CShaveRR Welcome in, Nance! One interesting detail: on this bridge over the Ohio River, right outside the hotel, the signal bridge that had held a couple of old C&O-style color light signals is now empty. Just to our south, though, is another signal bridge that has active B&O-style CPL (color-position-light) signals! This line is old C&O, and possibly used by old L&N. I suspect it got the CPLs as part of some form of terminal consolidation in connection with Queensgate Yard.
Welcome in, Nance!
Johnny
Oh, yes. Ricki and I are leaving tonight on the westbound California Zephyr on our way to Jackson, Miss., where we we will rent a car and drive to Bristol, Tenn., and back and then come as directly as possible back home. Right now, the train is reported to be 2:20 late (out of Denver OT), but we will jsut sit in the station until she comes in.
Anyone interested in a South Pennsylvania Railroad forum? I specialize in discovering where the remains of this route is. My forum is ...
http://southpennraiload.freeforums.org/test-forum-1-f2.html
If you travel the Pennsylvania Turnpike between Carlisle and Pittsburgh this might be of some interest.
Tracking the William Henry Vanderbilt South Pennsylvania Railroad right of way along the Historic Pennsylvania Turnpike.
......Johnny, that sounds like real fun....Best wishes to you and Ricki to have that fun. {West bound...?}.
Quentin
That's getting a running start, as it were, Quentin!
Today I was taken around Cincinnati by a knowledgeable railfan guide, while his wife and mine took in the International Quilt Festival. They spent money...we, on the other hand, watched trains! We first went to catch a southbound NS train climbing the grade out of the valley. He was crossing the river when we were, but we bet him up the hill by a substantial margin, even though it seemed to me to take a while.
After coming back down into Ohio again, we saw the portals of a tunnel once used by a PRR predecessor, the Cincinnati, Lebanon & Northern. We then went around to see a genuine hot spot: Winton Place. I swear, there was no time that this spot was without a train waiting to go through. The line was B&O's but NS added a third track, and all of them had trains at one time or another (they have a directional agreement, so most of the trains through here are northbound). Plenty of CPLs around here yet. We spent nearly three hours of time just watching stuff go through, and I have plenty of new and unusual cars to log. We then went further north to Glendale, where more CSX and NS trains came north on the old B&O trackage.
On the way back downtown to pick up the "girls" we saw the portals at the end of Cincinnati's subway tunnels (an aborted system--stations built, tunnels bored, but no track ever laid).
Tonight we dined at Skyline Chili...I hope you're proud of us, MC! I think we'd both do it again.
Tomorrow, it's time to visit a few highly-recommended quilt shops, hit Winton Place again, and make the pilgrimage to Cincinnati Union Terminal. I'm hoping Tower A will be available to look out from. Meanwhile, still seeing neat stuff going past the window on CSX's bridge here.
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)
Carl....I wonder....Wouldn't the subway be to any advantage today for the Cincinnati area.....if finished...? Don't remember if I ever heard anything of that aborted system.
The story I got was that it was supposed to connect with the Cincinnati & Lake Erie interurban line--I think it became a victim of the Depression.
Cincinnati has had a number of proposals for heavy-rail transit, and they're all regularly shot down. But, not knowing the details of the subway line myself, I suspect that it couldn't be utilized for anything that would be built today.
Recommendation: If anyone should stay in the Courtyards by Marriott in Covington because of its proximity to the old C&O bridge (which is why we stayed here), go for an even-numbered room: the higher the floor the better, and the higher the room number the better. The fifth and sixth floors are roughly at track level, and the ninth floor gives a pretty commanding view of the tracks, the river, and some of the Cincinnati skyline and other bridges.
Modelcar ......Johnny, that sounds like real fun....Best wishes to you and Ricki to have that fun. {West bound...?}.
As it is, we will not see Carl and Pat this trip because they (or we)left at the wrong time to be in the same part of the country at the same time.
From here, we go down to San Jose to go north to Portland (coming through Sacramento at midnight; 8:43 pm in San Jose is a better time to board a train). Does anybody want to guess our travel from here to Jackson?
