BaltACD All sports are boring when you don't understand the game and don't want to understand it.
All sports are boring when you don't understand the game and don't want to understand it.
CSSHEGEWISCH---I've been a crazed Blackhawks fan since 1957-58 when Bobby Hull rubbed my head with his glove and said "Hey Kid"...back in the St. Catherine's Tee-Pees days. The Blackhawks have always been special and magical.
As for this year, hopefully they are playing "rope a dope" right now.
Then I found out how big a deal Chicago was to railroading. That completed the deal for me.
I am playing snowbird this year to get away from Winter Maryland weather. Seems as if it followed me to Northeast Florida. Right now it is 34 and raining - a little further North it is freezing rain and some snow. West of here they are reporting about 60 miles of I-10 have been closed account iced over bridges and the resulting accidents.
In fact since I got down here this past Friday the temperature has only been above the 40's for several hours on Sunday. Heading further South over the weekend to Homestead - forcasted for the 50's & 60's....time will tell.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
It's 28 at the Crossroads of the West right now, with the sun showing itself from time to time.
Balt, are your sins finding you out and keeping you cold?
Growing up 50 miles south of Charlotte, we occasionally had freezing weather at night--and turned the water off and drained the pipes so they would not freeze. The worst weather was ice storms--keep your kerosene lamps handy.
Johnny
BaltACDSeems as if it followed me to Northeast Florida
One of our local hams winters in Florida, but checks in to a morning net each day via the 'Net. Yep - it's cold there, and they certainly aren't used to it.
We actually stayed above zero last night, as did the wind chill. The lake effect machine set up long enough to dump a foot of new snow in the usual band. Got about 3-4" here at the house.
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
work still busy.Ns sent a short stack train east and had cars uptown when I left work.Heard some Csx while I was cleaning off our dusting.Matt was able to go back to school today.Chores to do.
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").
Ns sent a westbound when I got off work.Chores to do.
Fun fact- you can write a post using the messages function in a reply box and get the use of spellcheck. Then, you can copy and paste that reply onto a thread and look smart...... Or, you can accidently hit the send button on the message page and send it to someone out of the blue and look like a total dummy. Don't ask how I know.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
We braved single-digit temperatures to go west again today.
After shopping for a while this morning in St. Charles, we headed west, with Rochelle as our destination. We were going to do lunch there as well ("I'm thinking Arby's", Pat says.). Once we got on top of the Peck/Keslinger overpass (a road intersection on a bridge over the railroad--think the opposite of Deval!), I looked west and saw the headlight of an eastbound in the distance. We went toward it on Keslinger, ready to dive in at whatever street worked for checking it out. That turned out to be LaFox Road, where we were first out at the grade crossing for an estbound train of auto racks.In this train, there were two Auto-Max cars in the middle of more typical racks. Pat hadn't remembered seeing anything like this before (trust me...she has!), and she asked whether these cars were for "maximum security" of the autos thereon.She couldn't understand why I had a laughing fit then and there. These Auto-Max cars were, of course, the "Shackle" cars of the good old days, intended to transport political prisoners to a concentration camp at Beech Grove (all according to conspiracy theorists). We had nearly gotten to DeKalb when we met an eastbound manifest train. Since manifests are the trains I like best, I turned around and chased that guy back through Cortland before turning on a side road and letting it stop me at a grade crossing. There were two sightings that I noted--I could have gotten more if the train were moving more slowly. When the train cleared, we took the back roads into Cortland. Deciding that lunch in Rochelle was a pretty remote possibility, we opted instead for Sam's Restaurant in downtown Cortland. Chris "CopCarSS" May introduced us to this place many years ago...it's an unpretentious place, popular with the locals, and serves good food. We've been back a few times since Chris took us there. It's about a half block from the tracks, but one can see the trains.More fun: the waitress came up and said, "Hi, my name is Barbara, and I'll be your waitress today." So I said, "Hi! My name is Carl, and this is my wife Pat." I don't think she was expecting that. But she played right along--shook hands with both of us. And she didn't forget our names, thanking me by name when we paid the bill.This time we got through DeKalb and on to Rochelle. Rochelle, I'm sad to report, was a disappointment to me today...no trains while we were there, the gas we were planning to buy wasn't as cheap as we found on the way out there (usually we can save quite a bit by filling up there), and the cars in the yard were somewhat monotonous, with nothing new or worth parking the car for. There was a neat piece of on-track equipment at the diamonds (on UP), but we didn't investigate--it was still only about 1 above, according to a local time-and-temp. So back toward home we went.In downtown DeKalb we were stopped by a westbound intermodal train. DeKalb is a good-sized city, but the railroad has no speed restriction whatsoever through there, and this guy was going every bit as fast as the timetable and cold-temperature restrictions allowed.Leaving DeKalb, we caught up to another eastbound manifest (I don't know where he was when we were headed west...I should have seen him). So once again I went through Cortland and got past his head end before turning into a side road to check him out. This was a better train than the first for me. After he cleared the crossing, we found a road that paralleled the tracks much closer than the highway, which we took into Maple Park. Back on the highway (Illinois 38), we encountered two trains at Meredith (a short westbound with frac-sand cars, and a stationary eastbound with manifest on the hind end and stack cars on the point--at least I think that was only one train). Next was a westbound train of empty coal cars seen in the distance east of Elburn.We had some shopping to do in St. Charles again, and we got the relatively-inexpensive gas in Geneva. Then we went into West Chicago, and out on the road along the tracks. Right by the block signal I was able to pull off the road when we saw a westbound manifest. This train was the best of the three I'd seen on this trip...good variety, and long, with two DPUs in the middle. After that, I was ready to bring my findings home, and no more trains were encountered, despite our hugging the tracks pretty much all the way into Lombard.Happy New Year! Hope the other 99 percent of the year is as good to us as the culmination of the first 3.65 days!
