I'm out of class and back on the rails again learning with every trip that I take. I spent the better part of the week going back-and-forth from Glasgow to Minot. On the final trip that I took of the week I spent the early hours of the morning dog catching trains that we're headed back to Glasgow. I'm not sure if I defined dog catching in an earlier post but it essentially means that the crew goes out and meet the train to relieve the crew on board of their duty so that they don't exceed their federally mandated service time of 12 hours. So what that looks like in a not shell is that I am part of the crew that will take a van out to meet the train wherever they are stopped at and we will switch crews out and take the train back to our home terminal and the relieved crew will take the van back to the depot to clock off. I ended up dog catching two trains that day and was off of work by 10 in the morning. It's definitely great to have the entire day and be off from work that early but the flipside to that coin is that I didn't receive my call to work until midnight to go on duty at 1:45 in the morning. So the hardest thing that I would have to say with having to work on call is that I knew that I was rested at eight in the morning the previous day and had to be ready to go on a moments notice throughout the day so I ran some errands and took a mid afternoon nap knowing that I still need to be rested and after waiting for 16 hours I got that call and was ready to go. The only hard thing I guess is not having my family around to be able to share my time with while I am waiting for that call. I have been pushing myself to stay productive with my downtime by taking many trips out to Fort Peck and going on bike rides or trying out several different spots and casting my flyrod out. I haven't had any success as of yet, I hear from a lot of people that it's primarily a spinning rod area and most people out here catch walleyes and not too many people go flyfishing unless they are in western Montana. I got my trailer moved into a different spot and have made a nice cozy little corner out of it.
Now that I'm back and out again with my on-the-job training the class has broken up and were all scattered around so I have been thrown into a box of solitude giving me large amounts of time to reflect on where I'm at in the journey. I definitely miss the comforts of my home and definitely miss being around my family, but I know this was a calling I was a long time coming and a journey that was greatly needed to help repair fractures, provide healing, and restore relationships. Only God knows the outcome of this great chapter in my life and I can only continue to push forward as I seek out the next choices that will present itself in my daily life.
Tomorrow morning, I will get into the car and head to a Boomtown known as Williston, North Dakota to spend the week in the yard. I work at 10 PM to 10 AM shift, and will spend the time setting out railroad cars from the train and building trains from a switch list. From what I hear, it's an interesting town that's been affected by a huge influx of work from all the oil rigs out there and with that influx has come an element of crime and drugs as well. It'll definitely be interesting to see what it's actually like though I'll be spending most of my time in the yard working or trying to be rested for the graveyard shift that I'll be on.
I hope that all of the readers from this blog are at the least getting a little better insight as to what the life is like on the railroad or are finding that I'm doing well out here in this journey that I have taken on. I'd like to thank you all that have tuned in and taken the time to look at my pictures or read my posts. I wish you all well in your days to come and will be back as usual in about a week.
No comments:
Post a Comment