The Trackside Lounge 1Q 2012

"Here's to the new year...may she be a dȧmn sight better than the old one and may we all be home before she's over."

--- Harry Morgan (RIP) as Col. Sherman Potter.

zugmann

"Here's to the new year...may she be a dȧmn sight better than the old one and may we all be home before she's over."

 

 

--- Harry Morgan (RIP) as Col. Sherman Potter.

I had not heard that Harry Morgan had passed until I read the yearly "People We Lost This Year" article in the paper.  Another one I'll miss is Peter Falk.

Here's another thought:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore.  Dream.  Discover.

--Mark Twain

There's a new year out there, full of promise.  Claim it!

CShaveRR

Here's another thought:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore.  Dream.  Discover.

--Mark Twain

There's a new year out there, full of promise.  Claim it!

+1

CShaveRR

There's a new year out there, full of promise.  Claim it!

Sounds like a plan!

Happy New Year everyone.

Bruce

AgentKid

 

CShaveRR:

 

There's a new year out there, full of promise.  Claim it!

 

 

Sounds like a plan!

Happy New Year everyone.

Bruce

 

I would have done a better job of "claiming" the day if I'd brought my binoculars to church!

Pat had to help count the offering after church, so, rather than take that time to go trackside and get pelted by whatever was falling at the moment or blown away by the wind, I elected to bring my word-processor (laptop minus internet equals word processor) to church and spend the hour updating old sightings in the counting room...which, by the way, has a marvelous view of the UP main line from several hundred feet away.

New Year's Day...a holiday following a probably shutdown on New Year's Eve (not a holiday this year, because it falls on the weekend, making January 1 and 2 the holidays, so I gathered), so not much was expected--my former co-workers at Proviso wouldn't be putting much together, and the stuff from North Platte should have gotten past us by then.  So just unit trains and stackers, and the slow Sunday trickle of scoots (none of which would show up while they were counting).  So I shouldn't be disrupted from the old stuff...

Right?

Nope...first a westbound train of WEPX gons goes through.  It includes one of the cars I've been hoping to see:  a double-rotary car, so rotary couplers can be next to locomotives at both ends.  But I can't read the number from that distance. 

Then we had an eastbound train of auto racks, headed by a UP unit and a CP unit with the big, gold medallion.  And--would you believe it--that train did a fairly good job of concealing most of another WEPX train, this one eastbound.  Again I could see the double-rotary gon, but again I couldn't read the number.

Binoculars would have been very helpful!

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On another note, congratulations and best wishes to Trains' Assistant Editor Angela Pusztai-Pasternak!

I thought you needed binoculars because you got lousy seats. 

I'm waiting for some books and art supplies to come via snail mail.  Waiting is the hardest part.  Probably on some TOFC on some train stashed in a siding somewhere waiting for a re-crew.  Yeah. I'm back to the drawing thing as a time-killer again.  Still not ready to give up the day(night)time railroad thing yet (or ever), but it's fun.  And cheap.  That's the important part.

Also pretty close to my birthday, and my hiring anniversary date (which are very close to each other).  This will be the completion of my 5 years.  I think that means I get a vest or something...

Carl:  Had a CSX unit hopper train come by yesterday.  It was all brand new short 2 bay hoppers  which I suspect were for cement ??.  The train cars were numbered in groups of five accending order. ie 243 41x - 24341x then 24342x - 24342x thru 243560.  The rails really do sing when all wheels are new. Now you have me looking at these numbers.

Train pulled by a couuple of C-44s

I had to wait decades for a vest (finally got one that didn't fit).

That is a neat sound, isn't it, Streaky?  CSX got 900 of those new cars from Trinity Industries.  I think you'll find them mostly in sand service (I saw some of them on Thanksgiving Day ready for sand loading up in Michigan).  I keep hearing about "frac sand" as reason for needing a bunch of new cars, but the fact is that there are a bunch of older, smaller cars that are going to be facing retirement soon.  Just about any of the gray pre-Chessie cars, for example, are about 40 years old, since the Chessie System paint scheme debuted in 1972.

We're getting a dusting of snow, strong winds, and plummeting temperatures.  here at the base of the Lake.  The Michigan side of Lake Michigan is getting pounded with a foot of snow in some places.  I'm sure the New York snow belt is going to get it, too.

Once again we are tied to the tracks of time by the conductor of fate, and left to perish under the hard cold wheels of the locomotive of the dashed dreams of reality.

zugmann

"Here's to the new year...may she be a dȧmn sight better than the old one and may we all be home before she's over."

 

 

--- Harry Morgan (RIP) as Col. Sherman Potter.

