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I had a frightening experience several years ago putting together a local in a small (7 track) yard. I was working as a Conductor alone (no brakie) and had just coupled our power to the big four car train and was walking to the rear to stuff our marker in the rear knuckle and perform the brake test. I had been promoted about 4 months when this happened and was still quite "green". As I arrived at the rear, I noticed a boxcar rolling away from me on our track about 10 carlengths away. At the time I noticed that the knuckle on the rear car was closed, but didn't catch the significance of that fact. I performed the brake test and was just putting the flag in the knuckle when I I felt the hair on the back of my neck go up and jumped clear just in time for that boxcar to slam into the knuckle I had been standing at. Needless to say I was shaking pretty damn hard. When I hired out they told us to think of a yard as a bowl. Yards are built this way to keep rolling cars from escaping on to the main or other tracks. In this case it seemed that our last car and this other car had been sitting with knuckles butted (both closed) and it had rolled away. The design of the yard (bowl) caused the car to roll back silently creeping up behind me as I was hanging the marker. To this day, I don't remember what it was that caught my attention, but I am very thankful to be alive. LC
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