Murphy - do your neighbors regularly set out lawn chairs facing your house?
She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw
Do you ever find yourself channeling Laurel and Hardie? The top pulley on my flagpole froze up, probably from rust. The pole is about 20', and is put together in 4, telescoping sections. That way, you should be able to take the pole down in sections, if something happens- like the pulley on top freezing up. Who would have guessed, that the sections wouldn't come apart, because they were rusted together. So I clamped on a pair of vise grips, and tried to twist the pole enough to loosen the sections. Not being able to get enough leverage, I grabbed the flagpole in my left hand and the vise grips in my right hand, pushing as hard as I could. The force made a difference. The flagpole had rusted off at ground level, and the pole, the vise grips, and I tipped over into the lawn. Not to be outdone, my wife opened a window in our new sun room. She wanted to throw some bread crusts to the birdies. So, she reached down, and simultaneously unlatched the two little wing blades that hold in the screen. Gravity did it's part, and the screen promptly fell 10 feet down onto the concrete patio below.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Mookie We went shoe shopping today. We came home and I drug myself and my shoes up a flight of 15 stairs. I tuned in the forum and while trying to read it from the floor (exhaustion overcame me!) I see a plane crash in Denver. No one supplied details, so I had to struggle over to Goggle and find out for myself. S'ok - Perfect landing in an empty house. Best news of the day. Back to the floor.
We went shoe shopping today. We came home and I drug myself and my shoes up a flight of 15 stairs. I tuned in the forum and while trying to read it from the floor (exhaustion overcame me!) I see a plane crash in Denver.
No one supplied details, so I had to struggle over to Goggle and find out for myself. S'ok - Perfect landing in an empty house. Best news of the day.
Back to the floor.
Joe - new as opposed to....old? Congrats to the Great Uncle!
afternoon
busy day for Ns today.saw empty well cars going east and west.Local was dropping off cars uptown.New great nephew has arrived.Everyone is doing good.Need to do some chores and enjoy the sunshine mother nature is giving us.
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").
MookieS'ok - Perfect landing in an empty house.
The pilot (an off duty firefighter) tried to put the ensuing fire out with a garden hose.
Even better - apparently it was a house he used to own....
And he was towing a banner for an insurance company...
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...
Thanks, MC
James
Early sixties B&W television?
Carl, or anyone else,
Any idea where the term "Hazel Day" comes from?
Norm48327Been following that on some aviation forums.The irony of towing a banner for insurance is not lost on those of us who've been involved in aviation for a long time. Best part is there was no one home and the pilot walked away.
Not only did he walk away (I believe he bailed out), but he walked to the house the plane hit, searched it, and attempted to fight the fire with what we in the fire service call a "green line" (garden hose). He's a firefighter in the Denver area with an off-duty gig flying the banners.
Edit: He was in the plane when it crashed, but was uninjured and self-extricated. The rest stands.
MC, those two Baldwin freight Sharks are reportedly in Escanaba, Michigan, shielded from railfans by their owner on well-posted private property. They should still be in blue/yellow/gray Delaware & Hudson paint, in a paint job based on ATSF Warbonnets (similar to the D&H PAs), even though they were operated by a couple of railroads after the D&H.I plan to be "volunteering" for the Lombard Town Centre today, helping spruce the place up (on the railroad we'd call this a "Hazel Day"). The neat thing is that my volunteer work will be, by design, along the tracks, where I can work safely and railfan liberally.
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)
mudchicken Meanwhile, weirdness here. Beware of small planes towing insurance company banners falling out of the sky into houses formerly owned by the pilot.(Garp remake?) Does the annoying pig and gecko outfit have a policy to cover all that? (plane was towing their banner) Or self destructing power plants?
Meanwhile, weirdness here. Beware of small planes towing insurance company banners falling out of the sky into houses formerly owned by the pilot.(Garp remake?) Does the annoying pig and gecko outfit have a policy to cover all that? (plane was towing their banner) Or self destructing power plants?
Been following that on some aviation forums.The irony of towing a banner for insurance is not lost on those of us who've been involved in aviation for a long time. Best part is there was no one home and the pilot walked away.
Norm
Most of the diesel oddballs ran their last miles in Ohio between Cincinnati (Sharonville/ Riverside) and Cleveland (Mingo Jcn) into the PC/CR era. The sharknoses (RF-15 & RF-16's ) weren't bad, they were more a case of a minority make and supposebly were too little-too late in a dying market for passenger power cab units. I thought a couple survive somewhere, collecting dust in Monongahela paint?/ Janesville?...and a B-Unit in a junkyard somewhere being used as a power plant?
Mookie Tree: was this one of the "shark-nose"?
Tree: was this one of the "shark-nose"?
No, this was a "one-off" (one of a kind, although two were built....). It was built by GE.
Baldwin built the "shark nose":
While E's, F's, and ALCO PA's ran on the Adirondack Division, I know of no evidence that the sharknoses did.
So, one of the images shown during the slide show Saturday night was a real stumper, and only some after-show research has provided a little information.
Apparently, this locomotive (or its twin) ran on the NYC Adirondack Division (the line we run), possibly during some cold weather testing:
UP had two built. They were condensing oil-fired turbines. They didn't last long.
More info: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/upturb/upturb.htm
busy weekend.toledo train shyow was nice.we went out in east toledo and saw Ns bring a combine train eastbound.Ns has some cars ready to go uptown.Need to get chores done.Ma nature is going to warm us up.
