Here’s a story of unplanned Princeton high jinks. Late one afternoon in the spring of 1976, Art Miller ’77, Karen Norlander ’78, and I bought train tickets to Philadelphia and boarded the Dinky. Professor Ze’eva Cohen had assigned us to attend a professional dance performance and write a review.

The Dinky eased away from the station. Engrossed in our conversation, we barely noticed that the conductor was taking a long time to come punch our tickets. Then the Dinky slowed down, stopped, and started rolling backward. “Hey!” “Wait!” we yelled. No one responded. We rushed to opposite ends of the train, but there was no conductor.  

I ran to the front of the car just in time to see Karen calmly grab a lever and push it up. With a jolt, the train started moving back toward Princeton Junction, picking up speed as it headed into a curve, going dangerously fast.

The station came into view, but although we were coasting in neutral, we were not slowing down. Karen, unfazed, reached over to the only other lever, painted fire-engine red, and pulled it. We screeched to a stop, just a little short of the station.  

“Sorry, guys,” Karen apologized wryly. “I guess I pulled that a little too hard.”

Worried about missing our connection, we leapt to the ground without bothering to lower the stairs. We called out, “There’s no conductor,” as we ran past a swarm of commuters. Down in the parking lot, a taxi pulled up, and two conductors in black uniforms climbed out and scrambled up the hill toward the Dinky. We wondered if the conductors thought we’d stolen the train.

The lesson we learned that day was one we never could have learned from our studies, even at Princeton: how each of us would behave when faced with a runaway train.

Liz Gold ’79
Chimayó, N.M.