I suppose so, I just wish that I had known back then about that whirling spot light thingy they put up on the engines. I imagine it is there to warn idiots like us that A TRAIN IS COMING. Crimeney, I didn't know, and had I known... I could have saved Brian and I a whole lot of nightmares. Flashlight, I thought. Duhhhhhh.....trainman wrote:Wow GG. That is amazing. You are LIVING proof (thankfully) to the saying "be careful, the light at the end of the tunnel might just be the train coming at you."
Just so you know I'm not anti-train and just anti-hike-into-trian-tunnel, one more train story.
Fast forward two years from the last story. Now we're juniors. Me, Brian, Paul (another train tunnel veteran who made it out) and Jeffy (fellow electro-geek, wasn't at the tunnel) are living in an off-campus apartment. We couldn't afford a good apartment, so we're in one that is right next to the tracks. Maybe 1/2 way between the SLO train station and campus.
We liked trains and used to hop onto the side of a boxcar now and then to speed up the walk down to campus. Trains moved real slow at this point, they weren't far from the station.
So one Friday night, Paul and Brian had gone home for the weekend. Jeffy and I are studying (GEEKS!). We all had our fake IDs at this point (another long story) and had heard from some older frat boys in a college bar that there is a real cool bar on the other side of Cuesta Grade at Santa Margarita. This is where they add/remove engines for the trip over the grade. By "real cool", the frat boys said it was a real working man's bar, mostly train folks, with a shuffleboard and they served Coors long necks.
I was a little home sick at the time. My home town is full of loggers. I figured loggers and train men would be pretty similar, so I say "Hey Jeffy, let's catch a freighter to Santa Margarita and check out that bar". Jeffy says he has to study, has 8 papers to write, 4 midterms, and {yadda, yadda, yadda}. So I ask Jeffy if he'd at least drive up there and pick me up later. He says he will, if he can drive my car. Hmmmm.... I'd never let him drive it before, but I said YES. I dumped the books out of my day pack, tossed in a light jacket and my 2m ham radio, and watched TV until I heard a train.
An hour or so goes by, and sure enough, I hear a freighter coming out of the station. Out to the tracks I go. It was a moonless night and I was hoping for a flat car so I could kick back and watch the stars. No such luck. A bunch of engines, a bunch of boxcars, and a whole mess of "hopper cars" (is that what they are called?). Each hopper car was piled full of beets. Yeah, beets. Just beets. Nothing but beets.
Oh well, I hop onto the second-to-last beet car and away we go. Wasn't as bad as I thought, the beets made for a nice 'configurable lounge chair'. I'm sitting pretty at beet-top.
I call into my fellow radio geeks on our campus repeater, tell them what I'm up to, ask if they want a play-by-play. They say sure. Radio geeks were all at the library studying, so any bit of excitement is good stuff for them.
The train starts accelerating as it goes through campus. Under the overpasses, out through the ag unit, and now we're coming up on California Men's Colony (prison). I broadcast what the prison looks like: bright lights, razor wire, 1 armed guard strolling in the courtyard. The radio geeks are eating it up, none of us had actually seen that prison before.
Now we're going up Cuesta Grade. I know there is a tunnel up there somewhere. Pretty soon the whirling light on the front engine lights up the tunnel entrance. I call out the play-by-play. I am calm. Happy. It's one thing to be walking through a tunnel when a train is coming, another thing entirely to be ON a train heading for the tunnel. Or so I think.
Then I hear this strange sound. Sounds like softball batting practice for our team. Squishy things being smacked by something hard.
I look forward, and see.... beets in the cars ahead of me being knocked off the cars by the top of the tunnel entrance. CRAP! NOT AGAIN!
I make like a gopher, and I'm digging down into the beets as fast as I can. I must have pitched off enough beets to serve beet salad to a whole town. Dig, dig, dig. If forgot all about my pack and the radio. Just dig, dig, dig.
The train was going slow enough that I managed to dig down to a level where I felt safe. Into the tunnel we go, a few beets above me get whacked. I am basically relaxed. There are Coors long necks at the end of this rainbow. I chuckle.
Then I start finding it hard to breathe. I'm coughing, gagging. Once again the idiot, I forgot that there were several diesel engines up ahead. And I'm just a few feet from the top of the tunnel. Dohhhhh!! I keep digging. This time looking for air pockets. I find a few, but not really enough.
By the time we come out of the tunnel, I'm in a daze. Weird high going on. Must be the fumes.
My next recollection is the train slowing down. Huh? What happened to the rest of the grade? I have no idea. But the train is slowing down. I climb out of the beets, see some lights, figure we must be rolling into Santa Margarita. My pack is still sitting half-buried in the beets. Happiness.
There were enough lights coming from the town that I could see we were going through a flat, grassy field. The frat boys said that sometimes the trains just slow down here, but then continue on to Oakland without stopping. So I figured I better jump. I do. Mostly just for dramatic effect, I do one of those tuck-and-rolls like you see in the movies.
All good. I dust myself off, head to the bar, start downing the Coors long necks. I have probably the best single bar night of my life. The train guys are cool. Just like loggers. We play shuffleboard, buy each other Coors, grand ole time. The bartender yells 'last call!", I say goodbye to my new Train friends, call Jeffy on the pay phone, and he's there in something like 25 minutes. Bahstud, he probably had my car up to 90 to get there that fast.
Oh well. What a night. I LOVE TRAINS!