Bruce happy birthday Sir !
Ns was busy today.got to peek out once in awhile at work.Had a freight in the siding with a CN unit in the #2 spot.Then a norange BNSF came up with an autorack train.Had to wait on a gp 38-2 high hood while he was switching uptown on the way home.rain here right now.Matt's snow moutain is finally all gone.Chores to do and homework to check.
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").
Happy Birthday! Hope you find a chocolate cake under your birthday tree.
She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw
Mookie Happy Birthday! Hope you find a chocolate cake under your birthday tree.
Ditto! Although I like my chocolate cake in front of me instead of under me....
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...
tree68 Mookie Happy Birthday! Hope you find a chocolate cake under your birthday tree. Ditto! Although I like my chocolate cake in front of me instead of under me....
60? Happy Birthday, kid. All through my years, I never gave any thought to the passing of each decade until I reached 70. Then it hit me: Hey, I'm old!
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
The one day I don't visit the Forum, and I miss a birthday. Hope it was a great one, Bruce! SJ, it's experience! We traveled home from Michigan yesterday, with the intention of hunting trains and cars, and going shopping for Pat. We were successful on both counts, though I was apprehensive until we got to about Burns Harbor. The first train we saw was a NICTD train coming off the street in Michigan City on its way to the Shops station.We went to our usual lunch spot in Gary, where we were interrupted (anything from an upward glance to a run outside) by four trains: westbound Amtrak Michigan train, eastbound coal train, westbound manifest with NS and CN power, and eastbound farm-implement train.Also at Gary, we went to one of the Mudchicken's work sites, up Clark Road. It appears that a new track is being built on an abandoned roadbed. There are so many tracks and former tracks crossing that road that I'm not sure exactly what I was seeing: I think it was the former PRR roadbed. We also saw a westbound NS local on the former Wabash line there, made up mostly of sugar covered hoppers. I would have made more rooster-crowing noises, but I figured that around noon MC would still be checking things out in the county courthouse, and out of earshot (besides that, this is one of two or more sites in connection with his current project). We also saw the same westbound manifest we'd seen at the restaurant (it had stopped for a signal in the meantime). In Hammond we saw another NICTD train, and followed it into Illinois.Nothing much at Dolton as we crossed (a locomotive with one car was coming south on UP, but we didn't wait for that). However, we had a mandatory hour or more of train-watching at Blue Island...mandatory because a westbound freight on the IHB was strung out across the crossing. I had enough time to get out and walk up a little way along the tracks (but off the property), catching a few interesting IAIS covered hoppers that I hadn't seen the likes of before. While he was sitting there, an eastbound came off the IHB for the old GTW. It was headed by CNW Dash 9s 8646 and 8701--the only two locomotives still carrying their old Chicago & North Western numbers and paint jobs. Pat figured the IHB train would start moving when the C&NW guy cleared...I guess I taught her well, since she came up with that--and that was exactly what happened! Meantime, the C&NW train stopped, also blocking our crossing, so we still couldn't go anywhere. While he was sitting there, a train of empty coal gons and hoppers with BNSF power went through northbound on CSX. Lots of variety on that train; I'm hoping some of the sightings I noted are news (I might have seen them before; my short-term memory is sometimes pretty poor). Pat was prepared...not only did she have a book to read, but she was able to finish knitting herself a pair of socks.Soon after the hoppers and gons cleared, the last train also moved up to clear the eight-track grade crossing. We went to Bedford Park to visit the store Pat wanted to (we had fun there!). Nothing seen on the BRC as we headed toward Summit, and nothing up close on the IHB through McCook and LaGrange. However, we made another shopping stop at LaGrange, and saw an empty oil train of STAX tank car (all of the current design, and perfectly safe) headed west on the BNSF "Racetrack". It looked like over 100 identical tank cars, but a pair of trained eyes could see that two different orders were represented in that string. By the time we got home, we'd been eight hours on the road. Compare that to the four hours we'd taken to get up to Grand Rapids (including a fuel and meal stop) the previous day. (That trip included a picnic lunch in the park in Chesterton, where we were treated to the passage of an eastbound stack train on the NS Chicago Line, ex-NYC.)
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, sounds like a good trip. I haven't seen a C&NW painted engine in years. Jealousy rears it's ugly head.
James
afternoon
busy at work today.spring is springing.need to get chores done and get Matt from school.Ns was quiet when I left work today.
CShaveRR Pat was prepared...not only did she have a book to read, but she was able to finish knitting herself a pair of socks.
Pat was prepared...not only did she have a book to read, but she was able to finish knitting herself a pair of socks.
Carl:
Tell Pat our neighbor minister has a license plate " I QWILT ". She does wonderful work that my wife can only envy.
Mookie, I'm sorry that I forgot to tell you that I would be coming through Lincoln this morning. As it was, I was still asleep and so would not have seen you wave even though my bedroom was on the south side of the train.
Johnny
I would like to thank everyone for their Birthday wishes. The day passed nicely and with being the first warm one in many months, quite enjoyable. It is 66° now.
I don't have my sources of RR news like I once did, as both railways seem to strive to keep their activities more secret than a nuclear research facility so as not to upset the shareholders. And I no longer seem to be able to get out to my favourite train watching spot anymore. That is partly due to the fact that one of the cycle/walking paths to get there was damaged during last years flood, and may not even be fixed this year.
Bye for now.
