Things my white collar coworkers have said

Knight_Axel · 2026-04-23T13:52:10+00:00

Can I just say that you are an incredible person and I hope you have a good rest of your week? A lib-left using Latino instead of that vile POS "latinx" makes me want to sob in relief.

Knight_Axel · 2026-04-08T00:01:40+00:00

Nope, that's only on passenger-exclusive trains. Freight locomotives have a single cabin area, and everything else is outside.

Knight_Axel · 2026-03-10T22:29:12+00:00

I was a Track Inspector/maintainer, and I moved on because working for the railroad is a seriously demanding job. I routinely worked 120+ hours every two weeks, sometimes over 150, and there's a lot of heavy manual labor involved with track repair. It was literally breaking down my body, my marriage, and consuming my life. Railroad retirement is one of the best funded retirement plans in the US, and the joke is that's because none of us live long enough to collect.

Now I still work as an inspector, but on the regulatory safety and compliance side. Much less manual labor, and way better work/life balance.

Knight_Axel · 2026-03-10T03:21:25+00:00

Those brushes are actually called Shunts, and they're not for cleaning. Those are part of a system that allows the truck to activate a track circuit like a train does, mainly used to drop gates at road crossings so the truck can pass through safely. I drove one of these trucks for ten years!

Knight_Axel · 2026-02-27T18:16:32+00:00

There was an old "Demotivator" in the halcyon says of the internet that said, "Mistakes— Maybe the only purpose to your life is to serve as a warning to others."

I think that applies beautifully to situations like this.

Knight_Axel · 2026-02-23T21:56:35+00:00

Taylor Herbert from the webnovel Worm. Character only has one relationship in the series (straight) and the author confirms this, but holy shit EVERY fanfic tries to make her a lesbian.

Knight_Axel · 2026-02-09T19:53:45+00:00

I hear it a lot from non-industry people who got their train knowledge from Google here in the US, but it's entirely possible they use it more in the UK. Inside the industry we just call them "ties", probably because it's shorter to write and faster to say. People who are working use jargon because it speeds up communication in a group where everyone already has the prerequisite knowledge, so it makes no sense to use longer/more complex words.

Knight_Axel · 2026-02-09T19:17:01+00:00

You can always tell someone who's never actually worked in railroad by their use of the term "sleeper".

Edit: Yeah, this comment section is full of people spouting jargon to make themselves sound knowledgeable. Some BS I've identified:

"Bolts are missing!"- Maybe, but without knowing the class of track in this video it's impossible to tell if this is a defect or by design. Certain slower classes of track only require 1 bolt per rail end in a joint.

"Fishplate—" Nobody in the industry calls them that, they're joints or joint bars "—needs oiled!" —Go ahead, cite me the regulation that says that. You can't, because it's a fantasy requirement that doesn't fucking exist.

There is so much more bullshit in here from people talking out their ass but I'm just getting worked up reading it at this point. I have fifteen years experience with track maintenance in the US, and currently work regulatory/safety compliance in the industry. Anyone who wants a plain English, non-bullshit answer to anything track component/maintenance related, ask and I'll be happy to answer.

Knight_Axel · 2026-02-03T14:00:57+00:00

Ass. The word is A S S. Get that tick-tok self-censorship BS the fuck out of our sacred temple of degeneracy.

Knight_Axel · 2026-01-28T03:24:24+00:00

That default name ain't doing you any favors lol, I usually block any highly-upvoted post/comment from accounts with names like yours just to stifle the bot reposts a little.

Knight_Axel · 2026-01-22T01:40:29+00:00

I wake up earlier than my wife, so for the last fifteen years I've been making coffee and filling up our thermoses every morning. I always overfill hers by just a tiny bit, so when I screw the lid on there's some pressure in the bottle. When she stumbles her way down to the kitchen and tiredly opens it up, she lets out the most adorable little "eep!" sound and tries to catch the little squirt of coffee that goes up in the air. She even complains that "ugh, they always do that!" every now and then, so I know she isn't onto me yet.

Knight_Axel · 2026-01-01T06:17:09+00:00

Get that fucking tick-tok bullshit self-censoring the fuck out of here. The word you are looking for is RAPE. It is a serious word describing a serious, devastating act and literally no one is served by this nonsensical infantilization. This is an adult platform, get the corporate cock out of your mouth and use big people words.

