WEBVTT - The Yard — E2 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:05.400 Just a heads up. This episode contains aboult language and 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:13.239 discussion of suicide, so take care while listening. When I 0:00:13.280 --> 0:00:16.640 first imagined Ruby hopping trains, my idea of it was romantic. 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:19.320 She'd be sitting with her back resting at the edge 0:00:19.360 --> 0:00:23.720 of an open box car door, open fields rushing by her, 0:00:23.920 --> 0:00:27.440 one leg extended, smoking a cigarette. I knew that trains 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:29.800 were dangerous, but this was the image I clung to. 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:33.880 It helped me get to sleep at night. I also 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:35.839 recognized that if I was going to understand when she 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:38.559 was up against, I had to see a train yard myself. 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:41.159 That's how I ended up in Roseville, one of the 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:43.640 biggest yards on the West Coast, to see what my 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:45.760 daughter would face if she was running through the train 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:48.479 yard trying to hop a train. Sometimes, you know, a 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:50.760 train goes by and it's squealing and you hear all 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:53.480 these sounds of like chuck chuck, the clock, the clock 0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:56.400 noises and stuff. But then other times, in the middle 0:00:56.400 --> 0:00:58.880 of night, a car just sales by you You didn't 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:01.279 hear anything, not in a whisper. It just comes out 0:01:01.280 --> 0:01:03.680 of the fog and just you're like, oh God, but 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:05.600 but the but the kids who traveled don't know this, 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:12.759 and they could be running between long corridors of trains. Absolutely, yeah, yes, 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:15.959 I've seen all kinds of people do that. I'd heard 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:18.600 Ruby might have come through Roosevelt, a railroad hub with 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:20.720 tracks that could take her over the Sierras to the 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:23.560 Midwest or north to Canada. But at first you'd have 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:25.840 to make her way through the train yard, across the 0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:28.960 tracks and between the freight cars. You're in the danger zone. 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:31.920 It's basically like running across the tarmac at l a X. 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:35.520 If I were to try to walk across all these 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:37.920 tracks ahead of me, each one of them is easily 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:41.240 able to have, like a fifteen thousand ton train sixties 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:45.679 seventy eight. Although I didn't know much about trains the 0:01:45.720 --> 0:01:48.000 day Ruby left, I was learning as much as I could, 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:50.680 as fast as I could. What I could learn on 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:53.200 the web would only take me so far. Like there 0:01:53.280 --> 0:01:55.200 was finding out lots of people died in the train 0:01:55.280 --> 0:01:59.120 yard every year. But how did that happen? If I'm 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:03.040 running across in front of a plane that's landing, Um, 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:05.000 you know, most people would think that would be crazy. 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:06.600 It would be like something you do like on an 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:11.040 insane daredevil. Bet No, one compares that to running in 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:14.120 front of a train which could be going almost the 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:16.480 same speed. I came to Roosevelt to find out what 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:18.880 Ruby could face in the yard, but it turned out 0:02:18.919 --> 0:02:22.399 that this dusty little town had some surprises for me. Sure, 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:25.040 I didn't think much about trains before Ruby left, but 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:27.760 when her friends talked about riding or I imagined Ruby 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:30.920 in that box car, I felt the draw. That was 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:33.960 my naive idea about how romantic a solo journey could be. 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:37.960 But in Roseville I learned the people who ride the 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:40.440 rails and the people who work in the yard experience 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:43.520 something more visceral. Inside the yard, they go up against 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:46.320 rob power every day, and it changes how they see 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:49.520 the world. The train yard is where all of this begins, 0:02:49.880 --> 0:03:25.280 the gateway to the city of the rails. For HBO's 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:28.080 the train yard is like the subway platform the bus stop. 