Destination Unknown
Cab Ride
Admiral Biscuit
Sweetsong did tour the gift shop; it felt like she ought to since she was there. While she didn’t leave with any new purchases tucked in her saddlebags, she did overhear that the Big Boy was going to be moved later, so that it would be in position for a longer excursion tomorrow.
She’d gotten lucky enough to sneak on once, there wasn’t much chance of getting away with it again. Besides, even if she had the bits or the luck to ride it more than once, that wasn’t the point. Every day was a new day, every day should have new experiences. If the fates desired she’d cross paths with 4014 again, maybe out in Wyoming or Utah or further south—maybe the locomotive didn’t limit itself to UP rails, either. She often saw groups of locomotives from competing railroads pulling a train together.
Just the same, once she’d seen what there was to see in the gift shop and been tripped over or stumbled into by any number of train enthusiasts who were more interested in the merchandise on offer than a little pony, she flew back out to the yard to look at the locomotive one more time.
Back when it had been built, railcars had been smaller and it would have been a giant among them. Here, it wasn’t any longer or taller than an AutoMax car, and if it weren’t for the telltale plume of smoke and clouds of steam around it, it might have been able to hide in the yard.
And yet, it was still somehow regal in a way that the modern locomotives weren’t. It was out of time, it was out of place, and it was still unquestionably the king of the railroad.
•••
She stuck around after even the drone had given up interest in the Big Boy, circling around the yard on thermals and occasionally swooping down close to it, watching as it was watered and inspected and then it finally left the yard. She could have followed but instead let it go, until it was no more than a moving smoke cloud over the city and then even that was gone, too. A stack train snaked through the yard, its diesels thudding as it reached the yard limit and throttled up for the main, billowing out its own small clouds of smoke. The urge to land on it almost overtook her, and she swept down low, first passing over the tops of the containers and then as the train sped up, those same boxes were passing under her.
She peeled off, angling towards downtown, flying by the UP rail museum and the Squirrel Cage Jail she still hadn’t visited, then above the collection of railcars at the RailsWest museum, all the way down to the I-29/I-80 interchange and its collection of stores and restaurants. She was antsy, and she should be looking for a place to hop the next train, but she was actually in a flying mood.
The sky was clear, the sun was up, and the Big Boy hadn’t been gone all that long; she could climb up and maybe see its smoke trail as it raced across the plains.
She did get high enough to see another river south of town and flew off in that direction, following a rail line most of the way, until it was time to turn to the confluence. From the air, she could see that the water didn’t mix right away, leaving the river browner on the Nebraska side. There was an unoccupied island that would have made a good sleeping spot if it wasn’t so far away from the tracks.
Still, she landed and nibbled on some leaves then sat on the bank and watched the river flow by until she got hungry enough to want an actual meal, then took flight back to Council Bluffs.
•••
The first restaurant to get her attention was called Buck Snorts, and it was a sports bar. She stayed long enough to find out that they served both moose and donkey burgers, and decided to leave before somebody wondered if a pegasus burger might be worth eating.
Council Bluffs had the usual cluster of fast food restaurants and familiar sit-down franchises, and she considered flying to the Hooters she’d seen—nothing on their menu was particularly great, but the waitresses seemed to really love ponies and were always fun and attentive. But she felt like trying something different and found the HuHot Mongolian Grill, which had an almost confusing array of options, many with funny names.
The spicy veggie tacos were tempting, but the five-heat rating made her wonder how much she’d regret them—both right away and later—so she picked Krabby Kardashian instead.
It was different and tasty, and even though she shouldn’t have had dessert, the molten muffin was too tempting to pass up.
By the time she’d finished eating, she was nearly too full to fly; luckily there was a massive highway interchange with lots of bridges, a railyard, and several stores with big, flat roofs all nearby. There was also a big grain elevator with a headhouse tall enough it was practically a skyscraper, but that felt like too much effort, and she settled for the Home Depot.
•••
Getting out of town proved easy enough. Several days in Council Bluffs and Omaha had showed her plenty of likely spots and given her a good idea of the train movement. It felt like it was cheating by flying to Omaha rather than hop a train in Council Bluffs, but besides the risk of being spotted in a yard, there were enough rail lines branching in enough different directions she couldn’t be sure which way any train might go. On the west side of Omaha, Sweetsong had found a crazy bridge and rail intersection where three highways and four rail lines intersected. That would give her plenty of opportunity to find a westbound train or, barring that, a southbound one.
She was still more interested in going directly westbound; she hadn’t crossed the northwestern parts of the US yet but had heard that they were beautiful and wanted to see for herself. It would certainly be cooler than the desert; she’d made the mistake of hopping a freight that ran across New Mexico and Arizona on its way to California. The Sandia Mountains had been beautiful but once it got into the desert the heat was unbearable. She’d finally bailed out near a truck stop, spent a day there recovering, and then flown the forty miles south to the San Bernardino National Forest. At night, since it was cooler.
