“The money.”
This was the answer I was expecting, and the answer I received, when I asked the engineer, “Why have you stuck around that long?”
“Anything else?”
He thought about it a moment. “The women you get because of the money. And drinking with my buddies.”
I was on the left side of the cab in the conductor’s seat and he was on the right. I was a newbie, less than three months on the job, and he was in his 27th year. I try to be humble with every engineer I work with. I even bring them a box of my wife’s homemade caramel rolls or fudge bars to buy my way into their good graces. This strategy is usually successful.
This conversation was a repeat of most other conversations I had with engineers to stay awake on long night runs. Sometimes I had a chance to talk about my faith. Mostly, it was hunting stories, work stories, women stories, whiskey stories, more women stories. Lots of politics and fixing what is wrong with everything. “If they’d only listen us….”
The locomotive engineer on a freight train is supposed to help a new conductor do his job safely and correctly, and I’d been fortunate to work with a great group of veterans willing to help me out. They knew that anyone in his 40’s starting an entirely new career had probably seen a few tough turns in life, and besides, you’re a team. Coal has to be hauled from a mine in Wyoming or Montana to a power plant in Minnesota or Vancouver, and both crew members have to get it done.
The conductor on a freight train is responsible for making sure the train is in compliance with government and company regulations, and that the cargo matches the paperwork. You tie down the hand brakes when the train is halted, coordinate the railcar equipment to couplings, change out broken knuckles in the coupling apparatus, and manage the high wire act of connecting thousands of tons of freight. You also handle the radio communication from the dispatcher.
The engineer’s job is to operate the train. In an emergency the conductor can operate the train and bring it to a stop, but otherwise, the engineer is the boss. You have to be a conductor before you can be an engineer, so each engineer knows the conductor’s job thoroughly.
I’ve done some pretty crazy jobs in my life, and been involved in some hairy experiences. Nothing was as difficult as learning how to become a freight train conductor in the coal fields of the west.
I know that will make some of you laugh. There are numerous railroaders in my mailing list, so you’re chuckling right now. But the type of brain required to excel at a job like that is foreign to me, and I had to pray, study, and labor with all my might to be able to pass certification. It’s the proudest I have ever been of a professional accomplishment, because I truly doubted whether I could pull it off.
I didn’t want the job. It came out of desperation, when, after following the Lord with our whole hearts, He allowed us to crash and burn pursuing a vision of making an epic film series. We left everything on the table, and the answer was “no.” Or, perhaps better said, “not yet.”
So, out of the ashes and with a family to provide for, off to the railroad I went, and in the process, I received more insight into the story of David and his Mighty Men than I ever thought possible.