RME greyhounds I'll guarantee everyone that no student ever graduated from her eighth grade who did not know the difference between "weigh" and "way". It would be nice to know also that they would know the difference between "way station" and "weigh station", both of which are perfectly correct English but of course with wildly different meaning. For our poster (who couldn't distinguish the difference) 'way station' (as in the Cliff Simak novel) is a depot along a railroad route, not one of the principal stops. It may have a connotation of 'out of the way'. (And yes, it's probably been many years since a railroad has built a new one of those.) A 'weigh station' is a facility where over-the-road vehicles are checked to ensure they are not overweight either overall or on particular axles. Interestingly enough (to grammar nutzis) there is a similar concern over the nautical expression 'anchors away' (which of course is "aweigh" correctly used) while the ship itself is 'under way' and not 'weigh' as it moves onto course. We say "way 'nuff" when lifting a shell down from riggers, when we have it positioned right, because it doesn't have to move any further to be aligned for the next step.
greyhounds I'll guarantee everyone that no student ever graduated from her eighth grade who did not know the difference between "weigh" and "way".
It would be nice to know also that they would know the difference between "way station" and "weigh station", both of which are perfectly correct English but of course with wildly different meaning.
For our poster (who couldn't distinguish the difference) 'way station' (as in the Cliff Simak novel) is a depot along a railroad route, not one of the principal stops. It may have a connotation of 'out of the way'. (And yes, it's probably been many years since a railroad has built a new one of those.)
A 'weigh station' is a facility where over-the-road vehicles are checked to ensure they are not overweight either overall or on particular axles.
Interestingly enough (to grammar nutzis) there is a similar concern over the nautical expression 'anchors away' (which of course is "aweigh" correctly used) while the ship itself is 'under way' and not 'weigh' as it moves onto course. We say "way 'nuff" when lifting a shell down from riggers, when we have it positioned right, because it doesn't have to move any further to be aligned for the next step.
I'll weigh in here. Please, let's go easy here lest someone think this exchange is turning elitist.
According to the Wiktionary, the etymology for 'weigh' is: "Old English wegan, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch wegen ‘weigh’, German bewegen ‘move’, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin vehere ‘convey’. Early senses included ‘transport from one place to another’ and ‘raise up’.
The expression, 'weigh anchor' was also used, possibly related to the 'raise up' usage.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
schlimmI'll weigh in here. Please, let's go easy here lest someone think this exchange is turning elitist.
But knowledge is so much fun!
According to the Wiktionary, the etymology for 'weigh' is: "Old English wegan, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch wegen ‘weigh’, German bewegen ‘move’, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin vehere ‘convey’.
The problem here is a bit different; I suspect that a significant part is functional divergence from a common root over time, with very disparate meanings developing. Note that the act of 'weighing' something on a beam scale, or lifting it in the hand to gauge it, is different from the purpose of the operation in terms of finding its mass. There's also the sense of comparing it against a reference of some kind.
Interestingly enough, there is some argument that 'weigh' in the sense of raising it up against its own gravitational resistance is a folk etymology, and that the actual term is that in the first recorded usage (first you have the anchor 'atrip' where it just comes out of the bed and can be moved, then you get it under way up to where it will be stowed at the hawsepipe or wherever). In any case, there's far less interest in the force on the anchor cable during the retrieval than there was when the vessel was riding at anchor, and where this comes more pointedly into the 'present' discussion is that any function of a highway 'weigh station' is divorced from marine practice that involves lifting heavy things. (Or except circumstantially from any use of vehicles that move 'under way' at essentially right angles to the weighing lift...)
We should probably go back to greyhounds' original topic (which involves how truckers can keep the truck under way as much of the workday as possible using ELDs effectively). I see some very interesting possibilities just from what I have read so far about ELD implementation and the required communications architecture associated with it.
(from Wiki) To "weigh anchor" is to bring it aboard a vessel in preparation for departure. The phrase "anchors aweigh" is a report that the anchors are clear of the sea bottom and, therefore, the ship is officially underway.
(from Online Etymology) The original sense was of motion, which led to that of lifting, then to that of "measure the weight of." The older sense of "lift, carry" survives in the nautical phrase weigh anchor. Figurative sense of "to consider, ponder" (in reference to words, etc.) is recorded from mid-14c. To weigh in in the literal sense is from 1868, originally of jockeys; figurative meaning "bring one's influence to bear" is from 1909.
Good set of references.
I can't believe the OED, which ought to be one of our primary recourse references here, has been effectively put behind a paywall!
RME Good set of references. I can't believe the OED, which ought to be one of our primary recourse references here, has been effectively put behind a paywall!
It's the trend, ostensibly to make the experience 'advertising-free'?
