Diesel Locomotive Works

Our work happens inside the Mech Design Office here at Diesel Locomotive Works. It’s not like a regular workshop where there’s a lot of hammering; it’s more about the planning and the drawings. We spend most of our hours sitting at desks looking at technical layouts for train engines. There are blueprints spread out everywhere and plenty of pens and rulers lying around. Even though it’s a design office, you can still feel the weight of the locomotives being built nearby. We can hear the distant sounds of the heavy machinery and the shunting of trains on the tracks. It’s a quiet place for the most part, but the work is quite detailed. We have to make sure every measurement for the engine parts is exactly right before anything goes to the floor. It’s a lot of back-and-forth between different people in the office. Sometimes we have to go out and look at the actual engines to see how the designs are holding up in real life. The air is a bit stuffy with all the paper around, and the lighting could be better, but we get by. We don’t really do anything flashy. It’s just about getting the designs done so the production can keep moving along. It’s a steady kind of life, working on the guts of the trains that move across the country. There is always a new sketch to review or a measurement to double check. We just focus on the lines and the numbers.