My Time As a Conrail Engineer

How can you tell apart a little kid who’s really, really interested in trains from one who thinks they’re fine only at a distance? Take them up to the Bridgeport railroad station, where you are at track level and wait for a nine-car diesel-pulled train to come roaring past about twenty feet from where you are standing.

The little tyke who is a genuine fan will not pee his pants.

So there we are, Mom and I; every time we go over to Bridgeport, I’m allowed to hang out at the railroad station for an appropriate length of time and hope a train comes roaring through on the express tracks. Perhaps one would stop on its way to New York or Boston, while the rest would speed through in a rush of overhead wire sparks and leaving dust devils of sand and dirt in its wake.

So, later in life I was taking post-graduate level courses at Notre Dame University and, during a break, a Conrail train came by our out-of-the-way building. The school ran its power plant on coal, delivered by a Conrail local.

“Want a ride?” the engineer shouted. He hardly drew his next breath before I was sitting next to him. As we pushed the string of cars across State Route 31, a trucker waved up at me and I wondered why. “He thinks I’m the engineer!” So I waved back, with the slow, easy manner of a working railroad engineer. “Well done, Mr. Trucker, and we of the railroad fraternity salute you.”