Trains Go Nuts 0

I worked for the railroad. The railroad can be a squirrelly place.

Once, I was riding my regular SEPTA train from Narberth to Suburban Station about this time of year. The previous night had been windy, causing a significant fall of leaves. When the engineer tried to slow for Merion, the cover of the leaves on the tracks acted like grease and we slid right through Merion all the way to Overbrook.

I should have known something was wrong when I saw the conductor running towards the rear car . . . .

Then there was the time I slept through a derailment.

I was in the sleeper, which was just behind the baggage car towards the head end.

When the train started to pull in Providence, the rear coach derailed. The crew cut it off and dragged the rest of the train on to Boston, where we arrived on time (there was a lot of fat in the schedule for the overnight train to Boston, so it wouldn’t arrive too early, like at five).

I didn’t even wake up.

But this was truly squirrelly.

While thousands of commuters cursed the fates and blamed aging infrastructure of the delays during the evening commute on Oct. 4, the real culprit was a squirrel that came into contact with a circuit-breaker, Amtrak spokesman Cliff Cole told The Record of Woodland Park.

The circuit-breaker damage caused an electrical transformer to trip and a signal that guides locomotive engineers to go dark.