Doobie_D
The Slack Action Hero
I got to thinking about this story the other day so i figured i'd write it out. Bout time i did this.
This particular story begins in the Gentilly yard. Its late Febuary.. 2007. The daylight had just faded away and there was a GM sitting on the out bound track closest to the jungle. We had just finished cooking up some rice and beans in an old 211 tall can (gotta do what ya gotta do). I wandered over to talk to a worker who was checking the hoses. He said "ayup this here's a hot shot all the way to Pensacola. All the way. Leavin in 15 minutes". Awesome! I think to myself. I return to the jungle to fetch Kayla. We find a nice Cadillac grainer and settle in for the ride. As promised the string airs up for the brake test and shortly after we lurch forward and creep outta the yard.
We watch the swampy Louisiana landscape fly by in darkness. After an hour or so we decide to roll out our bedrolls for the night. I woke up briefly to see that we were stopped in the Mobile yard for the crew change. Back to sleep. Just a bit after the sun cracked the horizon we woke up and made some cold instant coffee. The train was meandering thru a nice, desolate stretch of track (my favorite part about riding) somewhere in southern Alabama. No houses or grade crossings. Just miles of trees on either side of the track.
Then we reached Flomaton! I cursed that rat bastard worker as we continued straight ahead and past the right hand curve that led to the Florida state line. So damn close!!! No worries i think to myself. Just a slight detour thru Montgomery. We had never been there before so i was kind of excited to check it out. It was a pretty nice ride. Lots of winding wilderness scenery. "Georgiana, Alabama. Home of Hank Williams" a sign facing the railroad tracks proclaims. Soon the small towns and wilderness gave way to the suburbs of Montgomery. Our train slowed down and crawled its way into the Chester yard. The power disconnected and we made a stealthy getaway into the nearest woods and bushwacked it to a road.
Once we got our bearings we headed towards downtown. The city was like a ghost town save for a few cars. Montgomery has this creepy feeling in the air. Its like all those years of racial tension got perma-stuck in the air or something. We managed to find an old man walking down the street and he pointed us in the direction of the library. We checked the Bullsheet and found that there was a Waycross bound daily train that came thru at roughly 7am. Armed with our knowledge we started our 5 mile walk out to the S&N yard.
On the way the sky started mean muggin us and threatening rain. We found an open truck trailer in a secluded, rundown looking lot and we decided to bed down there for the night. All night it stormed its ass off.
In the morning we made the rest of the walk to the waiting spot. At roughly 9am (around the time our ride was supposed to arrive) A nice GM loaded to the hilt with open boxcars in the middle of the consist pulled up to the yard office. We hopped in the closest one and waited. A light drizzle started up. The train broke air and the units started working the yard for about 3 hours. Then they re-attach and we end up sitting 4 more hours. At this point the light drizzle turned into a pitch blackened sky and giant hail. We thanked the hobo gods for providing us with this bountiful train of open boxcars. Then we heard the fire siren. The winds were really picking up bad at this point too. I didnt know if the siren was for something else or the storm. Later i found it was because of the storm:
February–March 2007 tornado outbreak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
About an hour into the hailing and winds our train jerks to life. Cool. At least were on the move i think. We roll for about an hour and then the train stops dead on the main line. I look ahead and can see the brakemans light bobbing up and down as he walks back a couple cars (he was setting the brake). It was so windy giant limbs of trees were snapping all over the place. At this point we are getting kinda freaked out. A van pulls up to pick up the crew and i decide to flash my light at them in hopes they would take pity on us and give us a lift to civilization. No dice. I watch the van pull off into the darkness.
