We really regretted not being able to keep our commitment to deliver Santa to the kids and kids-at-heart at the Vancouver BNSF Yard Office last Saturday. We would have much preferred being Santa's sleigh that day rather than spending the sixth day in a row rerailing the engine so many times that no one kept a count.

We finally got the 700 put to bed in the Brooklyn roundhouse about nine hours short of a week after we had derailed only a carlength from the turntable while crawling around the extreme curve beside the roundhouse on our return from pulling the first 24 departures of the ORHF Holiday Express. So near and yet so far! On Friday afternoon we really thought we were going to be able to depart that evening for Vancouver and called a UPRR pilot for 6 PM. Alas the pilot ended up standing around watching us rerail once again on Brooklyn Yard track 517 just short of the clearance point of track 16.