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:30.360 They don't plan to spend a ton of time there, 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:33.160 but they do because they usually don't know when their 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:36.240 train is going to leave. So Roseville, one of the 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:38.440 biggest yards in the West, was a good place to 0:03:38.480 --> 0:03:41.160 start to understand the situation Ruby face when she tried 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:44.680 to hop a train without the fifty or sixty trains 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:47.160 at a coming through Roosevelt. There was a lot of emotion, 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:50.080 a lot of things could go wrong. I needed someone 0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:52.920 to guide me through this world, because while it was big, 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:57.200 noisy and obvious, it was also mysterious to outsiders. Beyond 0:03:57.240 --> 0:03:59.040 that chaos, there was more than you could see at 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:01.440 a glance. I wanted to find the person who could 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:04.320 show me that, so I started calling around, trying to 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:07.160 find a yard worker or a train conductor, someone who 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:09.400 worked on the ground who could walk me through life 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:12.640 in the yard. Finally, on my tenth call, a guy 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:15.000 told me he knew someone who could talk my ear 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:19.240 off basically just because they need. That's my kind of guy. 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:23.320 My name is Robert Hudson. I'm a former switchman and 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:27.240 brakeman and conductor for the Pacific Railroad. I told Robert 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:29.479 I wanted to know what my daughter faced in the yard. 0:04:29.720 --> 0:04:31.800 So on a Wednesday afternoon, he picked me up to 0:04:31.880 --> 0:04:34.480 drive me around Roseville. He had a bunch of spots 0:04:34.520 --> 0:04:36.120 he wanted to show me that would give me a 0:04:36.120 --> 0:04:39.000 full view of the yard. And Roseville is one of 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:43.320 the weirdest towns that you see around California. Because Robert 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:45.880 is ready faced with thick sandy brown hair and blue 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:48.159 eyes that brighton when he talks about the train yard, 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:52.400 and boy can he talk. It's got five sections, and 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:55.440 if you drive through Roseville it looks like any other 0:04:55.520 --> 0:04:58.320 California mountain town except for the fact that you can 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:02.000 see and hear the trains all time. You'd never suspect 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:04.719 it was part of the international economy, a hub where 0:05:04.760 --> 0:05:07.040 good shipped from Asia passed through on their way to 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:10.480 places all around the US. On our way around the yard, 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:13.080 Robert showed me how much the country owes two little 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:15.800 towns like this. We're actually right next to the old 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:18.120 telegraphy office, which I don't think a lot of people 0:05:18.120 --> 0:05:21.160 realize that. If you ever heard heard of Sprint UM, 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:28.120 Sprint is Southern Pacific Internal Network Telephone YEP. It was 0:05:28.160 --> 0:05:32.320 origionally started as the Railroad telephones before we had radios. 0:05:32.880 --> 0:05:36.480 In the seventies, the Southern Pacific Railroad laid telegraph lines 0:05:36.520 --> 0:05:39.400 along its train tracks. Over the next hundred years, those 0:05:39.440 --> 0:05:43.239 lines became fiber optic cables, and in two the Southern 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:46.080 Pacific began to sell its communication network as a service 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:50.679 to private customers, which later became Sprint Mobile Southern Pacific Railroad, 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:54.919 internal network telephony. All these facts about the rails that 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:58.080 came rattling out of Robert made me go, huh, really, 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:02.120 people have no idea how much the railroad effects in 0:06:02.160 --> 0:06:04.240 their lives, you know, like it reaches its fingers into 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:07.280 almost everything. We get all these different cities that's sprung up, 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:09.680 just like Roseville, you know, came out of nowhere because 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:13.400 it was just a place for two railroads crossed. With 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:16.159 Robert is my guide. This place was coming alive to me. 0:06:16.680 --> 0:06:19.200 There was order in this chaos. It wasn't just a 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:21.680 place where two rail tracks crossed. It was right in 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:25.800 the center of the economy. As we approach the center 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:30.280 of the yard, Robert pulls over and this is um 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:33.240 Right here is like the side of the yard, which 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:35.599 is the receiving yard that normally picks up a whole 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:40.360 bunch of cars from We're looking at the main part 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:43.280 of the yard, about fifty tracks wide, with pieces of 0:06:43.320 --> 0:06:46.679 trains scattered around, a few train cars linked together, standing 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:50.360 here or there on different tracks, not going anywhere. Robert 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:52.479 points to a long cut of cars stacked high with 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:56.159 shrink wrapped packages, and then there's a whole bunch of 0:06:56.160 --> 0:06:59.159 of cars that have lumber on them from you know, 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:02.920 upen Oregon in Washington, and so those are a lot 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:04.800 of those are actually probably headed down to the Bay 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:06.640 Area to get on ships and to go to China, 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:09.960 because our wood is actually going mostly to China. Right now, 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:12.760 I looked at at the United States is a number 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:15.640 one exporter of wood to China, nearly a billion tons 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:18.000 of wood a year, and each one of those cars 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:20.960 carried two hundred thousand pounds of lumber, enough to build 0:07:21.040 --> 0:07:24.440 six houses per car. The memberships out to China through 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:26.880 the Port of Oakland. But the same freight trains can 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:31.280 carry anything chicken feed, meet, even air Jordan's. Some cars 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:34.920 hold finished goods destined for Walmart and Amazon warehouses. And 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:37.600 along the way a lot of those trains passed through Roseville. 