Laundry here this morning and in other places as needed. Hotel-owned coin laundries are wonderful when you are traveling by train (and by car).
CShaveRR Randy--any advice on traveling 77 from Charleston to Charlotte, or 77/81 from Charlotte north as far as Hagerstown?
Randy--any advice on traveling 77 from Charleston to Charlotte, or 77/81 from Charlotte north as far as Hagerstown?
Pack some patience, 81 in VA can be hectic at times, especially if there's a race at Martinsville or Bristol. If you're going out of Cincinnati, take state road 32 over to US 35 east, and take 35 down to I-64 near Charleston. Nice and scenic, just pay attention when you are in the hills of West Virginia, need to be aware of which way you are headed at all times.....
Saw a flatbed load of a spring-frog switch in Bloomington, IL, yesterday, presumably for the UP's project between Chicago and St Louis. Was interesting in the fact that the frog and plates were pre-assembled, rest of the load was the rail needed to complete the switch.
Back to playing with Gators......
Randy Vos
"Ever have one of those days where you couldn't hit the ground with your hat??" - Waylon Jennings
"May the Lord take a liking to you and blow you up, real good" - SCTV
Johnny, I hope that late trains don't dramatically alter your plans. The trip might be no less interesting, but it would certainly be a lot more stressful.
Cincinnati was hit with a nice car-cleaning downpour today (the parking-garage-dwelling birds had decorated our car yesterday). We spent most of it inside the Cincinnati Union Terminal. Besides the obligatory trip up to Tower A, we also were given a free tour of some of the neat, out-of-the-way places in the building, including the offices of the C.U.T. president and the board room. If you thought cork flooring for sound deadening was a recent innovation, guess again! While at the library in Tower A I autographed (with permission, of course!) a few of "my" books that were there. I also added to my own library, thanks to the museum gift stores. There is nothing about this building that isn't impressive. The thing I found most amazing was the interior coloring. I can't recall having ever seen color photos of the inside before, so I had no idea how the rotunda ceiling would be painted...it's brighter than I thought. And the mosaic murals are fantastic!
(I also developed a bit more respect for Jerry Springer as a result of our tour. As Cincinnati's mayor, it was he who made the expensive decision to save the murals from the concourse when it was being demolished, and reuse them in the city's airport.)
It was still raining when we left, so we lingered at Winton Place only long enough to catch an Indiana & Ohio freight (something I didn't see there yesterday). We then went to a couple of quilt shops. The second one was in Glendale (I don't know how I missed spotting it yesterday), just a dogtrot away from the old B&O (CH&D) main line north. My browsing with Pat was interrupted twice by the train traffic. We had an early supper at the$1****$2and Bull, an English-style pub that fronts on the tracks. During our repast, four moves were made right outside (the fourth was a light-engine version of a returning local). Glendale is one of the most picturesque little villages you could ask for, and the old brick station (now a museum, among other things) fits right in, with a small town square intervening between it and the rest of the downtown. The little parks were particularly inviting at this time of year to those of us Northerners who have gotten a bit tired of winter. Plenty of greens, yellows, reds, whites, and lunar whites to welcome the season...oh, wait, those were the CPLs! (Lots of flowering trees, though!)
Randy, I didn't see your message from yesterday until we got here to Charleston. We took Ohio 125 across the lower portion of southern Ohio (I don't think you'd want to do that one with a truck!), winding up on U.S. 52 near Portsmouth, then crossing over on U.S. 23 to be on the C&O side. The big bridge didn't show up like it used to...must be the undergrowth (I nearly missed it until I saw Limeville Junction).
I see the censors don't like the name of the pub we were in last night. Maybe if I had gone in a little tipsy I could have called it the anglecock and bull, and gotten away with it.
Not much movement on the old C&O, even around Russell, Ashland, Huntington, and environs. I've got a turnpike between myself and the tracks here in Charleston, but may do a little exploration later. The temperature is in the upper 80s out there.
