I'm afraid it's all real...here's Ted's own account of the fun that night off of FB..

'Twas a rough night on the ole' railroad. The train was jinxed! Previous crew had a locomotive overheat on Wilbur Hill and struggled with a single unit into Davenport where they dropped the ailing loco and added another. I first ran a light engine from Four Lakes to Hite to make sure the train could make Deep Creek Hill.
We swapped crews just east of Davenport. Then had the C40-8 quit loading....later found to be because the electrical cabinet door had come open. Then going through the Mondovi Curves just prior to stopping to make a pickup, one truck of a car near the rear of the train derailed for no apparent reason. It managed to tear up a half mile or so worth of ties before being spotted. After assessing the situation we continued with all but 11 cars. After making a pickup in Reardan I spotted a broken rail on the mainline leaving town. The rail had both horizontal and vertical splits, but the head was lapped over the break in the web so you couldn't feel that it was broken. Rust showed that it had been that way for a short while. Ended up walking the rest of the train over it.
Then when adding the other locomotive at Hite, the locomotives failed the consist test (wouldn't bail a set on trailing units). I finally pinpointed the issue to a pinched pipe under the frame. Luckily we able to work around it and have the consist work properly. I was more than a little happy to get that train into Highline and get the hell off it!!!!!