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:41.360 It's one of America's main gateways for shipping. Robert told 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:43.800 me what happens when the train enters the yard, so 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:46.760 it comes in is one train shuffles up like into 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:49.640 different pieces, and it goes out the other end, and 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:51.920 it's now like a new train. It's only if it 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:53.920 actually has to get shuffled that it goes in the yard. 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:55.560 In the first place. Otherwise it would just go right 0:07:55.600 --> 0:07:57.880 past the yard. But if it's you know, if it 0:07:57.880 --> 0:08:00.240 has to get shuffled and it comes in on the 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:03.000 west side, say, and then they put it back together 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:04.680 and give it a new engine and it takes off 0:08:04.920 --> 0:08:07.720 to the east side. This is the same basic operation 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:10.480 that's sent goods around America since we started shipping by 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:13.720 rail in the early eight hundreds. Trains enter the yard 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:16.360 carrying one set of cars and leave with another. And 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:18.720 if you're paying attention, they can tell you a lot. 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:21.440 So the fun thing about the railroad is that because 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:24.400 it's behind the scenes, uh, you have the sense of 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:27.679 like every industry, I mean, there's a there's a finger 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:29.720 on the pulse of like the nation that we have 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:32.960 that a lot of people don't. So the railroad is 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:36.439 very much like um driven by the whole economy. So 0:08:36.679 --> 0:08:38.800 about a third of all of the goods in the 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:41.960 entire country that are sold in every store go through 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:44.679 the Port of Oakland or Port of l A. So 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:49.920 we move all that stuff. Those are just two ports, 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:51.719 and they receive a third of the goods that are 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:54.840 then shipped across America. And Robert said he knew when 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:58.000 the economy was getting shaky just by watching the traffic 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:00.079 in the yard, because I could tell, Like by in 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:02.719 two thousand, for example, I knew that the economy wasn't 0:09:02.760 --> 0:09:05.880 doing well for sure, you know, maybe like you're in advance. 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:08.520 I mean, because there was less and less railroad cars. 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:10.640 I mean I was, I was working over time, and 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:12.600 then all of a sudden, I was barely working seven 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:15.160 hours a day and getting paid for eight. And this 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:18.520 is before the actual crash. Yeah, before the crash, by 0:09:18.240 --> 0:09:23.440 at least a good eight months or something. Roseville is 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:26.280 more than it appears. This dusty old yard is an 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:29.440 international crossroads with hundreds of thousands of tons of goods 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:33.520 passing through. Sure didn't look that way, so we ignore 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:36.600 the train yards mostly, and the trains are indifferent to us. 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:39.400 They're too big, too busy to react to a little 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:42.120 human or two who might be standing in the way. 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:45.079 And taking advantage of that are thousands of hoboes looking 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:47.559 in the empty cars, hoping that and all of this 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:51.840 slamming together and breaking apart, they could slip between the shadows, quickly, 0:09:52.000 --> 0:09:55.520 leap over the gaps quietly to get where they're going unscathed. 0:09:56.559 --> 0:09:58.560 From my vantage point, at the end of the yard. 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:01.000 The odds of them make king It didn't look good. 0:10:05.520 --> 0:10:08.240 Robert was taking me to an even scarier place, the 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:12.920 place where all the noise falls away. The hop is 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:27.599 probably the most dangerous place in the yard. Before I 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:30.080 met up with Robert and Roseville, I went online trying 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:32.280 to figure out where I should go next. To find Ruby. 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:35.040 I found maps of train routes and imagine the view 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:37.600 from a train headed over the rockies or alongside the 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:40.920 Hudson in the fall. But I also wanted some basic facts. 