Carl, being late out of Salt Lake did not diarrange anything, it simply meant that we had to wait much longer than we had thought we would. We did have a long wait for a taxi to get to the station yesterday (we gave up and took an ordinary taxi)--and we had an even longer wait today until one that could lift Ricki in her transport chair into the vehicle. Today's driver promised to be at the hotel in time tomorrow morning so we will not miss our train to Seattle (and we do have a close connection there). Our first connection in Chicago may be bothersome, but we shall see.
We are enjoying our trip, though not being able to go to the diner for every meal is different.
The Capitol Service trains in California have wonderful, powered lifts for wheelchairs; the Superliners have heavy ramps that almost require two people to lift and set in place.
Our car from San Joe to here was one that had been refurbished under the "Tiger" program, and even though it had LED reading lamps, it did not have enough support bars--and there were no coat hoks in our room.
Ricki's in bed, and complaining because I am sitting up late writing this.
Goodnight, all.
(I'm HATING this new computer more and more with every passing day/hour, something!!! I'm better off with my old antique, even though some of its pieces and parts were from 1996!!! I just typed a fairly long reply and it erased it-- AGAIN!!! GGGRRR!!!!!) We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Hope that you folks traveling are having a wonderful time!
Today's questions are from reading "The Railroad-What It Is, What It Does," by J.H. Armstrong, Ch. 5 The Railroad Car.
1. Journal boxes: What should we look for when we check them? I think one thing is 'enough' oil, but how much is sufficient? What else do we check?
2. What is 'rail cant?'
3. Flat spots: Can these been seen easily just by walking by or do they require a close inspection, or? Would these be the culprit when one night my brakeman asked my engineer if he had square wheels on his side?
4. It talks about that cars often have at least one major overhaul in their life, perhaps being lengthened by 10 feet, from 40 to 50 feet. Would this car come back into service with identical reporting marks or do they change?
5. It says, "However, AAR regulations now prohibit the general acceptance in interchange of cars over 40 years old regardless of whether their current state meets all other requirements." Would this most likely be due to worries over metal fatigue, or?
6. It states, "The whole 9,000 lb. truck is held together only by gravity and the interlocking surfaces on the principal parts." Really?! What 'locks' them down on? Sounds kind of scary when you were to hit a big 'bump.'
7. I'm confused by what seems to me to be conflicting info. Under 'Load Limit' section, it says, "Both cars will use the same size wheels, roller bearings, axles, and other weight-related parts." (Prior to this sentence, it told about different types of cars.) Then, under "Wheels," it states that wheels are 33 in., 36 in., 38 in., or even 28 in. sometimes. (I'm sorry; I'm not too sure whether I'm allowed to quote the whole paragraph here, so I took 'the safest course' and did not for now.)
Thanks folks, as always, for all your help! Stay safe out there in all this warm spring weather!
Nance-CCABW/LEI
“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” --Will Rogers
Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right! --unknown
Trains
WMNB4THRTL (I'm HATING this new computer more and more with every passing day/hour, something!!! I'm better off with my old antique, even though some of its pieces and parts were from 1996!!! I just typed a fairly long reply and it erased it-- AGAIN!!! GGGRRR!!!!!) We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
I decided to do it this way in this forum a while back when, while typing a long, detailed reply, I accidently hit the 'escape' key which erased everything I had typed.
Thanks! That just might save (the rest of) my sanity!!
"+1" - not that I do it as often as I should, though - which is why my response applies to both comments above . . .
- Paul North.
Nance: Rail cant (as opposed to shoulda, coulda, woulda....) is how much the rail is tilted inward from vertical, set by the bottom of the tie plate. You don't want that rail canted outward as that makes it easier for the rail to roll over.
