Just another day at the office

The Y129 is a transfer job from the CSX in Louisville to several small regional railroads across the river. The Louisville and Indiana (L&I), the Southern Indiana Railroad (SIND) and 2 other small RRs. The first stop on our day is the L&I. When the train is built back in Louisville they always add the L&I cars to the rear of the train so that we can simply pull into a clear track in the L&I yard and cut those cars off of our train and continue north. Normally, a member of the Y129's crew will make the cut on those cars and then ride the rear car the length of the train and then stop the train and have the train reverse its movement to get that crew member back on the engine at the head end of the train.

At 11:30 this morning, as the crew of the Y129 (of which I was a part of) was making the move explained above from the L&I yard along a very busy road, we watched a crazy guy go crazy. As we pulled forward, we had a pretty busy road crossing blocked for a few minutes.... nothing out of the ordinary for that time of the day. But all of the sudden, a large rock was thrown at the train hitting the nose of the locomotive... just a few feet from my engineer and I sitting in front of wide open windows. We looked around and didn't see any kids or anyone, so we just continued as usual. We then made the reverse movement to pick up the crew member that made the setout at the L&I and he made it back up to the head end. As we passed back by the same area we had been in when the rock hit the locomotive, we saw a very odd looking fellow dressed in all black picking up rocks and throwing them our way... thank God he had bad aim because he wasn't hitting his target... US! Now, these aren't small skipping rocks let me tell you, these are jagged rocks the size of softballs or larger! After the guy got tired of missing us and the train, he turned and picked up the largest rock yet and with both hands above his head, smashed the front windsheild of brand new Ford truck in parking lot behind a row of stores! The brakeman and I just looked at each other and couldn't believe what we just saw! Instantly, I flipped open the cell phone and called the L&I trainmaster and reported the insane guy throwing rocks at us, cars and smashing windows. He, in turn, called the Sheriff. I called back to get the number from him to give them the full story and give them a way to get ahold of me. A lady from the City Police called me around 1pm and said that she didn't get enough information from the L&I to send a "cruiser" to check it out, but now that she had talked to me she would... and I thought to myself "that guy is long gone". So I called back on my way home from work and the 2nd shift police office worker hadn't heard anything of the story and knew nothing. I knew it... he got away! All day long I was really upset and just weirded out by what I saw, and that news just made it worse. I could see this guy breaking into a house, stealing a car, hurting or even killing someone... he just had that kind of look to him and really was that insane.... not to mention that some customer of one of those stores was going to walk out to get in their truck and find the entire front windsheild in the front seat. I got home, got cleaned up and went over to LB's and had dinner. Later on, I got a phone call... on the caller ID it said "private call", so I knew it was probably the police. Sure enough, it was the Sheriff and he was calling me to verify the information he had. After I explained again what happened and what the guy looked like he told me that he had been arrested shortly after I talked to the Police lady that called me! And get this, he had over 10 warrents out on him in Indiana alone! But that wasn't all! He was also wanted in Kentucky and had recently made a get-a-way from a mental prison somewhere in southern KY! WOW!

Just another day at the office.