The Weathering Depot

Another story from my days on the Indiana and Ohio railroad. During my last year with the railroad as track inspector I was inspecting the Mason Ohio to Lebanon Ohio line one day during the first week of August.

This was the line that the railroad at that time ran their own tourist train between the two towns. I happened to start this day at the end of track in Mason ,then worked my way up the line north to Lebanon where the other end of track was.

On this day the temperature was 101 degrees and with the humidity the total air temperature was about 103 degrees.

When I got to just this side of the depot in Lebanon where our run around track was, I came upon a broken rail. Of course this was some of the track the tourist train needed to run on to be able to shove the train back into the depot just on the the other side of US Rt. 42.

On my hirail truck I carried two acetylene tanks and welding gear. I also carried one of these huge round insulated water coolers that I had tied down to the truck bed. Thank goodness I had that this day!

Needless to say this took awhile to cut the broken rail out and splice in a good piece, plus joint bars of course. In the course of welding I of course used gloves and a welding mask. Before starting I made sure I took some salt tablets that I also carried especially in the summertime just for days like this. Thank goodness for these as well, for when I finished my work day my blue denim shirt was white with all the salt I sweated out. If I hadn’t had the salt pills plus plenty of water I most likely would have succumbed to heat stroke! Just another work day on the railroad however….!