Thomas the Train Engineer

Here is an excerpt from Tom's blog about his adventures yesterday.

I qualified as an engineer for the passenger trains this morning.

I hadn't planned to do that yet, but an early season mix up in scheduling left us without the scheduled engineer for the day, so I completed three check out runs under the eyes of Jim Hagen, and then went solo for the balance of the day.

I'm scheduled to be the engineer again tomorrow, but I doubt we'll run a lot of passengers. The weather looks like it will be inclement, and that usually cuts ridership.

Running a passenger train isn't much different than running a work train, technically -- you start, go and stop, signaling as needed -- but the passenger runs are carefully scheduled, include required safety checks at various points along the run, operate according to milestones, include signaling at various points along the run, and involve communications and other procedures designed to ensure 100% safety for the passengers.

In a nutshell, running a passenger train requires more careful attention than running a work train, involves a team effort between the engineer, the conductor and the communications center, and all of us have to keep thinking ahead to keep everything smooth and safe.

I don't plan to do a lot of engineering ... but I'll be able to substitute into the schedule as needed ...

The diesel that Tom drove is the one they are qualifying me to drive, but my intention is to only run it as a work train. For some reason, my legs are exactly the wrong size to be comfortable in the booth -- can you say cramp? --, and I would not want to have any problems when driving passengers around. I expect my most exciting moment will come when and if I ever have to drive the water tanker down to help fight a fire.

Oh, yeah. Don't call him Thomas.