0:10:42.440 --> 0:10:45.440 There's seven railroads with big freight yards like Roseville stashed 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:48.440 around the country. These places where the trains come together 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:51.000 and break apart are where hoboes switched from one train 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:54.720 to another, heading to where they want to go. Leaping 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:58.320 between trains is a dangerous move. About five people a 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:01.520 year die on railroad property, more than one a day. 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:05.200 To help me understand how these people died, Robert took 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:08.400 me across the yard to see the hump. So we 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:13.080 see if there's some spot, so way exactly are we yes? 0:11:13.200 --> 0:11:16.080 I was gonna say, this is a spot where we're 0:11:16.120 --> 0:11:19.920 on the quieter side of like the rail yard. Robert 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:22.000 points to the spot he wanted to show me, maybe 0:11:22.000 --> 0:11:24.920 a hundred feet from where we're standing. It's like trains 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:26.880 would be coming from the left of me and going 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:28.640 to the right of me, and the right after you 0:11:28.640 --> 0:11:31.040 know you as the hump. Then it goes into the 0:11:31.080 --> 0:11:34.000 bowl to the to the right of me. It's definitely 0:11:34.200 --> 0:11:36.959 like a substantial hill. I think the mountain is probably 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:39.880 twenty feet, but then below that there's a bowl that 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:42.040 actually goes down into the ground and is lower than 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:45.800 the ground level, so it might drop twenty five ft. 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:49.200 I watched as one by one, huge freight cars glide 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:51.120 across the tracks played out on the other side of 0:11:51.160 --> 0:11:54.600 the hump, going maybe five miles. They appear to operate 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:57.320 on their own power, the engines pushing it up that hill, 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:00.240 and then they're just rolling off into that to that 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:06.600 bowl by gravity. It's eerie. The train cars moved silently, swiftly. 0:12:07.080 --> 0:12:08.960 Unless you knew to look for them, you'd never see 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:17.600 them coming. Would we see them coming? And writers weren't 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:19.400 the only ones who are at risk on the hump. 0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:22.959 The people who worked there were two. JP Right started 0:12:23.000 --> 0:12:25.160 his life in the yard working on top of the hump, 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:28.200 and he knew how dangerous that work could be. How 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:30.319 big is the yard that you started at? Which one 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:34.520 was that? Oh gosh, it was Osborne Yards in Louisville, Kentucky. 0:12:34.840 --> 0:12:37.160 I can't remember how many acres it was. The hump 0:12:37.200 --> 0:12:40.000 is still hand operated. As cars come over the hill, 0:12:40.120 --> 0:12:42.839 there's a human being there separating the cars by hand. 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:45.600 JP right used to be one of those people working 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:48.000 the hump, pulling the pins to separate the cars at 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:51.280 the knuckle before they rolled onto the tracks. As simple 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:54.000 as it sounds, the job can be grueling. So you 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:57.360 reach in maybe like half of arm lights and you 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:00.600 pull this thing that lift the pin up in between 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:03.920 the two knuckles. So you're lifting ten to twelve pounds 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:06.839 with one armed all night, over and over and over 0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:10.000 and over again. The kind of the train is coming 0:13:10.040 --> 0:13:12.520 over the hump and you're reaching your hand in there 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:17.080 to pull this lever. Yet that allows the car to 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:21.120 separate back gravity when it goes over the hump. As 0:13:21.120 --> 0:13:23.480 the train keeps rolling new cars up to the hump, 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:26.120 a pin pullar has to be there at the ready, 0:13:26.400 --> 0:13:30.280 and some trains are miles long. The plan was to 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:33.800 get six cards a night on a shift, so there's 0:13:33.840 --> 0:13:38.120 two people doing it. How many nights I would walk ten, twelve, 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:42.480 fifteen miles a night on top the hill. I lost 0:13:42.520 --> 0:13:45.800 forty pounds the first year I did it. It took strength, 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:49.520 quick reflexes, an excellent hand eye coordination, and if you 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:53.040 made a mistake, it was one you'd never forget. Robert 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:56.480 Hudson told me pin pullers had a reputation, you know, 0:13:56.559 --> 0:13:58.240 the pin pullers, by the fact that they would lose 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:01.040 fingers almost inevitably. So they're like two or three fingers 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:03.720 on these guys, and they grabuly like pin out and 0:14:03.760 --> 0:14:06.439 they'd separate the cars that way. But as you can imagine, 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:09.520 like that was very dangerous. JP told me about one 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:12.840 close call he had. I was reading the cars on 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:15.280 the track next to me, and I accidentally moved over 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:18.000 a little bit too far to the next track, and 0:14:18.160 --> 0:14:21.560 UH car comes flying by, and I felt the wind 0:14:22.040 --> 0:14:24.720 of it on my shoulder and on my head, So 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:26.840 I was that close and then there it went, and 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:29.760 I was like, fuck, I never heard coming. But JP 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:32.440 knew the hazards and being a pin pully was just 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:35.240 an entry point to something greater. He had his sight 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:37.160 set on the best job in the yard, being an 0:14:37.160 --> 0:14:39.720 engineer who can pull down a hundred thousand dollars a 0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:43.440 year with just a high school education. Besides the money, 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:46.040 driving the train was a huge part of the appeal. 