Another thread following on the successful Wacky Cab Drivers thread. Share with us your favorite wildlife interaction while working on the railroad… LC
OK, I’ll get this party started. Some years ago I was hirailing a line under consideration by a Class 1 as a spinoff. I and my small team (myself, civil engineer and property person) were riding to give a report to a prospective purchaser. The line was located in a certain Gulf coast state with an abundance of wildlife. I was riding the lead hirail suburban, followed by a hirail pickup, with the roadmaster. Already that day we had seen a snakeskin that spanned nearly an entire bridge bent 9’+ and numerous Beaver dams some with ponds occupied by good sized gators(why don’t the gators eat all the beavers?) Apparently the Beavers reproduce so fast the gators can’t keep up. I was looking down the tracks and saw some 8"+ mounds of what appeared to be sand or perhaps chewed cellulose beweenand at the end of some of the ties. I asked the roadmaster, a thin gent with a scraggly beard and slouch hat who would have appeared at home in Confederate grey 140 years ago, “Johnny, what are those mounds, termites?” He looked back at me with a kind of fatherly, yet condescending look and said, after spitting his chew out the window, “Boy, thems Faaare(fire) Ants”. Mystery solved… LC
My most serious encounter with wildlife was when I apparently encroached on the territory of some red-winged blackbirds while biking into work. They didn’t bother cars using this road, but my bicycle and I were apparently slow enough to be considered a threat. Staying on the other side of the road helped.
Back in my youth, when I was hanging out with the local GTW crew, there was one brakeman who had absolutely no luck when it came to hornets. While switching in Grand Haven, he collapsed a small hole near a tie on one of the yard tracks, and took off running and flailing. I never found out how many times he was stung. On another trip, the same guy was stung while working on the ground in Marne. He went to a nearby house, and asked for a large piece of onion, which apparently sooths the sting.
Those hornets were particularly bad around Grand Haven one year. Probably the most vital switch in town (one that had a tall handle rotated 90 degrees to throw) developed a hornet’s nest in the base. You could still throw the switch, but the hornets buzzed in and out of the steel housing at the bottom of the switch, through a circular hole that was part of the housing. One time, while visiting with the crew, I brought a cork from home. I wasn’t the one who plugged the hole with it, but it apparently worked.
Funniest encounter…
South end yard, out in “the country”.
Escaped bull decided to use the side of our locomotive to scratch his back.
We were sitting in the team track, with the motor shut off, eating lunch and waiting for an opposing grain train to get up to us.
Suddenly, the locomotive begins to gently rock side to side, accompanied by a sound that is best described as what mating elephants would sound like.
A groan and grunting sound, from right under the engineer’s window.
Well, the hogger poked his head out the window, and began to chuckle.
We looked, and a huge bull was rubbing his ribs and back against the front steps and pilot plate, with his eyes screw shut and his tongue stuck out, thoroughly enjoying the nice rubbing post we had provided.
Because I had owned horses, the rest of the crew decided I was the guy to make the bull move so he didn’t get hit by the grain train.
Ya know, horses, bulls, all livestock with four legs each, so naturally….
I tried to explain that I was totally clueless about bulls, which all fell on deaf ears.
First try was to r
Mine - Finding LARGE rats under the cover plates of the “submarine switches” out on the piers.
My father (used to be a Road Foreman over Horseshoe Curve) - regularly encountered rattle snakes curled up next to the rail. At night the rail and roadbed would radiate heat, which attracted the snakes.
Nick
These are neat stores that a non-RR employee such as myself enjoys hearing. MORE!
Nick - One new Conductor Trainee was about to dismount the front step of a locomotive to throw a switch when his conductor grabbed him by the back of his shirt to stop him. Had he dismounted he would have stepped almost on a good sized pygmy timber rattler coiled next to the retainer on the switch stand. LC
White tailed deer are ubiquitous in Old Forge, NY, right next to Thendara, where I do most of my running on the Adirondack Scenic. It’s not at all unusual to have your drive down the main drag interupted by a couple of them sauntering across the road. One day I walked to my truck after dinner at the end of the day and found two grazing within feet of the vehicle. I was able to retrieve my camera from the truck and get a picture of one…
They liked the apple tree at the end of the station platform once the apples began to ripen. It’s quite normal to see several out there after we shut down for the day.
