Some Assembly Required

"You know like an erector set or a box of Legos"

"So you are telling me you get paid to play with Legos?"

"Yea basically"



Two flood platform pieces and the stairs

This was a portion of a conversation I had with my teenaged son this week trying to explain to him the flood platforms we were putting together.  Now I will try and explain it to you.  A flood platform is just what it sounds like, a platform to keep our crossing house up off the ground in case of flooding.  It sits about 9' in the air and it does not come all in one piece.  You get a kit that pretty much resembles the adult version of an erector set, a box of bolts and washers and a bunch of different pieces for you to fit together.  It also comes with a vague set of directions that if followed will not get you quite where you need to go. 

The discussion

The platform itself comes in 2 pieces, there are uprights, cross supports, foundation screws and so on and it will go together as described in the directions, the rub comes when you try to set the house on the platform and run cable into it.  If you put the house on the platform as intended, you can not open the front door all the way, nor can you run the cable straight up into the house because there are I-beams and cross members in the way. So we had to get a little creative, slide the house back, cut the grating and rig up 4 aluminum pipes so the cables are not swaying in the breeze. 

So yea I pretty much get paid to play with the big kid version of Legos. 

You can't have a week on the railroad without seeing something strange and this week was no exception.  It was goat week this week here at CSX, it's kind of like shark week, only less teeth.  While setting some 707 boards in Lynchburg yard we ran across a family of goats just wandering down the tracks, Mama, Pappa and a few kids takin a stroll through the yard.  Papa was pretty friendly so we fed him some crackers and then shooed them off the tracks.  That same evening we pulled the boom truck into the hotel parking lot just as a girl came out of a room to get into a Jeep Rubicon.  She was carrying a red bundle all swaddled up like a furry baby.  I looked closer trying to figure out what kind of critter it was and of course, it was a goat.   I know goats are cool and all, but swaddling one up and traveling with it seemed a bit odd to me.