BaltACD And what are now referred to as Locals or Road Switchers, on some properties were once known as 'Way Freights'.
And what are now referred to as Locals or Road Switchers, on some properties were once known as 'Way Freights'.
On the former CNW, we still call our locals "way freights". However, the conductor no longer rides in the "way car" or actually handles the "way bills".
It's funny, but the dwindling number of old head CNW conductors in my terminal will use "way car" in their old head stories. When they see a caboose now they call it a caboose. Even though most now are more properly either a "shoving platform" or a "gang car" for MOW work trains.
Jeff
Since we spun off topic for a bit, I would like to "weigh" in on this discussion.
Pet peeves in posts.....
"tressel" as in a bridge, is spelled " trestle"
"break" and "brake" have two completely different meanings, as in break a leg while you apply the brakes.
"No one" vs "noone"
I could go on but don't wish to be a " bore", or is it boar?
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."-Albert Einstein
http://gearedsteam.blogspot.com/
jeffhergert On the former CNW, we still call our locals "way freights". However, the conductor no longer rides in the "way car" or actually handles the "way bills".
I was under the impression that the "way car" was often a boxcar for carrying the LCL freight that would be loaded or unloaded at the various way stations. An example of this was a story on way freights in the first year of Trains. In later years, the volume of LCL freight may have been low enough that it would fit in the caboose.
The closest example of this still going on would be the freight deliveries to the Tall Trees Resort made by D&SNG trains.
Geared Steam Since we spun off topic for a bit, I would like to "weigh" in on this discussion. Pet peeves in posts..... "tressel" as in a bridge, is spelled " trestle" "break" and "brake" have two completely different meanings, as in break a leg while you apply the brakes. "No one" vs "noone" I could go on but don't wish to be a " bore", or is it boar?
Cite, Site and Sight are all different words
Do and Due
There, Thier and They're
and it is Axle, not Axel,
Also, UPS, FedEx and USPS are CARRIERS, not SHIPPERS, unless of course they're paying a carrier to transport a cargo for them, such as TOFC/COFC.
I have to feel for Greyhounds, I am a truck driver with a high school diploma and I cringe at some of the spelling that I see on the forums, especially when I see a supposed college grad spell College "CollAge"
That is just a short bit of my list.
Doug
May your flanges always stay BETWEEN the rails
challenger3980That is just a short bit of my list. Doug
Add these:
Dinner is what you eat in the evening in the diner or in the dining car. A dinning car would be noisy.
Loose is how one's trousers fit in theory, while lose is to misplace something or suffer defeat.
Definitely is when you are certain about something, not defiantly which is to oppose.
Let me throw in "your" and "you're."
Whoops
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
Improper use of ellipses...
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.
Do school teachers now say that the proper form for the possessive of the pronoun "it" is it's? I was taught that the possessive was simply "its," and "it's" was reserved for use as the abbreviation of "it is."
Also, I was taught that in most instances the plural of a noun was formed by simply adding the letter "s" at the end--and now I often see an apostrophe placed before the "s"--which to me is a possessive form.
Johnny
Johnny,
Think you're confused now? Check this out.
http://www.grammar-monster.com/easily_confused/its_its.htm
Norm
Our language is dynamic and its standards continue to evolve and change.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Norm48327 Johnny, Think you're confused now? Check this out. http://www.grammar-monster.com/easily_confused/its_its.htm
Enough said. Let’s get back to railroading. I’ll try to just accept and ignore any future errors in language usage.
greyhounds my father was a farmer turned politician. He’s another story.)
Sounds like an interesting story. Please tell us more.
BTW, sorry for derailing your thread.
erikem jeffhergert On the former CNW, we still call our locals "way freights". However, the conductor no longer rides in the "way car" or actually handles the "way bills". I was under the impression that the "way car" was often a boxcar for carrying the LCL freight that would be loaded or unloaded at the various way stations. An example of this was a story on way freights in the first year of Trains. In later years, the volume of LCL freight may have been low enough that it would fit in the caboose. The closest example of this still going on would be the freight deliveries to the Tall Trees Resort made by D&SNG trains.
CNW, CB&Q and I think I've heard about AT&SF (at least the eastern part) crews calling a caboose a way car.
Deggesty Do school teachers now say that the proper form for the possessive of the pronoun "it" is it's? I was taught that the possessive was simply "its," and "it's" was reserved for use as the abbreviation of "it is." Also, I was taught that in most instances the plural of a noun was formed by simply adding the letter "s" at the end--and now I often see an apostrophe placed before the "s"--which to me is a possessive form.
I remember "its" & "it's" exactly as you describe it.
As for plurals, I remember it as adding an "s" unless the noun ends in an "s", in which case you add "es."