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, you and Pat certainly had a lovely day.
Pat now fully understands "security," I am sure. Incidentally, I have not seen anything lately about the "FEMA" cars.
We are having mild winter weather, without much snow--and, all too often, smog in the city. At times, I wish I were still living at "the top of the Avenues" for where Katie and I were living is above the smog level (a little over a mile high).
When I'm working on our trains in Utica, hard by the CSX Chicago Line, I'm always a bit awed by the "moving walls" the AutoMax cars present if you're near the tracks as they pass. They are tall.
Beech Grove is only one of the many "camps" the REX84 conspiracy folks list. Supposedly there are two of them at a military installation near here, but in my travels around the installation (and I covered most of it at one time or another) I never saw anything close.
Probably my favorite video from that whole conspiracy theory was one of a fellow walking around a single head searchlight signal, explaining how it was hooked up to satellites to guide the trains with the shackle cars to the camps... It was so idiotic as to be hilarious. I called him on it in the comments on YouTube and the video soon disappeared...
Your friendly neighborhood CNW fan.
Carl, thanks for jogging my memories of my college days which included westbound freights behind SD45's crossing Lincoln Hwy/4th St at track speed and the last run of the "Kate Shelley" on April 30, 1971.
afternoon
Ns had some cars uptown when I left work.Chores to do.Waiting for it to warm up.Maybe next week.
joe
Balt you should drift over this way to Phx. AZ. 40 deg. in early morn. Then up to 88deg. by10am . nice sunny days in a row. Up in the mtns. where I am at 3:30mst. it is a balmy82deg. on the back porch. This is at 3800ft. elv. up I17 past Sunset Point.
Y6bs evergreen in my mind
Currently at Homestead, FL - it got upto 62 today, supposed to be 68 Saturday and middle 70's on Sunday. Then treking back to Jacksonville.
Geez that's really tough Balt. Just spent $130 bucks getting deep snow shovelled off my roof and garage roof and have 3 Mt. Everests on the ground corners now.
A pile of marking to do as well from the goslings. I think you should come up here and help out as you are advertising yourself as being bored. I'll let you take one of my classics out on the lake and go nuts to sweeten the pot.
The cold air (-3.5F) and and wind (7-15 MPH) are conspiring to drive me nuts.
The wind chill alarm on my home weather station is set for -15F. The variable winds mean that said wind chill is also variable, and is occasionally dropping below the trigger point, at which time I have to go silence the alarm. Again.
We're due to have this stuff for a while yet.
They are starting to push the drought panic button in Colorado. The molehills to the west of Denver are at only 25% of the average snow pack for this time of year. The grass is crunchy down here on the flats and range fires are getting to be a concern.
Took mamma and Matt and spent my gift card for a good lunch in Toledo.We followed the NYC back through to see if anything came by.Ns sent some frieghts and a stack train by.Also a very late lakeshore Amtrak came by as well.They have the new signal bridge up in Wauseon but the signals are still bagged.In Archbold they had a frieght in the siding with a cp leader.It had a former sd 80 mac as the 2nd unit and a rail train with frieght cars tacked on the back too.Going to get some snow tomorrow night.Then the guessers say 40's and rain on Thursday.Might need to build that ark yet.
Csx was jammed up a bit this morning.Trains had broken hoses and stuck brakes.Things got rolling again.Guessers say a mess will be here in the morning.
Messy start this morning.Matt was closed today.After work Ns sent a westbound stack train and the local was uptown switching.Mother nature is thawing us out for now.Chores and projects to do here at home.
We're getting a short break from the extreme temperatures. Yesterday got into the mid-30's and today should be more of the same. 40's and rain are predicted for Wednesday.
+42 here at 7:10 this morning.
Deggesty +42 here at 7:10 this morning.
She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw
Mookie Deggesty +42 here at 7:10 this morning. Ditto here - until Thursday and then high of 8+
Ditto here - until Thursday and then high of 8+
I don't remember the details at the moment, but our heat wave will wave good-by tomorrow.
What is more important as of the moment is that the Dawgs' seawall, after successfully resisting the Tide for sixty minutes, gave way to the Tide in the overtime period last night.
Murphy SidingAwe come on! +8 will seem awesome the next time it's -8..... or maybe it doesn't get that cold down there in Who-ville.
Who-ter....
Deggesty I don't remember the details at the moment, but our heat wave will wave good-by tomorrow. What is more important as of the moment is that the Dawgs' seawall, after successfully resisting the Tide for sixty minutes, gave way to the Tide in the overtime period last night.
CSSHEGEWISCHHow could yesterday's game be considered a college championship game when both schools were from the same conference? Wire-service polls are not a very good way to decide which four schools get into a championship playoff. It should be decided strictly on the field.
A la basketball? With a week between games, football season would last until June... Not that some people would complain about that.
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