CARL: Skyline may not replace your Chicago Hot Dogs, but the Chili is unique (ironically, there is a Skyline there in the Loop, about a block away from the Palmer House on Monroe (IIRC)). You were fairly close to where I grew up when you were in Glendale; My folk's house is about 3.5 miles west of there in a little less upscale part of town. The Wooden Depot from Winton Place was moved to a county park (Sharon Woods) at least 20 years ago - looks better in the park than it ever did in real life. I assume if you saw Winton Place, then you also saw the massive stone trolley barns as well along Spring Grove Avenue? (B&O/CSX moved over onto the PRR/NYC Big 4 main track in the 1970's and the original B&O Main Line (CH&D) was abandoned from Ivorydale(P&G)/Winton Place down to NA Tower/NorthSide/Gest Street to avoid all the grade crossings and the run through the middle of Spring Grove cemetery.
MC - I understand there was an article on Cincinnati railroads in the Winter 2010 issue of Classic Trains - see: http://ctr.trains.com/sitecore/content/Magazine%20Issues/2010/Winter%202010.aspx
"Winton Place: Queen City Gathering Spot - By Denny Hamilton
Have you seen it ?
Hadn't seen, but then again.......(the museum bookstore will get a visit soon) ....It was the only place I ever saw a PRR Baldwin Centipede (which was there totally by accident I was told)
My sister, brother-in-law, and wife are in the next room, watching TV...I'm here, as usual, except that "here" has never, ever, been Charlotte, North Carolina, before.
MC, we bought a postcard with the recipe for Cincinnati chili at C.U.T., and mailed it to our daughter, who really enjoys cooking...then bought another one to hang on to. Pat is not a big chili fan, but says that this stuff tasted pretty good.
I don't recall being shown the car barns, but my guide did mention the B&O rerouting. I bought an Arcadia book on Cincinnati transportation; I shall have to see if that has pictures of the station, or explains some of the other things. I hadn't known before that Cincinnati once had inclines.
WMNB4THRTL Today's questions are from reading "The Railroad-What It Is, What It Does," by J.H. Armstrong, Ch. 5 The Railroad Car. 1. Journal boxes: What should we look for when we check them? I think one thing is 'enough' oil, but how much is sufficient? What else do we check?
Never having had to treat a wounded journal before, I can't really tell you how full the oil had to be--it definitely had to be in contact with the lubricators in the boxes, so that the entire surface of the axle could be covered with the oil.
Roller bearings, of course, changed this process completely. They probably need very little, if any, field inspection unless they've given a message to the defect detectors. An on-the-road inspection of any type usually involves checking the temperature, with a tempil-stick (melts at a certain temperature threshold).
WMNB4THRTL2. What is 'rail cant?'
Mudchicken gave you a good answer here. Yes, it makes a difference how you orient the tie plates!
WMNB4THRTL3. Flat spots: Can these been seen easily just by walking by or do they require a close inspection, or? Would these be the culprit when one night my brakeman asked my engineer if he had square wheels on his side?
Inspection is usually the way to catch them. Actually, most of the bad-ordered cars coming over the hump at Proviso, in my experience, had wheel defects. They were general "wheel-axle defects" on the UP, but the CNW bad-order cards had a special line for "wheel, S-F" (slid-flat). You'd be surprised how insignificant-looking a loud noise-making spot on a wheel tread can be!
WMNB4THRTL4. It talks about that cars often have at least one major overhaul in their life, perhaps being lengthened by 10 feet, from 40 to 50 feet. Would this car come back into service with identical reporting marks or do they change?
That stretching of a car is pretty heavy, and not too many cars go through something that drastic. Right now, the fad is to either stretch or shorten 48-foot intermodal cars (you just don't see 48-foot trailers or containers that much any more, but there's a demand for cars to handle 40-foot or 53-foot boxes). Some covered hoppers have been shortened to haul denser commodities. Box cars that have been modified lately (there just aren't that many 40-footers left to stretch) have usually been increased in height by anywhere from six inches to a couple of feet. Door modifications (either from double doors to single, or sliding to plug) are common. Some old steel coal gons have been reduced in height to be the right size for scrap or whatever...unless Herzog gets 'em and makes ballast hoppers out of them.