Possessive, add " 's " even if the word ends in "s" unless it ends in "s" and has more than two syllables, in which case you add only an " ' ."
One thing that makes my previous sentences look odd is that I distinctly remember that the period, unlike other punctuation marks, always goes inside the quotes. Maybe that only applies to quotes for quoting and not for coining.
I'm still flabbergasted from learning a while back that some schools are not even teaching cursive writing at all.
Jeff: Way car (caboose or van not used anywhere except in the car classification folios in the mechanical department)
Paul: It's amusing to watch this new breed of button pushing/ cursive challenged muggles* try to read a deed from the courthouse. Even with the pre-printed deed forms, the blanks were often filled-in in cursive well into the 1970's. You won't survive long as a surveyor if you cannot read old deeds and documents.
(*) In this office, "muggles " are CADD Techs (draftsmen) who would not know LeRoy, Linotype, Pen & Ink and/or how to use them
(**) If you read many of the STB applications/filings, you understand why we all think they ought to take the crayons away from the lawyers, for the most part. Exhibit A's fail to communicate much because they are so poorly done. (And then the STB would scan color documents in b&w just to confuse the issue even more.)
schlimm A dinning car would be noisy.
Wouldn't that be the club car?
Mudchicken you think the Lawyers are bad in STB filings try reading some of the ones that are in charge of the FMCSA. One of them in the effort prior to it being killed recently was so gung ho about a 60 MPH speed limiter that he was forgetting that trucks speed can vary based on tire wear. His proposed idea to fix it a new regulation that would restrict all tires on trucks to a max of 10/32 tread depth and a minimum of 6/32 depth. His bosses laughed him out of the office when the cost to implement it came in at well over 300 billion a year in tire replacement costs and another 100 billion in lost wages and revenue nationwide. He still thought it was a great idea.
A new tire is over 700 bucks for a good lo profile 22.5 a wide base single is over a grand each for a virgin tire aka new tires. A recapped tire is still over 400 for a normal base and 600 for a wide base. We can use recaps on drives and trailers never on a steer axle. A new set of drives here as we don't run wide base tires anymore is over 5600 dollars and close to 6 grand and we refuse to use caps on drives. A trailer is over 3200 to 3600 for a set as caps are fine there.
ChuckCobleigh schlimm A dinning car would be noisy. Wouldn't that be the club car?
Shadow the Cats ownerOne of them in the effort prior to it being killed recently was so gung ho about a 60 MPH speed limiter that he was forgetting that trucks speed can vary based on tire wear. His proposed idea to fix it a new regulation that would restrict all tires on trucks to a max of 10/32 tread depth and a minimum of 6/32 depth.
I should probably not post this on an open forum, as this regulator or someone like him might be watching, but the correct (and somewhat obvious) solution to this would be to adapt some form of vision technology, or the old EMD radar creep control, as an 'absolute' speedometer. Building this in a robust enough form that would not cross-react with other units in adjacent lanes is not a particularly difficult task (and most of it is either developed or soon to be for autonomous-vehicle projects).
I am tempted to note 'no one but an idiot runs a speedometer off outside wheel diameter' (either in the rubber-tire world or in railroading) where speed indication needs to be precise. In the world of trucking recaps, where the diameter varies substantially from "new" to acceptable wear limit, this is so obvious that I'm surprised your Limiter Guy didn't comprehend it. (I would also be surprised he didn't restrict his "cap limits" to instrumented wheels (easy to put an encoder on any truck wheel for "limiter" purposes, and then mark the wheel(s) involved with some distinctive color code so inspectors have something else to write up o/o's for double-secret-probation violations -- 'your wheel is the wrong hue and saturation') and then set up a new bureaucracy or line and staff organization to start implementing this exciting common-sense idea as a mandate.)
I might add that it's more than idiotic to implement a "60mph" limiter in a number of respects. The baseline speed for truck 'regulation' on most interstates remains right where it was in the '70s: about 62.5mph, corresponding to a nice round (and sophisticatedly high-sounding) 100km/h, then and probably now right in the sweet spot between cruise gearing and powerband. BUT there has to be an override (the amount in the versions I was working with being about 10% overspeed for a fixed time, with manual override similar to the approach used for ATS forestalling on locomotives) with monitoring and event logging. Why am I sure that your Limiter Lorenzo, Jr. was pushing for absolute 60mph limiting of the happy sort I have encountered ... at a higher setpoint, if I remember correctly ... on U-Haul rental trucks?
zugmannImproper use of ellipses...
Since you've brought this up, just exactly what is your reference for "improper" in this connection?
