Trains version of Never Ending Story

[Overmod]

"Oh no", Noah repeated. "I KNOW the ICC has been long gone, and the moon doesn't rise or set in the north, so we're either in some horrible parody of the days-gone-by dream threads, or some sort of Goon Show sketch..."

"No," said David P. Morgan, popping nattily into the corner of the screen for a moment, "it's more like an architect sketch..."

"NO!" exclaimed Noah. "Don't say anything about the Spanish Inqui..."

There was a blare of trumpets and the door flew open behind him!

[Noah Hofrichter]

Suddenly in walked
M.W. Hemphill Who
wanted to add
a few words.
We began coversing
with Mr. Morgan
and all of
a sudden, the
weasles running the
big boys ran
in behind me,
yelling and screaming
that they wanted
to win in
this story, but it
was too late,
for according to
the mad, overloading
computer, the weasles
were slowly being
arrested till the
FBI burst in
behind me and
dragged the weasels
into the virtual
jails. the protested
highly, and said

(overmod, thanks, you brought a smile to my face)

[Overmod]

we're FREEDOM-LOVING HOBO WEASELS, and we DEMAND to be shackled in boxcars running forever over the secret midnight rails of Amerika!

Perhaps the weasels were suffering from cyanosis (hard to tell as their furry complexions were difficult to determine behind the beefy G-man chokeholds) because as they were being escorted to the waiting string of CIAX high-cubes, they broke into a chorus of

[MP57313]

"We(asels) Will Rock You" followed by "Weasels are the Champions", until they were suddenly interrupted with

[Overmod]

the terrible CLANG of the plug doors -- the most terrible sound in the world to the freedom-loving hobo heart! -- signifying their forever entombment in the low alloy high-tensile steel heart of America's most secret shame.

"Well, that's that" said our former editor, as he played a borrowed hair dryer across his drenched keyboard. "Now all I have to worry about is people who don't understand prolific nomenclature or can't spell ROTLMAO..."

"Is that so" boomed a terrible new voice from behind them. It was none other than

[espeefoamer]

the ghost of
old A.C. Kalmbach himself
saying "I'm just
checking up as to
how the magazine
I founded has
been doing lately.
I am very
pleased how things
are turning out.
keep up the
good work and
DO SOMETHING ABOUT
THOSE STUPID WEASELS"!

[Noah Hofrichter]

(General note: Oh the heck with the three word post format, this is now a story, feel free to post several paragraphs, or several words, whatever you want.)

Mark Replied "We just did Sir, there forever roaming the country in sealed boxcars."

"Good," A.C. replied.

Noah, turning back to his computer, began to notice the thing was finally stopping smoking. It began cooling off, and he could finally see the screen again. The posts again began to flow in, in a more steady pattern this time, and the story started slowly again.

So the Big Boys, all twenty four of them, began moving slowly along on threre tour, no longer having to worry about the weasels. They brought smiles to peoples face's all across the country.

(okay, another note, we need a new idea for this story, the big boys are getting about 20 pages old. Somebody get us rolling please, cuz I'm out of ideas.)

[Overmod]

It was then that the Gate to the railroad afterworld began to come further open, sagging like some awful Heritage-car Dutch door, to reveal...

[espeefoamer]

Boxcars with shackles,powered by double headed PRR T1s.[:D]

[Overmod]

For a moment we saw trainfinder22, yeehawing like Chill Wills on the bomb in Dr. Strangelove, waving to us from the inside of X1028, his face silhouetted in the lunar phosphorescence. Then the bituminous swirls of smoke -- even afterworld coal being too much for the tiny grates of the T1s -- swept down and hid the scene from view. Only the ripping sound of repeated high-speed slipping kept us, coughing and with red-rimmed eyes, remembering what we had seen. Soon even the chuckle of worn wheels had died away -- had we dreamed it, or was it even now taking on a terrible life of its own...?

Already Ed Blysard was hammering on his laptop, trying to upload pictures of the T1s to RailfanNet, but unfortunately

[Noah Hofrichter]

it was not working. He finally gave up in disgust, and a fit of rage, yelling at the computer. He picked the thing up, and

[espeefoamer]

he hit the wrong button and fried every computer in North America[:0].

[Noah Hofrichter]

Now we all began a manhunt, tryign to find the person who took away our access to the forums, and began searching the country for the source. As we ran around, accusing each other violently, we realized that

[Overmod]

we still SEEMED to be accessing the forum normally. Otherwise how could we be reading about our loss of forum access via posts to the forum?

Without realizing it, we had subscribed to the latest Kalmbach service, an extension of the "Say 'n Bank" program developed by Bank of America and the DIA during the early years of the Clinton Administration. Our posts were being picked up via heterodyne excitation of the fillings in our teeth, relayed via black helicopter and satellite to nearby billboards, and displayed secretly only to the authorized recipients...

"But I STILL can't upload my pictures" cried Ed. "How can I uplink them when I can't SEE the *$%>@ things!" And sure enough, his laptop remained dark.

But then hope came. On whispering wings

[espeefoamer]

Came UPs set of E9s bringing new computers operating on a completely new system[:)].

[Noah Hofrichter]

Finally Ed was able to upload his pictures, and he was happy again. Now everyone turned there attention to the E9's realizing that there were UP E9's in there presense! Everyone began asking questions, like

[MP57313]

where were these E9s wile everyone was running around ticked off?? It turns out they were

[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

[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...

[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

[Anonymous]

Oklahoma where a Farmrail train was pullin 100..

[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]

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

[espeefoamer]

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

[locomutt]

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

[Anonymous]

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

[espeefoamer]

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

[locomutt]

the wiskey train

[Anonymous]

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

[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