More Musings

[Mookie]

This could get dull, so you can pass on to the next posting. I won't mind!

Raining mucho here - speck north - could get heavy snow - like Omaha and east into Iowa - maybe the rest of you will get something out of this.

Bus drivers wave at each other - do train crews?

2 inch HF Comp Shoes - written on sides of rolling stock. What does it mean?

Why do you have markers (lights) at the ends of trains? Unless the Mookie is running (Ha) down the track behind it, who would know? I know the FRED transmits info, but why flashing and why headlights on helpers on the rear? I know a caboose used to have lights and they were quite decorative..... hmmm

Looked up some of the (shudder) things going past me out of the hazardous material book Ed sent me.

Carbon Bi Sulfide, Chlorine, Liquid Petroleum, Phosphoric Acid, Molten Phenyl something, Cresilic Acid, Muriastic Acid, Sulphuric Acid., alcohol....sounds like a bad chemistry lab project! And what about those tankers with no placard?

Saw two different mixed trains with an open door on a boxcar on both trains. Going too fast to throw myself in .....thank goodness!

Saw an SD 35 - SF #2560 and BNSF 39M - #2882.

Lots of Grinstein Green engines - that in itself is unusual - we usually only get orange for the coal.

And the best part of the whole weekend for the driver - going down our main drag and beside us was a really shiny 4 passenger desert/dune buggy (trying to read my notes ) - with a V8 and tons of chrome, sand tires, aluminum long shocks and no fenders. Definately not street legal! The guy (of course) driving had Spears/Madonna headset - so was either talking to his "pit" crew or calling his lawyer.


Ok - back to whatever you were doing. Thanks for the visit

Mook

[Modelcar]

...Central Indiana is in line to get 3 to 5" of snow tomorrow according to the weather folks...but one can never tell as they tend to hype it so often and when is it real. Paper says chance of snow flurries Tuesday. Today....Beautiful sunshine and really mild. Snow can't last long on this warming ground. And it may not even get here.

I suppose red warning lights on the rear of a train do what all red lights do...identify the back end of an object...and in this case a train. Hopefully some one will see them if by mistake they get too close....Accidents and mistakes do happen even on the R R's.

Now back to work Jen....

[Anonymous]

Mookster:
The notation "2" HF Comp" I believe stands for two inch thick, High Friction, Composite brake shoes.

Erik

[zardoz]

Mookie-

2"HF : two inch high-friction composition brake shoes.

Most train crews wave, or flip each other off, depending on who you're meeting. [;)]

The lights on the fred's are for visibility. A dirty boxcar is very difficult to see at 3am in good weather, much less the rain or fog; flat cars even more so.

Your chemical list: a good reason to railfan from an appreciable distance.

Perhaps I am a bit paranoid, or perhaps because of my other "hobby" (storm spotter for the weather service) I am always aware of which direction the wind is blowing......just in case. I inhaled some anhydrous ammonia once during a small spill years ago, and believe me it is every bit as bad as you can imagine, and worse. Once you smell the ammonia, it is already too late. To give an example, while you are reading this, after your next normal breathing exhalation (not holding an inhale, just a normal exhale), plug your nose and mouth. See how long you can last. That is how it feels when the ammonia hits you lungs. It is very fast and very deadly.

[CShaveRR]

Quite often there's a bit of radio bantering between crews meeting or passing one another, too.

The marker is what makes a string of cars a train, by definition. It basically served the same purpose as tail-lights on a car. There are instances when trains can be following closely enough to need to be aware of the train directly ahead of them.

The tank cars without placards are generally either empty, or carrying relatively harmless liquids, such as vegetable oil, corn syrup, tallow, or other stuff like that. Quite often the commodity will be stencilled on the car, to help ensure that nothing else is put in there. If you ever see a tank car stencilled "edible", that refers to food-grade tallow...don't try to eat the car itself!

We're supposed to get some of your snow tonight...not too much, I hope! My bike might be out of the shop by springtime, and I'd like some honest-to-Goodness spring to go with it!

