Comments on: It’s Train Day

By: penguin2

penguin2 — Mon, 11 May 2009 01:45:22 +0000

Now don’t think I’m crazy. Just think of all that they have in common-riding rails, jostling in a railroad car and seeing the sights, countryside or city. Trains bring a neat connection for the travelers.

I spent my childhood in NYC, riding subways, lived in Colorado and the trains out there show some of God’s beautiful country. The Durango Silverton Narrow Gauge still operates and that is God’s Country.

Today, I’m happy to take a train, even if it is Amtrak…yes, Happy Train Day.

By: Finrod

Finrod — Sun, 10 May 2009 20:41:04 +0000

To be precise, the Monon Bell, which is the traveling trophy which Wabash College (my alma mater) and DePauw University (our arch-rival) play for in football every November.

By: blooch

blooch — Sun, 10 May 2009 19:53:24 +0000

“…newborn babies don’t hold political views. They only know that they do not like to burn to death in their mothers arms, as happened in Dresden and Hiroshima and many other places.”

PeiperJ2, gaze upon this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7388762@N03/3295556197/

I wish I had the video I once saw of a concentration camp mother being forcibly separated from her toddler. The memory of it haunts me still. Primo Levi, for all his writing power, could never match it.

By: David123

David123 — Sun, 10 May 2009 19:53:06 +0000

had been the major turning points in World War 2 instead of Midway and Guadalcanal.

Maybe people in San Francisco and Berkeley would appreciate America and American values if they had spent some time under Tojo.

By: Achance

Achance — Sun, 10 May 2009 18:53:26 +0000

Stupid lefties complaining about US/British bombing in WWII being a war crime. It would be worth it to bring back some old Nazis, say some SS Totenkopt guys, just so you could turn some dope smoking, FM radio listening Lefties over to them. Where’s time travel when we really need it?

By: David123

David123 — Sun, 10 May 2009 18:38:31 +0000

especially, lots of radial engines [on B17s, B-24s, & B-29s].

Hope this link works and that you like it, achance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPgy4mZrYd4&feature=channel

I like trains too.

By: Ron Robinson

Ron Robinson — Sun, 10 May 2009 18:25:27 +0000

The Starlight Express was a nice experience for my family and me. It started off inauspiciously: my 8 yr old son made a rude remarkgesture to one of the porters. Once my son very clearly understood that the porters, conductors and cooks could have a very positive effect on our trip if they chose, and had him apologize, the trip went perfectly.

One of the greatest joys of train travel today is the other people you meet on the train. They are not like the fellow travellers on the airlines. They aree more thoughtful and more patient. And they seem to love our old heritage.

I agree with the commenter above that the Verde Canyon train is a wonderful experience – combine it with a chance to visit Jerome, AZ and you have a great 3 day weekend.

By: Achance

Achance — Sun, 10 May 2009 04:29:15 +0000

the diesel supplanted the steam engine. I don’t have the numbers in my head, but the service cycle on a steam engine was in the dozens of hours and on the diesel in the thousands. Probably the most common picture of steam engines is of the fireman walking around the engine iwth his oil can and grease gun. The diesel didn’t need that. That’s all it took.

If you’ve ever seen a radial engine aircraft started, you’ll know what your dad was talking about; they simply belch oil. Engine start is a cloud of smoke.

By: blooch

blooch — Sun, 10 May 2009 02:29:11 +0000

had two things in common: most of their guts were on the outside, and they required lots of oil. My dad worked on B-29′s in the ’50s, and he said those radials spewed and burned oil like you wouldn’t believe. He told me that the Junkers JU52, the corrugated German trimotor equivalent of our DC3, was so leaky that its range was severely limited by lube oil capacity, not fuel. Similarly, lubricating all of those exposed mechanisms on a steam engine must have been an engineering art in itself.

By: farstar99

farstar99 — Sun, 10 May 2009 01:20:52 +0000

Since it was the Mafia-run unions that got rid of them in the first place, and the Chicago Mafia’s puppet is in the White House, fat chance.

By: spedteacher

spedteacher — Sun, 10 May 2009 00:37:57 +0000

who would check the ceiling tiles and tap the floors and undercarriages for “escapees”. We were kids at the time we travelled, and we were American citizens to boot, so we never got harassed.

By: Achance

Achance — Sun, 10 May 2009 00:25:02 +0000

Woody Guthrie songs about riding the rods. Late 19th and early 20th Century rail cars had truss rods that kept them from becoming sway backed under the loads. There were usually four or more parallel steel rods under the car where a brave or stupid enough man could rest himself and ride. Of course, falling off was pretty much certain death, but if you couldn’t actually get into a car, the rods were the way to go.

