The night has beckoned, but in its calling is a reminder that summer dies hard at these latitudes, and any worthy endeavor undertaken this eve will surely result in a good banking of ‘sweat equity.’
Yet, you step out into it anyway, only half-knowing what you’ll find when you get there---the all-too-familiar waiting is always a certainty.
Left over from the matinee performance, you have a hodge-podge of stage props to work with, and no script. Yet, the lighting is superb in the form of a waxing gibbous whose brilliance could only be rivaled by the fullness of the Dying Grass Moon three days hence, and you’ve been granted an amphitheater of cloudless infinity from which Saturn and Sagittarius glance over your shoulder, ready at a moment’s notice to provide their guidance.
From the direction of illuminated number boards and stepwells stopped on the main, the rhythmic thuga-thuga-thuga-thuga four-cycle chant of westbound power at idle is heard above the velvety whispers of the still-hot south wind swishing through your hair and the trackside grasses alike, and in the mechanical murmur is provided reassurance that something is eventually going to happen that will have made your journey worthwhile.
But before that moment presents itself, a yellow ‘diverging approach’ on the eastward absolute signal will usher in two eastbound interlopers and see them slither through the west switch at Harwood and around our stilled westbound, making the wait interesting at least.
Not only has their passing created a great sense of anticipation, it has left a pair of sealed-beams and anti-climber mounted ditch lights piercing the south Texas darkness and lighting all in their path as they shine toward the western horizon.
And we wait still…
Until, poised in the darkness behind the glare, two long trumpets of a horn signal that the skilled hands of an engineer are now at work, sanding the rails, throttling-up a single sixteen-cylinder charge and skillfully getting drawbar tonnage underway from a dead stop.
Rick Malo©2019
Seen through a line of crude oil tank cars stored on the tracks of the Texas, Gonzales & Northern’s small interchange yard in Harwood, Texas down on Union Pacific’s Sunset Route, the eastward absolute signal displays its most restrictive aspect as the headlights of a starting-from-stop westbound freight light up the backside of it. Starting at 9:14 pm, October 10th, 2019, the camera's shutter was held open for 97 seconds.