Railroads are like a lot of things in life, where kids see it as neat and romantic, kind of like running away to join the circus or something, but the reality is quite different, and by the time they are adults they realize it isn't all it looks like.
The neat part to me, hearing stories of people like Rich and Hot Water, is that people do a job where you can freeze to death or boil to death (or both at the same time), be dead tired, hurting, get treated by those running the railroad as if you are a piece of track or a truck on a train (a replaceable "asset"), but still love it and wouldn't have done anything else.
