Eastward Ho! part deux

Trying to sleep-in next to a big city is not the same as on a train or in the desert — even though there are loud sounds in either place, the loud sounds in the city are different, and I found it very difficult to stay in my bag after about 6am, so I packed up and tried to figure out where I was and where I was going to go. I'd never been here before and didn't have a map, but as it got light enough to see pretty well it was obvious where the "downtown" was by the tall buildings clustered about a mile from where I was. I followed a street for a bit, then angled off down some railroad tracks that, judging from their shine, were used frequently, and might not drop me off in the middle of nowhere. Soon I got to some maintenance buildings in what was turning into a pretty large freightyard and I saw that it was a Burlington Northern yard, but that didn't tell me anything except that I was in a Burlington Northern freightyard. I walked into one of the buildings and got directions from a worker how to get to the bus station, where I could stash my pack in a locker and be able to walk around again like a human being.

Initially Denver seemed like an interesting city — there was a lot of building going on, and there was a surprisingly large and complex underground of places to eat, places to crash, places to wash clothes, etc. After reading through several flyers I found here and there it seemed that if you were hungry in Denver then you weren't doing your homework. If you gave it your full concentration, you could map out a walking route where you might have time to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner at two or three different locations each. After trying one of these "routes" one day, and seeing the portions of food that were served, I could see how, in order to keep your energy up for the whole day, you would definitely need to double up on meals.

If I had a change of clothes I could have cleaned up and checked out some museums and such, but I was really limited to used bookstores, thrift stores, and pawnshops, which kept me quite occupied as it was. After a few days of playing "tourist" I got the itch to ride again, so it was off to Larimer Street to get in character and stock up on wine, then back to the bus station to get my pack. Having collected a good supply of maps during my inner-city wanderings, I could now see just where I had to go to get a train back to California. There was a place on the tracks called "Utah Junction", and that is where the railroad line splits, with one line going either north or east (I couldn't figure it out) and the other line curving west — the direction I wanted to go. I made my way over to the big metal box with the Utah Junction sign on it and plopped down to wait. And wait.

To my good fortune, just as I was getting tired of sitting up in the dark staring down the tracks, a tramp walked up from behind me and scared the shit out of me when he cleared his throat to announce his presence. He asked me where I was headed and suggested that I walk over to the Rio Grande yard and catch a train there. I could get them when they were stopped and there wasn't any Yard Bull that he knew of. He was headed over there to wait for a friend of his who was coming in from Pueblo or somewhere, and would be happy to show me where to wait. I thanked him and we split what was left of my wine before heading over to the freightyard.

The yard was dominated by a huge neon sign that spelled out "Rio Grande", so I probably could have found my way there by myself, but it was nice to talk to someone, especially someone who knew about local freight lines. There were tracks running all over Denver, and the one map that I had that wasn't hand lettered didn't show any of them. The tramp showed me where the receiving yard was, where he would wait for his friend, and the departure yard, where I would wait for my train. He said that anything going out this one particular track was going at least to Grand Junction, so I should just grab the first thing smokin', as he called it. Another bottle was opened, and we spent an hour or two under an almost starless night, thanks to all of the lights in the yard, discussing whatever came to mind. Even though we were sitting in the middle of a freightyard, our thoughts were on just about anything that didn't involve riding trains, which I found rather refreshing.

At one point he got up and said it was time for him to leave, as it was after midnight and I was on the verge of falling asleep sitting up. We said our goodbyes and he disappeared off into the shadows. I was glad to have made his acquaintance, and I could now focus on grabbing the first train that came along. Not wanting to get into my bag in case I had to catch out on the fly, I put on a few extra clothes, thanks to one of the many thrift stores in Denver, and leaned up against my pack, staring into the yard for any sign of movement. A half hour later I was rewarded with the lights of some engines coming my way. They were just engines, no cars, but there were four of them, and that told me that they were headed for mountains, and not the flat plains that extend everywhere but west.