Of course, once we leave the station on either of our local runs, we are in the midst of Adirondack forest, so we usually remind people to keep their eyes open. Occasionally we’ll spot deer, but you have better odds in Old Forge.
The only encounter with a bear I’ve been involved with so far was in front of the engine - after several toots on the horn and a slowing of the train, the engineer called back to us on the radio to inform us he’d just chased a bear off the tracks. Didn’t see it myself. The same thing happens with deer from time to time.
On one trip I was sitting back, having finished my narration, when I spotted a deer that was laying in the ditch alongside the track. It jumped up and headed for the treeline, fortunately, as opposed to heading for the track.
I was eyes for a backup move one morning. As we rolled up the track, I spotted a brown mass in the grass next to the tracks. As we came to a stop, I saw it was a deer, just laying there, watching the action…
Much of our running is done alongside the Moose River. One very common question we get involves seeing a moose. They’ve been in the area, but none have managed to pose for our passengers yet.
LC
I’ve never encountered snakes…thank goodness. But in addition to the RATS, I’ve been buzzed by bats more then once. Occationally, we’ll get some deer running through the yard - and this is in the middle of a major urban area.
Nick
Nick - I should’ve said that the location of the switch was in Corning, NY. The CT was a friend of mine. Oh, and those rattlers are a rare subspeicies and are endangered. It is illegal to kill them… LC
Was about 6am or so, was running a UP rock empty through North Freedom, Wisconsin, had just crossed the Baraboo River when I noticed something… large… on the tracks. Grabbed a little brake and hit the horn a few times. Turned out it was two head of cattle that had gotten out from a neighboring pasture. They got off the tracks before I was able to make hamburger out of them, we got the train to Rock Springs, and when I cleared up the warrant with the dispatcher, I told then to get a hold of the sheriff to find the owner of said cattle.
In the 50’s, my Dad told me that he used to see flocks of birds that included parakeets. Now this is in Lincoln NE - not parakeet country as a rule. Escapees from parakeet prisons?
Wildlife stories?
Well, this one hotel we used to layover at had this really nice bar next door that gave rails a discount on drinks…there were quite a few wild life activities going on there…
WHOA! Lets not go down that path or I’ll have to tell the story about the bar next to the lead in Elmira, NY. That one has to do with some scary individuals (and not in a mean way either). I shudder to think of what happened in there and I only had to work nearby. It was called “Flames”…
LC
Our engine house as a rather permanent occupant - a 5 foot bull snake. Seems that when the engine house was built, the contractor ran the rails all the way to the back wall. Since that is where the welding bench is located and since we always need to walk between the engine and the welding bench, they put a steel plate across the rails, covering the flangeways - so guess where the snake lives! We tell all the new volunteers but they don’t believe us until on a warm spring day the snake is curled up across the volunteer entrance. Good volunteers will step across the snake to get in. The others don’t return!
dd
While waiting at Conpit Jct. for a test train to arrive from Conway in order to do some dirt-ball testing to debunk a “trailer with a flat tire cause the Van train to derail” myth, I decided to leave the car and wander down the ROW a bit and take some pictures. After getting about 500 feet from the car, I looked down the tracks about another 500 feet and spy a black bear running out of the woods, accross the three track main and down to the river.
Time to go back to the car!
Many years ago, I got an engine ride on the northbound Panama Limited out of Champaign. It was a warm and sunny October day that was the opening day for pheasant hunting. We saw many hunters along the right-of-way, but nary a bird. That is, no birds until we hit the city limits of the farthest southern Chicago suburbs with “no hunting” ordinances. There we spotted flocks of game birds. We were going a little too fast to see if there were any maps tucked under wings.
When I was growing up, a neighbor who was a game bird hunter said he was sure the birds carried calendars so they knew when to go into deep hiding,
Back before they made a container/chassie parking lot out of the swamp/field north of the hump, it used to be home to many pheasants. One male (the proper word might get bleeped) was strutting his stuff one evening, and was run over by a freight car going down the hump–it was like that white ring meant “Flange here!”. One of the hump conductors (we had two at the time) went down, retrieved the bird, took it home, and reported back that it had made fine eating.
No pheasants here any more–just geese by the hundreds. Also pigeons, and a recent introduction–I saw a hawk pinion a pigeon not too far from my tower a couple of days ago. Couldn’t hold it down, though.
Ed, your story about the bull was hilarious! Somebody in our yard would have put his cries of contentment over the radio, I’m sure.