I was 12 when I first laid eyes on a locomotive, and I will remember that moment to the end of my days. Those crazy unbelievers up in Sisko had invented a new engine that was supposed to be faster and more efficient. All the newspapers from up north talked about the new-coming passenger service which promised travel to any place in the Empire within a single day. This was easily twice the speed of the ancient 2 + 2s they ran before with their open tops and their rickety carriages. But where we lived no one paid much mind to that, as no one we knew had money for the fare. What got all of the farmers tongues to waggling was the freight version of that engine, which was even larger and promised to take produce from our fields to the ever hungry tables in the capital in 24 hours or less. So my dad hitched our two ancient mares to our old buckboard, and took me on the six mile journey to the closest passage of the tracks that we might see for ourselves what all the fuss was about.

We stopped some hundred paces from the tracks, and waited, not sure how close we could get. Later we would learn the engine had been held up in Delano, so that it reached us some three hours behind schedule. For some reason in my childish mind I equated tardiness of the train with a lessor size, assuming, like many of those around us, that the “monster engine” as they called it was just another product of the capital’s hyperbole. So as we waited my fear of the impending engine grew less and less, until by the time it finally arrived I was standing just at the bottom of the rocky ballast, close enough that if I were to lay out on the uneven rocks, with my feet in place, I could have touched the closest rail with the tips of my fingers. 

Our first hint of engine was a tiny white plume on the horizon, with a darker smudge underneath it, the darkly stained oil-smoke defining the edges of the white steam. As it slowly increased in size, faint trace of its passage were carried to us. The first hint I had of something larger than I imagined came when the rails near my feet started to vibrate like plucked stings on some massive fiddle. They sang and sizzled with impeding energy.

Then suddenly the engine was upon us, so loud and so encompassing that I could not hear my fathers shouted warnings to step away from the tracks. The sound was not just loud, but penetrating, you felt it more in your chest than in your ears. It was as if it was too big for your ears alone, but required the entirety of you body to hear.

As it zoomed by, piercing whistle blowing, a massive steel edifice towering some 15 feet over my head, and passing me at a pace faster than even birds could fly, I felt something in my head fall away. My earlier fears were overcome by the size of that great mechanical beast, leaving me fearless in excitement and wonder. I reached out my hands to the newly painted freight cars as they passed, not so much as to grab ahold of one, though I desperately wanted to, but just to feel the air of its passage. In my fevered excitement, that was enough for me.

There is a story in the Holy Bible that speaks of crippled beggars in Jerusalem so desperate to be healed that they stretched out their arms that they might touch the hem of the passing Jesus. Up until that moment the meaning of that verse had eluded my 12 year old mind, but by the time that train had finished passing I knew exactly what those poor souls were feeling. The smoke, the steam, the speed, and most of all the noise, had baptized me. I was forever changed. I knew then that I wanted more than anything else in the world to work on an engine like that. It didn’t matter to me if I shined shoes, or was the chief engineer, I just wanted to step onto that massive beast of a train, and take it anywhere it wanted to go. 

Five years later I did exactly that.