Harry Morgan.....A unique and interesting fellow and actor.  Didn't he also become well known way back playing the side kick in "Dragnet", with Jack Webb.....1967 - 1970.

Quentin, yes, Harry Potter did play in "Dragnet" (I never saw it, but I do know that he did). I enjoyed his comments in "Mash." I also saw him in a rerun of a movie made in the forties; his character in that one was a bit different from that in "Mash." I saw Loretta Swit in a rerun of a WWII movie; as I recall, she played a nurse in it also.

Carl, I too, at first, thought you and Pat got to church so late you had to sit at the back.

.....Johnny, I thought if one gets to church late...he must find a seat in front....The back rows seem to fill first.

"Harry Potter".  Love it!  Harry Morgan had, as they say, a nice long run.

I believe his Dragnet name was Joe Gannon.  He reprised the role in the movie Dragnet with Dan Akroyd and Tom Hanks (by then he'd been "promoted" to chief).

Johnny, hope you continue a speedy recovery!

I usually sit in the same place every Sunday in church, neither in the front nor the rear.  It's a place occupied by the "choir widows" and widowers (spouses and families of the people in the choir, of which Pat is one).  The choir didn't sing yesterday, so the spouses came and sat with us, disrupting everything!

(No, I didn't work on the computer or watch trains during church...this counting session took place for an hour or so after church.  Today I'm hearing an occasional train, but am disinclined to go out and check on things, with the temperature at 20 and the wind still pretty strong.)

The new alignment of UP's Milwaukee Sub north of Proviso is progressing.  The old bridge over Green Street (the road running along the south edge of CP's Bensenville Yard) has been replaced by both a temporary structure and a new one.  A new girder bridge is in place over the portion of the Bensenville Yard currently (?) crossed by one of the C&NW's ubiquitous Whipple truss bridges. (Sadly, we were not able to pull off the road and explore to see just what's what around here.  The truss bridge is still in place, but might no longer be in use.)

Progressing north along the UP, the line is still following a temporary realignment.  The newer, permanent realignment (including a large new girder bridge over Irving Park Road) appears to have rails, concrete ties, and ballast over most of its length; the rails and ballast stop some distance short of the connection with the temporary realignment on the north end.

All of this is in connection with the expansion of O'Hare Airport, which has already claimed the original O'Hare bypass (in the days before O'Hare, the C&NW's track went straight north from Bensenville to Des Plaines; the alignment was curved around the airport in the 1950s or '60s).  Nearly all of Bensenville north of Green Street and east of York Road, which used to contain some commercial establishments and blocks of residences on both sides of the old MILW (now Metra, used by CP/IC&E) east-west main line, has been leveled for the expansion.

This is an area that will be worth watching in the next couple of years.  After the UP route is finished, the area once occupied by Bensenville will have to include an overpass for CP at Irving Park Road (that's going to be a stiff grade, on a curve, out of the yard there!), and the right-of-way for a new T-shaped Tollway connector between the Tri-State, I-90, and the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway (and possible new airport entrance) west of the airport.

We saw a somewhat mysterious train while we were there.  Heading north out of Bensenville on the CP was a string of empty ethanol tanks, powered by a pair of older UP units.  Many of the cars were carrying a new (to me) reporting mark:  TRFX.  The cars were built beginning last spring, but they still aren't shown in the January 2012 Official Railway Equipment Register (according to a source I have for such things...I can't afford those books any more!).

CShaveRR

"Harry Potter".  Love it!  Harry Morgan had, as they say, a nice long run.

I believe his Dragnet name was Joe Gannon.  He reprised the role in the movie Dragnet with Dan Akroyd and Tom Hanks (by then he'd been "promoted" to chief).

Officer Bill Gannon, Sgt. Joe Friday.  I barely remember seeing the later Dragnets when originally aired, but have seen the reruns and those of the first Dragnets (1950s I think) when Friday's sidekick was a different person. 

Jeff

CShaveRR

I usually sit in the same place every Sunday in church, neither in the front nor the rear.  It's a place occupied by the "choir widows" and widowers (spouses and families of the people in the choir, of which Pat is one).  The choir didn't sing yesterday, so the spouses came and sat with us, disrupting everything!

Carl, I can relate to that....{believe a lot of people can}....We sit in the 5th pew back on the right side and on the very {outside} end of it.....

Creatures of habit.....Or continue using something we're satisfied with.

Thanks for the correction, Jeff. I should have known there weren't two Joes in that show.

Happy birthday today to Brother Larry Ackerman.  He hasn't been around here much lately, but he's still railroading.  Our best to you!

I'm surprised the following item hasn't already generated its' own thread, but for those of you that follow the corporate side of railroading I found this on the CN website, datelined December 30, 2011.

