When The Train Stopped The Race

The Railroad Day’s Race was the biggest race of the year in the small midwestern town of 37000 people. The running club of 80 put forth a maximum effort to carry this off. They were rewarded with almost 600 people some years, one of the biggest events around. The race director was a person with superb management skills. He made several committees to handle every phase of the 5 and 10k races. He made a notebook of the race detailing the duties of each committee and gave a copy of this to each committee chairman. Every committee knew their job and prepared well in advance.

Race day came and all the committees spent hours setting up their own parts. Several people labored away at the finish line. Heavy Steele construction scaffolding was put up with banners and a 6-foot long race-timing clock suspended from it. The water crew loaded up heavy banquet tables and huge water containers in pickup trucks and carried them out to water stops. It was July and the runners would be hot and thirsty. The packet crew who had spent weeks making up the packets now brought them to race and set up the tables to spread out them for runners to pick up. The race day registration crew was busy registering more runners. Everyone was busy.

In this railroad town it would have been hard to have a race without crossing railroad tracks. In this case it was impossible since it was called the Railroad Days Race, packet pick-up and awards presentation were at the train station. The race director being highly efficient, every year for several years had called the railroad yards and asked permission to use the same course every year. The first time he called he had spent a great deal of time in the bureaucracy before being directed to the person in charge. She assured him that at the time of the race there would be no trains at that crossing.

Not a detail had been missed, what could possibly go wrong? Then it did, 6 blocks from the end of the 5k a long freight train was at the crossing. The finish line crew chairman, and excellent runner himself, ran to the crossing breathlessly waving his arms to stop the train. Nothing stops a train. When the train finally got through the crossing the entire 5k race finished almost simultaneously and not long after the 10k runners started to come in. The finish line chairman tried desperately to keep the 5k runners in order so at least he would know the right order if not the right time. This didn’t work since some of the slower people had passed up some of the faster people in the last 6 blocks; it was truly a sprint to the finish.

It turned out that even though the race director had been faithfully calling the railroad for several years to clear the time of the race. The secretary he had been directed to felt this was not worth disturbing her boss over. When her boss, the actual person in charge, was finally contacted he angrily complained that he no idea what a 5 or 10k was and certainly could not give the OK for a crossing at a foot race. There was no way of knowing when trains would cross. He in fact said this in speech to the crowd at the opening ceremonies for the Railroad Days festivities immediately after the 5 and 10k awards presentation. Of course it might have been nice to know that in advance. After that year the race was moved to edge of town so they would not have to cross railroad tracks.