We bed down for the night and hope for the best. All night our boxcar was rocking back and forth like crazy and the wind was howling like a stuck pig. Sometime before daylight we started to move again but we just went back to sleep relived that we were moving along the track and not in the air. In the morning the sun was out and we were at a stand still again. When i peeked out of the boxcar it looked like a war zone. There were tree limbs EVERYWHERE and we were again in the middle of nowhere with forest on either side. We packed up and waited. A couple hours later the air came up. We continued on our way down the Meridian and Bigbee Railroad (the signs proclaimed) at our usual breakneck 20 miles per hour. A couple miles into it we went thru a town and i noticed the water tower mentioning we had just missed out on Selma, AL. A quick look at my rail map confirmed we could have got off and caught NS to Mobile and been on a decent rail line again. Oh well. We continued on at about the pace of a brisk bicycle ride. It took us the rest of the day to make the 54 miles to Linden, AL. On the way there i noticed that on either side of the tracks the foliage and smaller trees were all fucked up and i counted 13 different derailed cars along the right of way. The train stopped in a "rural hood" right next to some folks having a BBQ. We asked them if there was a store nearby and they told us " fo sho fo sho, downtown bout 3 miles dat away". We de-trained and started hoofing it. When we got to the head end the crew happened to be getting off too. I asked the engineer what the deal was with this line and he said, in a thick southern drawl "Man, we fear for our own lives on this stretch of track. Yall are crazy for ridin back there. But the next crew will be here in 5 hours to take yall down the line" So we walked into town in search of food and water.
We were digging thru a Dollar General dumpster and this nerdy lookin white dude pulls up and cracks his window just a hair and pushs a $20 bill out. We got some staple foods inside DG and some beer at a little conveiniance store. As we were walking back to the train we hear "ah my favorite kind of tourists". It was an old bearded hippy dude. He asked us how in the hell we ended up in Linden. We told him of our ordeal and ended up hangin out with him for a bit. He told us that if we were trying to get to Florida we should try the Alabama & Gulf Coast Railroad up in Magnolia. We told him we'd consider it and thanks. Since we knew nothing about the AGR's operations we just decided to suck it up and ride it out.
We cooked up some goodies and drank up our 6% steel reserve and knocked off. Woke up the next day rollin and made it as far as Pennington, AL. Our train worked a Georgia Pacific yard for HOURS!! till finally we were cut out in this yard in the middle of nowhere. We figured that was it. End of the game. So we walked to the tiny office and asked the stunned workers were the closest town was. They looked at us like we were ghosts but managed to point us towards the only mom and pop store in the area that was still 5 miles away. We tried hitching our way there while walking but got no takers. It was so back woods i expected horses and wagons to come rolling by and give us a lift. The store was literally at a cross roads of tiny farm roads with nothing in sight for miles in any direction. I checked the dumpster around back a there was a shit ton of white boxes filled with half eaten meals of fried catfish, corn bread, black eyed peas, collard greens etc.. Delicious! We were scarffing down the "trash" and a black couple came up to us and gave us $2. At least folks are friendly around "these here parts" i think to myself. We checked our maps and determined our best course of action was to either hitch to Demopolis which was about the biggest looking town within 100 miles or just go back to Linden and try the ACR. We started walking down state road 114 and we heard a train blow its whistle. Our train? I decided we should walk back to the store just to check it out. When we got back to the store our train was parked right before the road and the engineer was walking into the store!!!! We quickly ran down the train looking for a ride. We saw 2 Ghetto G lookin workers walking the train and they told us there was an open boxcar 12 cars or so back and they would wait till we got on to give the engineer the ok to pull. 5 minutes after settling in the air came up and we were off. We waved to the workers on the way outta town.
