The Train Engineer Blew The Horn At My Motorcycle… Then Threw Me His Radio
I looked where the freight engineer told me to look. Fifty yards beyond the crossing, half hidden by tall grass and a rusted signal cabinet, stood an old manual turnout lever that had not been used in years. I remembered it from my days inspecting railroad bridges. It connected the main line to a short emergency siding once built for maintenance crews. If I could throw the switch before the excursion train reached it, the train would be diverted away from the blocked crossing. I sprinted toward it, boots slipping on loose gravel. The steel lever had not moved in decades. I grabbed it with both hands and pulled with everything I had. Nothing. I tried again. Still nothing. Behind me, the whistle grew louder. The logging truck driver rushed over without saying a word. Together we leaned our full weight onto the handle. With a deafening metallic crack, the frozen mechanism finally broke free and slammed into position. At that exact moment the excursion train reached the turnout. The locomotive jolted as its wheels followed the emergency siding instead of the main track. The engineer continued full emergency braking while the train rolled safely onto the side track, stopping only a few hundred feet short of the blocked crossing. Inside the passenger cars, frightened families held onto their seats, but everyone remained unharmed. When the train finally stopped, the engineer climbed down, walked straight toward us, and wrapped both of us in a silent embrace. He couldn’t speak. Neither could we.
Within minutes, sheriff’s deputies, railroad supervisors, firefighters, and emergency crews flooded the crossing. Inspectors confirmed what could have happened. If the train had continued on the main track, it would have struck the pile of heavy pine logs at highway speed. The impact could have derailed multiple passenger cars carrying more than one hundred families enjoying a weekend mountain excursion. The emergency siding, forgotten by almost everyone still working on the railroad, had become the difference between tragedy and survival.
As investigators cleared the scene, the freight engineer who had thrown me the radio finally arrived in another locomotive. His name was Frank Delaney, a railroad veteran with forty-one years behind the throttle. He smiled when he saw me holding the radio. “I recognized you the second I saw that motorcycle,” he said. “You inspected this subdivision years ago. I remembered you were the only person close enough who’d know that emergency switch still existed.” I laughed softly. “I almost didn’t remember it myself.”
A week later the railroad company invited every passenger back to Cheyenne. Children who had been aboard the excursion train handed thank-you cards to firefighters, deputies, railroad workers, and the logging truck driver who had helped move the smaller logs. The company unveiled a restored version of the old turnout lever, mounted on a stone monument beside the historic depot. A simple bronze plaque carried just one sentence:
“Knowledge means little until someone chooses to use it.”
The railroad superintendent then surprised me with another gift. He handed me the battered black railroad radio that Frank had thrown from the moving locomotive. The scratches were still there. So was the cracked antenna.
“We were going to replace it,” he said. “Frank insisted we didn’t.”
I looked at him.
“He said that radio already finished the most important job it would ever have.”
Months later, whenever I rode my 2025 Triumph Tiger 1200 Rally Pro through Wyoming, I often stopped at that crossing. The damaged warning signals had been replaced. The crossing gates worked perfectly again. The emergency siding had been fully restored instead of abandoned, and a small sign reminded railroad crews to inspect the turnout every year so it would never seize again.
One cool autumn morning I watched the same excursion train roll safely through the valley. Children waved from the windows as the locomotive sounded two short blasts on its horn. Standing beside the track, Frank answered with a wave from the cab of a passing freight train on the neighboring line.
I smiled, clipped the old railroad radio securely inside one of my motorcycle panniers, and started the Triumph. The engine echoed across the Wyoming plains as another train disappeared into the distance. Some people believed heroes were the ones who made headlines. But I knew the truth. Sometimes they were simply the people who remembered one forgotten switch, trusted one another without hesitation, and acted before there was no time left to act.