Railroaders Dreams 2

Thought we had a topic like this already couldnt find it, must have slid off.
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I caught the crud from a guy at work at the beginning of this week. I always have crazy dreams when i have a fever. This is what i can remember. A set of light power with a SD 70 on the point, in the 8th run, i was standing up but my upper body was on the desk and my head was against the windshield. We started into a tight curve and i remember hearing and feeling the lead wheels hit the outside rail....then someone started yelling.... outta control. I get the nicotine patch effect when my fevers raging. Still sick now dont know if this post makes much sense.

UP: Have been retired for over four years and still, on occasion, have "railroad nightmares". When I was still working I spoke with several of my co-workers. They, too related having wreck, speeding or running red board dreams. Comes with the territory, it seems. Get well.

The worst nightmare is the never ending switch list, the work never gets done no matter how hard you kick them. Never had that with the UP but i did drill plenty of cars in my sleep as a contractor. I use to wake up angry.

Don't feel bad, I have been retired for just over nine years and almost
every night, I have some sort of a dream about my railroad career.
Some of them are ridiculous and most of them are bad. Often it comes to
working after my retirement, running an engine without a valid license or
without bulletins etc. It is not usually a dangerous situation but it is
always an unpleasant thing.
I always wake up, get it off my mind and then try to get back to sleep.
I still have 41 years of railroad experience in my brain, 24/7.
Noel Weaver

I've only been out here 4 months and I have nightmares most nights(days) too

I've had a few where the red block is in our face and I am going to run it. Next thing I know, I wake up wondering if I did.

It's good to hear that I'm not the only one with the 'red board' dream!!

Ever have it, while sleeping at a meet, and wake up to see the train passing by you, and looking up, and seeing the red? I have "dumped and jumped", more than once, to the amusement of the conductor. Those are the worst. Or suddenly realizing, you have nodded off, and have to ask the conductor "what was the last signal"?, while trying to figure out where you are, and where the next board is........ (even more "exciting" when you realize he had nodded off, as well.....)

The wildest railroad nightmare I can recall (and it was recurring) was one wherein I was operating a long coal train. Trouble was we were heading uphill through the residential streets of what appeared to be Ithaca, New York, making right and left turns. Oh yes, there were no tracks. Anyone familiar with Ithaca knows of the steep grades going from downtown to Cornell University and the total impossibility of the entire affair. Never did figure out what my subconcious was trying to tell me, and we never did make it all the way up the hill before I woke up.

When I was hostlin I had one where my pilot would give me a back upn and the engines would hit the derail and fall off. Kept getting the back up so I kept going till we get to the last motor and I hear "Oh hell stop the derail is still up" Weird stuff.
One of my favorite old head stories is where the teller wakes up looks over and sees the engineer is passed out ( same state he was in before) Uh oh!! Lets look at our orders and then look around outside trying to figure out just where the hell am I? Did I miss a meet? Oh dear hey Hogger wake up!!!!

Quite a few years ago, when I was working in the Central Dispatch of a major motor carrier, I would occasionally have dreams related to mistakes on the job, and at least one of my co-workers reported that his wife occasionally heard him "talk shop" in his sleep.

I suspect that the nature of both jobs -- the repetition, the constant second-guessing and the difficulty of undoing a mistake -- leads to a fixation on detail and a near-obsessive/compulsive pattern of behavior, which would account for the sub-conscious activity.

And its a pretty safe bet the air-traffic controllers would have the same story to tell.

No mystery here. Dreams are just a rehash of what's been on your mind over the day. You work a job, you'll dream of that job...with what was on your mind exaggerated in dreams.

You get torqued over the switch-list paper, you're going to be buried in switchlists that night - in dreams.

And if your mind is elsewhere, family issues, during the day...that's where your dreams will take you, too.

I dream of the job, also. If I'm away for a few days, on a seniority bump or whatever...I dream of other things.

By golly, I actually thought about the Cornell heating plant. Back in the 1970s, on occasion, I would ride with the Cortland local crew, the same guys who delivered coal to Cornell prior to the Freeville-East Ithaca line washouts in 1972. Could have been a combination of that plus the frustrations of getting up Logan Hill on the Orin Line with coal train after coal train.

When I was a block operator for Amtrak, I used to work cray schedules being that I was on the extra list. One night, after one to many drinks, I woke up and saw the red lights on my stereo EQ. I jumped thinking that I had trains at stop signals and began pushing buttons like an idiot. Now that I left Amtrak for greener pastures, I haven't had any dreams like that anymore.

While at engine and air school (on the slow trip to becoming a driver), both the instructor and my roommate were both ex-fitters turned enginemen, and they'd often get chatting about working on locos. My roommate would usually wake up next morning exhausted, and say something like "I'm going to kill that b** MacIntyre (instructor), I did a whole power assembly on my own last night!". I've certainly woken up often enough with the missus growling at me to not bring my work home...