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[CBQ] Neil Armstrong and Burlington Yard

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Subject: [CBQ] Neil Armstrong and Burlington Yard
From: Randy Danniel <milepost206@mchsi.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2012 01:50:44 -0500
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In July 1969 I was working a regular job 3rd trick in Burlington yard  
as a snake. Apollo 15 was slated to land on the Moon early Sunday  
evening and then in the early morning Neil Armstrong was to make his  
historic “Leap for mankind.” So I grabbed my sister’s B&W 19” TV  
since it had built in rabbit ears and headed off to work at 11:00.

Unlike most Sunday nights, we were busy. It was hot and humid with no  
breeze. Your clothes stuck to you like thin slabs of fresh liver.  
When word spread there was a TV in the yard office, everyone  
including the operator at BN, seemed to adjust their schedule to  
coincide with a necessary trip to the yard office just before their  
Moon walk. The depot was completely empty.

Everything stopped at Burlington for about 45 minutes. Even the  
Dispatcher’s phone was quiet. The lights were shut off so we could  
see the picture. To this day I can still see a couple of the old  
heads that saw steam yield to diesel and jets drive piston airplanes  
into retirement just sit there, absolutely mesmerized (as we all  
were) by the grainy picture captured off the rabbit ears. Just when  
we were all enjoying our extended break the radio came alive when  
Jack Myler on the wayfreight screamed they were by Lone Tree with a  
red board at Connett, the screen door slammed and you could hear the  
operator beating feet up the cinders to the depot screaming, “Tell  
him I’m in the can.”

And as any railroad story goes, there was always someone with a  
contrary opinion. I was working the West End switch engine a couple  
weeks later with one of the yard office moon walk historians. During  
the supper break, Kenny claimed in a deadly serious, conspiratorial  
tone, “That moon landing never happened. The moon is like a soda  
cracker. If you went there you’d just punch a hole in the Moon and  
shoot out the other side.” I asked if Kenny had been watching the  
same TV I had been a few weeks earlier. He said, “That was all staged  
in Hollywood.”

Years later I asked Kenny if he changed his mind, he never waivered.  
The Moon was like a soda cracker and Neil Armstrong climbed down that  
ladder in a Hollywood movie studio.

Randy Danniel


  

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