Thank You.
Thanks for putting things in perspective. the "good old days" were rarely that good.
Never answered my question
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgw_RD_1_5I NDG CSSHEGEWISCH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5osAXj0Mi8 Miningman
Of course there are horrid things in every decade, every generation. That is not what I was asking. The ask was about the excitement of railroading back before it all deteriorated to something completely different and the loss of all what we were familiar with in our younger days .
MiningmanThe ask was about the excitement of railroading back before it all deteriorated to something completely different and the loss of all what we were familiar with in our younger days .
Ie, the romance of the rails...
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...
CSSHEGEWISCH Thanks for putting things in perspective. the "good old days" were rarely that good.
Johnny
Right then. I guess everyone's agenda is so profound and important that no regard to the question is even considered.
MiningmanNever answered my question https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgw_RD_1_5I NDG CSSHEGEWISCH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5osAXj0Mi8 Miningman Of course there are horrid things in every decade, every generation. That is not what I was asking. The ask was about the excitement of railroading back before it all deteriorated to something completely different and the loss of all what we were familiar with in our younger days .
Life - when you know nothing and everything you learn is new and exciting changes when you get old and have seen and done it all before.
When you know nothing and someone takes time to explain something 'to your satisfaction' you look upon them has knowledgeable and respected.
When you knonw 'something' you then view someone taking the time to explain something as someone pushing a agenda that in many cases you will laugh at heap disrespect upon them.
In our younger days we knew we actually knew nothing but practiced our lives as if we had all the answers; only we didn't even know the questions.
Time wounds all heels.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Huh? What? "Above my pay grade" as they say.
...simply asked if the richness of the railroad world in the late 40's and thru 50's and all its mesmerizing aspects, especially to a boy or teen, was so good that you had a feeling that this could not last.
I sure did . Kids are smart that way.
Did not want to talk about all the problems post war, we all know and still have problems and always will.
When I saw TH&B and NYC Hudsons or doubleheader CPR D10's, green CNR streamlined Northerns it was marvellous and lifetime memories. Not thinking about iron lungs and all the darkness in the world. I was well aware.
I just knew these great things would not last.
Miningman The ask was about the excitement of railroading back before it all deteriorated to something completely different and the loss of all what we were familiar with in our younger days .
The ask was about the excitement of railroading back before it all deteriorated to something completely different and the loss of all what we were familiar with in our younger days .
Well I can see where the Miningman's coming from, in a way I just know we all can.
It's been said before over and over again, but strictly because it's true. When steam went away much, if not most, of the magic went away. That big machine on the head-end, the closest that God's ever let man come to creating life, made the "Greatest Show On Earth," and the show was free!
The loss was there, real and palpable. What came after wasn't the same, it just wasn't the same, to those who remember.
Today's railfans are still enthusiastic, and thank goodness for it. But of course, you can't miss what you've never known, or never had.
Still, given a chance the railroads still put on a pretty good show. And it's still free! Even if todays "stars" can't hold a candle to the old ones.
Brad Pitt versus John Wayne? Who would you choose?
Flintlock76 Brad Pitt versus John Wayne? Who would you choose?
Yes, Wayne, steam did have its own attraction--drinking in the sight of a J as it waitd to be put on the head end of a train, watching valve gear and rods do their work, listening as the engine began moving the train (knowing why the sound of the exhaust changed), observing two firemen stoking the firebox on a steam excursion, watching the engineer as he did his work....
Well thank you Flintlock/Wayne.
Way more than just steam, which was the 'big one'. All the passenger trains... big colouful trains going to Chicago and New York. I would catch a lot of passenger trains after school, 'Grand Trunk Western', 'Toronto Hamilton and Buffalo', 'New York Central' and more. Locals, little 3 car trains with a CPR D10 or light Pacific, a doodlebug every day going up what us kids called 'the ghost line', a lightly used branch that went all the way to Lake Huron. The freight too, local freight switching industry, the MOW train mostly old Heavyweights painted mineral brown, always parked every summer and fall well across from the station but in plain sight. Then the discontinuances posted. Everything gone in months. Even the watchmans tower guarding Brant St. gone. 2 water towers, gone. The Beach subdivision ripped up with its fruit trains from all the farms all the way to Niagara... and the big fruit sheds behind the station, along with its one little local passenger. This was traumatic. The change from 1959 to the summer of 1960 was enourmous.
It was so much fun and excitement , I loved all that stuff. Just knew it was too good to last . Don't know how that is. Was just wondering if anyone else as a kid got that same sense, 'To Good To Last' .