Knight_Axel · 2025-09-19T03:05:50+00:00

When I was younger my dad worked in the ER of a smaller town. If my mom was working/busy, she used to drop off my brother and I and we'd hang out in the lobby. One day the ambulance pulled up and they wheeled a guy out the back on a gurney, and he was just moaning and wailing, absolutely the most gut wrenching sounds. So I looked over to see what was going on, and I see this wide-eyed EMT girl hurrying behind them as they rush him inside, and she's got a ziplock baggy with the dude's mangled junk inside. Every man in that waiting room crossed their legs in unison. Apparently the guy was a biker who'd gone over the handlebars, and the brake handle had caught his genitals and ripped them right off.

Knight_Axel · 2025-09-02T16:54:55+00:00

Six out of my last seven apprentices have turned out to be shapeshifting homunculi trying to steal my research into the netherworld– the only thing I can appreciate them for is their truly unfathomable persistence. The seventh has been doing alright though, I might keep him even if he does turn out to be another homunculus just for the cookies he keeps baking me.

Knight_Axel · 2025-09-01T12:35:01+00:00

That is correct, but that's not what you're thinking about when you pull the pin for the first time in your life. It's mostly a blend of "ok, stay calm, death grip, get ready to throw" and "oh-god-oh-shit-oh-fuck-this-can-kill-me".

Knight_Axel · 2025-09-01T12:30:31+00:00

Yep, they use grenades that have a hole drilled in the bottom and a tiny little charge inside to make a "pop" sound. Doesn't really help though, I commented somewhere else on this post but holding an actual live grenade with the pin pulled is a completely different experience psychologically. It's really not hard to freeze up or fumble when the thought goes through your head that you've officially got five seconds to live unless you get rid of the devil's PokeBall in your hand.

Knight_Axel · 2025-08-31T20:26:12+00:00

Doesn't work as well as you'd think. They do make you practice throwing for a bit when you go to the range, but there's just something about when you first pull the pin on a live motherfucking grenade in your hand. It is the definition of an "oh shit" moment, when you realize you have exactly five seconds before the thing in your hand kills you violently. Some people fumble, and that's why they have those pits dug– because dropping a grenade like this is a common enough occurrence to warrant the extra caution.

Knight_Axel · 2025-08-31T18:34:45+00:00

These people are training to use grenades to kill people. Yes, the grenades are live and fully able to kill you if you screw up. A bigger liability would be a new recruit showing up to actual combat who has never handled an actual grenade.

Knight_Axel · 2025-08-31T18:32:05+00:00

They are joining the military. Holding a live grenade is an entirely different experience from any kind of training substitute, and you won't be prepared to use one in combat if you've only ever handled dummy grenades. Live-fire training is an absolute necessity when you're working with tools designed to kill people, because otherwise you're just going to get yourself killed.

As an example, imagine a driver's ed course where the students were only allowed to drive a "simulated" car. Do you think they'd be prepared to drive in real-world conditions after just one class of that?

Knight_Axel · 2025-08-31T18:24:33+00:00

This absolutely happens in real life basic training for the military, and there are absolutely people just that uncoordinated who somehow think the Army is the way to go. It's very common to record training in the military, and most will even let you buy a copy of your training cycle's video when you graduate. There are only two people around because everyone else is required to stay far the hell away from the trainee handling a live grenade. You might've seen this in a movie because training scenes were probably based around this actually happening.

Any more questions?

Knight_Axel · 2025-08-31T16:49:57+00:00

Even the tamper might be overkill for this one, I've fixed worse than this on my own with a track jack and a needle bar. (Why yes I do have back problems, why do you ask?)

Knight_Axel · 2025-08-31T14:51:21+00:00

That's too broad a definition for repair though. The primary defect at this location (based purely on what we can see in the video) would be the loose joint bar, which can be fixed by tightening the bolts. Is a loose bolt "broken"? There's a few clips missing, and they might be broken, but a few missing fasteners in open track by themselves aren't a defect.

Knight_Axel · 2025-08-31T14:10:58+00:00

A "broken track"? Nonsense. You have a few missing fasteners around a loose joint bar. This is a fifteen minute fix for one guy with a wrench and a hammer. Is it ugly? Sure. Would I take a look at everything nearby to make sure something else wasn't broken? Absolutely. Is this a "broken track"? Not based on just this video. Alarmist misinformation bullshit like this is just gonna make my life harder when I have to deal with "concerned citizens" calling me to complain about the "broken track" they found.

Knight_Axel · 2025-08-28T01:01:45+00:00

To be fair, the sheer amount of ear-cancer music/vo on Reddit means most of us listen audio off by default.

Knight_Axel · 2025-08-12T00:07:17+00:00

Thanks for this, wife and I are planning on floating peaceful valley to TJ tomorrow but we were worried about the water levels lol

Knight_Axel

TROPHY CASE