We’re a long way from Kamloops.
There are stories hidden in the faded and scarred paint; tales of hard miles and withering labour since the day she earned her diploma from the Building 10 Institute 27 years ago.
Somewhere along the way switch points aligned and wheels clattered across a frog, knuckles closed and gladhands mated and a snowbird found herself captive within a brace of foreign road cousins dressed in swoosh and orange, thumbing a ride on a frac sand train bound for the Delaware Basin drillings deep in the desert Southwest, where the weather in March is decidedly more toward her liking than the frigid heights and frightful grades of the Canadian Rockies.
Given a preference, she could get used to the gentle run down the Pecos River valley; a proverbial walk in the park, and the dry climate is good for one’s health, they say.
Old man Hagerman had a good thing here.
But the dispatchers in Fort Worth have other plans, and a fresh crew is on the way to throttle her out of her reverie and send her back north for another heavy train of hoppers.
There is little rest for the weary, or the aged.
Her passport has been stamped, and as long as her cylinders compress diesel and she can juice up traction motors, and the economy sees fit to keep her employed, she’ll ramble.
“Have FDL. Will travel”---
Until someone in Montreal says otherwise.
**
In the coupled company of BNSF GEs, Canadian National’s 1994-built Class EF-644a, General Electric Dash 9-44WL 2508 idles away a March 21st, 2021, Sunday morning at the Occidental Petroleum frac sand facility in Loving, New Mexico.