OpsLog – LMO – 3/27/2019

OpsLog – LMO – 3/27/2019

’m hosting our daily meeting. One of our developers, a child thirty years my junior, is unhappy with the direction my team is now going. So he’s sniping at me, little schoolyard comments. I stop the meeting. “If you have something to say, let’s hear it,” I let him run his mouth a bit. “You done? Fine.” Then I go back to my agenda. He, in turn, runs off to cry at the manager, only to find out that, woops, he was wrong all along.

That was my day job.

In my real-life job, I’m at the throttle of a pair of geeps holding in the Red Rock siding at 3am. I should be on the front end but it was easier to my desperately needed helpers to bury me behind the Calypso cut. So in front of me I’ve got a rusty boxcar endcap. To the right, the rolling fields with the sleeping town of Mingo Junction. And to the left, the rails shimmer as a cab forward pulling 415 (empty coal hoppers) rumbles past on the main. Time to go. I hear John on the front end give me two tugs on the horn level. As the slack bangs out of the cut, I ease forward, catching the pull on my forward coupler with a gentle tug. And we’re off, climbing through a tunnel and stringing out along the long curve into Harris Glen, our train long and proud.

Yes, this is my real life. And it doesn’t involve thirty-year-old man-children. Even our younger members run like men in this outfit.

Brilliant session tonight, guys!

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