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Since I'm hanging onto all of Bob's recent posts and don't know how to delete all the previous ones I'll start a new series
Bob mentions "incidents occur with alarming frequency"
This kind of statement always brings me back to a statement made by P.M. Adams, a Canadian Locomotive Engineer in his book "Life on the Head End"..one of my all time favorite books and I've used this quote in my own book Terminal Tales and other posts. This adage will and has always remained true as long as "wheels have turned on steel rails"
Adams opens his chapter titled "Calamity Special" with these words
"One of the more interesting features of railroading is its latent yet ever-present capacity for springing the unusual or unexpected on you. You jog along for weeks or months in a placid groove and then abruptly the routine is shattered and you emerge from the affair with a memorable experience"
Which reminds me of another old, but true, statement from a story in the old RAILROAD MAGAZINE titled "Traveling Op"
"What we endure with hardship, we remember with delight"
For most of us "old heads" every story we come up with generally will have come from a situation which was less than pleasant at the time it occurred, yet over the years it gets better and better with the telling...(and with perhaps a bit of "embellishment")
Pete
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