This next stretch of track was hands down the worst part we had encountered yet. We were running 10 mph tops and the boxcar was rocking back and forth so bad i seriously considered just jumping off in the middle of nowhere. It felt like the wheels were lifting up off the track from side to side. We went about 30 miles and the train went dead again. We watched the crew get picked up at a crossing. Where we stopped there was 3 derailed grainers just chillin in the woods across from us. We said fuck it, we are not gonna ride this shoddy ass death line another mile. We pilaged the units for water and started walking down a desolate county road.. destination unknown. We walked about 7 miles or so and got to Highway 10. And we learned we were in Yantley, AL (look it up, its not even really on a map) There was a store so we got some cardboard and made a sign for Meridian cause it was 22 miles up the road and finally.. a city! We got 5 minutes of hitchin in when the store owner came out and said "god damn it! I thought i told you mother fuckers to get the fuck out of my town! Im callin the sheriff again. I know he told you not to get off that train till its outta the county" It turned out that earlier in the day there was another unfortunate couple that ended up doing about the same shit we just went thru and the sheriff MADE them get on the train of death just to get them outta town. The store owner went in to call the cops and just at that time this old yellow eyed black dude pulled up and asked us where we were headed. He said he was going into Meridian to visit his wife who was in the hospital. Talk about luck. Id be damned if i was gettin back on that train again. So he gave us a ride and on the way told us he was an old black panther originally from Pennington and he had been a part of the Selma to Montgomery marches. He was a pretty interesting dude. We got to Meridian and we had him drop us off at the Amtrak station. I had to piss really bad so i ran inside really quick to use the bathroom (mistake). Apparently while i was in there dude man propositioned Kayla. He told her he'd giver $100 for a quickie. She told him to fuck off and that he should be ashamed of himself. Luckily he didnt push it any further. That night we slept by the tracks and the next day while walking around town we caught a glimpse of a dirty kid going into a gas station. When he came out it turned out to be our friend Sprout. Apparently him and our other friend Timmy had hitched to Jackson, MS and met this old crackhead homebum named cyclops who took them on their first train ride. They rode a KCS unit and midway thru their trip the conductor found then sleeping on the floor of the 3rd unit and thought they were a family of illegal mexicans so he called them in. They ended up doing 70 days in county. Crazy shit. We hung out for awhile in Meridian (another one of those creepy, southern, racially tense towns) We had a badass camp in an old abandoned putt putt golf course, explored parts of the city and split ways. They hitched up to Birmingham and we dirty dogged it to Pensacola.
The moral of this story... If you should find yourself on the M&B RR get off the first chance you get and run very far away from it. On a side note, about 2 months after riding this line a tressle that crossed the Bigbee river collapsed while the head end of the train was going over it and killed the entire crew. M&B has got to be one of the most dangerous operating line out there.
Hope yall enjoyed
This particular story begins in the Gentilly yard. Its late Febuary.. 2007. The daylight had just faded away and there was a GM sitting on the out bound track closest to the jungle. We had just finished cooking up some rice and beans in an old 211 tall can (gotta do what ya gotta do). I wandered over to talk to a worker who was checking the hoses. He said "ayup this here's a hot shot all the way to Pensacola. All the way. Leavin in 15 minutes". Awesome! I think to myself. I return to the jungle to fetch Kayla. We find a nice Cadillac grainer and settle in for the ride. As promised the string airs up for the brake test and shortly after we lurch forward and creep outta the yard.
We watch the swampy Louisiana landscape fly by in darkness. After an hour or so we decide to roll out our bedrolls for the night. I woke up briefly to see that we were stopped in the Mobile yard for the crew change. Back to sleep. Just a bit after the sun cracked the horizon we woke up and made some cold instant coffee. The train was meandering thru a nice, desolate stretch of track (my favorite part about riding) somewhere in southern Alabama. No houses or grade crossings. Just miles of trees on either side of the track.
Then we reached Flomaton! I cursed that rat bastard worker as we continued straight ahead and past the right hand curve that led to the Florida state line. So damn close!!! No worries i think to myself. Just a slight detour thru Montgomery. We had never been there before so i was kind of excited to check it out. It was a pretty nice ride. Lots of winding wilderness scenery. "Georgiana, Alabama. Home of Hank Williams" a sign facing the railroad tracks proclaims. Soon the small towns and wilderness gave way to the suburbs of Montgomery. Our train slowed down and crawled its way into the Chester yard. The power disconnected and we made a stealthy getaway into the nearest woods and bushwacked it to a road.
Once we got our bearings we headed towards downtown. The city was like a ghost town save for a few cars. Montgomery has this creepy feeling in the air. Its like all those years of racial tension got perma-stuck in the air or something. We managed to find an old man walking down the street and he pointed us in the direction of the library. We checked the Bullsheet and found that there was a Waycross bound daily train that came thru at roughly 7am. Armed with our knowledge we started our 5 mile walk out to the S&N yard.