San Bernardino had an Amtrak station with a train to take her to Los Angeles, and it was air conditioned and had a water dispenser on it. Just in case there was more desert between her and the Pacific.
In the north, there weren’t deserts.
A day’s travel on a westbound manifest freight—riding in the open on a gondola again—brought her to Grand Island. The end of the yard had another rail line crossing on a bridge.
A slow-moving coal train was trundling across the bridge and she paid it little mind, coal trains were all coal and whether the hopper cars were loaded or not, they were dirty and oily.
When two orange BNSF locomotives appeared on the tail end, that got her interest. They were both facing forward, so they were pushing locomotives, run by remote control. The train was going slowly, she could catch up to it, and she’d never ridden in a locomotive before, not without a crew’s blessing.
Maybe it was a dumb idea, but Sweetsong was going to try. It was too enticing.
Her departure from the Grand Island yard was anything but subtle; she jumped up out of her gondola, climbing over the tank car that was in front of it, getting good clearance before angling for the BNSF tracks.
She was spotted—she heard a few workers on the ground yelling, but they hadn’t seen where she’d come from, and even if they had, they were too late.
Unless they radioed the BNSF train to watch out for her. So what if they did? They’d never see her from the lead locomotive, and if the train stopped unexpectedly, she could escape.
She caught up to it two bridges later, and almost flew down to the locomotives but there were a lot of houses, a lot of people to see an unauthorized rider. The train wasn’t going all that fast and she could already see how the tracks bent northwest and out of town; there were a whole lot of fields ahead and as long as it didn’t pick up speed too quickly, she would have an opportunity to board unobserved.
•••
Luck was with her. The train stayed slow well into farmland, and the cab door on the engineer’s side was unlocked.
Sweetsong spent the first part of her journey exploring the locomotive. There was the cockpit with the engineer’s stand on the right, with controls and screens to tell him what the locomotive was doing; on the other side was the conductor’s desk. The locomotive simulator had only shown the engineer’s side, and it hadn’t been plastered with warnings and information on just about every flat surface. She read a helpful bulletin on the back of the cab explaining how to inspect roller bearings, and wondered if the “Danger 600 Volts” sticker warned about the first aid kit mounted directly below it.
She didn’t think it did; BNSF wouldn’t electrify a first aid kit. The sticker probably warned of the electricity on the other side of the wall, which she could feel coursing around as the locomotive worked. Not as good as a proper electric locomotive, and nearly blocked out by the feel of the diesel engine.
Down in the nose was a small bathroom with a lever-operated toilet and some storage spaces, and there was even a window in the nose door where she could look out at the rump of the locomotive in front of her. The windows all carried a sign that said ‘Unoccupied DPU locomotive,’ which spoiled her view, but somebody would notice if she took them off.
Best of all was the constant feel of power, not just under her hooves but through her whole body, especially as the train finally got a highball signal and the engineer advanced the throttle.
She rushed back to the cab and sat in the engineer’s seat, studying the screens, imagining that she had her hooves on the throttles. What would that feel like, to command such power? The rail museum had tried to make it seem like a locomotive with computer screens showing scenery and a fake control stand, but they couldn’t replicate the deep rumble of the prime mover and the tantalizing tickle of electricity that suffused Sweetsong’s bones as the locomotive worked.
The window being opened in a locomotive that was supposed to be unoccupied might be noticed, but even if it was too risky to stick her head out, she wanted to feel the wind rushing through the cab, so she slid the pane back, reveling in what was so far her best ride ever.
Besides the comfy seat with fold-down armrests for humans, the locomotive itself rode better than any railcar she’d ever been on. Maybe that was the weight or maybe there was some kind of cushioning in it, she didn’t know. Maybe it was because she was at the very back and pushing, instead of riding a car in the middle. She wasn’t sure; she knew train dynamics from a personal view but not a practical one.
Small towns came and went, and way up front she could hear the horn blowing. Her locomotive also had a horn and it would be foolish to sound it, the engineer would hear it and wonder.
Unless there was another train passing by. She knew the proper horn cadence, and she’d found the button, and outside Ravenna she had her opportunity. A loaded coal train on the parallel track, a few road crossings, and her hoof hovered over the button before she made her decision and pushed it.
The horn was louder in the cab than she’d expected, and she almost stopped at one press but that was the wrong warning, that would raise suspicion.
As the final blare faded off into the dusk, she waited to hear brakes squealing but instead the train rumbled on, the crew none the wiser.