Sidetracked and Nearly Derailed

 

"I thought I had died and gone to heaven! The consulting company I worked for at the time, Planes, Trains & Automobiles (PTA), had chosen me to take part in the biggest railroad survey ever conducted anywhere in the world," Tom Huff reports from Chicago. "PTA had been hired by an umbrella group of big freight-carrying railroad lines to perform a redundancy study to defend proposed cutbacks, consolidation and proposed mergers in rail freight services nationwide. The findings were to be presented to the U.S. Department of Transportation as well as to several Congressional oversight committees, where they would be entered in evidence as ex parte verified statements. I’m an avid model railroader and have been in love with trains since I was 4 years old. I was just thrilled when I was asked to ride trains for the next 10 months as I documented the condition of railway equipment, rolling stock, rail bed, tracks and the amount of freight hauled by rail from one place to another over various routes. Darn, that was a heck of a lot of fun!"

Tom, his boss and two colleagues spent the better part of 1983 riding trains through deserts, high mountains, prairies, forests, cities and towns across the United States.

"I was having so much fun hanging out with the engineer and train crews that I didn’t properly document …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.