Thats a lot of snow. We have snow that builds up and up because it never melts, just gets added to and compressed somewhat. We do not get big dumps of snow at once. It only appears we have a lot of snow, which we do, but we don't. Get it?
However...we did hit the magic number -40 last night, all through and into the am...that is where the schools close and degF and degC are identical. It matters not. Furnaces struggle, nails pop.
No relief until next week.
Thank You.
NDGI had forgotten about the International Travelalls.
Something not to forget with these was the 'slant' four-cylinder engine that was one-half a V8 ... one bank of a V8 on a V8 crankcase. I found those things fascinating from the first time I saw one.
Forward, into the past.
Now What?
I suppose if we knew that answer we could make a fortune in the futures markets or whatever. We can only speculate using rational thought, which is good for things like not walking into a moving train but not very good at predicting human behaviour and consequences, markets, even outbreaks of war, and so forth.
So now what for the railroads? They have become conveyor belts of transporting goods to distribution nodes. The railroads and how they operated, that I knew from my youth and bit beyond that, are no more. They have adapted magnificently.
Efficiencies and bottlenecks will improve, the last round of mergers will take place, likely down to 2 "North America" systems. Of course more automation and robotics. The uber wealthy will benefit enormously but they will tell us it's all good because banana's are so cheap at Walmart. Your grandkids will work for minimum wage as a cashier at Walmart and tell you how good it is that banana's are so inexpensive.
My preference would be to embrace and pursue a policy of full employment. Wages will go up. No more globalization and eliminate's the threat of moving your job. A wee bit of inflation is a good thing...vanishes the debt on families that has become so widespread in order to stay afloat. Eliminates predatory capitalism as well. Good for savings with higher interest rates. Not too much now, and slowly.
We need our best people, those that really care for the folks, working on solving the problem of how technology eliminates jobs. We need to figure out how to keep technology moving and maintaining full employment.
Encourage and revitalize all the smaller feeder railroads, the ones that need skilled folks switching industrial spurs all over the place again. Use the environmental angle if you need to...it can do it cleaner and a lot more than trucks.
Revitalize passenger service downtown to downtown. Airports are ridiculous things now, highways are insane with too much traffic, too many gizmo distractions, too many big rigs. Too many deaths.
Thats my now what.
Thank You/Merci.
Paul_D_North_Jr NDG Glad to see that a requisite bilingual form is included in the proposed name . . . - Paul North.
NDG
Glad to see that a requisite bilingual form is included in the proposed name . . .
- Paul North.
Thought Canada built a border wall between Ontario and Quebec.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
NDG . . . If Canada were to build a Barrier along a Border, a new Govt. Patronage Portfolio would have to be created and named ' The Department of De Fence. ' . . .
Yes!.. I demand a state of the art Maritime Border fence around Saint Pierre and Miquelon (territory of France), another in the water along the border with Greenland and of course a rugged Arctic fence with the North Pole to contain Santa Claus and all those sneaky elves. Need a big double door with that one, to allow passage of Pere Marquette 2-8-4 #1225 and the big guy himself, but only once a year. De Fence's.
Will the Patriots D-Fence hold up against the aerial onslaught of the Falcon's?
Had a look at a fall 1959 ETT for the Willingdon Sub. on the CP Historical Assoc. site. The Mixed Trains were handled by two crews turning at Two Hills, milage 87.6. three days a week each way. There was a Fourth Class freight carded for a Daily run of 8 hrs. 50 mins. EB only. As you well know, Fourth Class freight schedules were really in the realm of highly theoretical.
Bruce
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere" CP Rail Public Timetable
"O. S. Irricana"
. . . __ . ______
NDG- I grew up with those TH&B Berks and Hudsons...the Berkshires were used almost exclusively on the Starlight...a run from Hamilton, conquering the Niagara Escarpment long steady steep grade and on to Buffalo and hand off to the NYC. ...rare for me to see them in action as they left at midnight, returning very early morning. However I would see them frequently enough simmering around the roundhouse. The Hudsons were truly my favourite and they took passenger trains to Toronto. They were so perfect, with those big wheels ..and tough looking.
Maybe about a dozen times, out of many times, watching after school from the platforms in Burlington after we moved there from Hamilton, I would catch a Hudson glide into the station while a through Canadian National 6400 streamlined Northern would just thunder past. People I talked to at the station told me the Berks were shoved into the blast furnaces. I refused to believe that. Could not be.
On some Saturdays I would take a train with buddies to Hamilton to watch the Hamilton Red Wings hockey game at the old now long torn down Barton barn. Thats when I became a lifelong Chicago Blackhawk fan watching Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita and many others when the St. Catherine's TeePee's were playing them. That Indian Head crest and their outfits were just the coolest things ever. I would hang down from the entranceways off the ice to the locker rooms in between periods and once Bobby Hull gave me a big "hello". Heaven! Sometimes, after the game, I would walk over to the TH&B roundhouse by Chatham St. and see what I could. Steam by then was all gone from there even the Hudson's. Just cream and maroon Geeps and Switchers. Just Diesels to me. Disliked them for what they did to the steam. I was told CP and CN still had steam in Niagara Falls and Toronto. There was still lots of steam coming through town in Burlington, all CPR and CNR.