Sure Diesels came , very few passenger trains remained, almost all RDC and only CN left, no one else. Yeah ok, trains still, but not the same at all.
The all mighty dollar (or other monetary values of your choice) - both American and Canadian.
Name a company that was a going concern in the 40's or early 50's that is still the same sized operation in terms of product output and employment that is still in business at relatively the same size today. I don't think there are any!
The law conveys 'personhood' upon corporations. Corporations, like people have to grow to continue to survive - grow financially, grow in employment, grow in product range. To grow takes 'food'; in the case of corporations that food is a ever increasing amount of finances. Just like people, you take in food and grow until at some point the brain (CEO) becomes incompetent, firtters away everything that made the corporation the entity it was and it works its way to bankruptcy, having mismanaged the food ($$$), nerves and muscles (employment structure) and leave the company failing and ripe for takeover by another corporation that is in the processes of growing untils such time as 'old age' catches up with the 'newcomer'.
In the summer of '54, I would hitchhike up to Charlotte each week to watch two morning trains come in--storage mail cars and Pullmans taken off. Diesel power, yes, but it was still fascinating.
CSSHEGEWISCH Flintlock76 Brad Pitt versus John Wayne? Who would you choose? Colin Firth
OK, Colin Firth or Kenneth More? No doubt in my mind!
*
"Name a company that was a going concern in the 40's or early 50's..."
OK. Colt. Remington. Winchester. Smith and Wesson. Mossberg. Savage.
And they ain't made in China neither!
Flintlock76"Name a company that was a going concern in the 40's or early 50's..." OK. Colt. Remington. Winchester. Smith and Wesson. Mossberg. Savage. And they ain't made in China neither!
And none of them are the size that they were in the 40's and 50's - the name may be the same, the company is not. I have heard several of them threatening bankruptcy for various reasons.
Canadian Pacific, Canadian National, Union Pacific, Kansas City Southern
Rio Tinto has been a corporate entity since the late 1600's !!!
BaltACD... the name may be the same, the company is not. I have heard several of them threatening bankruptcy for various reasons.
Which one was bought by Soros with the explicit intent not just to stop its production but actively keep its designs and patents from being used by anyone else? I was sure at the time we were going to see the approach extended across a variety of other firearms providers...
I'd also point out we value pre-'64s for a reason.
Overmod BaltACD ... the name may be the same, the company is not. I have heard several of them threatening bankruptcy for various reasons. Which one was bought by Soros with the explicit intent not just to stop its production but actively keep its designs and patents from being used by anyone else? I was sure at the time we were going to see the approach extended across a variety of other firearms providers... I'd also point out we value pre-'64s for a reason.
BaltACD ... the name may be the same, the company is not. I have heard several of them threatening bankruptcy for various reasons.
I'm not saying those companys have had bump-free rides over their corporate lives, far from it, but they ARE still around and still producing. I was just answering Balt's question. I think it's a good answer.
I've heard about that George Soros thing too, but I couldn't tell you which one he targeted. Honestly, I don't spend too much time losing sleep over Soros.
Some people aren't happy unless they have a "boogyman." Conservatives have George Soros, liberals have the Koch brothers. Ho hum.
I don't believe in billionaire "Bond villians." As Zia Lucia says, "Dat's only inna movies!"
Oh, Winchester pre-64's? The only advantage the pre-64's have over the ones that came after was the craftsmanship and fine finishes, which were second to none. Performance-wise, the post-64's still got the job done, they just weren't as pretty.
Flintlock76I think it's a good answer.
Well, it is. It just doesn't answer what he actually said, which is that the're not around the way they were in the '50s. You yourself go to some length to establish some of the differences, which is a bit ironic...
I look at him less as a 'boogeyman' than as someone with an expedient ideology who has no hesitation manipulating things to suit it. The reason I argue with that is that the 'future' he seems to want isn't as fair to all people, particularly the currently-underrepresented or disenfranchised, as any action conceived and dedicated on that scale ought to be.
Now I was just as sure as God made little apples that what was going to happen when Soros bought large positions in, say, Olin (Winchester) and Vista Outdoor (including Federal Cartridge and Savage) was precisely that corporate action would be 'redirected' to make supply of arms more 'restricted'. At least one financial source thought this was a carefully-crafted kind of 'pump 'n dump' whereby all the right-wing dupe gun-owning community would say "OH NO! HE'LL CUT OFF OUR SUPPLY!" ... and go out and buy product just like a run on paper towels in shelter-in-place lockdown. (This was, to be honest, mentioned for the Arch Coal/Peabody play during the Obama conspiracy ... but I digress.) Answer is: it remains to be seen, but we haven't even seen the usual kind of mealymouthed 'corporate reorganization' activity that would indicate shutting down gun production absent external changes in law. I honestly don't know if I relish or disparage that.