Allowing them to back down onto a string of cars, I stood up and angled over to walk the train, looking for rides. In the middle of a long line of closed boxcars I found one with a door open only a foot or so, but passed it by hoping to find something better, but when I heard the train air up I quickly returned to the boxcar and tried pulling on the door without any luck. I crossed over to the other side and, after breaking the metal seal with my knife, I pushed on the door so hard that it flew all the way open and bounced back a few feet. I shoved the door all the way open and managed to hook it that way, hoping that the loud crash didn't alert anyone to my presence. The other door opened as easy as the first and it was secured, giving me at least a good view out of one side of the train. Beginning the familiar ritual once again, I spread out my gear, then sat in the doorway facing away from the yard lights so that I could see as many stars as I could. There were lots of them on this side, except for a jagged row across the western horizon that mirrored the skyline of the Rockies. A few more sips of wine and it was off to bed.

I woke up in the morning sitting on a siding only an hour or so from where we started! Aside from being depressed that I probably could have walked this far in the same amount of time, it was a nice day and there wasn't much I could do about it, after all. I was hoping that we were just waiting for another train to go by, and I dressed and hopped down to stretch my legs. The ballast used in this area had some very interesting looking rocks mixed in — nothing like the ballast used further west, so I paced back and forth collecting specimens. Now able to see the rear end of my train, I could make out an empty bulkhead flat about 20 cars back or so, and thought about switching cars to give me a better view of the scenery. Each time I began to climb up and get my gear I thought I could hear an approaching train, and walking back on the steep ballast on my side of the train would be difficult, especially if the train started moving before I got all the way back to the bulkhead. More time went by, and I made up my mind to make the switch — I cupped my hands around my ears to detect the slightest sound of an approaching train, then hopped over to the vacant mainline track and walked back as briskly as I could, glancing over my shoulder at every opportunity. I made the switch without incident, and settled down to rest and enjoy the wine du jour.

After what seemed like hours an eastbound train crept down the hill past me, and eventually we began moving westward. At one point I could see that we now had 5 engines in front, so maybe one of the original units was acting up and we borrowed one from the downhill train. I settled down to enjoy the scenery from my side-less and roof-less freight car, and eventually we stopped at Grand Junction again, where I bailed off early so I wasn't seen entering the yard, then walked back up to my original boxcar and climbed in. They dropped the air soon afterward and I hoped that it only meant that they were changing the engines around, as now that I had scoped out the entire train, the two cars I'd been riding on were the only two rides, and I hoped that they weren't going to get left here.

Sitting in the yard I noted that while on a train the "outside" noises are cancelled out by the noise of the moving train, but while the train is sitting still the outside noises, like running water, the wind, and traffic sounds are all that you hear. Sort of like changing channels on the radio — either the "train" channel or the "civilization" channel. I much preferred the train channel, but for the next several hours I had to listen to the other one.

It was late afternoon before we pulled out of Grand Junction, and I was awakened from a nice nap. Not much in the way of scenery west of there, so I dozed off and re-awakened when we again started snaking along the Green River, although it was getting too dark to see much. Taking advantage of my smooth-riding car, I slept until the early morning hours when we were descending down the west slope of the Wasatches and eventually Salt Lake. Here I bailed off at the Union Pacific yard after seeing two intermodal trains ready to leave the yard. The boxcar ride was fine but at this point of my trip I yearned for a little more speed, and I knew that trains on this end of the yard either go to LA or Oakland — I just needed to find out which of the two trains wasn't going to LA.

I could now use my scanner, as I had the Union Pacific channels programed in, but not the Rio Grande. I was able to discern which train was the one I wanted, and crawled up under the trailer just minutes before it pulled out. Still a little nervous about possibly getting shanghaied to LA, I was relieved to see that we were indeed headed west, and I relaxed and opened the "Nevada" bottle of wine. Flying along the desert was a step up from the junkers I'd been riding, and I had to remind myself not to leave small objects unattended in the wind tunnel between the wheels of the trailer. I had watched the Rockies and the Wasatches recede into the eastern horizon, and later today the Sierra Nevada would do the same. My grand tour of the West was coming to a close, and I was looking forward to the noises of civilization again.