PHOENIX - A man caught in the engineer's seat of a locomotive nearly pushed enough buttons and pulled enough levers to steal the train.  Full article here.

This is a fucking hilarious decision. I have just one question: what’s the end game here? What do you do after you’ve stolen it? IT’S A LOCOMOTIVE, IT’S HUGE, AND IT HAS TO STAY ON RAILROAD TRACKS. Anyway I guess this guy is probably a genius when it comes to driving trains.

The Union Pacific Railroad Police report that on November 8, employees heard a train horn blowing excessively and went to investigate. There they found 20-year-old Julio Rodriguez in the engineer’s seat.

 Hm. Ok. Nevermind. Tried to steal a train, and just ended up blowing on the horn a bunch. Well, I guess I’ll take this moment to remind all potential thieves that remaining quiet is a key part of committing any successful crime. In fact, if you are trying to steal a car, bike, train, or any other object with a horn, your best bet is to not honk it. But ok, guy made a mistake; other than that he knew exactly what he was doing.

He reportedly told police that he climbed in and began moving levers and pushing buttons while reading the operation instructions found inside. 

 Alright. Well, looks like maybe he had no idea what he was doing. Just working random buttons and levers until he made all systems go.

I’ll take a moment to give another tidbit of advice to thieves, or really anybody: when it comes to a vehicle you have no idea how to operate, starting the engine is usually the easiest part. As in, once you start the engine, it usually gets more complicated from there. I have a crazy idea: read the manual before you get there! This isn’t the 1800’s where you have to be apprenticed or any shit like that; just fucking google “how to drive locomotive”. I bet I could download a manual on how fly an F15 if I wanted to. Yep, here it is.

After Rodriguez was removed from the train, employees inspected it and saw that Rodriguez had released the brake levers and put the engine in reverse. 

They say all he needed to do was engage the gear and apply the throttle and the engine would move. 

Well you look at that, our guy almost had it. However, he touched every button on the dash, yanked every lever, and honked every horn, and all he did was release the brakes and put the train in reverse. For our guy, “engaging the gear” and “applying the throttle” seem like a couple of astronomical next steps. I'd rank his chances of successfully getting this thing moving in any direction from "not likely" to "fucking long shot". But hey, you know me, I'll always root for the underdog. Nobody expected the USA to beat the Russians in 1980. Nobody expected Rocky to go fifteen rounds with Apollo Creed. And nobody expected Julio Rodriguez to steal two locomotives without knowing how to operate them. And I guess he didn't.