But they were considerably, almost painfully, cheaper ... and that's one of the things that was at the essential heart of Balt's original post.
In the interest of fair disclosure: my 'hunting weapon' is a post-'64 .300 Winchester; it served me quite well without problem, and I have no reason to trade it in for "something better made". On the other hand I've done a considerable amount of work to it that likely wouldn't have come from the post-1964 factory.
On the same general topic, I use a Browning Citori for trap, and wouldn't replace it with anything (including any of the things Navy Arms tried to peddle from the '70s to the '90). This is a Japanese, not a Belgian, version ... and I confess that again I very carefully throated the thing to make the pattern more reliable, and carefully adjusted the foreweighting, but in every other respect it has always done what I (as a left-hander) require a shotgun to do. (Now my wife uses it in case she needs home-defense 'theatre', for which the thing is dramatically well suited in all respects...
Well of course those companys I mentioned aren't the same as they were in the 50's, no-one's the same as they were in the 50's. I brought them up strictly as going concerns of long lineage who's names are still living and not "Gone with the snows of yesteryear," as Lucius Beebe would have said.
I thought about bringing up Lionel, but they're not a manufacturer anymore, they're an importer. Definately not the Lionel of the 50's, but then they don't claim to be either.
Yeah, those post-64's weren't pretty, that's what the screams were about, especially from the old-timers. The guys I worked with at Navy Arms said Winchester's big mistake was not putting out a "budget" line as a lower-cost option and keeping the fine-finish pieces as a "custom" line, but hey, they weren't asked.
Nothing wrong with those Miroku-made Brownings, I handled plenty of 'em. I never bought one though, Browning didn't make anything I was interested in, although I do regret (somewhat) I never got a Hi-Power. The new ones aren't as nicely finished as the old ones, but they still get the job done.
"From the 70's to the 90's?" Are you talking about the Kromsons? They never sold any of those things in the nine years I was there! Talk about a "Who cares?" brand of shotgun!
Yes, Kromson. I was interested in getting one of these to play with, until I looked carefully and saw not only was the firing pin bent with poor machining and heat treatment but it had gouged a little divot in the breech face too. That didn't augur well for long-term anything...
Val had some interesting stuff in there at different times. I don't remember if I got my Barrett from him but it was the sort of thing he would have...
I'll tell you, at the best of times Navy Arms was like a museum! And all for sale too!
I saw historic pieces in there I never thought I'd see, much less get my hands on, it's what kept me there for so long. That and the folks I worked with, what a fine crew!
No Barretts in the time I was there.
Mentioning Browning, did you know that there is a collection of Browning's products in the former Union Station in Ogden?
There are also some older cars in another section--some that I had never heard of (and I do not remember their names).
There is quite a display of operating model trains there--and a few railroad cars outside; several years ago (I don't remember when it was that my wife and I stopped there) there was a rotary snowplow there, but it was not there when I was up there a year and a half or so ago.
As to old firearms, I have handled a ball and cap revolver that my grandfather's brother-in-law picked up on a battlefield after the battle was over. It looks to be in good shape.
I didn't know there was a Browning display in Ogden's Union Station Johnny, but it doesn't surprise me, John Browning was an old Utah boy who made good. And how.
John was a second-generation gunsmith, learning the trade from his father who was a producer of what were called "Plains Rifles," among other things. The first name that springs to mind when firearms enthusiasts hear "Plains Rifle" is Hawken, but Hawken wasn't the only one, just the most famous.
Wayne
This past week in Central Pennsylvania, NS seems to have suffered a classical mid-train string-lining situation.
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2020/04/train-derails-in-perry-county-near-susquehanna-river.html
Being a Professional IT Project Manager, my job is to look out for risks and developed mitigation strategies. So when a train is assessed and turned over to the train crew, does the crew walk the length of the train to ID a String Lining car arrangement? If so, and one is found such as what is pictured in the above news feed, are they allowed to have the cars rearranged to prevent it? My two cents is the time at the terminal to rearrange the cars is worth losing the main for several days. Thoughts from the experts here?
Surprise! A post about stringlining on this thread!
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"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
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