The rebuilt cars' new identities often depend on who is rebuilding them, and for whom. One of the biggest box-car-stretchers used to be the Chicago Freight Car Leasing Company, which would buy the old 40-footers, rebuild them to 50 feet, and lease them to Goodness-only-knows whom. So they'd get new reporting marks and numbers. If the rebuilding was done in-house (C&O, for example, stretched a lot of its own box cars in the early 1960s), they'd get new numbers, but would still be lettered C&O. I can think of a couple of cases where rebuilt cars did not get renumbered or relettered when rebuilt. When TTX stack cars or spine cars are rebuilt, quite often the new numbers will be based on the old ones (different first three digits, or something).
WMNB4THRTL5. It says, "However, AAR regulations now prohibit the general acceptance in interchange of cars over 40 years old regardless of whether their current state meets all other requirements." Would this most likely be due to worries over metal fatigue, or?
Moot point...I think it was fatigue that caused the restriction, but I've also heard that cars currently being built have had the age limit increased drastically.
WMNB4THRTL6. It states, "The whole 9,00 lb. truck is held together only by gravity and the interlocking surfaces on the principal parts." Really?! What 'locks' them down on? Sounds kind of scary when you were to hit a big 'bump.'
That's 9000 pounds, right?
Trains had a good article about trucks a few years ago, that explained a lot of this. Basically, you have the wheels on the rails, side frames on the wheels (sometimes a wedge or a bar [think SCL and ACL] to make handling the entire assembly easier), the bolster in the upper portion of the side frames to hold them apart, the springs to support the bolster and the rest of the car, and the center pin to hold the truck in the proper position under the car body (with the help of the center plates). It'd be a mighty big bump (usually caused by bouncing wheels over the ties instead of on the rail) to dislodge any component of this to a degree extreme enough to take the truck apart. A severe impact could knock out a couple springs, or bounce the body hard enough to knock it off center (the truck is no longer in the proper position and the center pin is probably gone), but it doesn't take too much effort to change out a wheelset just by lifting up the end of the car (after chaining the truck frames to the car to keep them on center).
WMNB4THRTL7. I'm confused by what seems to me to be conflicting info. Under 'Load Limit' section, it says, "Both cars will use the same size wheels, roller bearings, axles, and other weight-related parts." (Prior to this sentence, it told about different types of cars.) Then, under "Wheels," it states that wheels are 33 in., 36 in., 38 in., or even 28 in. sometimes. (I'm sorry; I'm not too sure whether I'm allowed to quote the whole paragraph here, so I took 'the safest course' and did not for now.)
Not having the book in front of me, I'm not sure what's meant by "both" cars in this case. However, cars in a given series, despite having different weights (and hence different load limits), will have the same gross rail load, because they do have the same bearing sizes, truck spring configuration, and wheel diameter.
Wheel diameters and bearing size are very important parts of the equation when it comes to determining the cars' capacity. Cars with a nominal capacity of 40 tons (rare nowadays!), 50 tons (almost as rare), or 70 tons usually have a wheel diameter of 33 inches. Bearing size is different among those three. The 28-inch wheels are also found underneath some 70-ton cars (usually 89-foot low-deck piggyback or auto rack flat cars), just to lower the height of the cars and provide more clearance. Cars with a nominal capacity of 100 tons (gross rail load of 263000 pounds) ride on 36-inch wheels, as do the modern-day 110-ton (286000-pound gross rail load) cars. The 38-inch wheels are on trucks with a nominal capacity of 125 tons (315000 pounds gross rail load).
________________
Currently in Charlotte, and suffering from railroad deprivation, since I've gone through Virginia and most of the way through the state here without seeing so much as a track. We did go off the beaten Interstate to check out NS at Bluefield, West Virginia. Earlier today I strafed a bunch of bad-ordered CSX gons in Charleston, getting original SFIX numbers off most of them, and interim HLMX numbers off those that had had them. Pat dropped me off at one end of the string, then moved to a parking lot and read her book until I walked the track (at a prudent distance) as far as the lot (I could have gotten the entire string, except that it was across a bridge that was clearly marked "No Trespassing"). Not sure what will be seen in Charlotte tomorrow, but expect to see more by the time we get to Roanoke!
