DeggestyReading about the railroad-themed licnse plates reminded me of RIcki's and my experiences and thoughts on such.
In Michigan, there are Secretary of State offices in many smaller towns - no need to go to the county seat.
Somehow, my father managed to get plate number 1001, with GJ either before or after, almost every year. Knowing him, he probably managed to convince the local office manager to save it for him...
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...
DeggestyHere, we thought about getting plates with our initials (mine are JBD; hers were PHD) on them--but decided it was not worth the extra cost.
"Say Lou, Did ya hear the one about the guy who couldn't afford personalized plates, so he went and changed his name to J3L 2404?"
--Fargo
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
As mentioned elsewhere, my beloved and I both have personalized plates on our cars. Her plate is all letters so it costs appreciably more each year when it's time to renew. My plate is mixed letters and numbers so I paid more up front when I got the plate but renewals are at the regular fee.
afternoon
Rain has moved on eastward.Farmers now have mini lakes in the fields.Ns had an eastbound fright and the local was working when I left work.Ran an errand and CSX sent a westbound empty coal train.Chores to do.Going to bundle up for the Toledo trainday tomorrow.
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").
JoeKohRain has moved on eastward. Farmers now have mini lakes in the fields
Same here - Upwards of 2 inches of rain in the past 24 hours. If you want to mow, you'd better live on good draining ground, or have a snorkel for your mower.
Lake Ontario is still very high, and forecast to rise even more. Everyone along the shore is watching the wind very carefully, winds out of the north and/or west will be a serious problem.
Attending the funeral of a longtime firefighter tomorrow, then off to the Syracuse area on Sunday for grandson's eighth birthday celebration.
Next week, we'll make try number four to fix the check engine light in the truck. It's all due to the evap system - they just can't seem to pin down the exact problem.
Ah, Larry, your father was in Oakland County! The GJ was ahead of the numerals, and 1001 was the first number available. If he wasn't in line every year, yes, it was saved for him!The Michigan plates came in a wrapper which told you which county each letter pair came from. For us (Ottawa County), it was NU-NZ early on, then it changed to RL-RS. I remember that Grand Haven got NV, later RN. The NU and RL plates apparently went to Holland.Then, after they went to three letters and three numerals (about the time I left the state), I lost track...and maybe so did the state.
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)
For years, some states had a number at the beginning of the identification on license plates. Some, such as Tennessee, used the population of the counties as the determining factor, others such asAlabama and Mississippi, used the names of the counties in alphabetical order as the determining factor--except Jefferson County (with Birmingham) was #1 in Alabama.
South Carolina had a letter which was determined by the weight of the vehicle--and highway patrolmen would check the weights of trucks to make certain that they had the proper letter on the plates. A Ford Model A had a "B" license.
Tennessee also had a "D" after the county number if a car weighed more than a certain amount.
Johnny
Otero County Colorado (La Junta) for years was the domain of PA and PB series license plates. Applied to car and truck plates as well as SME (mechanized equipment -yellow machines) The railroad, by luck or by some railfan's advanced thinking, wound up with most of the PA and PB tags from PA-50 to PA-99. To this day, I can remember fairly easilly that some of the railroad's work equipment in the Group 5 or track department were certain things. PA-56 was a motor grader and PA-72 was a track department backhoe. PB-66 was a Martinez trailer. (kinda fits)
Even though the Alco PA's were long gone, it was a reminder in ATSF country..
Here in NY, one could often tell what county a car was licensed in as prefixes/suffixes resembled the county name. It wasn't a sure thing, though.
Nowadays there are so many different number/letter combinations that about the only thing you know is that such and such a plate was probably obtained in a given county because all of the other new plates (on new and used cars) were in that series.
Some letter combinations are sort of reserved for certain specialty plates (and there are quite a few). My volunteer firefighter's plate contains the letters "VF".
Florida used to imprint the name of the county that issued the plate; they stopped that 15 or 20 years ago when car jackers were targeting foreign nationals in rental cars that could be easily identified by the rental ID stickers and the Dade County plates. Thereafter everything shows 'Sunshine State'.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
My wife has personalized plates that say JEFF WON. Her bother Jeff was a quadriplegic for 30 years and died of cancer. Friends gave her some money and told her to buy herself something nice to help heal the loss. She bought a raffle ticket for a charity event to help troubled kids and won a bright red Prius.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
evening
Well trainday in Toledo wasn't what it used to be.They did have the Ann Arbor unit but NS didn't have any extra horses.We did miss Amtraks Lake(Late) shore from departing by about 10 minutes.Amtrak didn't even send a train.Did however see plenty of trains move on Ns,found a new metropark and saw a switcher far away from home.Went to Deshler and worked on some projects there.Chores to catch up on here.The swamp is starting to dry out.
Sandbags, sandbags, sandbags. I've helped with the filling of thousands in the past week - and many more will be needed. Lake Ontario and the St Lawrence continue to rise to 40+ year highs, with no respite in sight. Right now the river is some two feet over normal for this time of year.
