Welcome to 2013. Here's the "new" lounge and a link back to the last one:http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/p/210378/2338142.aspx#2338142
Stay warm tonight folks. I get to see my surgeon Wed...hopefully good news on my finger.
Dan
Thanks, Dan; good luck!
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
Thanks Nance. I'm impatient by nature...and this isn't helping.
New Year's is 1 hour 12 minutes away here...
Good luck on your finger.
- Erik
Happy New Year Everyone!
It is nice to be in the new Lounge, with its' new paneling.
One of my New Year's Resolutions is to make it in here more often. I didn't get into the 4th Quarter Lounge at all.
Everyone have a great year.
Bruce
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere" CP Rail Public Timetable
"O. S. Irricana"
. . . __ . ______
Happy New Year to everyone in the Trackside Lounge!! Dan, hope you get a very good report tomorrow on your finger.
Dan,
Since I'm retired and do not need all of my digits as much as someone who is still working, if you lose your finger, I will be happy to give you one of mine. I'm always willing to give someone a finger.
Plaudits to Dan for providing the link to the new quarter's lounge in the old lounge. It made it quite easy to get here when reading my email this morning.
We are still having a light snow from time to time (though what fell last night may have been fallout from the inversion that covers the Salt Lake Valley). Living in a bowl is not good in the winter--until another stoem comes in and clears the air in preparation for the next inversion.
Johnny
I'm finally in...it's the coldest morning of the year here.(I guess that should be "season", though one can hope it doesn't get colder than this all year!)
We have plans to get out later today. Perhaps a train or two can be fit in. My sightings for December fit on four pages in my "paper trail"--back when I was working it would be a page a day, sometimes more.Our best wishes for a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2013 to everyone! May railroading continue to give us pleasure and excitement, and may all of the promised developments come to pass! And moderation to go with the paneling.(As for you, Jim, may you keep your fingers to youreslf--I don't think Dan needs that one.) Dan, do well tomorrow, and find some pleasant diversions today!
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)
zardoz Dan, Since I'm retired and do not need all of my digits as much as someone who is still working, if you lose your finger, I will be happy to give you one of mine. I'm always willing to give someone a finger.
She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw
Unless something drastic happens...I should be still able to count to five at the end of tomorrow. On both hands.
You mean "on each hand", right?No trains to speak of today (a stack train and an ethanol train too far away for anything practical, and bunches of cars in Clearing Yard...ditto). We were in one of our Historical Society's museums later this afternoon, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation--nothing at all came through then.We've just authorized a contractor to go ahead and put us on his schedule for an addition to and modifications on our house. Pat will get a better sewing room and kitchen out of this; I'll get room for office space between our dining area and her sewing room. We'll eliminate the part of the house that had a flat roof, and the heat will be better in the sewing room. The contractor gave us a quote that was a bit below what we'd been afraid of...looks like we can do all we wanted to, and it will be done by mid-summer. Next step is to see what the architect can do with our ideas.Thanks to a slightly higher cost of living, our fixed income is now fixed at a less-slightly-higher level. I should be running some errands tomorrow, possibly by rail.
Quoting Carl: "Thanks to a slightly higher cost of living, our fixed income is now fixed at a less-slightly-higher level. I should be running some errands tomorrow, possibly by rail."
Have you thought of hiring yourself out as an errand runner? You should get a nice addendum to your fixed income.
Oh, was Pat sewing something for you the day she banished you from the house?
CShaveRR You mean "on each hand", right?
You mean "on each hand", right?
Good luck with your renovations Carl. Misty & i should do something similar in concept - but can't agree on a general design. Time will tell.
Spotted some interesting cars Monday - ballast hoppers covered with tarps.
CNW 791000s?Those tarp-covered ballast cars are basically wreck-train cars. The tarps keep the water out...not a problem in the summer, but would keep the ballast from unloading in weather like we're having now. If you're seeing cars like this in ordinary trains, they're going somewhere to be put into this storage, or to be reloaded. Normally they keep them with the panel track, extra supplies, perhaps an Ohio crane, etc.
Uhh, Dan...if you're talking about these things, now might be a good time to do it. With a high-quality contractor, you won't have to lift a finger... Seriously, when we talked about this, Pat didn't have any idea how much I wanted to do. She'd been saying that the kitchen needed a new floor, better lighting, etc., and the flat roof on her sewing room was presenting problems that cleaning the gutters wouldn't help. But we've lived in this house for more than a third of a century (more than half of the house's lifetime), and this year holds our 40th wedding anniversary. The time was right!
Deggesty Have you thought of hiring yourself out as an errand runner? You should get a nice addendum to your fixed income. Oh, was Pat sewing something for you the day she banished you from the house?
Probably not necessary just yet, Johnny. I could do that, but if the railroad got wind of it I might lose free-ride privileges.As for the other, yes...and I knew that. But I didn't know just what. She was making me a nice light-blue-denim-colored flannel shirt. Usually I pick out my shirt material myself, but this was a total (and welcome) surprise to me.
