good morning
Dry here in Nw Ohio.Fostoria was a good train show.Csx still had trains parked waiting to make turns in Fostoria and Deshler.Going to be warm again today as well.Gussers say about Wed. mother nature will send a front to cool us off.
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").
I take it your colors are worth seeing, Larry...I remember the trip I took out that way a few years back, and all of northern New York was spectacular!
I'm worried about ours this year. The Morton Arboretum had an ad touting the colors, and we took a ride around it this afternoon. There were lots of colors, if one cares for green, yellow, and brown. We just might be too dry.
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)
Had a nice supper visit with John. He had a local favorite - chicken riggies, although his appetite wasn't up to the large serving provided.
He arrived just as our train returning from Thendara was pulling in.
Tomorrow is our "quick turn," complete with fall colors.
From my phone.
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...
I had a good trip up to NYC this morning, enjoying the business class car (nice upholstery on the seat, one free beverage from the counter, friendly crew, Wi-fi on board, good red cap service. From NYC to Utica, I also had a business class seat. The lunch offering is mediocre (in my opnion), but, otherwise the service is good. The red cap who took me and my baggage into the station in NYC put me on the train to Utica. We were delayed at Scenectady, and lost about an hour, but we did arrive in Utica at last.
I called Larry, and he took me to dinner, and it was a good meeting. I will see him again in the morning, and we wll go to Thendara and back, seeing the fall foliage.
Johnny
That sounds similar to my situation after our circle trips on Amtrak last summer and this summer. I spotted and also photographed a fair amount of industrial and shortline locomotives that had me digging up their histories when we got home. The same applied to some Class I power that I saw in storage or at division points.
If I had known, I would have gotten the car numbers which handled the 737 fuselages I photographed at King Street Station.
Putting the chatter in Chatterbox (lifted from my Facebook post):
I went from ho-hum to "Oh, Wow!" yesterday evening, then to "Ooof!" this morning.
We had driven to Cedarburg, Wisconsin, so we could see the exhibits currently running at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts. They were good, but didn't take too long to look at. So we were back to Kenosha for lunch, facing the hottest part of a day that broke records here.
The car was as good a place as any to stay cool, so we took Wisconsin 83 to Illinois 83, with the plan of taking that highway all the way home...almost.
We missed a CN train going the opposite direction near Antioch. A trip toward the tracks in Grayslake revealed an active Dog 'n' Suds drive-in that we hadn't known about. And at an industrial area near there, were a bunch of SSAM (Sault Sainte Marie Bridge Company) ore hoppers that I made a note on for checking when I got home.
Close to home, where Route 83 turns off Elmhurst Road, I stayed on it, because there be tracks a couple of miles ahead. And sure enough, there was a northbound Canadian Pacific train waiting at Bryn Mawr. I saw that he had some interesting cars on him, so I made one of my classic U-turns-over-four-lanes-of-rush-hour-traffic moves, and we headed back along the train, in the closest lane.
By then, the train had started to move, so I stepped on it a little and got back to the turnoff spot at Bryn Mawr before the engines did. (Bryn Mawr is the railroad name for the junction west of O'Hare, in either Bensenville or Elk Grove Village.)
So we got there, and I was pretty busy taking several pages' worth of notes on the cars I was seeing. When he cleared the junction, we saw a northbound freight waiting on the Union Pacific line, but decided not to wait for it, as it was too hot to stand still while he waited to get his signal. As it was, I probably would have been frustrated by him, as the information I wanted couldn't be accurately picked up when the cars were in motion.
So we filled the tank and went home. That's the ho-hum part.
When I got to my laptop and my files, I started to see how lucky I'd gotten. There were build dates and order numbers galore among my notes, a reporting mark for which I had no file (no problem to make one...details abounded). One car I saw, though it was in a common series for me, just happened to be one that I'd never seen before. And another car surprised me by being from the "wrong" builder, prompting a major update of that particular file. Yet another car was from a series of South Shore coil cars I'd never seen before, in spite of the fact that we're along the South Shore nearly every time we go through Indiana...you'd think I'd have seen at least one of those 90 cars before. Still another car was obviously secondhand, but came from a group of several hundred that I hadn't yet documented.
So, that was the "Oh, wow!" part. Before I went to bed, I sent a pair of emails to an "inside" friend, in hopes that he could get me former numbers for some of the mystery cars. Well, he did...big "Ooof!"
I usually determine the series limits for the cars I'm interested in, and ask for a sampling of former numbers. Much of the time, the cars were renumbered in order, and it's easy enough to figure out the intervening cars, even if there are gaps.
Not this time...those SSAM ore cars came from two different companies, and in no order. The South Shore coil cars were in no order, and they didn't all come from the same place, either. So there's more digging to be done before I finish with these, and I'm ill-equipped to come up with the data I need, at least quickly.
And already today, with the passage of another good freight train here in Elmhurst, the cycle might be starting again. I'm already at the hopeful stage for some of what I just saw.
evening
Chores and errands done.Just need to load up and go in the morning.Ns local was uptown when I left work.Friend told me that CSX is planning on putting new switches in this Sunday at west Defiance and the yard lead.Could make some interesting watching.
We're having a quite unseasonable hot spell (90's) through until around Tuesday. After that, it will be merely unseasonably warm (upper 70's) for a few more days.
Saw some decent fog while driving this morning, a few miles worth of thought yielded the following:
'Twas forty and foggy
Near Warden so boggy
At sunrise this first day of Fall
Though just three weeks prior
'Twas fifty degrees higher,
Now it is not like that at all.
(Warden, Washington)
Yeah -We're looking at another week or so of summer weather around here. Not necessarily complaining, but it would have been nice to have during the actual summer season...
If I did send the memo, it would say "knock it off!". Do you have an e-mail address for Mother Nature by chance?
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Well tomorrow is Friday and the first day of "Fall"....
Could someone send Mother Nature the memo???
Ns was clear when I left work.Matt and I went into town to do yardwork.CSX was dropping ties on track 2.The flagman was born here in town.Old house in the neighborhood is getting new siding and a front porch.Need to run errands tomorrow.Going to be an early start to Fostoria Saturday morning.
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