Paul of Covingtonswallowed a whole lake including a tugboat and barge that were never seen again.
Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRMdfMfPALU
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...
evening
Rain has gone away for now.Not bad outside.Local paper reports the ND&W and Henry county are wanting to build a self serve transfer station area in Napoleon.They are hoping to get grant funding to build it.There were alot of cars for the ND&W to move at FC today too.Tomorrow is Friday.
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").
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
Texaco I think...and they hit one of the tunnels I think...
23 17 46 11
Ed-- I did take a Google map cruise up the bayous. Pretty interesting, a lot going on there.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Whole lotta money spent in that short run, huh....pretty much any petrochemical product in the world is made or shipped from that place.
tree68 Paul of Covington swallowed a whole lake including a tugboat and barge that were never seen again. Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRMdfMfPALU
Paul of Covington swallowed a whole lake including a tugboat and barge that were never seen again.
Thanks, Larry. I only remember hearing about it second hand and didn't remember the details right.
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
morning
rain has left NW Ohio.Clear but cooler today.Chores to do inside and out.Since we cleaned up the cabinets we can store stuff under the layout.Can expand our mainline.Will do the benchwork today.
Recruiting open house at the fire station today. The only person who showed up was from the organization which sponsors the event statewide. Maybe we'll get our pictures in their magazine...
Back to the TV station for the auction again tonight. I'll be in my conductor's uniform tonight, as the railroad is underwriting a portion of the night's festivities.
Cool start this morning.More rain coming tomorrow.Going to mow the swamp after church.Looks like we need to fix a switch on the layout.Time to get cleaned up.
Saturday stint in uniform at TV station went well. Sunday was busy, including a trip to the highest point on the Adirondack Division to memorialize a longtime employee who recently passed away, then returning to cover my shift at the TV station for the evening. Made for a lot of driving.
Not as busy this coming week, but I still have enough to do. Much if it is inside, which is good considering the cool (maybe even cold) temperatures they're forecasting...
ns was clear when I left work.Chores to do.Guessers say rain on the way.
Today was a nostalgic day for me, though it didn't really start out that way.I hopped on a scoot in Lombard to go to Glen Ellyn and get some blood drawn (tests). That went quickly enough that I caught the next train east and went as far as Oak Park. Nothing shaking there (though two eastbound stack trains came through in the half-hour or so I was there), so I headed back west to Elmhurst (had I stayed in Oak Park for lunch I might have caught the good-looking eastbound manifest that met us in River Forest). Between Bellwood and Elmhurst, we started running very slowly. The reason was because the eastbound scoot was operating on Track 3, the same track we needed, at Elmhurst. We still had to stop a couple of minutes at the control point (parked at Park). Part of the reason for the traffic jam became clear there: an eastbound freight headed into Yard Nine at Proviso was still sticking out on the main line (he was moving, but the mid-train DPU, visible from our scoot, suggested how long he was!). As soon as the eastbound scoot went by, we moved into Elmhurst and I bailed out.Once I hit the platform, the rest of the reason became apparent. Track 2 was occupied by a GP38-2, about five loads of ballast, and an ex-MP caboose. I crossed over to the bathroom...I mean, station...and noticed that they were dumping ballast in front to the station. To the west of this little train were a surfacer, a tamper, and a ballast regulator (the big broom).This is when things started getting nostalgic. It was 45 years ago this month (April 1971) that I caught a job off the yard extra board that entailed dumping ballast in front of the station in Elmhurst! It was basically my job to operate the grade crossings from the control boxes while we were there. That was the cushy job--the other brakeman was more of a rookie than I was. I don't know nor do I care what the conductor had him doing. So I vividly remembered seeing the ballast coming out of the hoppers...and the dust...and staying out of the way...and walking from one crossing to the next between York, Addison/Cottage Hill, and Maple..and back...and forth...Things have changed a lot since I did this. Back then we had slab-sided longitudinal hoppers for ballast. There were more of them in our train, because they were only 50- or 70-ton cars, instead of the 100-ton HLMX (ex-KCS) cars I saw today. We also didn't have a waycar back then. But those old ballast cars could pour out ballast much more quickly than these did...and that was not a good thing, as these newer cars also put it pretty much where you need it.I also don't remember a mechanized army to take care of the ballast once it was unloaded...in one pass, instead of several. Today there was a surfacer--using lasers to keep the track level as the ballast was tamped beneath every other tie (the track was actually lifted up by this machine to aid in that). Back in 1971 this had been done manually, with shovels, ballast forks, track jacks, and levels, and our crew had nothing to do with it.Next came the tamper, which, from what I could figure, tamped the ties that the surfacer skipped over. The regulator made several passes over the track after that, sweeping and plowing