Another trip report. We were going to go from Charlotte to Spartanburg, South Carolina (the bottom end of the old Clinchfield), but found ourselves in Chester while headed that way. On the way to Chester I'd discovered a bunch of tank cars on an industrial spur. There was a public road nearby, so we turned on that, and discovered a yard full of tank cars, with more tracks and more yards going off into the distance. Eventually we found a crew switching with three blue-and-white GMTX Geeps. I got lots of neat cars to check out. Most of the major-railroad cars belonged to NS, so I assumed that this was an NS operation (the leased locomotives didn't give me a clue). It wasn't until we actually got into Chester, and I drove up to a no-trespassing sign that actually identified it as the Lancaster & Chester Railroad, of Gypsy Rose Lee fame (as discussed in the Lounge around pages 27 and 28 of the past quarter). Naturally, we had to turn around there, and follow the line to Lancaster, seeing whether we could find the ghost of a vice president for each mile of the line.
Johnny, it wasn't hard to find the lavish office building of the L&C on Main Street, but it looked more like a new facade on an old freight house. It was interesting to follow South Carolina Route 9 along the line, with its curves and grades, jointed rail (but nice-looking roadbed) and neat truss bridge over the Catawba River. One industry between I-77 and Lancaster had a couple of the old L&C 40-foot box cars in front of it, and another place nearby had three L&C gons of unusual design (they're 100-ton cars, only 37 feet long inside, sides of 6'7" in height, and lettered "Guardian Ft. Lauderdale" on the sides); they own four of them.
Carl, I glad you got to the seat of the county in which I grew up, and found the L&C interesting.
A quick update on our trip. En route to Seattle Monday, we learned that we would not be able to continue as we had planned, because of high water in North Dakota. So , we made arrangements to catch p with our trsin out of Chicago that leaves tonight. Yesterday, we left on the Coast Starlight, and arrived in Sacramento, and we are now waiting to fly to Chicago. We made it safely, without incident, through the incoming inspection.
More, later.
Johnny, I guess your flooding is in the Red River basin. I've heard that Amtrak will permanently be rerouted around Devil's Lake before too long now, as the water's within about a foot of flooding the track.
__________________
Today we moved from Charlotte to Roanoke, and paid a visit to the Virginia Museum of Transportation. To me, this was a sad place, at least outside the building...the three big locomotives there were all engines that I'd seen live in the Chicago area. Saddest of all was C&O 614--it looks like it's ready to go to scrap, displayed with its main rods missing. I hope that the rods are restored when it's moved to Clifton Forge.
Speaking of which, we go there tomorrow, just to see how the C&O Historical Society is doing on their interpretive center (and work in the Archives).
The rest of VMT was all right, but needs a bit of sprucing up. The "Rail Walk" between VMT and the O. Winston Link Museum (in the old station) looked inviting; I wish I had more time to spend there. The old headquarters building, the shops, the Hotel Roanoke (not where we're staying, unfortunately), and everything else in that area show just how big the N&W was to that city. I didn't see the car shops, which I understand are being kept very busy by Freight Car America.
Forging ahead tomorrow...wish us luck!
Been a while since I've been around. Not a whole lot to say...so I'll let my pictures do the talking.
Manifest train winding it's way through Oshkosh:http://flic.kr/p/9yN7q1
Potash train from this morning:http://flic.kr/p/9yK6K6
Off to go trackside...where I belong. Shame I can't access the site via my BlackBerry...must be some forum software as I can with all of the others forums and groups I use.
Dan
Thursday morning–US Airways treated us right.
I started this yesterday–and had no time to write any more until tonight. I have not even looked at my email to see what the rest of you (Carl and Pat, especially) are up to.
The airline personnel gave Ricki every consideration, even to providing a chair narrow enough to fit down the aisle on the airplanes so she could get to her seat. Amazingly, we had no difficulty with the TSA, but breezed through it; Ricki could not walk through the primary inspection, but had to be wheeled around it and then checked to make certain that she had nothing that might be deleterious to the plane or other passengers.
him from Memphis to Chicago last year, and gave us good service, even coming to our room (H) to take Miss.).