I mention this because I use ellipses a great deal in my posts, based on my experience in radio (where ellipses are used, as in theatrical dialogue, to indicate a pause or 'stretch' in narration when text is to be read aloud before it can be pre-read). This comes under 'informal' use of ellipses in most discussions of grammatical usage I have seen.
You may be proceeding under the assumption that only the use as an indicator of omission is "correct". That is, in my experience at least, mistaken.
(I must admit I'm not a full adherent to "classical" rules of standard written English: I have campaigned long and hard behind the scenes, for example, to get "their" accepted as the singular as well as plural possessive pronoun, following accepted usage for 'you', in part to eliminate required sex references in grammar. I do not expect to succeed in that any time soon, even as much else in English changes dramatically for the sloppy worse.)
I use ellipses frequently to indicate an excerpt - ...rules of standard written English... - but more often to indicate that pregnant pause one leaves when speaking to let whatever one has said soak in...
I really have no excuse for misusing much of anything along that line - somewhere in my library is a copy of the Government Printing Office Style Manual...
In the Internet world, there are rules for omitting portions of an IPV6 address, using periods, but they escape me at the moment.
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...
RME most of the idiots anymore at FMCSA or at the USDOTalso they have no clue what driving a OTR truck. They wonder why the industry is demanding more parking in the Northeastern US when their own studies show a shortage of parking places up there. They fight us when we scream about rest areas being closed or about the passage of Jason's Law. Jason's Law for the OTR industry requires shippers or recivers that if a drivers runs out of HOS time provide a secure place to park on their property for their mandated break. We haul their crap they delay us hours at a time and yet we can not take a safe break on their property. Drivers have been shot robbed and killed just off a customers property since they were out of hours and couldn't legally move.
Then we get to how the FMCSA studies turnover to say a driver shortage. Instead of looking at where the current drivers go all they do is look at how many drivers a carrier hires in the year. If a carrier has like England around 5000 trucks and in a year hires over 5000 drivers it says its turnover is over 100% not how many are replacements for drivers that left. Or how they look at other issues. There big one right now is Sleep Apnea. They are using a BMI formula to mandate testing. Right now I would require that test based alone on my bra size. They refuse to even fight the states on how drivers need a comfortable enviroment to sleep in. No they think 140 degrees is acceptable to sleep in for 10 hours. Think you would feel refreshed on that. Yet they expect drivers to do that.
Well as expected D-day for us was 12-18-17 and my boss was offered 2 carriers in the area that are not converting to ELD's. We are going to intergrate their drivers into our carrier over the next couple weeks and their customers are happy to maintain their service. The on paper mergers will take place in a few months after all their equipment is apprasied and such. We just grew by 50 trucks overnight. We got a break and hadn't turned in our trade trucks yet for the last order and can install ELD's in the newer of the merged fleets ones in a couple days. Now for the fun of getting their equipment up to our standards on trailers. Some of these trailers are basket cases. Thanking heavens that we have 200 new ones showing up in January for the fleet.
Well, 12/18/2017 has come and gone. Electronic logs are now required on long haul trucks. With exceptions.
DAT, a service that provides information to match trucks with loads, along with rate and other information about trucking, says that the electronic logs are a "Wild Card". Nobody is quite sure what the effect will be in total. A consensus is that it will force truck rates up, which is good for the railroads. But nobody has a sure handle on what will happen. The Christmas and New Year holidays preclude early evaluation, since the rush is over and few people want to be working over the Christmas holiday time.
Some truckers are spitting nails about the electronic logs. It does have rough edges. If a driver is 40 minutes from a delivery and he/she runs out of time, that's it. They can't fudge. The delivery is going to be late. As the cat's owner has said, some truckers have just shut down rather than deal with the electronic logs.
Elogs should be good for rail, especially intermodal. But, as DAT said, it's a wild card and no one knows for sure.
There are pluses and minuses to the elogs. The damn government is, to its unusual credit, trying to do a soft implementation. There is a 90 day "Soft" time in which truckers caught running without elogs will only receive a fine. After that, the truck will be taken out of service.
Agricultural interest, God Bless 'Em, are pushing for a total exemption on their commodities. So there is also a 90 day hold on ag elogs there while things get reconsidered and reviewed. If they get an exemption on fresh fruit and vegetables it will hurt the railroad's prospects. Owner operators hauling produce are notorious for ignoring hours of service regulations. If they have to adhere to the hours of service regs because of elogs, it will force their costs up and divert some such traffic to rail movement.
On the other hand, the ag interest do have a valid point regarding the movement of livestock. I've had first hand experience moving live animals and, as a wise man once told me, that's one of the most difficult things in the world to transport.
You cannot just shut down the truck. You've got to keep moving. Otherwise, you'll kill the livestock in a most terrible way. This is an issue that can be solved, but it's going to take some thought and compromise.
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