evening
Update..Pizza oven caught fire no one was hurt.Basketball brackets have teams with large numbers behind them left.Time for bed.
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").
afternoon
Well my friends were still able to have their keg and eggs yesterday in Deshler.Better weather today.Csx had to fix a switch problem at east Defiance.There is a G 784 waiting to go Marysville.Dispatcher was double checking the crew qualifacations.The Lackawana unit is trailing on a q 591.It is running through Garrett and eventually Avon yard.Going to a 30th class reunion meeting this afternoon.Weather not going to be very springlike this week.
Joe - hope you weren't planning on Pizza from Porky's in Deshler tonight - it appears they have/had a fire in the kitchen. Caught the fire department responding on the YouTube channel...
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...
Ns had some cars uptown when I left work.Ran errands in town.Chores and projects for this weekend.
What confuses the pole problem further is who owns the pole ? Around here it may be Ga power, EMC, ATT, and some cable company. Then who replaces it if it is broken ? Power company usually gets the job and bills the pole owner.
A common protocol is the higher the voltage the higher up on pole the wires are. So usually transmission lines, then feeders for service transformers, cable, and telephone, traffic signal control may be anywhere. Often takes over a year for complete replacement of dangling pole as each service closer to ground company has to wait for comapny above to move its wires to a new pole and saw the pole down further.
Of course RR and light rail CAT has to have all the services above the CAT..
Around here you're likely to find power, cable, telephone (copper), and fiber optics on the same pole. And it will be four different vendors. Maybe five, as we have companies in the area who provide fiber other than the phone or cable people.
During the ice storm, we were under orders not to cut the fiber lines, which I get, as fiber isn't easy to splice...
If we have an incident involving a pole, we usually just worry about the power and have dispatch contact the local utility. Everybody else can figure it out later. The power folks will usually at least make sure the other lines are out of trouble.
The power folks are usually easier to get on the scene than cable or phone.
Well, it is not just railroad matters that confuse reporters. This afternoon, a car hit a pole on 3300 South; the scene was on the two channels that I looked at. The first camera was a little way from the pole, and I saw immediately that it was a power pole--which the reporter called a "telephone pole." The rporter on the second channel gave the right description.
When I was growing up, the poles back of the hose carried both power and telephone lines--the same man owned both utilities.
Johnny
mudchickenHope I can listen on the radio to what happens with the fighting tree sloths tomorrow while I'm in southern Colorado. (suspect Electroliner will be watching from his neck of the woods) Add Quote to
Yep, Loyola won in a very exciting ending. A three pointer with seconds to go and the win. WOW. Now to see how Cincinnatti and Xavier do tomorrow
Better not be Girl Scout Cookies scattered down the R/W! Got so preoccupied with the Miami bridge oops / construction accident that I forgot about the Aesculus glabra 'nuts playing today. Hope I can listen on the radio to what happens with the fighting tree sloths tomorrow while I'm in southern Colorado. (suspect Electroliner will be watching from his neck of the woods)
Well the team survived today.In other March Madness news local team gets to play on Saturday.It's the same day as a commentators daughters wedding.(oops)Ns was clear when I left work.Have report a pedestrian was killed on csx here in town this morning.Ran errands by the yard.The caboose was all alone.Waiting for delivery of girl scout cookies.Chores to do.
We're in the "waiting for spring" season here. I've heard about people seeing robins, but haven't seen any myself yet. Haven't heard the geese overhead yet. But...We do have some crocuses poking up, and our neighbor has his snowdrops. And our local Dairy Queen has been open for a month. And today we're going down to the Flower Show at Navy Pier--by train (and bus), of course!
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)
CSSHEGEWISCH We've got enough local geese that stay home for the winter so it's hard for me to view them as a sign of spring. Seeing red-winged blackbirds on fence posts works better for me.
We've got enough local geese that stay home for the winter so it's hard for me to view them as a sign of spring. Seeing red-winged blackbirds on fence posts works better for me.
Yeah - I start getting the red-winged blackbirds at my feeder. And they're here, picking through the snow for the sunflower seeds that end up on the ground.
"I told you we came back too early!"
Not as many geese hanging around this year, though. Not sure why. There have been a few flying over, but we haven't had many clear skies, so it's hard to tell.
As my granfather once said after cleaning off his head, "I'm sure glad cows don't fly."
You also got lotsa green tootsie rolls and are using an umbrella for something other than rain?
GEESE! We've got hundreds, thousands of them flying north over us today! Lots of focks of blues, snows & honkers against a clear blue sky. This is definately a sign of good things coming our way.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Ns was clear when I left work.Extended forecast has rain/snow for the first day of spring next Tuesday.Chores to do.