It took the car rental company a little time to provide a car that Ricki could begin to get into (we ended up with a 2011 Impala), and even then she could not get comfortable despite much help until we had stopped at a turnaround on a divided highway, and I ws getting back into the car after failing to help her–and a man who was passing by stopped, came over, and lifted her into a comfortable position!
After a late arrival in Chattanooga, we had a good rest, and got away from the hotel an hour after the official checkout time–I had to wash and dry some clothes this morning; I always look for a hotel with a coin laundry.
We had as uneventful trip to Bristol after we ate Krystals for lunch in Chattanooga.
But, the hotel where we had planned to stay had no room with an accessible bathroom available, so I asked that the Courtyard by Marriott be called and asked if there was one available there. Thus, we are here tonight.
Tomorrow, we plan to eat at the breakfast provided for the college alumni who have been out for fifty or more years, visit with alumni friends, eat the official alumni lunch, and then head for Nashville.
No trains sighted since we detrained yesterday.
zardoz Trains WMNB4THRTL: (I'm HATING this new computer more and more with every passing day/hour, something!!! I'm better off with my old antique, even though some of its pieces and parts were from 1996!!! I just typed a fairly long reply and it erased it-- AGAIN!!! GGGRRR!!!!!) We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. Might I suggest typing your lengthy replies in a word processor (such as MS Word). Set the program to do an auto-save every few minutes. When completed, simply copy from the word program and paste into the TRAINS forum reply page. I decided to do it this way in this forum a while back when, while typing a long, detailed reply, I accidently hit the 'escape' key which erased everything I had typed.
WMNB4THRTL: (I'm HATING this new computer more and more with every passing day/hour, something!!! I'm better off with my old antique, even though some of its pieces and parts were from 1996!!! I just typed a fairly long reply and it erased it-- AGAIN!!! GGGRRR!!!!!) We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Nance, I sympathize with you on suddenly having your labor lost. While traveling, I use a laptop that will, either while writing a post or in a word processor, suddenly jump to an earlier point in my composition–and, if I am not watching what I am writing, look up and find that I am writing in the midst of what I had already written. Yet, the advantage of being able to keep in touch (somewhat) does outweigh this annoyance.
This was Ricki’s and she gave it to me last year when she became thoroughly annoyed at what she had to go through to be able to read what was on the screen (she needs magnification to read it).
I am also somewhat annoyed in that whereas I use WordPerfect X4, which has navigation similar to that of Word, on my computer at home, this one has Word Perfect 9, which has a much different navigation system (don’t ask me about Word Perfect for DOS, which is Ricki’s true love).
Note, I am writing this without reading anything anybody wrote after Zardoz’s post.
Things are still running slowly here...this is the third time I've attempted to get into the Lounge in two days, and I've either found myself interrupted, or locked out...last time I was given an error message after typing everything up, and had to log in again, but my message wasn't saved.
Dan, I'm admiring your pictures, and wishing I could be up there with you (but not too much...see below).
In that first shot, I was noticing how the track no longer even comes close to the edge of the platform. Did one of the railroads pull it out and away to ease the curve in the foreground, perhaps?
A lot of the potash trains these days have the new little POTX covered hoppers. I haven't seen any of these for myself yet. I think it's due to observing primarily the lines that go west out of Chicagoland, rather than north-on-their-way-to-Canada.
Johnny, it sounds like you have plenty of adventure, even without seeing trains. Our best to Ricki, and may you both remain comfortable and continue to enjoy your trip!
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Tonight Pat and I were in a real Trackside Lounge...at Cumberland, Maryland, in the Holiday Inn. Had a good dinner, and watched Amtrak's westbound Capitol make its station stop. Our room is three floors above the lounge, and the trains on the former B&O main line are readily visible. Not so much after dark, as the street lights don't provide much illumination. But there is a good variety through here. We had one string of auto racks head west behind Wheeling & Lake Erie power--three units, three paint schemes! Even the coal trains are anything but monotonous! These days, CSX runs a mixture of hoppers and coal gons, many of its own cars relettered and renumbered from other reporting marks, and many from private companies, also often secondhand. It used to be that if you had a coal train on the lines serving the ports of Baltimore and Newport News, you could count on everything being Chessie System hoppers.
