Traveling Outside of Time
In the cab of the locomotive, the Starlight’s two engineers now have some unwanted free time on their hands. I’m a little disappointed to note that they don’t wear overalls or steel-toed engineer boots or those nifty blue and white striped cloth hats with bills. But at least they have nicknames. The engineer at the controls is Porkchop; his co-worker – they trade off throughout their 318-mile stint – is Butterball. They are both philosophical about the delay. Butterball, also known as the Galloping Gourmet because of his skill at preparing Hungryman TV dinners on top of the big diesel engine, tucks into his brown-bag lunch. Porkchop, a thirty-year Amtrak veteran who dreams of opening an art gallery when he retires, leans back in his chair and starts talking about the job.
“Hours of boredom punctuated by minutes of sheer terror,” he says with a laugh. Butterball chews his sandwich and nods in agreement. Then they regale me with tales of what they and other engineers of their acquaintance have hit, from deer, elk and the occasional owl to a pick-up truck full of grain (which spilled out and filled the cab up to engineers’ necks) to their all-time favorite accident: a house. It was on the back of a flatbed making its way across the tracks at 5 mph. “Anything that can get in your way, does,” says Porkchop. Then they both nod sagely.