Water dribbled, a nozzle spun faster, and then, for a few minutes, the trickle became a jet, roaring as it blasted the tracks beneath a train. "It'd take your fingers off if you put them in there," said Dennis McAnulla, the assistant chief mechanical officer on Regional Rail maintenance for SEPTA. Oozing from a pipe a few feet farther along the train was a milky solution of sand, tiny metal beads, and oil that ran like melting ice cream over the rail. The train's three-man crew ran a few more checks, tested the brakes, and Wash 2 heaved forward from the Wayne Electrical Yard facility off Germantown Avenue into a drizzly night to combat nature's bane of trains: Fallen leaves....
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