Prototype Railroading: Night Time

Part of railroading is working at night.  Some nights are fine, but others are long and miserable.  No matter how much rest you have gotten during the day, it is always very difficult to stay awake between the hours of about 1:00am and 4:00am.  The combination of complete darkness and a tired brain can make for some seeming unusual circumstances.  It can also scare you just about out of your skin.  Usually afterwards you just sit there feeling a little silly, and as long as you did not say anything, you can just amuse yourself thinking about it later.

In between towns, it is very dark along the railroad.  On a night with a full moon, you can see shapes beyond the range of the headlights, but that is about it.  If the moon is not full, or if it is cloudy, you really cannot see anything beyond the range of the headlights.  Sometimes, as you continue along in a half asleep daze, a deer appears in the headlights.  You jump as it disappears in the brush on the other side of the tracks.  Sometimes a bird appears right in front of the headlight, and scares you silly too.  Night time does funny things to you.

When you get into towns, even in the middle of the night, there is usually a little activity.  There are still one or two cars on the roads, and certainly the entire town is lit up.  You can see better, but there are still a lot of shadows, and things can still appear to be something they are not.  A few nights ago, while on the train through Miles City, I saw a car coming down the street towards the tracks.  There are about a dozen crossings in town, so there is usually at least one or two cars that have to wait for the train, even in the middle of the night.  This car was moving pretty quickly, and despite the fact that we were getting closer, the car did not appear to be slowing down.  I started to get nervous, and I was about to pull the emergency brake, when I realized the car was headed for an underpass, and had no reason to stop for the train passing overhead.

In another spot in Miles City, several months ago, I discovered something lighted and flashing flying alongside my side of the train, just about at the height of the roof of the cab.  I was just puzzled after the first trip, and then I was surprised to notice it on several following trips.  If it was a UFO, it seemed odd that they would be there to meet me every time, and always matching their speed with the train exactly.  The really odd part was that the flashing light seemed to flash faster when the train was moving faster.  Then I discovered power lines along the tracks there.  One evening, when it was still light out, but only barely, I discovered that the headlight was reflecting off the dips in the power lines in that spot.  I guess that destroyed my aliens in Miles City theory.

Sometimes you are so tired that when reality is a little out of the ordinary, you think it is you.  One night, as we were coming past Tulser siding, just outside of Miles City, we saw a green signal in the distance, at the end of the siding.  That indicated we could continue at normal track speed, which is 60mph there.  We were still accelerating out of Miles City though, so we were probably going about 45mph.  As we got closer to the signal, it turned yellow briefly, and then red.  I rubbed my eyes and thought to myself, "Oh geez, this is going to be a long night if my brain starts doing this!"  Then I heard the engineer mutter an expletive and set a lot of air on the brakes, and I knew my brain was not playing tricks on me that time!  After a minute, and before we got there, the signal went back to green again.  By this time, we had slowed down considerably because the engineer had anticipated having to try to stop for that suddenly red signal.  It stayed green until we were about on top of it, and moving only at a crawl.  Then it started the games again.  Once again, it went to yellow briefly, and back to red.  The engineer again let out a few expletives under his breath and set a lot more air to try to get the train to a stop behind the signal.  We figured it would go green again, and as soon as it did we would take off.  As it turned out, we sat there for seven or eight minutes and nothing happened.  Just beyond the signal was the east siding switch.  Rather than get permission past the red signal and have to line the switch by hand, I went out there and jumped on the metal bars that connect the switch rails to the machine that moves it.  That was just enough to establish the connection needed to make the signal go green again, and the engineer got by it before it had a chance to change on us again.

On another trip, I was just returning to Glendive at first light, after what was nearly a 12 hour shift up to that point.  By the time I got home it was closer to 13 hours.  As we crept into the yard, it still was not light enough to see anything beyond the headlights.  Despite having lights, the yard really is not very well lit.  As we came into the yard, there were trains on both sides of us.  Our train eased in between other trains awaiting crews.  In the distance, about where the light from the headlight begins to be less useful, I noticed something walking out from under one train, across the track we were arriving on, and then under the train on the other side.  I thought about how badly I needed sleep, and how ineffective the Mountain Dew was after that much time awake.  As I looked, more and more of these light brown, furry-looking things kept appearing from under the train on the right, and then disappearing under the train on the left.  They kept coming as we got closer, they just seemed to be in more of a hurry getting across in front of us.  Once we got close enough that the light was useful, I realized I was not seeing things.  It was deer, trying to get across the tracks ahead of us.

Night time is weird sometimes, even when you have been asleep all day.