[Mookie]

QUOTE: Originally posted by zardoz

Mookie-

2"HF : two inch high-friction composition brake shoes.

Most train crews wave, or flip each other off, depending on who you're meeting. [;)]

The lights on the fred's are for visibility. A dirty boxcar is very difficult to see at 3am in good weather, much less the rain or fog; flat cars even more so.

Your chemical list: a good reason to railfan from an appreciable distance.

Perhaps I am a bit paranoid, or perhaps because of my other "hobby" (storm spotter for the weather service) I am always aware of which direction the wind is blowing......just in case. I inhaled some anhydrous ammonia once during a small spill years ago, and believe me it is every bit as bad as you can imagine, and worse. Once you smell the ammonia, it is already too late. To give an example, while you are reading this, after your next normal breathing exhalation (not holding an inhale, just a normal exhale), plug your nose and mouth. See how long you can last. That is how it feels when the ammonia hits you lungs. It is very fast and very deadly.

hate to bring this up - but most parents - especially the mother half has been around ammonia - either for cleaning or.......diapers....that's enough to knock you on your tailfeathers! Ugh! And that is close enough for me! [xx(]

[mudchicken]

....and besides that, the smeller in the 'ol beak is kaput for just a while! Try working near the ammonia that farmers use to inject nitrogen in the soils with!!![|(][|(][|(]

[JoeKoh]

How about an alfalfa pellet plant? Seen crews wave to each other.matt and I wave to the crews too.
still waiting on that note
stay safe
joe

[edblysard]

Lets see,
The brake shoe queston was answered, the fred/marker lights were covered,
Zardoz covered the Port Terminal "how ya doing?" hand signal, the ammoina smell is taken care of, I know you already smelled a sulpher car, and the edible tallow?
Wait till mid summer, and see how close you can get to one that was overloaded, and has that stuff running all down the side.
You dont want to eat any fried foods for a while.

And chlorine cars...made the mistake of leaning up against one, with dried chlorine powder on the handrail.
When I washed the jacket I had on, what I got out of the washer, well, it wasnt a jacket anymore, but it was really, really white.
What you buy in your Clorx bottle is about 3% chlorine, the rest of it is water.
Whats in the tank cars is 100% chlorine.
We had a leaker here once, that stuff even ate the rocks it leaked on.
And you dont want a whiff of it either, floors you just like the ammonia.

Ed

[mudchicken]

and she didn't even get to the the "official" NFL roller bearings yet!

(mookiecat is not far from York, NE ---maybe 45 miles or so downwind of it - Oh.....Is that why they call it "_______" Linkin???)[:D]

Worked a sulfuric acid derailment at Campo, CO in the '80s and had the lading eat the stitching and some of the leather off my boots....took about 3 steps and the vibram sole and the leather uppers totally separated. Toes suddenly went from toasty to freezing after the first step in the snow.....(never heard snow sizzle before either!)

[?]Sure you were not looking at a GP-35 or SD-39R/SD40-2...ATSF never had SD-35's??[?]

[Anonymous]

Chlorine is bad news. Some years ago SCL had a wreck in Florida along a highway. People were stopped along the road looking at the wreck nearby. The low-lying green cloud from the ruptured chlorine tank made its way across the field to them. One sniff, and you're gone. The ones further away tried to flee in their cars, but the chlorine stole the oxygen so the engines wouldn't start! Don't hang around train wrecks, Mook.

[adrianspeeder]

I live right down the road from the Three Mile Island nuke plant, and don't really have a problem with it. I am mare worried about the local chemical plant that recieves about five tankers a week of all kinds of nasty stuff. It rolls right down the middle of main street by way of the local short line, and the people are totally clueless. I think that TMI is the safest place around here.

Glowin' green,
Adrianspeeder

[tree68]

Didn't see an answer to "what's in the tank cars that aren't marked?" Could be anything that doesn't require a placard. They are also probably multi use cars, so they aren't even marked for "corn syrup" or whatever.

