Fri 29 Aug 2008
Blood on the Tracks, Flood on the Derailed Blog
Posted by TJ under Derailed
Bobby the Conductor is back on the job after scoring an Irish tan in Myrtle Beach, and he obviously came back with his batteries supercharged.
In one memorable week, Conductor Bobby gets duped by a woman holding the train doors as she waits for a phantom baby, gets his daughters’ photos leered at by a toothless riders, gets hit on by salacious Latinas, and searches for a dead body.
We’re deadheading to South Norwalk when I hear my engineer give a sudden burst on the train horn. This noise is followed by the loud burst of the emergency brake dumping.
“Sh*t” says the engineer…”I just hit someone.”
The engineer calls the Rail Traffic Controller, and I get a familiar knot in my stomach. He tells the RTC that we just hit a guy on the bridge just west of the station. He says that the guy was laying in the gauge of the rail.
I walk back to retrieve my radio and flashlight (it was dark out) from my railroad bag. It’s my job to find the body and I’m dreading it.
Me, I changed a few commas to semicolons this week.