"I'll take her through ..."

My older brother occasionally reminds me of the time, years ago, when I drove a car right into a washout.

I was a new driver, with a lot more self-confidence than common sense. My brother and I were driving home in a fierce rain, and came to a spot where water was running over the road.

My brother, more experienced than I, told me to stop. I replied "Don't worry, I'll take her through ..."

And so I did, for a score of feet until we hit the washout and the front end of the car sunk into the water. Stuck we were, and I learned a bit more about caution.

I was reminded of this yesterday at the railroad. We were taking a new car, a beautiful open excursion car for fall color viewing, for a test run. The test run was sandwiched in between the noon and 1 pm trains.

I was driving the diesel, and a a bunch of volunteers -- Dale, Jane, Gary, Bruce, Bob -- were riding, listening to the trucks and looking out for any problems.

We made it out to Western Springs. The new car performed beautifully.

Bob and I turned the diesel at Western Springs, and I headed down along the siding past the switchback. The others, meanwhile, were going to push the new car through the switchback so we could hook up, let the passenger train pull into the Western Springs station, and return to Hyde Park station.

I got out of the diesel and walked back to help move the new car.

We've been having trouble with the east end switchback. The switch doesn't reliably open as it is supposed to do. John and I spent an hour a week or two ago trying to diagnose the problem, and everyone knew about the issue. Meanwhile, we've not been using the switchback.

We moved the new car to the problem switch. Caution, of course, would have dictated that we would manually open the switch to let the new car to the problem switch.

Not so. Dale said something like "We'll find out how the switch is working ..." It wasn't, and about ten seconds later, we'd derailed the front truck of the new car.

It didn't take but a few minutes to set things right, and I doubt that anyone on the passenger train even noticed we were doing anything odd.

I wish I could report that I'd played my brother's role and advised Dale to stop and manually turn the switch, just to be on the safe side, but I didn't.

I laughed like everyone else.

So I paid my dues, getting under the car and helping get the truck back on track.

The trip back was uneventful, and the new car will be put in service.