On the way the sky started mean muggin us and threatening rain. We found an open truck trailer in a secluded, rundown looking lot and we decided to bed down there for the night. All night it stormed its ass off.
In the morning we made the rest of the walk to the waiting spot. At roughly 9am (around the time our ride was supposed to arrive) A nice GM loaded to the hilt with open boxcars in the middle of the consist pulled up to the yard office. We hopped in the closest one and waited. A light drizzle started up. The train broke air and the units started working the yard for about 3 hours. Then they re-attach and we end up sitting 4 more hours. At this point the light drizzle turned into a pitch blackened sky and giant hail. We thanked the hobo gods for providing us with this bountiful train of open boxcars. Then we heard the fire siren. The winds were really picking up bad at this point too. I didnt know if the siren was for something else or the storm. Later i found it was because of the storm:
February–March 2007 tornado outbreak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
About an hour into the hailing and winds our train jerks to life. Cool. At least were on the move i think. We roll for about an hour and then the train stops dead on the main line. I look ahead and can see the brakemans light bobbing up and down as he walks back a couple cars (he was setting the brake). It was so windy giant limbs of trees were snapping all over the place. At this point we are getting kinda freaked out. A van pulls up to pick up the crew and i decide to flash my light at them in hopes they would take pity on us and give us a lift to civilization. No dice. I watch the van pull off into the darkness.
We bed down for the night and hope for the best. All night our boxcar was rocking back and forth like crazy and the wind was howling like a stuck pig. Sometime before daylight we started to move again but we just went back to sleep relived that we were moving along the track and not in the air. In the morning the sun was out and we were at a stand still again. When i peeked out of the boxcar it looked like a war zone. There were tree limbs EVERYWHERE and we were again in the middle of nowhere with forest on either side. We packed up and waited. A couple hours later the air came up. We continued on our way down the Meridian and Bigbee Railroad (the signs proclaimed) at our usual breakneck 20 miles per hour. A couple miles into it we went thru a town and i noticed the water tower mentioning we had just missed out on Selma, AL. A quick look at my rail map confirmed we could have got off and caught NS to Mobile and been on a decent rail line again. Oh well. We continued on at about the pace of a brisk bicycle ride. It took us the rest of the day to make the 54 miles to Linden, AL. On the way there i noticed that on either side of the tracks the foliage and smaller trees were all fucked up and i counted 13 different derailed cars along the right of way. The train stopped in a "rural hood" right next to some folks having a BBQ. We asked them if there was a store nearby and they told us " fo sho fo sho, downtown bout 3 miles dat away". We de-trained and started hoofing it. When we got to the head end the crew happened to be getting off too. I asked the engineer what the deal was with this line and he said, in a thick southern drawl "Man, we fear for our own lives on this stretch of track. Yall are crazy for ridin back there. But the next crew will be here in 5 hours to take yall down the line" So we walked into town in search of food and water.
We were digging thru a Dollar General dumpster and this nerdy lookin white dude pulls up and cracks his window just a hair and pushs a $20 bill out. We got some staple foods inside DG and some beer at a little conveiniance store. As we were walking back to the train we hear "ah my favorite kind of tourists". It was an old bearded hippy dude. He asked us how in the hell we ended up in Linden. We told him of our ordeal and ended up hangin out with him for a bit. He told us that if we were trying to get to Florida we should try the Alabama & Gulf Coast Railroad up in Magnolia. We told him we'd consider it and thanks. Since we knew nothing about the AGR's operations we just decided to suck it up and ride it out.
