Locomotive Cab Ride

He had a light touch with the 26L automatic handle. All the levers, really. Smooth, despite our rocking back and forth over sectioned rail. I suppose sixty-six years of railroading means his muscles have built up some memory. I noticed he had a few pounds knocked off the train line, with a few notches out on the throttle. We were backing along, headed home, crossing after crossing. "We almost got hit last week by a semi," he reported, dryly. "He was on his phone. Not paying attention." Speaking of dullards, I finally figured out that the brakes-with-power was so that our chief could get his train stopped on a dime the next time there was foolishness behind a wheel.

Richard Long hired out with the Seaboard Air Line at 18 years old. That was in '59. By the early '60s, after a few years as fireman, Mr. Long was right seat in every cab he entered. He was on the point for five different railroads, yet never changed employers. They all changed on him. "Outlasted most of them," he reported. He ran fast freights and faster passengers along the same Air Line main that still cuts through downtown Kingsland; although a glance over along Seaboard Avenue at today's diminished roadbed makes that old Silver speed hard to imagine. At the top of his game, he left the CSX freights for a career bringing Amtrak up out of Florida at track speed. On the Genesis units: "Didn't like 'em. About the ugliest damn locomotive I've ever seen. The F40. Those were good engines." Fair enough. I trust the man with 66 years on the seat. I can see how an Old Head would prefer a proper stand to someone's idea of a desk.

Back to muscle memory. How many notches, how many radio replies, how many long-long-short-longs does a man rack up over six decades of diesel service? Innumerable. That light touch is well earned, and no one can learn on a simulator what those instincts have come to know. He checks his watch. "Been a little while since I've heard from you back there," Mr. Long coolly says into the radio. At 84 years on the planet, a man need not bark at his junior. "Sorry about that!" crackled a reply. From then on, pushing from the front, the Captain heard from the rear about every crossing and gate, right on time. Light touch.

I'm betting retirement ultimately proved unsatisfactory for Mr. Long. No doubt he was glad to shed the pain points of running engines for Big Business — bad trainmasters, distant dispatchers, young guns on the ground. But I bet he missed the throttle. So when St. Marys came calling, with scheduled Saturday slots for hauling tourists, I'm thinking it was not a hard sell. True, this is no Silver Meteor. No hotshot Seaboard pigs or racks. He's not taking the hill by storm in nearby Folkston. (Truth is, I never saw him get us beyond Notch 3, what with the 15 mph flat running.) Still, beats sitting around at home. Muscles with memory need their flex.

"When was this locomotive built?" asks the other guest in the cab, making conversation. "Oh, I bet mid-'60s," Mr. Long surmises, kindly, but not before pausing long enough to signal to his passengers that a cab is not a place for too much chatter. I check the blue sheet. 1966. Indeed, a Straight 38 from the first graduating class, under the care of a man with 7 more years on the rails than the machine he's moving. "These are good engines," he adds, still watching in the mirror as we ease through town. When later I handed him my card and thanked him for the terrific ride, I sheepishly suggested he check us out next time he is on the Internet. Mr. Long kindly took my rectangular paper, studied the information, then admitted, without dismissal or apology, "I don't even own a computer."

Light touch, indeed.