“I’m a certified train-aholic!”

Yesterday afternoon (Saturday, December 20, 2008) we attended the annual bring-a-dish-to-pass Christmas dinner of the vaunted 282-Alumni.
The so-called “Alumni” are the union retirees (Local 282) of Regional Transit Service in Rochester, N.Y.
It was a reaction to the fact Transit management retirees ran roughshod over union retirees — a continuation of the bad vibes at Transit: management versus union.
Transit had a club for long-time employees, and I was in it.
It was called the “15/25-year Club;” I guess at first the “25-year Club.”
But they lowered the employment requirement, and renamed it “15/25-year Club.”
The employment requirement was lowered even more; I joined at 10 years.
My employ there ended in 1993 with my stroke; and the “Alumni” didn’t exist then.
The Alumni is a special club — you have to join.
It negotiates advantageous pricing of services; e.g. dental services.
It holds biannual breakfast meetings at a restaurant, and also has its own web-site. (One of the retirees is a ‘pyooter geek.)
So here we are at this shindig, having brought a cake.
A loudmouth appears with a railroad-engineer cap — the kind hardly used any more.
It had a tiny railroad crossing-lights pin, its lights flashing red, side-to-side.
DREAD; a railfan. Do I dare introduce myself? Some goggle-eyed geek accosts me at the mighty Canandaigua Weggers seeing my Horseshoe Curve jacket.
I like watching trains, but I’m not an idiot.
“I’m a certified train-aholic!” he loudly proclaims.
“Do you know this guy?” Linda quietly asks.
“No,” I say.
“I worked as a mechanic at Transit 30 YEARS,” he loudly blared.
Okay; this is why I don’t know him. I hardly knew any mechanics; mostly drivers.
He kept repeating that 30-year bit, and that he was “a certified train-aholic!”
An album was unveiled; 89 bazilyun awful pictures of trains.
“We drove out Interstate-80 west of Cheyenne, right next to the Union Pacific mainline in Echo Canyon through the “Watich” (sic: “Wasatch” [“wa-SATCH”]) Mountains.
Pictures of dashboards and steering-wheels with blurred freight-cars behind shrubbery off to the side.
“Ever been to Horseshoe Curve?” I asked.
“I took care of my wife’s caboose for 15 years!” he loudly trumpeted. (So much for Horseshoe Curve.)
This was apparently wife number-two. Number-one walked out — this was never explained; I guess we were supposed to know that.
Number-two had had a stroke, couldn’t talk, and was confined to a wheelchair.
“We used to live in that trailer-park on Wayneport (‘WAINE-port’) Road,” he loudly declared. (Wayneport Road crosses the cross-state CSX Railroad mainline at a grade-crossing near the trailer-park.)
“Ya could hear the trains blowing for that grade-crossing all night long.”
“So when they finally threw us out” (??????????????), “I took my boombox down to the crossing, and recorded every train that passed.
Now I play that tape to go to sleep!
I’m a certified train-aholic!” (“Certified,” everyone.)
“The best restored steam locomotive is Nickel Plate #765, and the reason is because they run it like it was designed to run: hard and fast,” I said.
“My wife” (don’t know which) “volunteered me to be a Cub-Scout pack-leader.
I led a Cub-Scout pack for 10 years!
And I always wanted to coach a baseball-team; so my cub-scout pack went into Little League — used to play at the old Palmyra Airport. I welded up a pole with a rubber hose a baseball could be put on, so the kids could get used to swingin’ the bats!
And my son went out to Cheyenne, and was invited by Union Pacific into their roundhouse there. Got in the cab of both the Challenger and 844.”
“I rode behind that Challenger,” I said. “60 mph!”
“They ran that thing on Clinchfield (Railroad) to head up their Santa Claus train” (Clinchfield had similar engines) — “I have that tape,” I said.
“But one leg of the wye where they were going to turn it had been removed, so they had to back it 80 miles.
Never again. Every time they send it anyplace they send out people in advance to make sure they can operate with ease.”
“I feel sorry for that guy,” my wife observed.
“Probably alone if wife number-two had died, like he said.”
“Ever been to Marengo?” he bellowed.
Apparently there’s a Live Steam model-railroad site near Clyde, NY, on Clyde-Marengo Road; i.e. a model-railroad outfit that uses tiny live-steam locomotives to pull trains outdoors on a large layout of track.
The model-trains are large enough to ride.
“Live Steam” means the model-railroad locomotives are actually steam-engines: fuel is burned in the tiny fireboxes, and the heat generates steam in a boiler, so that they’re actually steam-engines.
The site is near the N.Y. State Thruway between Rochester and Syracuse.
“Gerry here” (the ‘pyooter geek, and also a railfan) “went out there last fall and had a ball!
He got on a model train, and around-and-around he went; photographing everything!
He flat-out disappeared.”
“Had a ball!” 89 bazilyun times, everyone.
“And every time ya go there, something is different!” (More 89 bazilyun times.)
“I hate to be a pest, but I only like the real thing,” I said.
“I’m a certified train-aholic!” he shouted again, spraying me liberally, and soaking his album next to my plate.
He had taken off his engineer’s hat, but the crossing-lights pin kept flashing red side-to-side.

For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (“Transit”), the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that.

“Mighty Weggers” is Wegmans, a large supermarket-chain based in Rochester we often buy groceries at. They have a store in nearby Canandaigua.

“‘Pyooter” is computer.

“Linda” is my wife of almost 41 years.

“Cheyenne,” Wyoming.

“Union Pacific” Railroad, still in existence; the eastern part of the original transcontinental of 1869.

Horseshoe Curve, west of Altoona, Pennsylvania, is by far the BEST railfan spot I have ever been to. Horseshoe Curve is a national historic site. It was a trick used by the Pennsylvania Railroad to get over the Allegheny mountains without steep grades. Horseshoe Curve was opened in 1854, and is still in use. (I am a railfan, and have been since I was a child.)

“CSX” is CSX Transportation, mainly a railroad.

“Nickel Plate #765” is a restored Nickel Plate Railroad 2-8-4 Berkshire steam-engine, the best there is. —I’ve ridden behind it. (“Nickel Plate” is the New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad, called the “Nickel Plate” long ago by a New York Central executive because it was so competitive. The railroad eventually renamed itself the “Nickel Plate.” Norfolk & Western Railroad bought the Nickel Plate years ago, and N&W has since merged with Southern Railway, to become Norfolk Southern. Nickel Plate never actually attained New York city; it stopped at Buffalo. [“New York Central” was fairly large from the middle-west (Indiana, Ohio) to the Atlantic coast (mainly New York City), but no longer exists. It merged with the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1968 as Penn-Central, and that tanked in about eight years.])

“Palmyra,” NY is a small town on the Erie Canal north of where we live. The airport, now closed, was for small private airplanes; it was only a single grass-strip.

The “Challenger and 844” are both restored Union Pacific (Railroad) steam locomotives, the Challenger, #3985, a 4-6-6-4 articulated and #844 a 4-8-4 Northern. (An “articulated” steam-locomotive has one driver-set hinged to the other, so the locomotive can bend through sharp turns [e.g. crossover switches]. One driver-set [the rear] is attached to the boiler, but the other [front] is hinged, so it can angle off-center.) —I have ridden behind #3985; never seen #844.

“Clinchfield” Railroad mainly operates in Kentucky and Tennessee. It no longer exists; was merged into Seaboard System, which was merged into CSX.

The “N.Y. State Thruway” is the cross-state interstate highway, but toll. —Interstate-90; Massachusetts to Buffalo and beyond. (The Thruway also includes a stretch from Albany to New York City, Interstate-87.)