Bisch was inspired by an unusual occurrence on the train. In that groove, as I minimize travel across the face of a national notion that has begun to unravel, I will present strange rail transit experiences, with the promise that these events have been used, in some part, in the construction of the novel.
The small Salt Lake City station is a square temporary office space. It is dwarfed by the reviled Greyhound station, less care taken in its make than the light rail pavilions next to it. The FEDs have a week boot print in Utah’s HQ, a reminder that the LDS is still a government in waiting.
An old lady with oxygen is behind me, addicted to smart phone games. An old man next to me is headed back to China, practicing Cantonese with his Smartphone. They were both brought in by caring Gen-X folks of their same sex. A Gen-X SLC couple, he from Sacramento, headed west sight seeing, sit to my front, across from two boomer retired couples on vacation, one from Carolina, the others from Chicago. On the flagship California Zephyr Line, the #5 headed west through the Sierras and the #6 east through the Rockies, vacation business is coming back. But, most of us, are still the recent Amtrak customer, the economic refugee. Among these are us Rail-Pass folks. We are becoming hated by some of the staff because my fellow, rail-passers, being single men, seem to by slight tippers and cranky boomers besides. I tip well, too well I am told. This gets me some reprieve from the sneers.
Amtrak sends a text that the 11:40 PM #5 is a few minutes late, then 20, then 40, then 2 hours! Then it inches up, and up, the people groaning as their phones go off with tardy, and inaccurate updates, like the weather broadcast under retarded crypt-made skies updating by the minute and erasing its false prophecies…
The staff: a bald clerk of 60, a hard signal man of 65, a wimpy youth with beard for baggage, a soft young Asiatic mix track technician—and a hot, lithe babe with deep, curly, red hair who has good man skills and elder empathy, the ambassador. Redhot has a sense of humor and serves as the event narrator. The clerk says, I wonder how long?” She responds saucy-like, “You know what engine it is!”
The old man next to me says to his driver, “You should leave. I don’t want you falling asleep on the way home. I have my journals.” He turned out to be a prophet, acing the exam ahead of time. The young fella, an enormous, hippie-haired 410 pounds, with kind voice that trusted whatever this wise elder said, asked, “What is it, you think?”
“Above Helper, Utah, on this side, headed up Soldier’s Summit, that is why they built and named helper all those years ago, to provide engines and fuel for that ascent. I suppose they no longer help at Helper. One engine cannot do it alone. It sounds like they sent a bad one east and aren’t surprised it can’t get back—might wreck the other...this will be a while.”
The old vacationers built a suitcase corral between the door and the office cube. A family of Polynesians, including a college ball player and his three siblings, invaded softly and began horsing around in seated giggle mode. I went outside to observe and listen. For the rest of the trip, the unlikely snatches of conversation by conductors, engineers and clerks are due to this old runt moving about on foot doing limbering, mobility and stretching exercises away from others, and listening to the snatched words on the train platform. Even whispers carry along the rails and slabs when the great hissing trains are not there.
Two locomotives are required to tow the 9 light cars at speeds up to 81 MPH. Engine 14 died on Solder’s Summit. E23 was losing water. At 2 AM, the #6, headed by E37, pulled in to SLC, which has no facilities and is just a crew stop. E37 detached and rolled east to save the day, and he did, towing a train with one dead and one lame engine along. A freight engine from Union Pacific, with its American flag waving in the wind on a yellow grime background, took the lead east. The freight engineer explains:
“My engine has 14,000 horsepower [1]. It weighs 140,000 pounds and can pull 140,000 tons, that is 160 freight cars. It only goes 42 miles per hour—its a different animal, good for the mountains, but will lose passenger time across the flat lands. E37 is hurting, like asking a greyhound to tow a dog sled, and will need another freight engine to lead her over the Sierra’s—expect that just before Reno. We have a freight yard there…”
He was a rough, clean-mouthed man. The supervisor of he and his, of the eight gathered engineers [who made Redhot thirsty in her voice, being close to so many rough hands], who may only work limited shifts, is a lean, whip-like man of 55 in a truck as white as his hair is black. That man swears like a sailor. All would be according to what he and Old Prophecy said. The boomers would increasingly complain as we rolled west by train, having lost a day of their precise activities.
This one had the great pleasure of 3 hours exercise and an hour seated nap, then leaving at dawn, so pretty along the Great Salt Lake. Rolling across the snowy peaks of Northeastern Nevada, usually done by night, was a beautiful sight. The Sierras would be lost in the night as freight locomotive 8154 gave an indication by its twice-painted black-on-yellow and twice bright-lit digits, of how many more massive engines were in the freight fleet than in the passenger line. The freight men loved the passengers. The conductors liked working up to the standards of the freight men, who were more experienced engineers than the passenger men. The freight engines, which I now hear roar and clarion call from the comfort of Nimur’s small palace in Fremont, are like land ships, great steel dragon-heads with ladders, decks, roaring engines and hissing brakes. The brake power is so mighty that when they test as we stand track-side in Reno, the hiss almost blows us deaf and away.
To be continued in ‘He Don’t Talk!’
Notes
1.) 14 and 140 were accurate on all three numbers. I could not recall the digits he named after 14,000 or 140,000, 1s and 2s, I think, but am not sure.
