I misspoke earlier...

[plonq]

It seems that I misspoke when I said, "Unless I hear otherwise, it sounds like when I come home for the weekend it will be to stay."

What I should have said was, "Unless I hear otherwise, I'll be heading back out for a couple more days of work." I learned that sometime after I did my last post, but I didn't have access to a computer until after I got home. I have been operating under the assumption that I'd have to make the 380km drive two more times over the next few days, but apparently the good thoughts and positive karma you all have been sending my way paid off today.

I got a call from our foreman telling me that we're done. Finished. No more. It's over.

I took a few more photos on our last couple of days up there that I am going to post here (along with a few more that I will clean up and post at a later date). This has been a month of hard, heavy, cold, wet work but atara and I seem to have come out of it intact. It feels good to be home.


If you were tied to the train tracks, this might be what the world would look like to you. It is going to be a long time for me before I can look at this picture and see something other than sagging joints that need lifting, and rotten ties that need replacing. I'll never be able to look at railway tracks the same way again.


I handed the foreman my camera to get a shot of the crew at work on our second-to-last day on the job. I am the only one who was actually working in this picture. I was holding up the tie and thinking, "Just take the picture so that they can tamp this tie!" Holding up the tie wasn't really that much work, mind you. The tough part was getting the lining bar to bite enough so that you could actually lift it in the first place.


One of our unofficial duties at this time of year is to rescue ducklings that have become trapped between the ties. The little bastards can run pretty fast on those little legs, and I had to run to keep up. I took several shots, and this was the least blurry of the lot.


This was an interesting little bar in Spyhill where we had our last supper together as a group. The lighting in this shot is a bit deceptive, because it was about 21:30 when I shot this, but the colour-correction makes it look like late afternoon. What made this place interesting is that when you ordered a steak, they served it raw and you had to go to the grill and cook it yourself. On the plus side, you could not gripe too loudly if the steak was cooked wrong.


This is the only picture I have of the whole crew together. Mitch (far right) was the supervisor who acted as our foreman during the assignment. He was a bit of a slave driver, but none of us complained about it because he worked the hardest of any of us. He's also one of the nicest people you'd ever want to meet. He just oozes small-town friendly.


This is the last picture from my time up there. I shot this out the front window of the truck as we were backing up to a crossing so that we could take the truck off the tracks again. There is a bit of distortion from the windshield, and a couple of blurred spots where bugs were spattered on the glass, but I like the overall effect. This almost has an oil painting look to it.

Comments

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

The tracks need to be re-designed to include "duckling tunnels" every few feet. ;-)

[elfasi.livejournal.com]

Beautiful pictures, sets the scene quite well. You must be glad getting back to your office :). My thoughts were of the original workers you had to replace, what was the story there in the end?

[plonq.livejournal.com]

I can't go into a lot of detail about it because the company has issued a gag-order of sorts, but I can tell you that it was not worth it to the union members for the amount of time that they were out.

I can tell you that if I was working in that bargaining unit, I would be very angry with my union executive if I had voted for the strike, and even angrier if I had voted against it.