Pennies squashed on rail and other news

[Anonymous]

Gee! thats funny,when i was working there the locos were sound and the paint was crap. I wouldn't shoot your mouth off unless you worked in one of the SP shops!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous]

Hi Tim, I never got to work for the SP but the locos were more mechanically sound than the UP's.I think the meltdown was caused by the UP top brass wouldn't listen to the old SP ways of thinking. It was their way!. hence the meltdown.
marty

[dknelson]

The real problem with the SP/UP "merger" is that SP was spending all its money on keeping its engines beautifully painted and sparkling clean.
Dave Nelson

[Mookie]

Lincoln Nebraska - I have a friend that is originally from Nebraska - she has lived all over California. Finally landed in La Quinta. But has been in Oakley, San Diego (my favorite) Riverside, La Quinta twice, Corona and Mira Loma.
She hated Oakley - too cold - and she is native Nebraskan!

Jen

[sooblue]

The Tom thumb maybe.*lol*

[Anonymous]

Marty, sorry to interupt, you being a ex S.P. man perhaps you can answer a question for me. It had been rumoured, that the reason for the U.P. and S.P. melt down after the merge was that the last year before the merge S.P. was repairing there engines with bailing wire and duct tape is this true? I do not work for the railroad, My sister is going for her doctorate in bussiness and is writing a paper on that mess.
TIM ARGUBRIGHT

[JoeKoh]

thanks ed i'll check it out.Now that we have warmer weather and no rain my honeydo listcan get done.
stay safe
joe

[Anonymous]

Roseville is about 15 miles east of Sacramento Ca.on the old SP mainline over the Sierra Nevada mountains. where are you located?
marty

[Mookie]

hee hee - we have some old hoggers on here who will hopefully, back me up. If not, well I get to pick who administers the test! And while we are in here - where is Roseville?

Jen

[Anonymous]

i never heard that before. that could be rather tough to explain to the dispatcher. would you have to take a pee test after that one?
marty

[Anonymous]

i did a 2 year trick at UP's roseville loco shop and service track. i did everything from changing TM's & turbo's to hostling, assembling and outbound departure testing.
marty

[Mookie]

you know... I forgot to ask! Well, duh me, I will have to check into that and get back to you!

Jen

[edblysard]

Winged pigs, or just plain ones?
Ed

[edblysard]

The Port Terminal Railroad Assocation, in Houston Texas.
Founded in 1924, to the serve the City docks and the Houston ship Channel industries.
Currently we have 450 customers on both sides of the channel, our member lines are BNSF, UP, and KSC.
We fall into the class 3 catagory, a switching and terminal railroad.
Type PTRA into your search enging to see so photos.
Stay Frosty,
Ed

[Mookie]

Since we are talking $ - here's my 2 cents -
Heard years ago that a pig would derail an engine, since they are round and roll rather than splatter. Assume they could do that to a modern diesel, but not for sure. Anyone care to comment?

Jen

[Anonymous]

HEY ED
what RR do you work for?
Marty

[Anonymous]

i was a machinist at the UP roseville service track and the only thing worse than grade crossing damage, was when they would hit a cow. LOTS OF PIECES AND PARTS. ROUGH ON THE NOSE TOO!

[bfsfabs]

Always good to hear from the Arts & Entertainment editor from time to time. Great story. I don't beleive a word of it but, good story. Insightful up to the minute reporting.

Lowell

[dknelson]

Squashed bugs on the windshields of Santa Fe's Alco PAs could accumulate to as much as a foot thick. Some crews would scrape this off and keep it as a souvenir. There is currently an E-Bay auction for such a scraping the current bidding has hit $27.
Dave Nelson

[JoeKoh]

when they aren't scraping paint off the locomotive they car crush whats left of the vehicles invovled in train collisions.won't be a lot left.
stay safe
joe

[edblysard]

Well done.
Yhe Unihead Ed

[sooblue]

There is a stretch of track located in Mpls. Mn
that has had so many pennies squashed on it that the rail is copper coated for 1 mile.

The earliest date of the pennies is 1910.
for 300 feet the color goes from copper to tin as durring WWII tin was used instead of copper.

BNSF refusses to replace that stretch of track claiming that it is a landmark and brings in extra revenue as shippers want it known that their product has traveled the copper mile.

BNSF is studying how to upgrade said mile as the rail is getting rather thin in spots. They are trying to transfer the pennies to new rail.

The UP on the other hand is begining to finaly scrape the auto paint off the front of it's lead engines after years of continuous grade crossing hits.
Says UP: "after 1500 hits per year the paint gets a little thick and begins to slow the engines down some"

It's thought that 2 new jobs will be added to UPs staff just for paint scraping.
Names have circulated for days. The top two names and by far the leading experts in UPs opinion are
-------- and ----. UP has been looking for them for some time now. The last clue they had as to their where abouts was that they had waders on and they were carrying shovels.
Others say they were spotted trying to peal off pennies from the copper mile in Mpls. MN.

Will UP find M&M?
Will the paint scraping really start?
will BNSF replace the copper Mile?
Only time will tell