Re: A Railroad Saga... (add to it)...

Billy had Lake go back a few hundred feet and put some new "guns" (track torpeodes) on the rail and leave a red flag to warn anything that might be following that they were stopped there.
He didn't figure the dispatcher would run much up behind them with the siding at Burning Switch occupied with his own train. The only other place anything could get in the clear was the empty passing track and the wye at Horse Creek. The railroad was pretty well tied up until they could unravel what was wrong with the 29 and get the line cleared.
Billy whistled off and hey moved forward slowly toward where the German had said their caboose was derailed. He thought if it maybe wasn't too far off the iron, maybe they could set a rerailing frog and chain up to the drawbar and pull it back on the tracks.....
In the backs of their minds they were all wondering what had become of the "second" train they had met back there at Burning Switch....There was no place a whole train could have gotten in the clear and out of sight between where they were and where they had started back up from Burning Switch.....Had someone made an error and not made them aware of a "second 29", or was the vision of that second train with the strange sounding engine and the unresponsive hind-end crew something they had all imagined??? A "Ghost Train"???? Why had the German paled so when they asked him if a train had been following him?......