It would cure constipation!!!
There's another video around of a fellow who is climbing what appears to be a 1500' tower - probably out on the plains. I know that a couple of the broadcast stations in OKC have towers in that range.
They don't have elevators - it's a straight 1500' climb.
Apparently he does it twice a year to change the bulb at the top (and likely others on the tower). As I recall, his paycheck is $10k for the job.
Just think - if he does that somewhere once a month...
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
tree68 There's another video around of a fellow who is climbing what appears to be a 1500' tower - probably out on the plains. I know that a couple of the broadcast stations in OKC have towers in that range. They don't have elevators - it's a straight 1500' climb. Apparently he does it twice a year to change the bulb at the top (and likely others on the tower). As I recall, his paycheck is $10k for the job. Just think - if he does that somewhere once a month...
afternoon
Ns had a couple cars uptown when I left work.Didn't hear anything on Csx while running errands in Defiance.Matt's first day of school went good.Need to fill out the paperwork.
stay safe
joe
Deshler Ohio-crossroads of the B&O Matt eats your fries.YUM! Clinton st viaduct undefeated against too tall trucks!!!(voted to be called the "Clinton St. can opener").
CSSHEGEWISCHHe definitely earns it.
That video just popped up in FB again. He gets $20,000 per...
tree68 CSSHEGEWISCH He definitely earns it. That video just popped up in FB again. He gets $20,000 per...
CSSHEGEWISCH He definitely earns it.
Suspect he has a select clientale of 1 to 2 dozen stations that he performs the bulb maintenance upon. Few families can thrive on $40K a year. Suspect he may be doing one a week across the mid-west.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
tree68That video just popped up in FB again. He gets $20,000 per...
When I was a young lad working for a local AM station, our top bulb burned out. The boss offered $100 to anybody at the station who would climb the 163' tower to change it. No takers.
There were several climbers who advertised in Broadcasting magazine and one was engaged. I'm told it didn't take him long to scurry up with and replace the bulb. It was reported that he didn't use any safety equipment, the absence of which would probably put an OSHA operative into a coma these days...just a sort of pouch on a belt to hold the big bulb going up and coming down. He got his money and headed to the next job about as quickly.
Still wasn't worth $100 for me to try.
Oh, and that was long enough ago that $100 was a nice chunk of change.
Just watching the videos makes my stomach queasy, with a touch of vertigo!
BaltACDSuspect he has a select clientale of 1 to 2 dozen stations that he performs the bulb maintenance upon. Few families can thrive on $40K a year. Suspect he may be doing one a week across the mid-west.
That would be my thought as well. Hopefully, he's putting a lot of it into a retirement account - his knees won't last forever.
When I was working, I watched the contractor put up a 200' tower for our new public safety radio system. I wanted to climb it (there is a ladder up the middle), but never got to it.
I climbed a 200' tower while I was in the military, but it had stairs up the middle - like climbing up the stairs of a 20 story building. No big deal (we were strapped in, though).
Back in the 70's, I was resposible for a large microwave system that covered Northern Illinois and extended south to Pana IL. While it was not my job, I chose to climb a 160 ft guyed tower. MW towers have to be very stable at the dish locations so that the signal beam is focused on it's distant mate. The tower had a triangle cross section made up of three four ft faces. It had a ladder on one face on the inside. So I climbed into the core of the tower and climbed up. Piece of cake. If I slip, all I'd have to do is stretch an arm or leg out and I stop. But when I got to the top, I had an experience that I will always remember. There is no reference at the top, you are up 160 ft and the ground is way below. The tower is strong, as it is designed to stay up with a half inch of ice load and survive a 125 mph wind. But I looked up and the clouds were moving. The sensation was that the tower was moving and for a moment, I grabbed the tower and thought what do I do if this thing crashes. But then, I realilzed what was happening and I was fine. It like when you are on a stopped train and one next to you starts moving, you feel like your train is moving. But I have no desire to climb any thing higher.
