Source: keamoose on facebook.

My dad was a Burlington Northern engineer for most of my childhood so with me being a kid and him doing that, we always had a little bond with trains. Trains in particular were one of the few things we talked about. I had more hats with the white and green BN than I can count and for many years I thought it was the number three with teeth.

Many a time I rode Amtrak while he was at the helm…

Anyways, he stayed pretty much around the mid-west but would sometimes talk about the locomotives out in Colorado, needing to plow through the winter snow.

When I was out in Oregon, before the Microsoft gig, Union Pacific advertised for a mass public hiring so I went to the gathering. There were maybe 50 people there and after they jerked us around for a couple of hours, they told us that they would only be hiring applicants with heavy machinery experience. Of course I just left.

Before I went though, I told my dad about it and he was pretty excited, probably for himself as much for me, and probably even more than when I told him about getting hired by Microsoft about six months later.

I didn’t need a job with the railroad anyway — long hours away from home and that whole industry wants to move to unmanned trains whether they say so or not.

Funny/not funny related news: the first month I was at Microsoft, this happened: Switching yard accident sends 17 cars rumbling through Portland.

#confessional #trains #videos #HeavyMachina