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:49.360 As dangerous as they are, trains show you hidden places 0:14:49.400 --> 0:14:55.120 in the world. As four testosterone purposes, there was nothing 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:59.000 better than getting up on the train on a really 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:04.000 nice night. You got to really good locomotives. So you're 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:08.480 gonna go sixty and you crack open the windows. It's 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:12.000 nice outside. You cracked that throttle and off you go 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:16.240 through the back roads of Kentucky all the way through 0:15:16.280 --> 0:15:19.960 to Tennessee. I mean, there's an absolute allure to the 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:21.880 whole thing. Of course, it's almost like you're in the 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:26.200 wild wild West riding your big you know, four thousand horses. 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:31.120 When you are participating in how you feel that you 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:36.640 are really building the country. You're you're out there doing 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:39.600 something that has a long tradition. You're in one of 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:42.240 the oldest unions in the United States. There's all this 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:46.560 brotherhood's talk, and it's easily to get wrapped up into 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:49.400 this whole fucking cowboy movie that you're a part of 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:54.040 every night. It isn't just a thrill that attracts rail 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:58.280 workers is knowing that you're part of something bigger. Pretty 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:00.880 Much anything that anybody has on their body or in 0:16:00.920 --> 0:16:05.000 their home or anything is delivered somehow on a train. 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:07.520 So it's a very important part of our economy. And 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:10.880 we're told that, you know, as part of the company jargon, 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:15.400 but we also know that, hey, we're proud. It's a tradition. 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:22.520 You're proud is a great tradition in this country. Their tradition, 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:25.360 JP is so proud of still uses technology that hasn't 0:16:25.400 --> 0:16:28.320 been improved upon from more than a century. But these 0:16:28.360 --> 0:16:31.640 simple technologies, like the hump or the high tech of 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:34.680 their time, they changed the world, just like the Internet 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:38.880 or smartphones have shaped our world today. These trains connected America, 0:16:39.120 --> 0:16:43.040 tying individual cities together into a country. They created a network. 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:46.240 Historian Richard White told me how the railroads really were 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:49.720 the Internet of their day. Places that have been isolated 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:51.960 from each other. They might be thirty miles apart, but 0:16:52.000 --> 0:16:54.120 nobody would ever see each other because it was too 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:56.360 hard to go down muddy roads to do it. With 0:16:56.400 --> 0:16:59.240 the rails, those people would become neighbors. And it's not 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:01.720 just thirty mile So we've been hundreds of miles away, 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:05.240 places that would have been utterly strange would now become familiar. 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:10.240 That's essentially the same thing the Silicon Valley promised in 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:13.960 the late early twenty first century. The The argument was simply, 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:17.600 information could travel so quickly people would be able to 0:17:17.640 --> 0:17:19.840 see each other, talk to each other, here each other 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:22.800 without filters in between them. Then, in fact, this kind 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:27.320 of neighborly listening community would arise from the technology itself. 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:31.240 The railroads brought people together, just like the Internet did, 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:35.000 connecting people in ways that were previously impossible, And just 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:37.480 like with the Internet, there was a lot of commentary 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:41.440 and criticism about the railroads. Phil Sexton, a local railroad 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:44.520 historian in Roseville, told me that when trains began to 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:47.000 spread in the early eighteen hundreds, they had their own 0:17:47.119 --> 0:17:50.040 version of the y two K panic. There were actually 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:54.399 scientists in Europe who postulated that by moving as fast 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:58.040 as thirty miles an hour, you would be irrevocably damaged 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:02.800 due to the g forces. But damn the warnings. Americans 0:18:02.800 --> 0:18:05.080 wanted to be on the move. Being able to travel 0:18:05.200 --> 0:18:08.640 quickly and freely change the US from a farming country 0:18:08.680 --> 0:18:11.359 to an industrial one. Starting with the big growth of 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:13.720 the cities. The people who took to the rails of 0:18:13.760 --> 0:18:16.239 the eighties had something in common with those who are 0:18:16.240 --> 0:18:19.520 on the rails today. They just had to go. Some 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:21.800 people just have itchy feet. If you remember the end 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:24.439 of Huck Finn, he talks about lighting out for the 0:18:24.520 --> 0:18:27.000 territory ahead of the rest because it's just too civilized 0:18:27.040 --> 0:18:29.480 where he is, And a lot of people felt that way, 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:31.919 And a lot of people wanted farm land, or they 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:35.560 just wanted what they felt was more freedom and kind 0:18:35.600 --> 0:18:39.400 of breathing space. With trains, remote places whose journeys were 0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:42.679 once too treacherous or too far, we're now within reach. 