Watched one of our tower crews installing a MW reflector on a coal generating station's 500' stack. They had a winch line from a truck to a pully at the top of the stack and when they were done, one of the men rode the winch line down like it was a zip line. Except he was not connected to the line, just had a pulley and gloves for control. Tower workers don't seem to have any fear.
They look somewhat like these that are on a mountain top.
One summer when I was working on my college's Building and Ground Crew, I was painting the eaves of a building--standing on a scaffold board that was laid across two window jacks, about 20 feet off the ground. Once when I bent over to get more paint on my brush I looked away from the building before straightening up; without anything close at hand for reference, I had to straighten up very, very slowly. Always after, I looked at the building when bending over and straightening up. To paint the outside edge of the gutter, I would hold on to a rafter with one hand and lean out to see what I was doing. It is well that there was no such thing as OSHA back then.
Johnny
Muggy here in Nw Ohio.Matt was closed due to fog this morning.Ns had a westbound train on the main and another one coming into the siding when I left work.The local had some cars uptown too.Chores to do.
Heard from Houston Ed this morning. All safe and sound and dry, in their home.
I will let him give any details he cares to share.
She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw
[quote user="BaltACD"]
BOB WITHORN Reminded my self why I don't like nailing down shingles. Today I can't move anything.
Isn't that why they invented nail guns?
Yes. I was using one and it was only 20 packs of shingles! Ever notice that there aren't any old roofers or movers?
[quote user="Mookie"]
BaltACD BOB WITHORN Reminded my self why I don't like nailing down shingles. Today I can't move anything. Isn't that why they invented nail guns?
And roofing companies....
The roofing company would charge more to show up the it was worth. It's just a hores run-in in a pasture. Besides, it gave my daughter, the horse owner/farm owner a new appreciation for what I know how do. Still don't like roofing, the knees, back and etc., keep reminding me that it's not something for a guy bin his 60's.
What a drag it is getting old.
CSSHEGEWISCHWhat a drag it is getting old.
Beats the alternative!
Ns local was uptown when I left work.The boys from Columbus are in Indiana tonight.Hoping for no surprises.
I think I just hit a new milestone on the Trains forums- my first thread to be moved! I had started a thread about painted locomotives and someone decided that it should be moved to the Locomotives forum where nobody goes. I got a nice e-mail telling me it had been moved, so all is well.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Congratulations, I think.I was going to make a comment or two on your post, but a voice in my head insisted, "Don't go there!". So I won't.Instead, I'll say here that red is probably the worst color for maintaining, in any form, be it paint, cloth, printed media, and on and on.I've never seen a really bad-looking NS locomotive. I suspect that a lot has to do withgood paint, because I've seen black tank cars that have turned gray and/or exposed their primer coat in a very short while.A friend of mine once said that Kansas City Southern had the right idea when they were painting all of their freight equipment that "cocoa-powder brown", because that was the color that everything weathered to, anyway. I suspect it would be different for units that spent most of their time in ore fields, etc, where the soil is a different color.Watching trains a few days back, I was thinking that UP should paint the underbodies of their locomotives (trucks and tanks, anyway) that color of brown instead of gray--brown used to be a color that UP used along with yellow, and that was the color I was seeing on all of the locomotive trucks that went by me. It may not look as good initially, but in the long run it certainly wouldn't look worse!
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
Black nicely hides, at least from a distance, oil stains. Of course, everything from a distance usually looks nicer. I remember the last time I had the MP heritage engine, which I think as been touched up since, it looked good. Until we got up to and on it. Then it looked really ratty, especially inside.
Carl, do you know off-hand of any covered hoppers with cushioned drawbars? Our train lists have started identifying cars with cushioned drawbars and some covered hoppers are indicated as having them. The lists now have a summary of car types with all listed except gondolas. They always come up as "other car". Nothing like seeing a list for your empty coal bucket as "135 other cars."
