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The Trackside Lounge 1Q 2012

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Posted by CShaveRR on Tuesday, January 3, 2012 9:01 PM

Thanks for the correction, Jeff. I should have known there weren't two Joes in that show.

Carl

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CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)

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Posted by Modelcar on Tuesday, January 3, 2012 8:58 PM

CShaveRR


I usually sit in the same place every Sunday in church, neither in the front nor the rear.  It's a place occupied by the "choir widows" and widowers (spouses and families of the people in the choir, of which Pat is one).  The choir didn't sing yesterday, so the spouses came and sat with us, disrupting everything!


Carl, I can relate to that....{believe a lot of people can}....We sit in the 5th pew back on the right side and on the very {outside} end of it.....

Creatures of habit.....Or continue using something we're satisfied with.

Quentin

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Posted by jeffhergert on Tuesday, January 3, 2012 5:33 PM

CShaveRR

"Harry Potter".  Love it!  Harry Morgan had, as they say, a nice long run.

I believe his Dragnet name was Joe Gannon.  He reprised the role in the movie Dragnet with Dan Akroyd and Tom Hanks (by then he'd been "promoted" to chief).

Officer Bill Gannon, Sgt. Joe Friday.  I barely remember seeing the later Dragnets when originally aired, but have seen the reruns and those of the first Dragnets (1950s I think) when Friday's sidekick was a different person. 

Jeff

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Posted by CShaveRR on Tuesday, January 3, 2012 5:09 PM

The new alignment of UP's Milwaukee Sub north of Proviso is progressing.  The old bridge over Green Street (the road running along the south edge of CP's Bensenville Yard) has been replaced by both a temporary structure and a new one.  A new girder bridge is in place over the portion of the Bensenville Yard currently (?) crossed by one of the C&NW's ubiquitous Whipple truss bridges. (Sadly, we were not able to pull off the road and explore to see just what's what around here.  The truss bridge is still in place, but might no longer be in use.)

Progressing north along the UP, the line is still following a temporary realignment.  The newer, permanent realignment (including a large new girder bridge over Irving Park Road) appears to have rails, concrete ties, and ballast over most of its length; the rails and ballast stop some distance short of the connection with the temporary realignment on the north end.

All of this is in connection with the expansion of O'Hare Airport, which has already claimed the original O'Hare bypass (in the days before O'Hare, the C&NW's track went straight north from Bensenville to Des Plaines; the alignment was curved around the airport in the 1950s or '60s).  Nearly all of Bensenville north of Green Street and east of York Road, which used to contain some commercial establishments and blocks of residences on both sides of the old MILW (now Metra, used by CP/IC&E) east-west main line, has been leveled for the expansion.

This is an area that will be worth watching in the next couple of years.  After the UP route is finished, the area once occupied by Bensenville will have to include an overpass for CP at Irving Park Road (that's going to be a stiff grade, on a curve, out of the yard there!), and the right-of-way for a new T-shaped Tollway connector between the Tri-State, I-90, and the Elgin-O'Hare Expressway (and possible new airport entrance) west of the airport.

We saw a somewhat mysterious train while we were there.  Heading north out of Bensenville on the CP was a string of empty ethanol tanks, powered by a pair of older UP units.  Many of the cars were carrying a new (to me) reporting mark:  TRFX.  The cars were built beginning last spring, but they still aren't shown in the January 2012 Official Railway Equipment Register (according to a source I have for such things...I can't afford those books any more!).

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)

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Posted by CShaveRR on Monday, January 2, 2012 1:55 PM

"Harry Potter".  Love it!  Harry Morgan had, as they say, a nice long run.

I believe his Dragnet name was Joe Gannon.  He reprised the role in the movie Dragnet with Dan Akroyd and Tom Hanks (by then he'd been "promoted" to chief).

Johnny, hope you continue a speedy recovery!

I usually sit in the same place every Sunday in church, neither in the front nor the rear.  It's a place occupied by the "choir widows" and widowers (spouses and families of the people in the choir, of which Pat is one).  The choir didn't sing yesterday, so the spouses came and sat with us, disrupting everything!