Yesterday was spent on the C&O side, at Clifton Forge, Virginia. Many years ago I was one of maybe five or six volunteers who basically put out a monthly newsletter and organized an annual convention for a couple hundred members. Since that time, C&OHS has grown to thousands of members, puts out a decent magazine (not monthly any more, but still eight or nine issues a year), has published books, and maintains a headquarters office with a full-time staff and plenty of volunteer opportunities every day. Not only that, they're assembling a Heritage Center that has some C&OHS-owned locomotives and rolling stock (C&O 614 will move here after being done with its exhibition in Roanoke). They've built a replica C&O wooden station, and are working with the city and with Amtrak to move the station stop for the Cardinal here from the shelter by the old station no longer accessible to the public.
Anyway, I went to C&OHS headquarters to meet and discuss the possibility of reissuing the freight car book that I had first put together in 1980 (using an IBM Selectric and press-on typefaces and borders), based on a booklet that C&O had published in 1937, detailing its freight car fleet. We'd added much information about builders and dates, status of the fleet, origins, rebuildings, and so on. C&O reissued its booklet in 1946...so we're now going to incorporate pages from both editions in an enlarged book, covering several thousand more cars (including things previously not seen, such as the composite hoppers, 50-foot box cars, and well-hole flat cars), and basically giving two snapshots of the total fleet. The new book will have computerized layout and typesetting, hard covers, and will incorporate everything unearthed in research since the original was published (and there's plenty of that!).
That was the plan...go in, see what could be done about the book, and get going. But when I got there, I was greeted like a living legend! Many people came and said how happy they were to finally meet me in person, and I was presented with an engraved plaque designating me an "Historian Emeritus". I guess I'm one of three members ever to be accorded this title.
So now I have my work cut out for me...when we get home, I have to dig through old photographs for some good-quality shots of the equipment we need to illustrate. By next month I'll be editing proofs, and the book is expected to be out by early August!
But until we get home, it's nonstop driving, visits to museums and quilt stores, and train-watching whenever. Tonight, Cumberland...tomorrow, the Station Inn! Hoping the weather continues to cooperate!
No cooperation from the weather today...we woke up to rain in Cumberland, and brought it with us into Pennsylvania. It would intensify whenever we needed to go out of the car somewhere, and there must have been a real gully-washer around Roaring Spring (hadn't made the connection with the name before...we didn't see a spring, but we heard the roar of a muddy-looking creek).
(Memo to railfans going to the Holiday Inn in Cumberland...get an odd-numbered room and you'll be fine. Any room on that side of the building will have a view...third floor isn't too far above track level, and you can go up from there! Pat didn't appreciate the lack of some amenities in the room, such as counter space, a coffeemaker that she could brew her own coffee in...)
The Station Inn has already proven itself in the train department. We've been here less than two hours and have had five trains that I remember. The room is smaller than in Cumberland, but we have places for everything here. The trains are noisier, but Pat has already demonstrated that she can sleep through them.
I've exhausted my first full scratch-pad making notes on the equipment I've seen on this trip. I think I have a spare...otherwise we'll walk down the street to Sheetz!
Well, Carl, glad you are having a good time of it, at least for the most part anyway. You're having much better luck than I am in gaining access to the Lounge! (Must be when you changed the 'keys' over in the new quarter, mine didn't get updated! )I've been reading along, though, bc I subscribe now! Neat how that works! Take care, keep up with your notes and we'll be waiting to hear more.
Sounds like an interesting trip Carl, hope you are having fun.
We have bright sunshine today...but the suns rays of light left the heat behind. It's only 32. Blech...good day to get my Flickr organized. I only have about 800 pics to finish tagging and putting on a map.
Took Aedan to the Y to swim yesterday and as suspected, he seems to have a great affinity for the water. Just like his father! Too little to get him on the leg press machine though...
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