# Union Pacific Unit Taxi Service



## spidermonkey (Feb 27, 2010)

Late January '08

so i was in frisco and needed to clean up a little bit and decided to head up to portland, knowing there wouldnt be a whole lot of street musician competition in the dead of winter....
we {me and budy dog} catch the bart over to oakland in the afternoon and by nightfall are on a reefer porch to roseville....after re-uppin on booze and food in roseville we get on a single open box on a train that looks as if its heading to portland....well in the middle of the nite i wake up going over donner pass with over a foot of snow in the door of the box...
ride through sparks cause it was way to cold to get out of the bag and put it away and climb around finding a ride back west in the early morning hours....hours later its daylight and warm enough to at least sit up in the bag and try to get down some beers while laughing at the situation....several hours before darkness falls, we pull into elko....we didnt stop out by albertsons so i was bummed i was gonna have to walk the several miles from the yard back to town in several feet of snow....
train stops in yard, i get off, hop strings to the main run where the snow is knocked down a little and start walking to the access road when a vehicle comes by....having never had a problem in elko, i flag em down and it stops and the window rolls down to a cool lookin fella and i say 
"howdy sir, i was on that junker just come in, caught her in roseville and thought for sure i was goin to portland but ended up here, i cant hack this snow, ya'll got anything headed back roseville way?"
he says "yeh there was this mudslide north of k-falls and we're seein shit we never see here, one you came in on is headed to hinkle, then probly portland" {so i WAS right!!}
so i ask some questions bout the slide and we bullshit a bit then he says
"bout 9 tonite theres the RPRV to roseville, catch it on the track closest the office, everyone round here is pretty cool, good luck" and i continue my walk through the deep snow several miles to albertsons....
get to albertsons, panhandle up beer and food, and while packing it all away this cool fella bullshits with me and ends up offerin me a ride to the yard....so he gives me a ride to U.P. ave and i get out and start heading towards the yard office building...well i spot an old open boxcar on a service track rite next to the main and i start heading towards it, well theres this white explorer thats been gaining on me slowly and rite before i get to the box, i decide he's close enough to see me and having no fear in this yard i approach it, well the window rolls down and i say
"howdy sir, got sent out this way by accident thanks to the mudslide, tryin to get back to callifornia, talked to a fella earlier that said RPRV comes in at 9 and i was headin to that box to wait for it"
he says
"im the trainmaster and im not supposed to let you ride"
so i say
"sir, i cant handle this cold and we're just tryin to get outa here"
he says
"you think this is cold??"
no shit, two foot of snow, middle of the night, thats what he says...haha

so he lets me wait in the box and tells me the trains late and about 11pm here it comes....so it breaks air, but the units still sit there, and after about a half an hour i go get on the 2nd unit cause its so cold...
well im sleeping and rite before sunrise this fella who looks younger than me comes in and i jump awake and he says
"sorry to wake ya, go back to sleep, we're fixin to leave"
we pull within a few minutes and i do as he suggested, haha

well rite before winnemuca he comes back again and says he's the conductor and wishes me luck and gives me his lunch he didnt eat.....i figure "hell with it" and decide not to hide and just sit rite there, so this old mean looking man comes on my unit in winnemuca to sign on, and i try to defuse the situation with kindness....i say
"hi my names ------ and im sorry to be on your power but its so cold out there" and he says "i dont wanna know you, dont touch nothin" and leaves, and we pull shortly thereafter....
well the ride is warm and beautiful from the unit and uneventful, and we hit portola...in portola the conductor of the new crew come back and we meet and he's cool and we pull....well at the keddie Y we stop....after an hour or so this big guy, the engineer comes back to my unit, he is suprised by me cause the conductor hadnt snitched me off, but we get to talkin and he's cool as hell, turns out he had been with UP for over 30 years and had seniority in the sierras and could have whatever runs he wanted, well we talk for at least an hour and he tells me theres a split rail and a downed tree and we're down till a crew comes out and fixes em both....well after another 2 hours of waiting and talking, i mention that im just going to go back to frisco, hell with it, and that im going to have to catch an oakland bound outa roseville....well he tells me that the engineer of the train stacked up behind ours is an ole friend of his, and that they die in martinez and put on a local crew to oakland....i say "that would rock!"
so he gets on the radio, asks his buddy to jump channels, once on the other channel he says "how about some passenger service" and the other engineer says "whos the passenger?" and he says "he's alrite, i been talking with him for hours, he's been ridin the rails for years, good guy, got a dog"
and the other engineer says "alrite, but you owe me one, i'll pull up, out him on the 3rd"

and sure as hell, rite at the Beautiful keddie Y, in the dead of january winter during a beautiful giant-flake snowstorm, buddy and i got to jump from the stairs of one unit, to the stairs of another, without touching the snow, for a more direct ride towrds our destination, with full approval of both crews.....

well, the engineer of the train i was now on comes back a few minutes later and tells me we'll prolly be pulling within the hour cause they got the rail fixed and we're cleaning up the down tree, he tells me that he knows the fellas coming on in martinez and that he'll tell them about me, and for me to hit the CALL button when i wanted them to stop so i could get off safely....i say "desert yard, sir" and thank him........he leaves, i sleep...

i wake up and jump up and look out the window...emeryville...so i pack up...the train is goin slow so when i hit the call button by the bridge overpasses in desert yard we stop pretty quickly....we get off and give a salute to the head unit, they toot salute back and roll....

and thats how it went

so on a side note, i had just gotten into roseville just over a year later and see that same conductor from the portola crew from this story while im panhandling at 7-11 on cirby....he radioed for me and gave me the pull time and track # i needed to know
=o)

another funny side note....when i was bullshitting with the engineer or the portola crew at keddie, he asked me if the guys that came on in winnemuca had seen me, and i said yeah and descibed the guy who did and our brief "conversation"....well he starts laughing his ass off and says "no shit"....i dont get it so i ask him whats funny and he says "i ben working with that guy for over 20 years and he's never said a word to me, never talks to anyone, we figured he didnt even have a heart".......

goes to show ya, you never know


----------



## BUMJUG (Feb 27, 2010)

sweet story yo.....feels good to hear this kinda stuff...


----------



## wildboy860 (Feb 28, 2010)

fuckin awesome story yo!!


----------



## threehalfgallons (Feb 28, 2010)

thats pretty sweet.
hearing that stuff makes me think that this isnt necessarily a dying lifestyle.
and that makes me smile.


----------



## veggieguy12 (Feb 28, 2010)

Nice one, dude! Thanks for sharing the tale...


----------



## Pickles (Mar 1, 2010)

Incredible! It's nice to know that there are still people out there that take kindly to hobos. I've chanced it a few times with engineers and conductors and haven't had a bad reaction yet... glad I'm not the only one!

Great story man. Awesome stroke of luck


----------



## kokomojoe (Jan 15, 2016)

I love hearing stories like this.


----------



## atlastalias (Sep 9, 2016)

spidermonkey said:


> Late January '08
> 
> so i was in frisco and needed to clean up a little bit and decided to head up to portland, knowing there wouldnt be a whole lot of street musician competition in the dead of winter....
> we {me and budy dog} catch the bart over to oakland in the afternoon and by nightfall are on a reefer porch to roseville....after re-uppin on booze and food in roseville we get on a single open box on a train that looks as if its heading to portland....well in the middle of the nite i wake up going over donner pass with over a foot of snow in the door of the box...
> ...


"Hit the call button when you want them to stop" lol


----------

