Refrigerated Train

The train rolls around the bend.  Faster and faster it glides.  Ahead lie the Tehacapis.  The brown grass blows in the spring wind the train rolls towards Barstow.
The freight train now grinds upward, over the mountain.  Towards the summit roll refrigerated loads of lettuce from the Salinas valley bound for eastern markets.  In a week these loads will be salads on Fifth Avenue.
I watch the growling locomotives and will follow the train on the climb.  The locomotives growl with one hundred cars.  It is a fight to keep the perishable train on schedule.  A refrigerated train stays in front of the pack.  It has priority on the railroad.
I watch as the piggybacked trailers climbed the Tehachapi Grade.  A steel train sits on the secondary siding; it has a red light and waits in the hole.  The refrigerated train passes.  The crews give a friendly wave.
That is working on the railroad.  It is a dangerous job.  It is a rigorous job, yet there is always a friendly salute to a fellow railroader, to a passing kid.  That is working on the railroad, always a wave, yet always alert.
The train rolls onward.  Through the town of Tehachapi, it has conquered the Tehachapi Loop on its climb of the mountains.  Downward into the Mojave, the train rolls to the lonely desert.  As night falls, the train will get a fresh crew in Barstow and continue its trek towards Kansas City.  Its trek eastward, delivering California’s freshness to Fifth Avenue.

Back to Barstow

My Christmas present this year is a trip to Barstow.  Sixty trains a day ply the rails.  Refrigerated trains carry goods from California valleys to the east coast.  Amongst the throttling trains, my artist’s muse refills my spirit for another year’s drawing.

BNSF ES44AC by Andy Fletcher

Take An Amtrak Vacation

Have you ever ridden Amtrak? Amtrak has local and long distance services throughout all parts of the country.

Amtrak trains connect such cities as-

Seattle to Chicago
Los Angeles to Chicago
Oakland to Chicago
Los Angeles to New Orleans
New York City to Chicago
New York City to New Orleans
New York City to Washington, DC

Amtrak offers many Regional trains. Long distance trains serve cities along their routes and make connections by bus and rail.

Amtrak also offers metropolitan commuter services in many of America’s cities.

Amtrak’s trains and buses offer services to riders with disabilities.

Go to amtrak.com for Senior, AAA, Military, Veteran, and Child discounts from 10-50%.

Amtrak B40-8P drawing by Andy Fletcher

Green Collar Job: Locomotive Building

The locomotive of the future is here today, and with it a growing green collar job-locomotive building. Evolution Series Diesel-Electrics, “The World’s Cleanest Locomotives” roll out of General Electric’s Erie, Pennsylvania, plant. Built by American workers, these locomotives are the product of five years and $250 million of research and development by the modern railroad industry.
GE Transportation, which built 907 “ World’s Cleanest Locomotives” in 2007 employs 5,000 workers at Erie. General Electric has orders for hundreds more.
The infrastructure of transportation is tied to America. Transportation jobs, by their nature, cannot be outsourced. The future of this transportation lies in locomotives, which can pull a ton of freight, on average, over 400 miles. Although locomotives can be built overseas, General Electric has chosen to keep its plant in the United States.
Locomotives have evolved due to more stringent standards of the EPA. Locomotives had no emission standards prior to 2000. The EPA mandated emissions be lowered to 500 parts per million by 2007 and 15 parts per million by 2012. This is done in two ways-
1. By remanufacturing existing locomotives.
2. By purchasing new locomotives.
Railroads have already stepped up to the 2007 standard. Much of the locomotive rebuilding done was done in the United States. Many of the locomotives purchased came from General Electric and were built at Erie by US workers. The industry researches and prepares to build its next “Cleanest Locomotives.” American green collar workers build today’s locomotives now and will build the next generation of locomotives tomorrow.

http://www.getransportation.com/na/en/aboutus.html
Final Report Scoping Study to Evaluate Locomotive Emissions Operating in New Haven, Connecticut and Potential Control Options
June 2006 prepared by NESCAUM

Roll Into the Night

East bound rolls into the night

Into the morning and into the night

Forever I roll across America

The steel rail glistens along the way

Into the night and into the day

The streamlined cars roll

Across a land so big

Places to go Places to be and places to go

Across the mountains and across the plains

Across the rivers, wide and mighty

Past picked-fences and broken glass allies

Neon lit nights, sunrise in valleys

Mailboxes on roads, the engineer waves

A tractor tills soil; a dog chases its tail

The locomotive plies onward

Into the night and into the day

The cars sail clickity-clack

The crossing gate dings

Across our land the east bound sings

Bacon hits griddle and sizzles; the farmers arise

Into the morning the eastbound flies

Down the track stands Chicago, for where my ticket is punched

Loved ones await my arrival

We will talk over a cup of joe

What I saw in America

How it rises in the morning and dreams at night

Where it tucks its head as the stars twinkle down

What the highways and byways appear like while rolling In an eastbound train

Across the land we love

The sun rises again; dawn cracks its head

The morning mail in, the mail trucks sit idle

Hungry for the express car’s bags Into Union Station our Zephyr glides

Here I am

Chicago