk on back. I also have a radio i can use to talk to the engineer with. Well, when I went back to the sixth car, there was a one hundred pound piece of the brake rigging that was disconnected on one side and dragging between the rails. I needed to wire up the dragging side, and to do it, I needed to crawl underneath the car in between two wheels, bench press the steel bar, and wire it up. As I was doing that, another train came by me on the other track going 70 miles an hour. keep in mind i was four feet away from the other track so when it went by it it was kind of scary. did I mention the track I was on had a foot of snow on it? after half an hour and two trains, I was done and went up to the lead engine covered in dirty snow, half frozen, and glad it was over.

I think I'm going to use this blog to talk about my job, so maybe I can give my wife a break.