Bruce
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere" CP Rail Public Timetable
"O. S. Irricana"
. . . __ . ______
BC: Looks like I'm gonna be here into Thursday. Yesterday, be'cuz of da' threat of rain, we hacked our ways down the two dormant main tracks before it rained until dark. . Fortunately, no leaves on the trees helped with the GPS. I wouldn't want to work that this summer. The sandvic and the machete blades are now dull. There are 5" trees growing between the rails in the cribs of the PRR Ft. Wayne line and the Dune Park Line isn't that much better up high on it's fill. The sad state of affairs in Gary makes it harder to work than most places.
Deggesty Mookie, I'm sorry that I forgot to tell you that I would be coming through Lincoln this morning. As it was, I was still asleep and so would not have seen you wave even though my bedroom was on the south side of the train.
I can vouch for the fact that Johnny made it to Chicago and hung a right toward Nawlins.MC, I'd like to think that the area of Gary we were exploring was much safer, though not much prettier. The road looked impassable (mud and water) beyond the old NYC; we turned around short of that.In the vicinity of the old PRR/new MC line and the old Wabash, there was a remnant of a crossbuck without a track. It was all rusty, and the words could be seen because they were formed by holes for the old "cat-eye" reflectors that were state-of-the-art once.
In our crashing thru the trees, we encountered a waybill box for the interchange between IHB and PRR (the track connection was gone). That thing was so overbuilt that it will still be there 200 years from now. Weird to see that just appear out of the weeds.
What's a "waybill" box? Have anything to do with what usually was in a caboose?
I hope you took a picture, MC, so people 200 years from now can see how long ago it was around.SJ, picture the operation: the PRR comes along with a bunch of cars to hand off to the IHB here. The conductor, in the caboose, has the waybills for all of these cars. There's no yard here, just a track or two connecting the two railroads. No yard = no clerk to give the bills to. So the conductor puts the bills in this box (it may or may not have been locked with a switch lock or two), where they sit until the IHB comes along and picks up the cars. The IHB conductor knows about the box, too, so he retrieves the bills and takes them with his train to its destination.I think waybilling has largely gone paperless now, so this box might have been an artifact even if the tracks were still here.
CShaveRRSo the conductor puts the bills in this box (it may or may not have been locked with a switch lock or two), where they sit until the IHB comes along and picks up the cars.
I remember this!
Only the one I saw was used in a situation where there were elevators but no manned station. The elevator agent put the waybills in the box when he finished loading the cars and the conductor would take them out when he lifted the cars. The one I saw was mounted on a post and had two locked doors. One door used a padlock supplied by the elevator agent and the RR door used a standard switch lock. It was painted that standard mineral brown colour and was about the size of a birdhouse.
That is how I remember it, a birdhouse without any holes, but for the life of me I cannot remember where I saw it. When I was very young we would go on drives and we would often end up visiting friends of my parents who also lived in stations, but I don't know which one.
Carl, thank you for helping me recall that lost data file!
evening
very nice outside.keep it coming.Ns had a freight parked in the siding when I left work.Toimorrow is another day.
I remember these too.. one night we caught a possum and locked it in the box knowing that the CNW crew would be along shortly....
Randy
One of the old RRers (now retired) that I worked with told the story of when he used to hang around the railyard as a little kid. They'd see the conductor dump a bunch of neat paper slips in the box, and run over and grab them after he started to pull away.
They never understood why he'd scream and curse at them...
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 found my camera - If I can, I'll climb back up there and take a picture.
(This thing was not built by a terminal carpenter, it was built by a welder with too much Idle time - bulletproof!)
Speaking of bulletproof:
Today was the first time I ever got a sandwich at a Subway shop and had to build the sandwich and pay for it from the other side of a bulletproof glass wall. Either that is a new style sneeze shield or it is a tough neighborhood.
Randy!
(One of our field surveyors has had the repeated bad luck of finding dead skunks in monument boxes - why the dumb critters get in there after the box lid gets pulled off is unknown. - In the meantime, he has acquired the company nickname of "Pepe' Le Topo" (paraphrasing a certain Looney Tunes character))
Mookie Randy!
We arrived in New Orleans a little late this afternoon, and I rented a car, and drove up here to spend the night before going on to Chattanooga tomorrow.placarded cars--in several groupings that were separated by non-hazardous cargo.
I saw several CN freights today, and one had quite an assortment of placarded cars in several groupings that were well separated by non-hazardous cargo.
Oh, yes. Except for my trip last year, which started on the same day of the week as this year's trip, when I have left Chicago for Memphis and points south, the train is backed out of the station until it reaches a point at which it can proceed on the St. Charles Air Line to the connection with the IC (now CN) mainline. Last year and yesterday, we headed out to some point at which we backed for a distance and then headed over on the St. Charles Air Line. I could not determine what the points were, for it was dark. I wonder if having the Pullman cars (Chebanse and Adirondack Club) on the rear, so these people who have paid a high fare will not have to walk to the south end of the train to board (I, and all the other sleeper passengers had to walk almost to the south end since the sleeper is ahead of the diner which is ahead of the lounge which is ahead of the coaches--and when I arrived in Chicago yesterday, I had to walk almost the full length of the train to get to the station--Waanh!).
MookieRandy!
YES!
I'm glad this tradition carried over from the Flat Wheel Cafe. It's just not the same if we all have to say it under our breaths after one of Randy's posts.
nice outside.some rain on the way.Ns was working uptown when we left.People are complaining about CSX blocking crossings here locally.need to go get Matt.Tomorrow is Friday.
Randy is our resident Peck's Bad Boy. His charm comes from you never know what he will do/say.
....."Peck's bad boy".....haven't heard that saying for many moons....It was in the east too.
Quentin
I thought of it and then had to do research to make sure I knew what I thought I knew.
At any rate, Randy keeps me on my toes and keeps things from getting too dull.
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