The ERG can scare the dickens out of you. What's more scary for us in the fire service is that under a certain amount carried, stuff doesn't have to be placarded.... You can get a real witches brew going...

[Anonymous]

Like stated above the CROR doesn't require a placard on anything except dangerous goods. If it's a tank car without one, the contents won't be dangerous.

[edblysard]

Most of the food service cars have the product stenciled on them, the corn sweetners especially have the producers name advertised on the side, wouldnt want tallow or lard, or enedible animal fat loaded into them, would make you pancake syurp taste odd.

But fed regs do not require non hazardous contents to have a placard.

The fun ones are the class 4 hazardous when wet, the metal alkides, which become flammable gas when exposed to water, lots of things you dont want anywhere near you.

And think about this, not only do we move thousands of these cars through your town or city, we do so safely.

When there is a accident, most of the time, the cars are tough enought to take just about anything that happens, and keep their tank integrity, and contain their contents.

Ed

[Mookie]

QUOTE: Originally posted by mudchicken

and she didn't even get to the the "official" NFL roller bearings yet!

(mookiecat is not far from York, NE ---maybe 45 miles or so downwind of it - Oh.....Is that why they call it "_______" Linkin???)[:D]

Worked a sulfuric acid derailment at Campo, CO in the '80s and had the lading eat the stitching and some of the leather off my boots....took about 3 steps and the vibram sole and the leather uppers totally separated. Toes suddenly went from toasty to freezing after the first step in the snow.....(never heard snow sizzle before either!)

[?]Sure you were not looking at a GP-35 or SD-39R/SD40-2...ATSF never had SD-35's??[?]

MC - I just write down the #'s and read them off my list that I downloaded. It was still in Sante Fe colors, so could have been a GP 35 - my list does contain some errors and for sure, the Mook wouldn't know!

But I didn't get any bites on the dune buggy we saw. It was a honey - even to my uneducated eyes! I thought for sure the men on the forum would go for that one and not the railroading items! Guess you guys really are die-hard train fans! Or maybe you all own one and it is no biggie! [:D]

[CShaveRR]

OK, kiddo, I'll bite. That guy could have a lot of fun in that thing on those eastern Nebraska sand dunes!

I think I'd fall into the "no biggie" category...we spend a week or so in Michigan dune country every summer (no railroads at all in that county, though one former railroad is now a magnificent bike trail), and I've seen a pretty good variety of stuff. They get used up there, though, so they don't stay shiny for too long. The neatest thing I ever saw was a limousine modified for dune travel...with huge wheels, the thing was almost as high as it was long!

[CShaveRR]

In over 30 years, I'm aware of only three hazmat incidents that took place around our yard. The one I actually witnessed was pretty spectacular...some phosphorus came out of the top of a tank car after an overspeed impact. That stuff is transported in water, because it flares up as soon as it comes in contact with air. All that burned was the small amount that escaped, and the fire burned itself out in a couple of minutes, but we had fire engines there and lots of panicking employees (it was after dark, so the sky was lit up by it).

One of the other incidents involved a load of "live" automotive batteries shipped in a plug-door box car. Gas (I think it would be hydrogen) built up inside the car, with nowhere to go, and something ignited it. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it made a flat car out of that box car! The force was enough to derail cars on adjacent tracks, and I was told that a greenish mushroom of flame formed. I'm glad I wasn't there for that...I only saw the aftermath.

I'm also glad that things have changed since both of those incidents, which took place in the early 1970s. I honestly don't know if (or how) batteries are shipped by rail any more, but can bet that it isn't in sealed box cars! And tank cars have come a long way in the past 30 years, as have hazmat-handling instructions.

[wabash1]

And nobody seem to mention the other good stuff that i get. like dynomite and radio active waste some low leval others well the pretty glow at night ( just kidding) and yes been in the amonia leak burned my throat bad, I wont let that happen again