What Happened To My Penny?

Returning from lunch at (where else?) Subway Restaurant (where I've eaten most of my lunches, since 1997), I noticed a train approaching from the north on the Southern Pacific tracks that run through Midtown Sacramento. I felt an impulse I haven't felt since childhood.

When I was a kid, my Dad told me there was a powerful wind next to a passing train, right at track level, that could suck you unawares right underneath the train. I wanted to see this wind in action, so on a visit to my grandmother's house in Bernalillo, NM (where the AT&SF rail line was to be found), I decided to place a piece of paper under a small rock right next to the rail. The powerful wind would surely wrench the paper loose from under the small rock and the train would rip it into confetti. Only one problem, though: I was not allowed out of the yard.

The kid next door was under less-demanding supervision, however, so I persuaded him to set up the experiment. The train came too quickly, though, and in haste, he mangled the experiment, by placing the piece of paper, topped by a big rock, right on top of the rail. I panicked and fled, sensing that the speeding train would derail when it hit the big rock, and careen out-of-control, sending thousands of tons of metal flying through my grandmother's kitchen.

Nothing like that happened, though. After the train passed, no sign of the rock was to be found. Likely, either the train crushed the rock into dust, or simply knocked it off the rail.

Today, being a mature adult, instead of rock and a paper, I decided to try a penny. I laid the penny right on top of the rail and waited for the train.

The first few Diesel BNSF locomotives rolled right over the penny. Looking at the penny between the passing wheels, I could see it had flattened out under the incredible weight. The penny was apparently glomming onto, and fusing with, the rail. I quickly looked away, then back, but the penny had abruptly vanished. It couldn't have been knocked off the rail. Like a wad of gum on the sidewalk sticking to the bottom of some passersby's shoe, the penny had apparently glommed onto the passing wheel of one of the lumber or petrochemical rail cars, and simply rolled off, to the south.

I'll miss that penny....