However, if you ever rode a train out of Washington's Union Station in the late afternoon or evening, then you were a beneficiary of his quick-witted vigilance.
The Owings Mills resident, who turned 60 in December, made sure that arriving and departing trains delivered you either to your work or home on time.
And if other calamities arose, foul weather or man-made, he was still the guy who helped get you to your destination; even though it might have taken some time, you eventually got there just the same.
For the past 20 years, Moffett, an Amtrak train director who retired at the end of January, daily climbed the narrow stairs of venerable K Tower, a three-story brick- and green copper-clad structure that sits on a wedge of land a stone's throw from the end of the station's platforms.
The small island that K Tower inhabits is crisscrossed by a confusing spaghetti-like network of burnished shiny rails going from left to right, right to left, and straight out of the terminal.
An enormous connecting network of switches and blinking signals controlled from K Tower aided arriving and departing trains that rumbled seemingly just inches below the tower's window sills.
The sound of squealing flanged wheels as they passed through switches, the roar from diesel engines and the sound of clanging bells from darting switch engines on their various rounds filled the air.
Moffett's destination - control central - was a darkened, crowded room, surrounded by windows, whose major feature is a huge model board with winking red and white lights showing moving trains and their routes.
Taking in all of this might seem like bedlam to a visitor, but it is the daily controlled ebb and flow that made up Moffett's working life for two decades.
"I worked the 3 p.m.-to-11 p.m., or middle trick, shift for 20 years, and one of the secrets of my success was having good people working with me. I think of them not just as friends or co-workers, but as my extended family," Moffett said the other day.
"On any given day, I might have to deal with late trains, weather conditions, shopped cars [cars needing repair], substituting equipment, speed restrictions, tracks out of service, catenary [electric wire] problems and extra trains," he said.
"You try and work around all of these factors and keep the trains running on time," he said. "When my wife, Elaine, asked each evening, `How was your day?' my usual answer was, `I've seen worse.'"
