First, something I forgot to mention that happened the other day, I spilled an entire cup of water on my Macbook! Luckily everything is fine, but I had a slight heart attack as I watched the water covering my keyboard. Oh yeah, my phone was soaked too, but it is NOTHING compared to the computer!

Now, for the rest of the story

F Tower. I walk up to this old brick building in the middle of no less than 4 sets of tracks (not sure the exact count). I see in the upper left corner a simple monogram in stone weathered from all the years of service F. We go into the door and you can smell the age of wires and equipment that has been running for so many years. I am there no more than 5 minutes and the amazement and terror of this location is realized, a huge freight train blows by the building at maximum track speed. The entire building shakes and you realize that you are at the absolute mercy of the railroad!!!

Ok, that’s my shot at a dramatic writing style But seriously, I have been scared – legitimately frightened over only two things in my career and I have experienced BOTH in the last 2 years. The first is high railing over a bridge and the second is being inside F Tower. High railing for those who don’t know is when you ride in a vehicle, truck, on the tracks. The thing about the railroads is that a train isn’t like a car and it doesn’t need guardrails for bridges. It can’t accidentally veer off to the right and need a guardrail to keep it above the water. It is very scary to ride over a bridge – especially one of any height

Now for the second, F Tower. You may not have ever heard of Fostoria, Ohio, but “railroad” people have. it is a very busy area for trains and there are multiple railroads crossing each other and while it is not the fastest speeds, it is fast enough for such tight spaces. There is a place you can see from F Tower that is called The Iron Triangle where railroad watchers go to take train pictures and just watch the trains go by. It is kinda a big deal

Anyway, this place is actually one of the first projects I worked on when I started in the business. I started in 1996 and we did this job in 1998. It is nice because I am a month away from my 20 year anniversary being a railroader. I think it is kinda cool

This morning on the way to the office, we had a little bit of extra time so we had breakfast at this diner in town called Dell’s. It’s been here for 75 years!! It was probably the best biscuit and gravy I have ever had, and I have a recipe y’all!!!

Then I worked all day helping get this location all right. It’s not that it was wrong, but because it is so big and complicated it needed to have some special attention to organize it a little better.

We had lunch in town at a Chinese place, not great, and back to work I got back to the hotel, grabbed me some Subway and watched all my YouTube people and now I am in bed doing this

I am going to wrap it up though because I haven’t managed to find a new book yet and I have a long flight tomorrow.

Enjoy the pics and see you tomorrow 😉