It Helps to Know the Engineer

In 1993, AMTRAK was testing two European high speed trainsets, the Swedish X2000 and German ICE. The two trains were sent on a tour of the system, to show off the potential of high speed rail. Since both were electrically powered, and there is no electrification outside of the route between Washington DC and Boston,  AMTRAK put two of their turbine locomotives on the back to push it around. The proposed American builder of the X2000 was located in Elmira, New York, a town near to where I lived. As part of the tour, the train was sent to be displayed at the proposed factory.

The routing of the train to Elmira took it down a backwoods branchline that in the last 40 years had only seen an occasional special passenger train. The branch only hosted a couple of local freight trains a day. A railfan friend of mine, Don, was the regular engineer on those local freights, but whenever a passenger special came available he'd volunteer for the job. So of course he got to run this special.

Another friend and I took the day off from work to chase this train. We picked it up on the mainline, our intention to follow it all the way down the branch to Elmira. We had our radios on, and Don helped us out by making periodic announcements of his location. Things went fine for awhile, till we heard on our radio a call to the dispatcher from Don. Apparently the turbine locomotives had both died, leaving the train stuck in the middle of nowhere. Since we knew just where it was, and were close by, we went to the nearest crossing then drove down along the tracks until we came to the stalled train. On our way there, Don and the on board managers had decided that if they couldn't get the turbines restarted, that he would have to get the locomotive from his local freight to pull the train to Elmira. Normally that would have involved calling the dispatcher and waiting hours while he found someone to drive out, ferry Don to where the freight was, etc. But hey! We were on the scene with a vehicle, and promptly volunteered our services to drive Don to pickup the other locomotive. Everyone was pretty happy about that. So much so that they gave us a tour of the train while we were all waiting as they tried to restart the turbines. And not just a quick tour, but The Grand Tour, normally reserved for politicians and other VIPs. Ultimately they did get the turbines going, we finished our tour, and we all proceeded on our way to Elmira as originally planned.