A Visit to the Gold Coast Railroad Museum
My employers annual holiday party/meeting took place in Florida this year, and since I had some spare time on Saturday, I looked up the local railroad museum to see whether it might be worth a visit. Turns out it was, very much so. When I arrived, they asked if I wanted to do any train riders, so I said “sure, what do you have?” They said they had cab rides leaving every half hour, so I signed up for that. Turns out I was the only passenger and had the GP-7 and crew all to myself. So we rode up and down the lead track to the CSX branch at a leisurely 10mph for about half an hour and the engineer kindly explained about how one operates these things. On the way back, a nice surprise: he asked if I wanted to give it a try. I said sure - I wasn’t going to pass up that opportunity. So I sat down and, under his supervision, was allowed to operate the engine for a bit - it all seemed very easy: release the brakes, notch it up a couple notches on the throttle and keep an eye on the speedometer. But hey, it was engine-only, on flat and level track and we weren’t going faster than 10mph … Still, it was quite neat … 
(PS. I don’t think this is an official component of their cab rides, but if it’s a slow day, who knows …).
Below are a couple of shots taken at the museum… more are over here.
