So I get stuck on the Brown line for 30 minutes becuase of a track fire yesterday.

Well today, the Metra rail (which is right by our office window) caught fire in like 5 places.

This 12 car giant ass Metra rail grinder train went down the tracks throwing sparks like crazy. I guess it’s purpose is to smooth the tracks out. It was awesome. They had water cars at the end of it that spewed out water to put out any fires the sparks created (nope. it didn’t work so well). Then at the end is two guys with water canons to put out any other flames (that didn’t work so well either).

I was thinking they probably only really need to run that thing once a decade or something but if they have a good year with no accidents or something. They say “Alright everybody! let’s run the rail grinder!” It’s like a company picnic or something.

So we let the smouldering continue for about 20 minutes but it only got more smokey and we noticed more smoke wafting up and down the tracks so we called 911. We can only imagine this is probably happening all the way up and down the tracks.

The Fire Dept came out and sprayed the tracks down while a cop sat in his car and cracked jokes at em over the megaphone.

I got a bunch of pics but left my CF card reader at home.
I’ll put em up soon.