Operator Test

[thor CNJ]

Seven people failed this test at the club last night Give it a try:

posted May 05, 2004 12:45 AM
Seven guys flunked this at the club tonight. How about you?

The question:

An EP5 with four converted heavyweights is travelling East. It is going 65 MPH. A Southeasterly crosswind is blowing at 45MPH, and there is a clockwise wind shear of 25 MPH. Taking all these factors into account, which way is the engine's smoke blowing?

I'll give you the answer later.

[FJ and G]

EP5s don't smoke; a bit of steam, perhaps.

Dave Vergun

[Big_Boy_4005]

Electric trains don't smoke! Can I come over and operate?[swg]

[thor CNJ]

The Ocean County Society of Model Railroaders meets Tuesdays and Fridays. If you want to operate, stop by, but bring your own locomotive.

[Big_Boy_4005]

Thanks for the invite Thor, but I think the commute would be a killer. I wish we had something like that here. On the other hand, that is kind of what I'm building in my own basement. A layout large enough to be a club!!!! Of course everyone is invited when I finish. Hell, everyone is invited now, if they don't mind not being able to see any trains run. Maybe it is time to get cracking again, I've spent the last 3 weeks tied to this computer.[swg]

[cnw1995]

What a great quiz! I wish I could come by but it would be a bit of a trek. Thanks for your previous reference to the Vienna Station.

[FJ and G]

I believe that Thor's website has the greatest number of hits of any individual's train website. If you ever get to know him, he's quite a character.

Dave Vergun

[macdannyk1]

What smoke? An EP5 is electric. I guess it could be on fire... :)

[lionelsoni]

I have seen (and smelled) considerable smoke coming out of abused traction motors.

[FJ and G]

I'm still curious if anyone solved the problem, ignoring the model of locomotive. That clockwise windshear sounds a bit like a tornado.

[Big_Boy_4005]

Actually guys, the EP5 is the one we lovingly call the "Little Joe". The Joe in question is Stalin. I forget the whole story, but I think he ordered a bunch of these engines, and for whatever reason, never took delivery. The engines ended up working domesticly for the Milwaukee Road I know, and I suspect the Pennsy and New Haven, since Lionel made those models two, too.

The truth is that Thor's quiz is an old riddle. When told verbally, you simply say electric train, and start spouting speeds and wind directions as a "smoke screen"(pun intended). This is a clever modification for use in print and with train lovers, electric train being too obvious.

For those who perfer to fly, here's an oldie but a goodie: If a plane crashes on the border between the US and Canada, where do you bury the survivors?[swg]

[FJ and G]

Elliot,

and the answer to the flying riddle:

you kill all the survivors of the crash before burying them. The crash, btw, was a result of the aircraft encountering clockwise windshear.

dav

[Big_Boy_4005]

Yes Dave, I think you are on the "right track".[swg] Perhaps just a tad violent though, let's write that off to military training, shall we?.[;)]

[thor CNJ]

The fun of this is that the folks who fell for the joke know what an EP5 is [:0] Half our club's O gaugers own an EP5. [:0] Everyone knows electric. We're less than half an hour from the old electrified Pennsy Mainline, so electric gets a lot of respect here. [:D] [:D]

[thor CNJ]

The fun of this is that the folks who fell for the joke know what an EP5 is [:0] Half our club's O gaugers own an EP5. [:0] Everyone knows electric. We're less than half an hour from the old electrified Pennsy Mainline, so electric gets a lot of respect here. [:D] [:D]

[Big_Boy_4005]

QUOTE: Originally posted by thor CNJ

The fun of this is that the folks who fell for the joke know what an EP5 is [:0] Half our club's O gaugers own an EP5. [:0] Everyone knows electric. We're less than half an hour from the old electrified Pennsy Mainline, so electric gets a lot of respect here. [:D] [:D]

Shame on them![swg]Do you guys usually call them "Little Joes"? Electric is cool and perhaps one day the entire country will go electric. It makes sense for the future. There has been a lot of discussion about diesel and different forms of energy over on the Trains Magazine forum recently. Check it out.[:)]

[thor CNJ]

Little Joes? No, around here they are known as EP5s or Jets.

[lionelsoni]

The EP5 and "Little Joe" are not the same. See http://www.highironillustrations.com/railfan_specification/spec_littlejoe.html
The EP5 had fewer wheels, for one thing, but not as few as Lionel put on it.

[Big_Boy_4005]

Lionel is fairly well known for mangeling prototypes, and while their model is not really accurate to any prototype locomotive, over the years collectors have called Lionel's models both EP-5's and Little Joes. That's a nice picture Bob, and I think that's what Lionel was trying to do when they made their model. They would have done better putting it on a GG-1 frame.[swg]

BTW the box for my MPC 8558 says, most genericly, "Milwaukee Road Electric".[:p]

[Anonymous]

Elliot:

You don't bury survivors because they lived.

OK, I've got one:

Farmer Brown & Farmer Green are neighbors. There's a fence between their two properties that Farmer Brown's rooster likes to sit on. If the rooster lays an egg while it's on the fence & it lands on Farmer Green's side of the fence, who owns the egg?

Tony

[Big_Boy_4005]

By definition egg laying falls outside the domain of roosters.[swg] You have to get up pretty early in the morning to put a riddle past me. Keep in mind, I like to sleep in.[(-D][(-D]

I called my 11 year old over to try this one, he said he's heard it, then I tried the 10 year old, and the result was more the intended. It took a few tries while stressing the word rooster. She then proceded to produce a library book she had checked out, all about where baby chicks come from, on the off chance I didn't get it!!!!

Aren't childern wonderful???[^][:D][:I]

There are 7 maple trees. Each tree has 7 branches, and each branch has 7 twigs and each twig has 7 acorns. How many acorns are there?

[Anonymous]

Ummm, acorns grow on oak trees, not maple trees.

Now, if you stapled the acorns on the maple tree branches, you'd have:

7 acorns on a twig
X 7 twigs on each branch
X 7 branches on each tree
X 7 trees
= 2,401 acorns (& staples)

Tony

[Anonymous]

now....

would you use an electric stapler, or one of them ol' fashioned swinglines???[;)]

and... where you gonna find a tree with twenny-fore-hunnred-an-one acorns, HUH?[:D]

[Big_Boy_4005]

Your math is good Tony, but your logic is better!!!! [swg][tup]

[Anonymous]

woodsy:

For that much stapling, I'd get a pneumatic stapler. [:D] More power! [:D][:D] [8D](grunting a la' Tim Allen)

And it's 7 trees with 343 acorns each

Tony

[FJ and G]

I had assumed that there were 7 squirrels on each twig, each holding an acorn.

Actually, maple trees produce those neat helicopter seeds.

dav

[Anonymous]

Here's one:
A Los Angeles Railway F-Class trolley's first set of resistors produce a resistance of 70 Ohms with 5 rheostatal coils engaged. It's second set of resistors produces a resistance of 30 Ohms with three rheostatal coils engaged. By how many settings do their third and fourth controllers differ? This is a multiple part question, so good luck.

(I am chuckling inwardly to myself as I type.)

Good luck,
Daniel

[Anonymous]

What's the matter--too hard [:)]?