The Hudsons did not last that long on the TH&B so I consider myself extremely fortunate to witness and marvel at them. The 6400's 4-8-4's lasted longer..5 years or so but one day in 1959 it was all over.
I would listen for steam, during the afternoons and laying in bed at night as we lived a block away from the station, hoping and convincing myself that surely they didn't get rid of all of them.
The last steam locomotive I saw in town ( under steam and in service) was a CPR Jubilee running with RDC'S!
Only lots of trains with long lines of dead humiliated steam heading to the end in Hamilton after that.
The famous Queen 6218 made a few appearances years later and then 6060 Mountain was a regular through town on Toronto to Niagara Falls runs. Very nice, appreciated and marvelled at, reminiscent and all, but it was just not the same.
NDGBack in the day, did a Train and Engine Crew make it on one run, or was there a change off of Crews/Terminal/R House/Yard en route?
It was one crew district.
There was discussion of that question on another forum many years ago, and if I remember correctly, they said the Company ran turns from each end with only one or two trains a week going over the whole route.
When I was a kid we would go through Hanna on our way to visit relatives in Saskatoon and on the straight flat stretch east of Hanna to the Saskatchewan border Dad used to like letting the car settle in at about 82 MPH. I can still picture in my mind how far down the road you could see.
Getting back to your part of the world for a moment. Those developers were making those outrageous offers to CP to buy that ROW in Edmonton as a defensive measure to prevent future trains from running past their new housing developments, but on the Southern Transcontinental, when CP abandoned the line east out of Pentiction, BC, they sold the ROW in Penticton to devlopers before the tailights of the scrappers disappeared over the horizon to prevent rebuilding that line from ever being easy or cheap. Or so I've read.
NDGThe Willingdon Sub. once connected Lloydminster and South Edmonton, a long way.
That is quite the picture of the border fence. Along way from the Willingdon Sub.
A 174.5 mile long line the CPR realized too late that they should not have built. Costs had increased to the point that competitive service to smaller locations like Lloydminister, already served by a CN predecessor, was no longer going to work. It marked the end of the grain branch building business.
The Crossfield and Hatton Subs were built later, but were far shorter, about 30 and 17 miles respectively.
EDIT: 27.4 and 17.1.
One thing that did work out for the Company was the route they used from South Edmonton to get out of Edmonton. When the line was abandoned, developers offered inordinate amounts of money for the right of way through the city, but someone had the foresight to stand at the switch to the Willingdon Sub., look NE, and say, "Fort McMurray and the Athabasca Tar Sands are thataway". CP never made it that far, but the present day Scotford Sub. uses that route ouit of Edmonton.
CSSHEGEWISCH So it was a rebellion against the existing government, see Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution of the United States. There is no provision anywhere in the Constitution for secession.
So it was a rebellion against the existing government, see Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution of the United States. There is no provision anywhere in the Constitution for secession.
Johnny
Thank you, Mike. It is obvious that your education has not been neglected.
https://archive.org/stream/virginiafirst00tyler#page/n0/mode/2up
https://archive.org/stream/storyofconfedera00derriala#page/n7/mode/2up
CSSHEGEWISCH The "War for Southern Independence"?? Is this an alternative fact?
The "War for Southern Independence"?? Is this an alternative fact?
There actually is, or was, a strategy outlined for invading Canada for whatever reasons, a "just in case" sort of thing. I have seen and read it...was made in the fifties I believe. It has a strong railroad connotation to it. The main stategy and goal was to capture Winnipeg and severe the rail lines between the East and the West thereby dividing the country in two. Capturing and destroying the railroads in Winnipeg was the key strategy to victory. Fascinating.
Winnipeg has two seasons...brutally cold winters and then the big honkin mosquito season. Actually if you just phoned and asked we would probably just give it to you.
With your new administration maybe the preferred plan now would be to just buy Canada.
Miningman Very cool NDG. Algoma Steel rails..from Sault. Ste. Marie, Ontario! Little do our American friends know about our line of defence against them in case of invasion...the famous "Pine Tree Line"...with a guy behind every pine tree with a sling shot. Oop, I let the cat out of the bag didn't I? Oh well.
Very cool NDG. Algoma Steel rails..from Sault. Ste. Marie, Ontario!
Little do our American friends know about our line of defence against them in case of invasion...the famous "Pine Tree Line"...with a guy behind every pine tree with a sling shot.
Oop, I let the cat out of the bag didn't I? Oh well.
Pages from a book written for junior high school students. I don't remember learning much of this.
https://archive.org/stream/geographyofnewen00emer#page/20/mode/2up
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