Nick has sent in this story of his time driving a GE 44 ton switcher:

“In the summer of 1978 I got a job working for a company that repaired freight cars. One of my duties was to drive what I believe was a GE 44 ton switcher that had seen better days. After a month of being the engineer I got promoted to switchman. The highlight of my days were cleaning out and refilling the work tracks. At least until ‘The Blizzard of 79’ hit Chicago. Everything stopped for about 10 days, while we dug out. Then, we got to do limited switching while we spent most of the next 4 weeks digging out the rest of the work areas.”

Photo above shows a scale model of a GE 44 ton Switcher for those who are not familar with the loco.