the leftover ballast to make things look presentable.Back then we just dumped the ballast and left. And, speaking of leaving...When the crew was done this afternoon, they waited at the western limits of the control point until everyone was finished, including the foreman who had to repair a cable damaged by the surfacer. Then the dispatcher lined him back into the yard. When we left, the control point (then known as HM Interlocking) was right at York Street, and we had to wait in front of the station to get the pot signal off Track 1 to go through the crossovers, and line a hand-throw switch to pull into a seldom-used track off the main line and leave the ballast cars. We had to dodge the scoots then, and trains going through the area were hamstrung by the old direction-of-traffic ABS rules.Ah, where to begin...if a scoot was on the "wrong" side (as one had been this morning), he would have been moving at Restricted Speed, because he wouldn't have had cab signals or Automatic Train Control giving him permission to go faster. And this would have been between Elmhurst and West Chicago, since there were no controlled crossovers between HM Interlocking and NI Interlocking. And when the westbound scoot that I departed on left, he was followed by no fewer than five freights, out of Proviso, off the IHB, and from in the city! Track 2 was occupied by the ballast gang, so these trains went out on both Tracks 1 and 3. Now the next crossover is in Lombard, and west of there, Track 2 was probably available.Back in '71, CNW wasn't doing too much maintenance, so this ballast spread in Elmhurst was a big thing. Today, it seems to be a small part of a much larger project--new rail had been installed on at least two, and possibly all three, of the tracks past the station in Elmhurst. And this would have been since the last time I visited, last week. The new rail is 141-pound, replacing 133 or 136. And who knows what was there in 1971...maybe 131, but more likely 112. It wasn't welded, yet. And maintenance is a much bigger thing nowadays--one of the trains that went out today was a mechanized track gang on flat cars including one car for floodlights and generators for night operation, and another flat for the outhouses... Another train out was Herzog ballast cars, including many in their new red-and-gray paint scheme...which looks like it was inspired by the way the C&NW painted its ballast cars toward the end. More nostalgia!Our old friend Colin ("MetraKid2" on the Forum) dropped by while I was there, and we chatted briefly. He's currently on furlough from BNSF.Soon after he left, I took the scoot home to Lombard. I have plenty of notes...
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 - funny how that stuff happens...
Just had a moment of my own, if you will. Was watching a rerun of "That 70's Show" when a t-shirt one of the characters was wearing caught my eye. It was for "Slot and Wing Hobbies" in Rantoul, IL, right outside what was the north gate. I did a lot of shopping there when I was stationed there - in the 70's. In addition to slot cars and airplanes, they had a substantial model railroad department, which is why I was there...
It can work in the other direction, too. In my youth, seeing a freight car with a South Shore (CSS) reporting mark was almost impossible. I was out exercising the camera this past Sunday and spotted a flat car loaded with steel bars with CSS markings. South Shore coil cars with the "South Shore Freight" herald on the covers turn up pretty regularly. A friend of mine once spotted one in Denver.
Evening
Those south shore cars run on Q 500/501 on CSX as well.Ns had some cars in the siding when I left work.Csx was in the paper and politicians talking about the blocked crossings.Especially the hire road crossing.This is where the Defiance yard is and where cars for GM and other places are switched.There was a state study for an overpass.Back then the state said in had no money for an overpass project.Probably still doesn't.Will keep watching.Chores to do.
joe
Ns was clear when I left work.Chores to do.Rain on and off this weekend.Tomorrow is Friday.
RV: If that's the case, bring a trailer-load of ether out this way (12" of snow due here in the next 24-48 hour.)
...at least 12 wk old Duncan thinks it's furry fun.
mudchicken...at least 12 wk old Duncan thinks it's furry fun.
Photos; or it didn't happen.
Norm
Norm48327 mudchicken ...at least 12 wk old Duncan thinks it's furry fun. Photos; or it didn't happen.
mudchicken ...at least 12 wk old Duncan thinks it's furry fun.
Ns was clear when we left work.We saw a CSX stack train with BNSF power(probably 171) when we were in Defiance.Matt will do his mowing job tomorrow before more rain.I mowed and trimed the swamp today.Momma is making his list for Matt's confirmation lunch in 2 weeks.(time flies)
Rain has arrived in Nw Ohio.Matt got his mowing job done this morning.Have been working on the track on our layout.We found some track we picked up at last years Fostoria train show.Will keep working.
EMS conference over for another year. Speakers weren't too bad, for the most part. One that I greatly dislike was (unfortunately for her) ill, but I don't know that she was missed.
We're supposed to be pretty wet over the next couple of days.
Matt is off to Sunday school.Time for me to get cleaned up.More rain coming this week.
Amtrak turns 45 today.
NorthWest Amtrak turns 45 today.
Hard to believe that it has been that long. It doesn't seem that long ago when I was at the De Kalb station after classes to catch the last run of C&NW 1, the remnants of the "Kate Shelley". The consist was an E7A and three single-level (800-series) coaches, all steam-heated.
afternoon
drizzly here in Nw Ohio.Short Ns train went west when I got off work.Chores to do.
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