(No, I didn't work on the computer or watch trains during church...this counting session took place for an hour or so after church.  Today I'm hearing an occasional train, but am disinclined to go out and check on things, with the temperature at 20 and the wind still pretty strong.)

Carl

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CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)

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Posted by Modelcar on Monday, January 2, 2012 11:22 AM

.....Johnny, I thought if one gets to church late...he must find a seat in front....The back rows seem to fill first.

Quentin

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Posted by Deggesty on Monday, January 2, 2012 11:16 AM

Quentin, yes, Harry Potter did play in "Dragnet" (I never saw it, but I do know that he did). I enjoyed his comments in "Mash." I also saw him in a rerun of a movie made in the forties; his character in that one was a bit different from that in "Mash." I saw Loretta Swit in a rerun of a WWII movie; as I recall, she played a nurse in it also.

Carl, I too, at first, thought you and Pat got to church so late you had to sit at the back.Smile

 

Johnny

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Posted by Modelcar on Monday, January 2, 2012 11:02 AM

zugmann

"Here's to the new year...may she be a dȧmn sight better than the old one and may we all be home before she's over."

 

 

--- Harry Morgan (RIP) as Col. Sherman Potter.

Harry Morgan.....A unique and interesting fellow and actor.  Didn't he also become well known way back playing the side kick in "Dragnet", with Jack Webb.....1967 - 1970.

Quentin

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Posted by zardoz on Monday, January 2, 2012 10:33 AM

Once again we are tied to the tracks of time by the conductor of fate, and left to perish under the hard cold wheels of the locomotive of the dashed dreams of reality.

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Posted by CShaveRR on Monday, January 2, 2012 9:15 AM

I had to wait decades for a vest (finally got one that didn't fit).

That is a neat sound, isn't it, Streaky?  CSX got 900 of those new cars from Trinity Industries.  I think you'll find them mostly in sand service (I saw some of them on Thanksgiving Day ready for sand loading up in Michigan).  I keep hearing about "frac sand" as reason for needing a bunch of new cars, but the fact is that there are a bunch of older, smaller cars that are going to be facing retirement soon.  Just about any of the gray pre-Chessie cars, for example, are about 40 years old, since the Chessie System paint scheme debuted in 1972.

We're getting a dusting of snow, strong winds, and plummeting temperatures.  here at the base of the Lake.  The Michigan side of Lake Michigan is getting pounded with a foot of snow in some places.  I'm sure the New York snow belt is going to get it, too.

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)

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Trackside Lounge 1Q 2012
Posted by blue streak 1 on Monday, January 2, 2012 5:46 AM

Carl:  Had a CSX unit hopper train come by yesterday.  It was all brand new short 2 bay hoppers  which I suspect were for cement ??.  The train cars were numbered in groups of five accending order. ie 243 41x - 24341x then 24342x - 24342x thru 243560.  The rails really do sing when all wheels are new. Now you have me looking at these numbers.

Train pulled by a couuple of C-44s

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Posted by zugmann on Monday, January 2, 2012 12:53 AM

I thought you needed binoculars because you got lousy seats. 

 

 

I'm waiting for some books and art supplies to come via snail mail.  Waiting is the hardest part.  Probably on some TOFC on some train stashed in a siding somewhere waiting for a re-crew.  Yeah. I'm back to the drawing thing as a time-killer again.  Still not ready to give up the day(night)time railroad thing yet (or ever), but it's fun.  And cheap.  That's the important part.

 

Also pretty close to my birthday, and my hiring anniversary date (which are very close to each other).  This will be the completion of my 5 years.  I think that means I get a vest or something...

It's been fun.  But it isn't much fun anymore.   Signing off for now. 


  

The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any

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Posted by CShaveRR on Sunday, January 1, 2012 7:13 PM

I would have done a better job of "claiming" the day if I'd brought my binoculars to church!

