mystery train of events

A few years ago, when I lived in New York's Upper West Side, I became friends with a guy who lived a few blocks away in a beautiful brownstone apartment. We had met by way of a girlfriend of mine who worked at Penguin Books. She had gone to college with Carl and had introduced us because we were both mad fans of noir/pulp crime fiction. Carl was a writer of extraordinary poetry and I dabbled in fiction and screen plays but really we just hung out on the Upper West Side (at a time and in a zeitgeist immortalised in Seinfeld
re-runs. Seinfeld is, to me, a documentary series.)
We hung out, went to the odd shows together and then finally, after the big breakup with Janet and various levels of crisis, we drifted apart. The last time I spoke to him back then he was contemplating quitting the city and pursuing an old passion--driving diesel locomotives for the railroad--a choice which was so totally true to the personality I knew and also so anachronistic and challenging that it had to be right.
Over the years I heard vague whispers that he had done so and was now running big trains for the various US railroad companies. Hauling coal across the prairies, that kind of thing.
Recently, through the kind offices of Google, we met up again. He's now working as an instructor/evaluator for the railroads--conducting workshops for aspiring locomotive engineers in out-of-the-way rural areas and run-down industrial towns and cities. I was filled with envy and admiration when I heard that information--how cool to drive around the beautiful U S and A, the byways and blue highways, and pull into a town and run a locomotive clinic. I can hear Johnny Cash clearing his throat as I type.

Anyway, he has a blog, of course, (from which I stole the lovely photo above). Meet the man.