LPTP #8... destination reached, more or less

Well, okay, now that I've finished telling my version of what happened to the police, the fire investigators, the railroad investigators, the FRA investigators, and even a stray NTSB investigator who happened to be driving by (all while ignoring the media except to refer them to railroad Media Relations), and had a good laugh at all the posts since my last one, I do hereby declare the thread ended. And the winner is Mikey!

I don't remember why I chose this date for it to end, but I wrote it on my desk calendar, so I must have had a good reason. Perhaps I just thought it was a reasonable time from when it started. It could be that it would be my first chance to post after qualifying on the streetcar, but I don't think I knew when the thread started when I would be doing that.

And yes, I did qualify, under rather unusual circumstances. The qualifiers were busy, my pilot operator was late, and they wanted to film three cars coming out of the barn in sequence. Several of us rushed through prepping the car for service (which I should have done myself to show my proficiency), I ran it out with a different pilot, then my scheduled pilot showed up and, after running it himself for a couple of trips, let me take over. After a while, the qualifier showed up and watched me do a trip, then sat back and relaxed for a trip, then pulled me off to go talk about it and go over my training form. He filled it out and signed it and shook my hand. Never watched me put the car away and shut it down. Then I went for a celebratory ride on the Nebraska Zephyr (with the same video camera in front of me, filming the conductor talking to the passengers).

After six days of operating this car, I can start training on other cars with straight air brakes and K-controls. After a year, I can move up to certain interurban cars, Chicago L cars, or PCC streetcars. Once I qualify on any of those, I can train on anything else electric.