Larry, we all expected you to pass them. Well done!
Johnny
zugmann tree68working a wine/beer train tonight, and then two days of rules classes. That made me chuckle for some reason. 2 days? Wow... we only get one.
tree68working a wine/beer train tonight, and then two days of rules classes.
That made me chuckle for some reason.
2 days? Wow... we only get one.
First day NORAC, territory, and On-Track. Second day (half day) air brakes.
I passed everything.
It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood and I have my south window open.
The neighbor dog is giving me barking lessons.
If this continues, I will have to pay him. So I will introduce him to the "We Cite Barking Dogs" people.
Fair trade, I think!
SJ, I think you would notice them, but I can't describe them to you. Here is a picture of a car that's equipped with them:http://rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=2017956Note all of the extra stuff at the bottom of the sideframes (compare to the truck on the next car, also visible in the shot). Those are the ends of bars that run diagonally below the bolsters and out of the way of the brake-rigging. This keeps the axles more perpendicular to the rails.Norris, I'm still in the hoarding phase, unfortunately, though not as strongly as I once was. I keep having too much other stuff to do to reorganize my dungeon so it will accommodate the books. Trust me, I use these books, and use them hard..it's not just hoarding for hoarding's sake!
MookieMurphy SidingI just dropped off 168 books at a little used bookstore that is the fund raising component for a small town history museum. It's a really fine line between having a lot of books and hording. I'm starting to wonder just when I crossed that line. When the fire and safety depts started driving up and down your street daily.
Murphy SidingI just dropped off 168 books at a little used bookstore that is the fund raising component for a small town history museum. It's a really fine line between having a lot of books and hording. I'm starting to wonder just when I crossed that line.
BC - are self-steering trucks something I would know if I just glanced at the trucks?
Today Pat had a meeting to go to in Naperville, so I had the car. I filled the car with gas, and headed all the way north to Bensenville, just hoping a CP train would be sitting there. Well, I hit the jackpot: a train of WPSX empty coal cars on the UP line, an inbound CP stack train (one-unit wonder), and a manifest ready to head out as soon as the UP gave them the signal at Bryn Mawr. It was a long train with two units (one CP, one DM&E). I drove slowly, taking notes on what I could, then turned around and headed back south again. As I was a few carlengths past the engine headed back, I noticed that the manifest was moving!
Yes, folks, that was I who made that U-turn across four lanes of York Road to catch the head end again at Bryn Mawr. I pulled in there, and took copious notes as the train picked up speed. Lots of new tank cars of various types, crude-oil tanks that I hadn't seen before, and freight cars from two railroads that I'd heard of, but hadn't seen anything from before: the Saratoga & North Creek Railroad in New York and the Utah Central Railway in...oh, yeah, Utah. So two more files to build here.
The reason I went to Bensenville in the first place was because it was too early to grab lunch. It wasn't any more, so I got a burger at Wendy's and went to Elmhurst where I came across two trains leaving town westbound: a stack train and the same WPSX train I'd seen in Bensenville (which had changed crews at Proviso). The stack train won the race. I parked trackside while these guys were going by, picked up the Sunday Trib and a Diet Dew (I may die but I'll be happy), and ate lunch and did the Sudoku while a Com Ed coal train came in.
No headlights, and the signals at Park were all red, so I sneaked over to Jewel and picked up the stuff Pat was hoping I'd get (plus a few things for me), then came back to the tracks. The gates had just gone down for a westbound auto train. I couldn't get any build dates due to the train's speed, but made other notes about some new-looking cars.
When the train cleared, I crossed the tracks and headed west--and wouldn't you know it, an eastbound knocked down the gates at Myrtle (that's not a bad thing)! It was one of the longest manifests I'd seen in hours! More neat stuff, including cars with self-steering trucks under them, and another series of brand-new covered hoppers.
So I may have seen only a few more trains in three hours than I saw in just half that time yesterday, but today they were all freight trains (until the scoot that gave me the green light at the Grace/St. Charles intersection near home) and, because I wasn't seeing the same old same old, I now have nine pages of notes to agonize over, and one heck of a report to put together!
Murphy Siding Maybe that second day is training for serving the wine and beer correctly.
Maybe that second day is training for serving the wine and beer correctly.
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/
I took a quick trip into Elmhurst today to do some banking and to check the hobby shop. Their ATCS screen was off, so I couldn't see whether it had been updated to include the newly-opened crossovers at College (the old screen had plenty of room on the diagram for inserting the new plant). Trains seen included a couple of coal/hopper trains, a pair stackers, a pair of manifests, and a westbound auto train. Unfortunately for me, one of the manifests was seen while I was on a scoot in the opposite direction. If you count the four scoots (two of which I was riding) that I also saw, that's 11 trains in less than an hour and a half, roughly eight trains per hour. I can live with that.Only one good sighting, though...an HCPX 21000-series tank car that I didn't have a clue about. A look at one of the photo sites showed that the series had been relettered without being renumbered. Still no help. But an e-mail to my fellow carchaeologists gave me the answer I needed: ex-OPIX. Crazy...the cars went from one chemical company to another (OPIX reporting marks were transferred from Occidental to Equistar), then came back to Occidental!
evening
matt is setting up his new arrangements for his room.had to wait for the local before we could go home today.Tomorrow it's the train show in toledo.Sunday we are going to see the 765 in Bryan.Mookie will check out Ed's site.
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