Here's those cars I was talking about Carl:
http://flic.kr/p/dGZtTX
http://flic.kr/p/dGZtRz
I still think they're for emergency ballast use, and the tarps keep the ballast from being affected by snow and ice so it can be unloaded when needed.So are you officially a castoff now? (In other words, how is your finger?)I just read over at Railway Age that EJ&E has officially been merged into WC.Last night, while doing some documentation of a certain ex-GBW box car series I discovered three railroads for which I had nothing in my updated files. One (WVRC) is now complete, two more (SJL, VNOR) to go.
I have absolutely nothing new to report. Other than office jobs (even on the railroad) are boring.
Don't think I can do this another 31 years.
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
I'm sure that you'll be longing for the boring days before too long...
CShaveRR I still think they're for emergency ballast use, and the tarps keep the ballast from being affected by snow and ice so it can be unloaded when needed.So are you officially a castoff now? (In other words, how is your finger?)
I still think they're for emergency ballast use, and the tarps keep the ballast from being affected by snow and ice so it can be unloaded when needed.So are you officially a castoff now? (In other words, how is your finger?)
Well I will get the two pins out of my finger in two more weeks, so that's a good thing. I have a smaller brace now so I can start using my left hand more but its still pretty stiff & sore so things are still slow going.
It has also been an eventful 24 hours as my dad ended up having an emergency appendectomy which now puts off his scheduled heart surgery...it's never dull...
zugmann Don't think I can do this another 31 years.
Next project cut out for me...trying to narrow down origin possibilities for 418 tank cars that left GATX for SRIX in 2001. Many of them don't seem to exist any more. Have to check records one by one, then go back and plug in a little more information. What a way to spend a cold winter day when I'm not out doing something else. Until cabin fever returns...I made the offer of a day of train-watching for our church's auction again. (The auction is on February 21--proceeds benefit UMCOR, the United Methodist Committee on Relief, which often beats the Red Cross to major disaster areas).
It's been a while...I'm still working on that SRIX project. I might get done with it tomorrow, if things go smoothly. I was able to get former series for about 80 percent of the cars (so far). Getting precise numbers would be a challenge at this late stage, especially with so many of the cars retired.I would have done more work on this project today, but I took advantage instead of balmy-for-January temperatures (we hit 50) and biked my errands around town, and followed that up with a bike ride to Elmhurst and back. The trip to the hobby shop was productive, and I was treated to a "three-fer" at the depot this afternoon: an eastbound stack train went through (and around Proviso) on Track 2, as MPRCB pulled out of the yard onto Track 1 and an westbound stack train blew past on Track 3. I was on the north side, so I got a bit of material for research off the manifest. I couldn't see much of that westbound stacker on 3 with the other stuff in the way, but I heard his power (both head-end and mid-train DPU) as they went by, and he was moving compared to the other two, which weren't doing too badly (especially once the MPRCB got all the way out of the yard).
Trains folks--your guide to railfanning will be available (courtesy of Al's Hobby Shop in Elmhurst) at my guest-speaking gig Sunday, as the first-ever presenter at the Lombard Historical Society's "Second Sunday" series of historical talks. I'm a lousy public speaker, so, at the rate of a thousand words each, I'm hoping some old pictures will do a lot of the talking for me. Most of the historical shots will be of CA&E and CGW stuff, but there will be a couple of pictures of the CNW main line from the old Village water tower. I hope to be able to take up some time with a Q&A session as well. If anyone wants to come by, it's at 2:00 this Sunday at the carriage house behind the LHS Museum, on Maple west of Main in Lombard.
zardoz Well, ya gotta do something...might as well be something as fun as railroading.
Yeah, that's one word for it.
so Dan - how goes the recovery?
Everytime I go to the doc my brace gets smaller. I was told that my pins come out in 12 days so im hoping that holds true. Not too much pain but a few aches. I'll manage.
Thanks for asking!
Got word that the nearest coal-fired (and rail served) generating station likely got its final coal train a few days back. If true I won't get to see any more of Uncle Pete in my 'hood. Makes me sad to hear as unit coal trains are one of my favorite subjects to photograph. Time will tell if this is "progress" or not.
zugmann I have absolutely nothing new to report. Other than office jobs (even on the railroad) are boring. Don't think I can do this another 31 years.
Anyone want to write out 4th quarterly reports?
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
Which power plant would that be, Dan? And what's happening to it...gas conversion, shut down, or what? Where will the power come from if it goes?Best wishes on continued progress for the hand!
CShaveRR Which power plant would that be, Dan? And what's happening to it...gas conversion, shut down, or what? Where will the power come from if it goes?Best wishes on continued progress for the hand!
Yes, I would like to know too which one. I've heard (second hand thru condrs working to Clinton) from the Illinois guys that one of the Chicago area plants has also stopped taking trains, but not which one.
Since the first of the year, we've lost 16 pool jobs (8 on the east end, 6 on the west) on the short pools. I'm youngest on the west pool, with two older on the bump board. I'm just waiting for one of them to displace me. Probably go to the extra board, but have toyed with the idea of going to the north pool.
Jeff
Going to guess that it's the Green Bay generating plant, I think that is the only one that goes by Oshkosh.....
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
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