The  Closing of the Texas/Mexico Border and What It Means for Railroads   It’s been in all the news and freight cars are stacking up on both sides of the border! For beer drinkers, it may mean that you don’t have a cold Corona beer for New Year’s celebrations. Currently, the crossing at Eagle Pass (south of San Antonio) and the crossing at El Paso are closed, affecting trains from Ferromex, the Mexican rail carrier, and Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe, my old railroad. Trains can still get through at Brownsville and Laredo in Texas but that’s like putting your thumb over the end of the garden hose. You don’t get all the water you need and in the case of the railroads, they don’t get all of their traffic either into the US or into Mexico. The two closed crossings, Eagle Pass and El Paso, handle 45% of all US/Mexico railroad freight. Commodities being held up from Mexico include beer, auto parts, vehicles, and appliances. It's estimated that there are 60 trains being held up on both sides of the border. The closings were caused by the US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) moving agents from the closed stations to other areas swarmed by illegal aliens rushing the border from Mexico. Apparently everyone has gotten the word that the border is wide open and it is. We are getting illegal aliens from as far away as China, Iran, and even Gaza. And not only are they causing problems in the border states, they’ve made their way to so-called sanctuary states like California, New York, and Colorado. Three out of five illegal aliens no matter where they live, are dependent on federal handouts which means that US citizens are paying to support this invasion. Burlington Northern Santa Fe and the Union Pacific are imploring that the federal government quickly reopen the closed crossings. But the illegal aliens are riding the trains and we all know how dangerous that is. Ferromex reports that there have been many injuries and deaths. How many? We don’t know but a hazardous guess would be in the hundreds based on the pictures that we’ve seen of people riding the trains, many of them on the roofs of boxcars and sitting on jagged material being transported in gondolas. And it’s hard for train crews to remove these people. I remember when I was working a freight train across Nebraska for the BN and we went into a siding to let a hotshot freight go by us from the other direction. I was in the caboose that day and I walked up on the right side of the train looking for issues like hot bearings or material sticking out. All of a sudden I heard a loud “hey, let’s get this train moving!” It was three hobos in a boxcar hoping to get to Montana where they had jobs waiting for them on a cattle ranch. Their boss had given them bus money to get to Montana but they had used it on booze instead. I explained to them that I was only going as far as Alliance and I had no idea where there boxcar was going after that. I reached the head end of the train and started back towards the caboose on the left side of the train, looking for problem areas, when I stepped on something soft and wiggly and looked down to see that I was stepping on a rather large but thankfully dead rattlesnake. Still somewhat irritated at my stowaways and their demands to get the train moving I decided to have a little fun with my new friends. By that time, the eastbound hotshot was racing along and I watched the hotshot to see if it had any problems. It didn’t and I continued walking along my train. The engineer sounded two blasts on his horn letting everyone know he was moving forward as the switch opened to let us onto the mainline. As the train moved slowly back onto the mainline, I waited for the caboose and held the rattlesnake behind my back. The three would be cowboys were all hanging out the doorway of the boxcar yelling “it’s about fucking time” and other such encouragements and I, as they went by me, threw the rattlesnake up into their car, hitting the middle cowboy in the chest. They screamed like little girls and all three of them jumped out of the boxcar on the other side and started running. I grabbed the railing of the caboose and got up onto the steps in time to see the hobos running back towards the train. But it was too late, they had run too far, and all they could do was raise their fists in confused defiance. Unfortunately, there is no way to throw enough snakes to fix the problem. It’s incredible to think that the US government has no way to secure its borders and its commerce. What do you think?      

The Union Pacific Railroad is investigating a pilot program to have railroad conductors drive along in a pickup truck rather than ride in the locomotive. They would be called facilitators or expediters. It’s a long way from the days when the conductor and the rear brakeman rode in the caboose. When I worked for the railroad 45 years ago we often had five man crews – an engineer, a fireman, two brakemen and of course the boss of the train the conductor

It could be very difficult for the conductor/facilitator to find his train in the event that the train suffers a broken drawbar or some other difficulty that brings the train to a stop. When I worked in Nebraska and Wyoming there were many parts of the trackage that were pure isolation with no roads. Imagine that plugging up your line and trains stacking up. Plus, how difficult is it going to be to be alone in that locomotive without any other human companionship. Trust me, it can get pretty lonely out there! Especially if you are having problems!

What do you think?