Trains version of Never Ending Story

[Overmod]

with the countless needless tasks involved with grievance documentation, humming 'Bye, Bye Blackbird' under his breath to the rhythm that the drivers made.

Meanwhile, Clouseau had been caught by the Scotchlite collar of his rail-issue trenchcoat, and was dangling from the rail of the third unit. His kicking feet found the lever for the coupler! With a grinding clash

[espeefoamer]

a union rep climbed on the third unit with a long list of Agreement violations comitted by using a toad engineer and a trainmaster as conductor. As he was crossing over to the second unit who should he meet but FRA inspector Cluseau heading the other way.

[Overmod]

flag them with excitement. Seems he'd inadvertently been consulting subsection 8, appendix C, paragraph 42(d) of the UNREVISED version, and had only just noticed that the recent rules crackdown (due to the ridiculous number of 'red lights' run under the influence of Jack, including the red lights at Maize's) now included a section-8 waiver patterned after that of the United States Military Code. He beckoned to his friend Mr. Toad (a British hot-rod runner of some repute) to take the now-uncrewed train over the remaining trackage. Boarding the second unit, Toad turned the isolation switches to make up for the missing Capsulo-Cab. Leaning rakishly out the FRA-mandated rifle-slot cab window, flirting his long white silk scarf like some batrachian Isadora Duncan, he whistled off his brakes, beckoned Stoat aboard as conductor, and had just started to move the consist (the mighty Deuyheytz DEVO powerplant going tapocketapocketaPOCKETA through the sprung carbody doors behind him) when

[Noah Hofrichter]

the weed weasels gave up and began hunting for another kil...er.....violation. They began heading back to there car, when all of a sudden Trainmaster Stoat began to

[Junctionfan]

there was a loop-hole and that although stupid, it was legal. Upset with the findings....

[Overmod]

in an ironic twist, the consist plowed over Cocroach's pickup at a brush-obscured crossing. Unfortunately, the pasty remains caused the Z's power to begin to slip uncontrollably. Closer and closer to a standstill came the

[espeefoamer]

Johnny Cocroach,who had stolen the aforementiond devices and had them in the back of his pickup.He offered to sell them for 1 million $. The Z train paid the ransome and was on its way until

[Overmod]

and was promptly arrested and incarcerated awaiting trial. This meant that the Z train's consist would not pass FRA exams come midnight... unless the crew could scrounge an appropriate crossing-warning signal device before MIDNIGHT! Fortunately, swooping through the creepy night air, came the answer, in the form of

[espeefoamer]

But unfortunately,there were weed weasels hiding in the bushes with speed guns and they caught the Z train going down the grade making 90 miles an hour,when the whistle broke into a scream

[Noah Hofrichter]

headed for chicago. It was an hour down,so it had some time to make up and was going to make it up if the crew had a say in thing.

[espeefoamer]

passing BNSF Z train as it blasted by at 70 MPH

[Overmod]

bleeding a bit from where it had been severed from his hand by the force of the

[espeefoamer]

his eye on the rail,his ear to the ground, his nose to the grindstone...

[locomutt]

And his thumb was STILL on the throttle...............

[Overmod]

a considerable amount of momentum had built up without his noticing. He was singing along with the sound of the locomotive, thinking of the DODX cars in his consist, and had just gotten to:

She was goin' downgrade, boilin' ninety fifths an hour
when we heard that missile scream,
He was found in the wreck with his mouth on the bottle...

[Anonymous]

the steam whistle blew indicating another fine batch of Jack was ready, but then......

[locomutt]

And his Thumb was still on the throttle......................

[Overmod]

started researching how to develop a combination steam locomotive and still. He rapidly discovered that such a locomotive could be fueled on 'biomass', cook its own mash, and as a fringe benefit implement partial condensing. The more Jack he drank, the better this idea began to look. The pain of his wound began to fade into the background, and he dreamed of a far better way to get money than any bank robbery -- hitting the United States Government up for EPA development funding for his 'corny' idea.

It began to look as if alcoholic locomotives were a thoroughly do-able proposition. Just about the time the last couple of fingers were left in the bottle

[Anonymous]

but Jesse was disappointed because he found Jack Daniels had once again reduced the proof rating of "Old No. 7". So he........

[locomutt]

the wiskey train

[espeefoamer]

since he got caught in that time warp again,he shot Jesse James who he caught robbing

[Anonymous]

then a brave engineer picked up has sword and his pistols and

[locomutt]

Put all of his liquid assets in wood............

[espeefoamer]

The railroad was now owned by Jack Daniels who had secretly been buying up stock so he could

[Anonymous]

a hidden whiskey distillery, and not to the bread maker as everyone had thought, because.......

[Noah Hofrichter]

grain cars in-route to Chicago, where it would interchange with the other railroads at the BRC clearing yard. From there it went to

[Anonymous]

Oklahoma where a Farmrail train was pullin 100..

[Overmod]

drag, suggestively switching their B ends and wolf-whistling to the hoboes on the clanking freight cars.

"That's too much" groaned Hofrichter, running his hand down his face. "I gotta change that." He hit the 'edit' key for his last post, hoping against hope he could alter the context before the weasels returned and added their unique charm to the quickly disintegrating narrative.

But it was too late. There the E9s were, chanting away (David P. Morgan taking notes) with big wing smiles on their faces, looking for all the world like yellow Jodie Fosters in a remake of 'Silence of the Lambs'. Fortunately the time warp was still swirling behind them... with a sudden flash and some cheap special effects borrowed from the Philadelphia Experiment, and a sudden flash of nausea, we found ourselves abruptly translated to

[railman]

thousands of blue box models bearing their image...
In a strange turn of events, a time warp opened, the engines rolled in,
and came out in...

[wcfan4ever]

stuck in Mexico on a TFM train. Boarder Patrol would not let them cross until they were able to strip them to see if they had been carrying any exports. What they found was