Dear all,
I am just starting this blog. i dont know where it will take me, but it cant compare with where my work has already taken me. This year i have stayed in hotels more than 75 nights and been on almost 70 airline segments. I am a railroad bridge inspector for Osmose Railroad Services, a railroad contractor. I travel, either alone or with other guys, all over the country and Canada. We inspect timber, concrete and steel bridges for mostly short-line railroads.
At the moment i am in a hotel in Arlington, Texas.This Holiday Inn express is right nect to the Six-Flags over Dallas amusement park and the rooms are pretty nice. We have all reached platinum status this year, so we got the free upgrade to the suites. Nice double room with a den-like room and a bedroom. King sized bed and a big shower. We are going to Trail Dust for steaks and a chance to check out the amazing ladies who work there around 6 tonight. Our flight is at 8:00 tomorrow out of DFW, pretty late by our standards so im glad to be able to sleep in.
We spent the week at a Holiday Inn in Paris, TX. Paris is the home of Campbells soup and is in a dry county. This means that you can buy a beer for inflated prizes at the bar or become a member at the restaurant or drive 6 miles out of town for a case.
We were working North of Paris, in Oklahoma and Arkansas on the Kiamichi railroad. the Kiamichi basically forms a cross centered at Hugo, Oklahoma and running West pasty Durant, OK, North to Antlers, OK, East to Hope, Arkansas and South to Paris. I found out at the end our inspection that Hugo is the home to five circuses. I heard that there are elephants and tigers outside of town, but we never saw any. What we did see was flat, featureless land with scrubby pine forests and muddy streams. Occasionally there appeared sandstone right under the soil. This railroad is probably one of the worst i have ever seen, but i am no track inspector, and the crew are so nice and dedicated, it's amazing.
We were completing the end of a four week inspection. We had been out the first two weeks in july when the temps were in the low 100's. Hot and humid as hell, we usually had to stop by 2 and go hide in the hotel. This time it was chilly and crisp in the morning the moon rising in the still-black sky. We'd go to the Denny's for coffee and breakfast then drive up to Hugo. We got with one of the railroad employees who would take us out to the part of the track that was open (without trains) and that had bridges we had to inspect. I climb and wear the waders when needed as greg gets the bases and Steve records the findings. I wear lineman's spikes (climbers) and a belt with my tools. The tools are a drill, Dewalt 18 volt, a 16 oz hammer and a long proboscis that we call an indicator. I hammer the piles, caps and stringers listening for void. After a year or more you get a pretty good ear for the sound of rotten, hollow sections of timber or the sound of shell seperation, when the timber rings seperate from decay. When i hear something, i use the drill to find any decay, if present and use the indicator to hook any void. We use a formula to figure out if the member is reject or possible reject or just needs to be monitored. These recommendations are used by the railroad to determine their program for the next year.
In this job i have gotten to climb the tallest timber bridge in the world and got to hang off timber bridges in the Canadian Rockies. I have worked in the desert near Mexico and had to swim in aligator swamps in South Carolina for a dropped drill. i love it.
i am going home tomorrow to Madison, Wisconsin. I can't wait to not think about bridges for a few days straight. There's a show on sunday near my place. Del the Funky Homosapien is playing at The High Noon. Should be sweet.
Maybe i will be back on later