Jeff
While there are fire departments that paint their apparatus black ("safety black" is one tongue-in-cheek description), most do paint their trucks red. The "safety yellow" ("slime yellow) craze is pretty much over - even the FAA doesn't insist on it any more.
But - this is about paint durability (even if the color isn't black) - the slime yellow craze coincided with a period when the steel used for vehicles was pretty poor. As a result, there was a lot of rust evident (in cars, too). Red trucks didn't show it like the slime yellow rigs did. Other than the "fire trucks are red" school, I suspect that's one reason the color faded from favor as quickly as it did.
These folks like their lights, too...
I guess if a railroad thought hard about it, why not paint loclomotives in the red oxide(?) color that BNSF paints their covered hoppers, in order to hide the rust?Carl- Your post reminded me of an old joke- A woman goes into a carpet store to order new carpet as her kids had worn out the old stuff. When the saleman asked what color she wanted, the woman gave him a handfull of dirt from her front yard. "That's the color I want to match. It'll make it easier on everyone."
Ns has a coal train in the siding.It has 2 sd 70 macs.One is still in"Mookie" paint.Haven't seen those around very much.Mother nature is cooling us down today.Chores to do.
Joe
Jeff, when I used to look at equipment descriptions ("UC/INITnumber), just about everything had the word "cushioned" on it, including an awful lot of stuff that I knew didn't have cushioning. No, I don't know of any cushioned covered hoppers, past or present.Coal gons used to come up on our switch list as a "J" something or other. That would go along with their AAR Car Type Code, which is usually "J301". I'm sure somebody in the programming department could come up with a "see J, say gon" fix.Those Heritage Units have been around for a while...maybe a repaint is in order?
Joe - I am not a big green fan, but with the cream to go with it, to me that is the best paint job ever on BNSF. It is tailored looking, really has held up well and so much better than the ever popular ack-orange. NS black and white - also very tailored looking. Both look like they are dressed to go to a cocktail party - orange looks like orange pants, orange shirt and a yellow vest bought at a flea market.ACK...
Does anybody here besides me remember the stunt that the KCS locomotive shops pulled with an SD40-2 back in the bad old days (the complete opposite of painting everything primer brown/red where every panel was painted a different random color before they put the locomotive back together after a total tear down and rebuild following a wreck?)
If I remember correctly, that was KCS' Bicentennial unit!
Anybody out there squirrely? We don't have a walnut tree in our yard, only an apple tree that feeds the wildlife for miles around. The closest walnut tree is over a block away. For some odd reason, Mr. Squirrel carries lots of walnuts a block down the street to my driveway. There, he peels off the green outer coating to get at the walnut meat and leaves the razor sharp shell pieces on the driveway. Other than the obvious reason- Mr. Squirrel hates me- why would he (or she) do this?
Murphy Siding Anybody out there squirrely? We don't have a walnut tree in our yard, only an apple tree that feeds the wildlife for miles around. The closest walnut tree is over a block away. For some odd reason, Mr. Squirrel carries lots of walnuts a block down the street to my driveway. There, he peels off the green outer coating to get at the walnut meat and leaves the razor sharp shell pieces on the driveway. Other than the obvious reason- Mr. Squirrel hates me- why would he (or she) do this?
First, let me say I'm a lover of Black Walnuts. They are a bear for us humans to crack and are very tasty but squirrles are looking for food and have the advantage in that they are rodents that must gnaw. Their teeth continuously grow if they don't. They can gnaw through the toughest of things and Black Walnut shells qualify among them. Do not expect Mr/Ms squirrel to plant a Black Walnut tree in your yard. When they are done the only thing left is the very hard shell.
They are named squirrels for the simple reason they are squirrely. While riding my Gold Wing several years ago I had one chenge direction three times as I approached. The end result was a dead center hit with the front wheel. I didn't stop to see if he/she survived.
Better to be hated by a squirrel than a skunk.
Best I can offer at the moment.
Norm
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