Pat had to help count the offering after church, so, rather than take that time to go trackside and get pelted by whatever was falling at the moment or blown away by the wind, I elected to bring my word-processor (laptop minus internet equals word processor) to church and spend the hour updating old sightings in the counting room...which, by the way, has a marvelous view of the UP main line from several hundred feet away.

New Year's Day...a holiday following a probably shutdown on New Year's Eve (not a holiday this year, because it falls on the weekend, making January 1 and 2 the holidays, so I gathered), so not much was expected--my former co-workers at Proviso wouldn't be putting much together, and the stuff from North Platte should have gotten past us by then.  So just unit trains and stackers, and the slow Sunday trickle of scoots (none of which would show up while they were counting).  So I shouldn't be disrupted from the old stuff...

Right?

Nope...first a westbound train of WEPX gons goes through.  It includes one of the cars I've been hoping to see:  a double-rotary car, so rotary couplers can be next to locomotives at both ends.  But I can't read the number from that distance. 

Then we had an eastbound train of auto racks, headed by a UP unit and a CP unit with the big, gold medallion.  And--would you believe it--that train did a fairly good job of concealing most of another WEPX train, this one eastbound.  Again I could see the double-rotary gon, but again I couldn't read the number.

Binoculars would have been very helpful!

_______________________

On another note, congratulations and best wishes to Trains' Assistant Editor Angela Pusztai-Pasternak!

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)

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Posted by locomutt on Sunday, January 1, 2012 1:04 PM

AgentKid

 

 CShaveRR:

 

There's a new year out there, full of promise.  Claim it!

 

 

Sounds like a plan!

Happy New Year everyone.

Bruce

 

Thumbs Up

Being Crazy,keeps you from going "INSANE" !! "The light at the end of the tunnel,has been turned off due to budget cuts" NOT AFRAID A Vet., and PROUD OF IT!!

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Posted by AgentKid on Sunday, January 1, 2012 12:44 PM

CShaveRR

There's a new year out there, full of promise.  Claim it!

Sounds like a plan!

Happy New Year everyone.

Bruce

 

So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.

"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere"  CP Rail Public Timetable

"O. S. Irricana"

. . . __ . ______

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Posted by The Butler on Sunday, January 1, 2012 12:15 PM

CShaveRR

Here's another thought:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore.  Dream.  Discover.

--Mark Twain

There's a new year out there, full of promise.  Claim it!

+1 Thumbs Up

James


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Posted by CShaveRR on Sunday, January 1, 2012 8:53 AM

Here's another thought:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore.  Dream.  Discover.

--Mark Twain

There's a new year out there, full of promise.  Claim it!

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)

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Posted by The Butler on Sunday, January 1, 2012 8:41 AM

I had not heard that Harry Morgan had passed until I read the yearly "People We Lost This Year" article in the paper.  Another one I'll miss is Peter Falk.

James


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Posted by locomutt on Sunday, January 1, 2012 7:38 AM

zugmann

"Here's to the new year...may she be a dȧmn sight better than the old one and may we all be home before she's over."

 

 

--- Harry Morgan (RIP) as Col. Sherman Potter.

Thumbs Up

Being Crazy,keeps you from going "INSANE" !! "The light at the end of the tunnel,has been turned off due to budget cuts" NOT AFRAID A Vet., and PROUD OF IT!!

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Posted by zugmann on Sunday, January 1, 2012 1:45 AM

"Here's to the new year...may she be a dȧmn sight better than the old one and may we all be home before she's over."

 

 

--- Harry Morgan (RIP) as Col. Sherman Potter.

It's been fun.  But it isn't much fun anymore.   Signing off for now. 


  

The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any

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The Trackside Lounge 1Q 2012
Posted by CNW 6000 on Sunday, January 1, 2012 1:25 AM

Happy New Year!

A link back to the last edition (4Q 2011):
http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/p/197318/2195696.aspx#2195696

ALL ABOARD!  Here's hoping everyone had a safe night.  We're supposed to get a little snow (FINALLY!!!!) so I might go trackside for a bit tomorrow.

Dan

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