CN completes merger of DMIR, DWP into Wisconsin Central

http://www.cn.ca/en/media-news-merger-wisconsin-central-20111230.htm

Bruce

One for Carl before I crash for the day:

New (to me) reporting mark I saw.  EAMX 5200, 3 pocket ARI hopper built in 04.  Any ideas of who they used to belong to?  The marks looked fresh.

I remember the comment of one old-time radio announcer commenting on a note he received from a guy who listened to him "every night, before I crash."

"Was he airborne?"

Couldn't tell you right now who the previous operator of this car was; it seems to be one-of-a-kind on the Everest Railcar Services roster.  (EAMX 5201 is similar--same dimensions, but a different volume and gravity-pneumatic outlets.)  I'll get back to you on this in a couple of weeks, when my contact for such info returns from his vacation/surgery recovery.

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Pat and I will be taking advantage of our amazing weather by biking our errands around town today.  We're supposed to break 50 degrees today, and still be in the 40s tomorrow.  It's 44 right now, in mid-morning.

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I've been increasingly bothered by the story of the suicide of young Alex Frye in Cheyenne a week or so ago.  He was a kid who loved trains, knew everything about them, had a lot of friends (in the community, in his railroad club, and on the railroads themselves), yet was driven over the edge by bullying at school--apparently by some kid who thought it was "funny" to taunt him.  There, but for the grace of God...

CShaveRR

I've been increasingly bothered by the story of the suicide of young Alex Frye in Cheyenne a week or so ago. 

I hadn't heard the cause of his death until now.  Bullying has been around since time immemorial.  Of course, that doesn't make it right, but it's only been in the fairly recent past that the way "out" seems to be suicide.

I wonder if the focus on stopping bullying by going after the bully might not be the totally correct course - perhaps we need to look more closely at "innoculating" folks against being bullied. 

I suspect that one cause of bullying may well be that the bully actually has a low opinion of him/herself and seeks to "raise" their perceived status by lowering that of others.  I've seen it happen in other contexts.

It is sad.

Middle school/Junior High is absolutely the worst...people seem to be able to dish it out, but don't know how to take it.  And it's the ones who are too nice to dish it out who wind up getting it.

http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/family-bullying-to-blame-in-wyoming--year-old-s/article_f75be98c-cde6-5b00-8834-b5b04a805925.html

Back in a minute, with another pretty move involving our new crossover in town...

Busy monitoring news about CSX's mishap in northwestern Indiana today.  There are a couple of threads already on this.

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This scenario took place over about 30 minutes this afternoon (don't worry; those crossovers are really connected and functional!). 

First train through:  westbound scoot, traveling 3 to 3.

About ten minutes later, an eastbound stack train came, crossing from 2 to 3.  As he was passing, I noticed another headlight to the east. 

It was a westbound manifest (probably MPRDM).  As soon as he got the signal, the signal behind me (Finley Road) also cleared up for him, and he came straight through, 2 to 2.  And, I could see still another headlight to the east!

By the time the hind end of the manifest cleared me, I could see that the next westbound was moving, and crossing over from 1 to 2.  He had come west on what is (according to common perception--we know better!) the eastbound track.  It was another manifest, one with NS power behind the two UP units (MELNP?).  By the time he got to the Finley Road signal it was flashing yellow.

What's neat about this is that the next eastbound scoot would be coming on Track 1 in about 10 or 15 minutes.  To maintain that schedule, he would have been well past Turner on Track 1, so the westbound manifest had to clear him at the Lombard crossover.  I have no clue what was happening at Elmhurst that caused the dispatcher to send him out on Track 1 to begin with, but it's nice to see that they're becoming accustomed to having the CP Y019 option!

CShaveRR

 

Couldn't tell you right now who the previous operator of this car was; it seems to be one-of-a-kind on the Everest Railcar Services roster.  (EAMX 5201 is similar--same dimensions, but a different volume and gravity-pneumatic outlets.)  I'll get back to you on this in a couple of weeks, when my contact for such info returns from his vacation/surgery recovery.

 

Funny you mention the 5201 as it was tagging along for the ride with its brother.  Didn't appear to be pneumatic, I think it was identical to the 5200.  But I wasn't paying that close of attention to it.

No biggie, just caught my eye.  Probably because of the 2 sequential numbers.

UMLER could have bogus info on this car.  Gravity-pneumatic outlets aren't always dramatically different from straight-gravity outlets.  I was surprised by the identical dimensions and different capacity, as shown in UMLER. 

If you say these cars were built by ARI, and the 5200-cubic-foot capacity shown in UMLER is correct, they are Through-Sill cars (look like Center Flows, but have a distinct center sill, which Center Flows lack).