If you follow Baseball you should be aware that there is a reason that you never discuss a no-hitter while it is happening.
GME

This is slightly off-topic, but not by much. It involves Amtrak passenger service, rather than railway preservation, and it involves somebody well known to us all. A passenger was complaining about something. I don't remember what it was, and it doesn't really matter. He said something like. "I'm going to contact Graham Claytor! He's a friend of mine!" This was some time after Mr. Claytor had passed away. I was tempted to ask the gentleman if he had attended the funeral, and just how he planned to make that contact.

If this thread were to expand into the realm of general passenger service, then the sky's the limit!

Tom

Tying Mr. Claytor, passenger service and railway preservation together, I was on a Southern Railway steam excursion returning to New Orleans when a mature lady got locked into a restroom on one of the heavyweight coaches. The crew had to damage the door jamb using one of the tools on board "for emergency use only" to get her out. She was a bit flustered by all the attention. Her embarrassment was probably not lessened when fellow rider and temporary wrecking foreman Mr. Claytor apologized to her on behalf of the company.
Alex Huff

A recent conversation, more like interview, from my trip to IRM...

"I see you're wearing a Western Maryland hat! Can you tell me about 1309? When will it be running? Will it wear WM or C&O paint? And will it need diesel assistance?"

Me to gentleman - "I don't work or volunteer there. I'm with another railroad."

"Oh. Well I don't care about that. Bye."

Guess I learned my lesson for wearing a hat for a railroad that hasn't existed since 1973... Next time I'll bring brochures and a new set of knowledge.

Christian B.

One of my all time favorites is, "What time does the 1 o'clock train leave?"

If you remember the old saying, "To lie like a railway timetable", then you'll understand the validity of being uncertain about when a scheduled train actually runs.

The most memorable railfan/volunteer quotes over the years at BR&W always seemed to make the annual "Coloring Book" that was handed out at the Christmas Party every year.

One quote that comes to mind from one of those coloring books is the sketch of two volunteers standing on the end of 752 (when it was newly on the property) looking rather perplexed shouting to the shop, "Hey! Where is the dipstick on this thing?!?"

"I swear, I saw this going down the mainline last week!"
-Someone upon seeing an artist rendering of the ill-fated ACE3000 prototype, in the late 80s. Man, it was hard to keep quiet...

Well, this is not a verbal quote, but an e-mail;

After moving (without permission from the project foreman) a 90 year old locomotive under going restoration in a restoration building and subjecting other volunteers to injury from unattached bare steel body panels and damaging the paint during a Guinness Book of Records attempt to attach a coupler in 5 seconds or less (because they had a "priority") the responsible "operating personnel" sent out an e-mail "ordering" all volunteers to put signs on things that needed "special handling"..... At an all volunteer railroad museum....

Cheers, Kevin

One of my favorites is from the Iron horse News of the Colorado Railroad Museum:

The mother turned to her child and pointed to the water tank and told him that the water was from the old days when the locomotives burned water?!

On tours I give at my own Western Railway Museum; I am often asked how the trains (meaning locomotives) get there. I explain some on their own wheels, some on flat bed trucks and some on flat cars over the rails. Then they ask why do we do it that way?

Ted Miles, Western Railway Museum

Actual questions and answers:

"What's in that car there?"

Fuel and water.

"What do you do with the fuel"

Burn it.

"What do you do with the water?"

Boil it to make steam.

"What do you do with the steam?"

Warm up our lunches.
----------------------------------

"Who throws the logs in?"

Nobody. It doesn't burn wood.

"Who shovels the coal?"

Nobody. It burns oil.

"No coal? Then it's a diesel, right?"

No. A lot of these things burned oil.

"Who shovels the oil?"

#$%^&*

"You gotta have some coal hidden someplace up here."

You caught me. We sneak it up here in our pockets. It only
takes all five us several trips to get 30 tons up here.

Way back before the coming of Amtrak, as a young twenty-something, I would visit the Santa Fe depot in Pasadena, California. One evening just after El Capitan/Super Chief departed a car pulled up and the driver and the passenger jumped out. I said something about the train had already arrived and departed on time. The driver replied something like, "What do you mean, a train is never on time!" and headed into the depot building.

From a TRAINS article about the Rock Island in the 1970s.
As a passenger runs after the departing commuter train, the dispatcher comments: "Thank you for chasing that train out of here, I've been trying to get it to leave all day."

Wesley

One of my favorite bits of Black River folklore involves the Very Important Businessman who wheeled into the Ringoes yard one weekday afternoon, ran up to the platform and began yelling, "When's the next train to New York? I need to get to New York!!" Finding no one to receive him (it being a weekday and no passenger trains running) he ventured down to the enginehouse where he continued his tirade at the somewhat bewildered shop crew. Upon being gently informed that, um, this train doesn't go to New York, he bellowed, "You don't understand! Its VERY IMPORTANT that I get to New York! You need to start that thing up and get me to New York RIGHT NOW!" But alas, the shop crew were unmoved. Apoplectic with rage, he turned and left, muttering something about poor customer service being the cause of the decline of American passenger trains, got back in his car and flew off in a cloud of dust in the vague direction of Princeton Junction.

Recently while flagging a crossing, I had just jumped out of the truck a passerby asked "What time is the train coming" my reply "Any second now" as I point to the train approaching less then 1/10th of a mile away.