Um, yeah, Gerald, it goes something like that.
Your post reminds me of a time I was chasing Norfolk Southern 611's last fan trip with a friend. It was after 9:00 P.M. and 611 was making its way back home in the dark. We paced her for quite a ways, taking in the sounds and the steam plume that kept getting reflected in the automobile headlights. (That part of the trip was better than all the photos. The best camera is in your head.)
Anyway, we lost the train at some point and decided to get off the highway at a rather large town, because we thought the train would stop there and let passengers off. Well, we didn't know where we were going (or what we were doing, for that matter), but we thought we were headed in the general direction of the tracks when in the rush to beat the train my friend drove us off the road and into a ditch.
We got the car out of the ditch and continued on, managing to find a deserted railroad yard. It was at about that point that I spotted the red lights in the passenger side mirror, and told my friend we had company. She did the wise thing (although I seem to remember some hesitation) and pulled over, and soon we were surrounded by plain clothes officers with guns drawn, flashlights in our faces.
Now, here we are at 10 at night, in the middle of who-knows-where, with a bunch of cameras and other rather unusual pariphinalia strewn about the car. Needless to say, there was no steam train nearby. God only knows what they were thinking as they scanned the interior of the car and viewed all that stuff.
Their first question, asked in a rather excited tone, was, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!! You were driving erratically and you drove off the road back there!" The truth is usually the best policy in these circumstances, so we told them there was a steam train coming through and we were trying to find it. Let's just say they weren't convinced.
To make a long story short, we managed to convince them that we were not drug dealers or otherwise up to no good, and they finally realized that we posed no threat. To the contrary, we were the ones in danger. They pointed out that we were in a very rough part of town where people get hurt on a routine basis. We were very contrite, they finally let us go, and we go the hell out of there.
Ah, the memories...
Curt
