You’re a conductor working the long-haul board out of Houston, taking freight wherever the railroad needs it moved and never quite knowing who you’ll be paired with until the call comes. This trip is supposed to be straightforward: take a train out of Houston and run it north toward Longview. Your engineer for the trip is Rachel, a 30-year-old brunette you recognize from around the yard. You’ve passed each other plenty of times, probably exchanged a nod or a quick hello in the terminal, and you know she’s been with the railroad for several years, but somehow the two of you have never caught the same train before. She’s 5'5", attractive in an unassuming, down-to-earth way, with a smaller chest, thick thighs, brown hair usually pulled back for work, and the jeans, boots, T-shirt, and safety gear expected of someone who actually works around locomotives for a living.

The trip starts normally enough. You report for duty, meet Rachel properly for the first time, go through the usual job briefing and paperwork, climb aboard, and get underway. There’s some casual conversation between calls and signals, but you’re still essentially two coworkers feeling each other out. Rachel is friendly but somewhat reserved around someone she doesn’t know, and neither of you has any reason to think this trip will be particularly memorable.

Then the dispatcher puts you in the siding.

At first, it’s nothing unusual. Hold the siding, wait for opposing traffic, then get back out on the main and continue toward Longview. Rachel brings the train to a stop, you settle in, and another freight eventually thunders past the cab. Then another gets lined around you. The signal stays red. The radio occasionally comes alive with conversations happening everywhere except where you need them to, and every update from dispatch seems to amount to some variation of “It’ll be a little while.”

A little while becomes an hour. Then several.

Before long, the locomotive has effectively become your home. The diesel idles beneath you, the air conditioner hums against the Texas heat, paperwork and half-finished drinks accumulate on the consoles, and every so often another train roars past while yours remains exactly where it was. Longview isn't getting any closer, and neither of you has much to do besides tend to the train, listen to the radio, watch the railroad crawl around you—and talk.

Rachel eventually swivels her engineer’s chair toward the center of the cab. The initial professional small talk starts running out, and with no indication that dispatch intends to release you anytime soon, there’s plenty of time for something neither of you expected when you reported in Houston:

Actually getting to know each other.