We've got it down to a science, though. A couple of saw horses, a couple of 2x4's, three or four traffic cones with the tops cut off, shovels, 5 gallon buckets (seats for the bag holders, and you can turn out a lot of bags. That does require about a dozen people, though. Shovellers, holders, tiers, stackers. I was trying to keep the holders supplied with bags, but had to dodge around flying filled sandbags to do so...
This isn't going to end soon. The powers that be can't let any more water out of the lake and river than they already are, as Montreal is already flooded. And it's still raining - we've had 3.5" to 4" in this area alone this past week.
This is nothing like the flooding they get along the Mississippi, et al, but it's sure significant for us.
tree68This is nothing like the flooding they get along the Mississippi, et al, but it's sure significant for us.
This isn't quite as disruptive, but today was the Lincoln half and full maratons. In preparation, they dug up and closed a majority of the thru streets last week and today, ran the marathons on what was left...
Someone in this mix needs a reality check - bet they stayed home today...
She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw
Back to winter - 29 degrees this AM in lead pipe capital (Flint, Mi)- guessed wrong when I left Elkhart and brought the wrong jacket.
And this morning? Snow. Not a lot - just a dusting, and widely scattered. But, snow.
BOB WITHORNLarry, A few years back Grand Rapids, Mi. had a 100 year flood of the Grand River downtown. There are pictures of fish swimming past the windows of our eye doctor. When they built the building they made it water proof fully expecting floods.
I remember seeing those pictures, Bob, and others showing the CSX bridge in town being weighted down by a string of loaded covered hoppers (that would be the one just upstream from Wealthy Street).We spent part of last week at my sister's place; their back yard boundary is determined by the Grand River. It's still within its banks, but is almost at the same high level that it was last year. That close to the mouth of the river, one doeasn't expect much change in water level, but it does happen--they couldn't use their dock one year not that long ago because of low water levels.As we were traveling last week, the St. Joseph River looked uncommonly high, and it was nice to be able to see distinct channels on most of the other rivers along the Lake Michigan shore.
Swamp drying out day today.Ns local was uptown with some cars.Chores and errands to run.
joe
Cool with some sprinkles today.Ns was clear when I left work.Need to go give hugs.
Joe,
I'm having a hard time believing it is May. The weather is more like early April.
Norm
Norm48327 Joe, I'm having a hard time believing it is May. The weather is more like early April.
Same here - the truck showed +34F on the way home from a meeting last night, and I don't think that was all rain hitting the windshield. Didn't stick, though, at least not here.
Just ran across my old CB callsign, so I looked it up on-line. What came up? A discussion right here on the Trains forum. I'd forgotten that Mike Yuhas said he was a ham then - and probably still is (as am I, now).
I've run across amateur frequencies for train chasers (2 meter), but off-hand, I don't recall what they are, and I haven't used them. Given that a technician license requires no code and allows unlimited use of the 2 meter band, it's really a great idea if a group of folks regularly chases together.
Using local repeaters, individuals could be many miles apart and advise their friends of oncoming traffic, especially something of interest, like a special movement.
Local was busy uptown when I left work.Mother nature wants to send us more rain.Chores to do.
Are everyone's ears burning? Had a nice lunch visit with MC today in downtown Cedar Rapids. Tomorrow his group is being treated to a special excursion up the Iowa Northern RR, and I'll be chasing them to get some pictures. Hopefully the weather will clear off for them (we're currently experiencing a monsoon).
Brian (IA) http://blhanel.rrpicturearchives.net.
What a guy that Mudchicken is, keeping track of his long-time Forum friends! I'm glad that he gave you an opening to get lunch with him, and that you were able to take him up on it.(Did I mention about how he hung around La Junta until the wee hours of the morning to visit with us when the Southwest Chief straggled through, hours late, and hung around as long as the train did to keep us company? As I said, what a guy!)
CShaveRR (Did I mention about how he hung around La Junta until the wee hours of the morning to visit with us when the Southwest Chief straggled through, hours late, and hung around as long as the train did to keep us company? As I said, what a guy!)
(Did I mention about how he hung around La Junta until the wee hours of the morning to visit with us when the Southwest Chief straggled through, hours late, and hung around as long as the train did to keep us company? As I said, what a guy!)
Yep, he did talk about that. He felt sorry for you and Pat being so far behind schedule.
blhanelYep, he did talk about that. He felt sorry for you and Pat being so far behind schedule.
And that didn't even take into account the trip west! Who had ever heard of a wind-related detour before that?
Had errands to run.Ns was clear when I left work.According to reports q 165/166(CP Trains) are back running on CSX.Glad tomorrow is Friday.
Ns local was uptown when I left work today.Went into town so Matt could mow.Csx sent 2 westbounds.Mother nature is going to warm us up for next week.
Two days without rain! WooHoo!
The lake is still high, though, and many on this end of the lake are grateful for gentle easterly winds.
The powers that be are gradually increasing the flow through the power dams, which will help - but they still have to be mindful of the effects of doing so on downstream communities. Montreal isn't out of the woods yet, flooding wise.
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