Don't envy you. Here in Downers Grove, this morning, I was on the way to the library and was a block away from the BNSF crossing with a Metra Scoot stopped at the station and a snow squal almost obscured the train from view. The snow covered the parkways and grass but quickly melted. Temps in low 30's. Now the sun is shining and another snow squal has started. It's almost SPRING.
We're under a winter storm warning. So far it's been snowing consistently but not heavily. I haven't bothered with the driveway yet.
It's a nor'easter, so the east coast will (again) bear the brunt of it all. Still, we're looking at 8-10", especially if the lake effect machine kicks in.
Ns had an eastbound coal train in the siding when I left work.Snow squalls on the way home too.Chores to do.
MC Ohio State isn't going to be long in the dance.Sister has tickets for the play in games in Dayton.Mother Nature is giving us snow/rain/snow/rain etc etc. Ns has some cars uptown but the main line was clear.Had a loaded coal train for Detroit Edison earlier in the siding.Chores to do.
(1) This chicken will stay out west next weekend, methinks.
(2) New Mexico caught fire Friday, fire got into Colorado today and will apparently get into the Oklahoma panhandle soon. BNSF is probably grateful, for once that Dalhart to Trinidad is now concrete ties. They have delayed a few trains in Amarillo headed to Denver until the 23000+ Acre smokeout & range fire moves more north of Clayton NM. We are now paying dearly for the dry winter out here. Johnny got a little moisture, but its not getting over the mountains. Smelling smoke here, but not sure who's smoke and ash we are getting. The long gone ATSF Colmor CutOff is in the middle of this thing.
(3) NCAA wouldn't force a march madness meeting between Cincy and Ohio State again. Drat.
(4) Another pedestrian/ train fail near Denver, this time on BNSF. ...and again near a signalled/gated crossing.
Spent the entire weekend (including Friday night) at a local outdoor show, trying to sell people on amateur radio. We had a surprising number of people who were - now to find out how many follow through.
Next weekend is our chicken barbeque, which will tie me up for most of that time.
We had a quiet weekend, in spite of a few targeted train-watching spots on our way to and from St. Louis. On the way down (Friday), we saw a CSX train in Highland, Illinois, east of the St. Louis metro area (nice quilt shop in town). The train was stopped, and was long enough to require cutting at two rural crossings east of town. I had to content myself with notes on only a couple of cars, as we couldn't get close to it on parallel roads. CSX seems to be mixing stack cars in with the manifest, at least on this train. There were also some loaded auto-frame flat cars, which I seldom see up this way.Saturday we served as judges for the Illinois state Odyssey of the Mind competition. We were roped into this because our daughter Ellen, who is a regional director for the Peoria area, needed to supply enough judges to the pool, so she could enter all of the teams that had been working on projects. Pat and I were judging a problem that involved tweaking a well-known story and adding humor, an argument, some character that didn't appear in the original, an eyewitness to the event (oh...and make it humorous). I was a harsher judge than my wife when it came to handing out points--we could give out up to 50, and my scores were usually around 28. Fortunately for the teams, our category was only one of serveral for which points were awarded. And Ellen's school did well--six teams, five trophies came home with them. (We were able to judge one team from their school, but not the ones in which we had grandchildren--they had different problems to solve, anyway.)Before we left the area, I caught one UP manifest train in the snow, at the top of the hill at Kirkwood. He was moving amazingly fast, given his length and the fact that he had only one unit at each end. The station at Kirkwood, now run by volunteers, has an ATCS screen in the window facing the tracks.On the way home, we got to check out another ATCS screen, the one for the UP at Rochelle. We didn't stay long, as nothing showed up behind the stack train we saw leaving town. There were a couple of trains in each direction while we were on the road, though. I came home to an email with a bunch of unusual freight cars from my pal in eastern Kentucky. He and his wife had been traveling, so these weren't what he was accustomed to seeing, either.
Saw CP on Ns this morning.Then after work Ns had a big train in the siding.It had to split a crossing in town.Another big freight passed it.They both had a bit of everything.Hope everyone sprung ahead ok.
Took brother out today.Saw Csx and NS.Csx decided to run a d 743 and Ns ran their L 75.Both work the steel plant in Leipsic.Also got to se a q 016 crawl through Deshler.Dispatcher wanted them to double check the train before it got to North Baltimore.Someone mentioned the new diamond to be installed in Deshler on April 1st.Sprung some clocks ahead already.One clock in the kitchen decided to jump back off the wall after I moved it ahead.Stacey wasn't too upset.Check your smoke detectors too tonight.
mudchickenIt's finally Friday - gone home to recover. I do not need many more weeks like this one.
Ns local was uptown.They also had a westbound autorack train in the siding.They were parked by our parking lot.Usually they wait uptown.Going to see if I can find some CSX tomorrow.Chores to do.
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