0:18:43.280 --> 0:18:45.479 That meant that people who wanted to go could go 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:50.720 further and much more easily. All those dreamers and scoundrels 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:53.440 who wanted a new life could board a train to California, 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:57.199 which had a geography much different from the East. Who 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:00.760 could imagine seven thousand foot tall amount and being in 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:05.600 snow in June or July for you know, the strange 0:19:05.720 --> 0:19:08.800 rocks that you would see of verdant, vibrant colors in 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:12.160 different mining areas. It's very unlike any in the eastern 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:16.360 United States, but it wasn't just California, it was all 0:19:16.359 --> 0:19:19.280 the stops along the way, the three thousand mile breadth 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:22.240 of the country, with the tracks late east to west 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:24.640 along the route. Noon was different in New York than 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:27.600 it was in Sacramento. Trains had to stay on schedule, 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:32.359 schedules had to stay in sync. Robert Husson described the 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:36.600 railroad solution when we all used to this day time zones. 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:40.719 Time zones comes from the railroad, you know, we we 0:19:40.840 --> 0:19:43.640 uh we get time zones because they had to be 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:45.840 on the same time when they got to the next town. 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:48.480 They couldn't, you know, say like, oh yeah, sorry, noon 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:51.320 is different here, fifteen minutes different. Something that didn't work 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:52.639 for them. So they had to find a way to 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:55.000 like have every begin on the same time zone. I 0:19:55.040 --> 0:19:58.159 mean time zones. There's such a given in life. I 0:19:58.200 --> 0:20:01.840 never thought that someone or some busy this invented them. 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:03.200 You know, it's hard to believe that there was a 0:20:03.240 --> 0:20:04.960 time when people would just look up and be like, well, 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:06.520 the suns in the middle of the skuy, so it's new. 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:09.600 It had to be right, otherwise there was no way 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:12.080 to communicate. If the train was five minutes behind, then 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:16.560 they'd be crashing into another train. The railroads accomplished a 0:20:16.640 --> 0:20:19.920 huge feed synchronizing the world's measurement of time from one 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:22.280 zone to the next. So if you're ever curious why 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:25.040 New York is three hours ahead of California, the answer 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:29.200 is railroads. Some historians say the railroads invented modern life, 0:20:29.359 --> 0:20:32.680 and that modernity begins after a country builds his first railroad. 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:35.920 So many things developed by railroads hundreds of years ago 0:20:36.000 --> 0:20:39.239 are still part of our everyday lives. Railroads gave us 0:20:39.240 --> 0:20:43.000 cruise control and air brakes, even QR codes. The way 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:45.640 they synchronized time even had a role in Einstein's theory 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:49.480 of relativity. But really was off the clock, out in 0:20:49.520 --> 0:20:52.800 the world, unconcerned by schedules. If I was right that 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:55.439 she was train hopping somewhere, it was funny to me 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:58.040 that young travel was rejecting modern life by hopping on 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:00.560 a train, the thing that created the world. They were 0:21:00.600 --> 0:21:07.320 rejecting something primal, drew people to the rails. Otherwise they'd 0:21:07.359 --> 0:21:09.640 take one look at the train yard and come straight home. 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:14.359 Had weby been through Roseville? Where had she gone? What 0:21:14.480 --> 0:21:17.880 had she seen? I still didn't know, but I knew 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:20.600 it didn't really matter where she hopped out from. It 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:25.479 was obvious that any train yard could kill you. Did 0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:27.960 Ruby know this when she left? Was that even a 0:21:28.040 --> 0:21:31.119 factor in her decision? Then again, maybe all of the 0:21:31.160 --> 0:21:33.320 reasons I was coming up with didn't matter to her. 0:21:34.200 --> 0:21:36.359 They were a mom's reasons, and the fact that I 0:21:36.359 --> 0:21:38.480 wanted to find a reason seemed like a very mom 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:42.080 thing too. That explanation could be a lot simpler than that, 0:21:42.920 --> 0:21:44.560 if I was willing to let my mind go to 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:46.680 the part of the past I didn't want to revisit. 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:52.119 Ruby had been having a hard time before I moved 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:55.760