We cooked up some goodies and drank up our 6% steel reserve and knocked off. Woke up the next day rollin and made it as far as Pennington, AL. Our train worked a Georgia Pacific yard for HOURS!! till finally we were cut out in this yard in the middle of nowhere. We figured that was it. End of the game. So we walked to the tiny office and asked the stunned workers were the closest town was. They looked at us like we were ghosts but managed to point us towards the only mom and pop store in the area that was still 5 miles away. We tried hitching our way there while walking but got no takers. It was so back woods i expected horses and wagons to come rolling by and give us a lift. The store was literally at a cross roads of tiny farm roads with nothing in sight for miles in any direction. I checked the dumpster around back a there was a shit ton of white boxes filled with half eaten meals of fried catfish, corn bread, black eyed peas, collard greens etc.. Delicious! We were scarffing down the "trash" and a black couple came up to us and gave us $2. At least folks are friendly around "these here parts" i think to myself. We checked our maps and determined our best course of action was to either hitch to Demopolis which was about the biggest looking town within 100 miles or just go back to Linden and try the ACR. We started walking down state road 114 and we heard a train blow its whistle. Our train? I decided we should walk back to the store just to check it out. When we got back to the store our train was parked right before the road and the engineer was walking into the store!!!! We quickly ran down the train looking for a ride. We saw 2 Ghetto G lookin workers walking the train and they told us there was an open boxcar 12 cars or so back and they would wait till we got on to give the engineer the ok to pull. 5 minutes after settling in the air came up and we were off. We waved to the workers on the way outta town.
This next stretch of track was hands down the worst part we had encountered yet. We were running 10 mph tops and the boxcar was rocking back and forth so bad i seriously considered just jumping off in the middle of nowhere. It felt like the wheels were lifting up off the track from side to side. We went about 30 miles and the train went dead again. We watched the crew get picked up at a crossing. Where we stopped there was 3 derailed grainers just chillin in the woods across from us. We said fuck it, we are not gonna ride this shoddy ass death line another mile. We pilaged the units for water and started walking down a desolate county road.. destination unknown. We walked about 7 miles or so and got to Highway 10. And we learned we were in Yantley, AL (look it up, its not even really on a map) There was a store so we got some cardboard and made a sign for Meridian cause it was 22 miles up the road and finally.. a city! We got 5 minutes of hitchin in when the store owner came out and said "god damn it! I thought i told you mother fuckers to get the fuck out of my town! Im callin the sheriff again. I know he told you not to get off that train till its outta the county" It turned out that earlier in the day there was another unfortunate couple that ended up doing about the same shit we just went thru and the sheriff MADE them get on the train of death just to get them outta town. The store owner went in to call the cops and just at that time this old yellow eyed black dude pulled up and asked us where we were headed. He said he was going into Meridian to visit his wife who was in the hospital. Talk about luck. Id be damned if i was gettin back on that train again. So he gave us a ride and on the way told us he was an old black panther originally from Pennington and he had been a part of the Selma to Montgomery marches. He was a pretty interesting dude. We got to Meridian and we had him drop us off at the Amtrak station. I had to piss really bad so i ran inside really quick to use the bathroom (mistake). Apparently while i was in there dude man propositioned Kayla. He told her he'd giver $100 for a quickie. She told him to fuck off and that he should be ashamed of himself. Luckily he didnt push it any further. That night we slept by the tracks and the next day while walking around town we caught a glimpse of a dirty kid going into a gas station. When he came out it turned out to be our friend Sprout. Apparently him and our other friend Timmy had hitched to Jackson, MS and met this old crackhead homebum named cyclops who took them on their first train ride. They rode a KCS unit and midway thru their trip the conductor found then sleeping on the floor of the 3rd unit and thought they were a family of illegal mexicans so he called them in. They ended up doing 70 days in county. Crazy shit. We hung out for awhile in Meridian (another one of those creepy, southern, racially tense towns) We had a badass camp in an old abandoned putt putt golf course, explored parts of the city and split ways. They hitched up to Birmingham and we dirty dogged it to Pensacola.
The moral of this story... If you should find yourself on the M&B RR get off the first chance you get and run very far away from it. On a side note, about 2 months after riding this line a tressle that crossed the Bigbee river collapsed while the head end of the train was going over it and killed the entire crew. M&B has got to be one of the most dangerous operating line out there.
Hope yall enjoyed