By: Achance

Achance — Sun, 10 May 2009 00:21:13 +0000

Had if for years, just one of those things you collect because they’re cool. I never tried to model any of the Eastern roads but that big, bulky 2-8-0 with the overhung Elesco feedwater heater was just such an imposing locomotive that I think I spent the princely sum of $125 for it back in the ’70s. You don’t want to think about what a Japanese production brass model locomotive goes for these days, not that you could actually find a Japanese one new. The Japanese have the same out-sourcing problems we do.

Next time I get to G’burg, I’ll find the train; never done that.

By: larryp

larryp — Sat, 09 May 2009 22:11:16 +0000

I was travelling on a student tour thru Europe. We had the over-night couchette cars- 6 bunks, 3 to a side. If lucky it was all from the tour. But sometimes itwas odd- man-out and we shared the room with strangers. The hot book that summer, one of them, was Rosemary’s Baby. There were a couple of copies on the tour and we took turns. I can remember reading with that weak wall light at midnight about Rosemary et al in the couchette car—drama! Train clacking away at 50 mph.
When we crossed the border somewhere, the door would slide open and and the conductor would say something like:”Americain? Oui?” yes, one of us would say…Bang went the door closed.

By: LibRick

LibRick — Sat, 09 May 2009 21:58:40 +0000

You sparked an old memory. A group of us hopped a freight train to Pocatello Id. to see a Fleetwood Mac concert. Did it on a dare. Those were the days.

Happy Train day!

By: Achance

Achance — Sat, 09 May 2009 21:56:02 +0000

almost as much as I love the sound of steam. We still have a few radial engined airplanes operating here. The Greenies ran off the Dehaviland Otters with radials and they now all have turboprops, but there are still quite a few Beavers operating here. Up North, there are still some DC-6s and even a few DC-3s and C-47s still slogging along after sixty years or more. Northern Air Cargo had a whole fleet of C-118s, the side-door cargo version of the DC-6 and I have some great pictures of them operating off the dirt strips in rural Alaska, but NAC has now gone all jet; there’s a video available from Amazon of the last radial engine flight, cool stuff.

Even the old jets are pretty much gone now. Alaska operated a fleet of B-737-200 Combis that hauled freight and passengers in rural Alaska. Most were equipped with rock deflectors on the nosewheels and a bypass air duct that put a blast of air in front of the engine intakes so they wouldn’t suck in dirt and gravel. Thing’s were noisier ‘n Hell and many is the bureaucrat who has done his hungover penance for spending his last night in Anchorage in the sin dens by having to listen to the Godawful racket in the back of an old Combi on the way to Bethel, Kotzebue, or Barrow.

By: blooch

blooch — Sat, 09 May 2009 21:39:27 +0000

by himself as a young boy from Baltimore to Seneca, SC back every Summer in the ’40s and would carry his suitcase a few blocks to his Granpda’s hous eon Depot Street. His mother would probably be arrested for neglect today.

My Maternal Grandfather purchased few passenger cars in the ’70s ,after he divorced Grandma ,and he moved them onto a siding off the Pickens Railway, (Family ran the line at the time) where he lived until his death in 2004. He made some good moonshine in the dining car for years.

“If I could save sounds in a bottle,
The first thing that I’d like to do,
Is to save the growl of a radial engine,
And the call of a steam whistle, too.”

Apologies to Jim Croce.

By: spedteacher

spedteacher — Sat, 09 May 2009 20:29:46 +0000

was my very first train ride. It was a verrrry long time ago when the bandits and the sheriffs where allowed to use their guns.

My first train trip was from Germany to Hungary across the Iron Curtain. Now that was interesting, and I was only 12 years old. But this trip made me fall in love with trains, especially the ones with the “bedrooms”, as I called them. Very James Bond like.

By: Achance

Achance — Sat, 09 May 2009 20:23:05 +0000

Costs and enviromental regs caused them to shut down the incinerator. They contracted with Waste Management to run the thing and, of course, they want to do it as cheaply as possible, so they’re just stacking and covering general garbage. Last year it stunk insufferably for miles around the place and it is right in the middle of a commercial area, nice neighborhood, and even the State Pioneer’s Home. Plus, it is right on the route from the airport to town so a visitor’s first impression is that God awful stink. A certain amount of Hell raising got WM busy and now it is a spider web of piping and methane flares, so the stink is pretty much under control, but the eagles still love to hang out there.

By: Socrates

Socrates — Sat, 09 May 2009 20:19:40 +0000

Really, this comment is about trains and the telegraph, which made each other possible. Without the telegraph, there could not have been long-distance train travel, lest the railways hire someone to run along in front of the train to say the coast was clear. And without trains, there could have been no telegraph, for how could you fix the wires? It was a symbiotic relationship,

Trains and telegraphs made possible a boom in newspaper production. For the first time, newspapers could be syndicated, and could have reporters stationed in far-off locations with daily deadlines. Whereas in the 1840s news stories would sweep across the country in weeks, in the 1850s that turned into hours, with full reports within a day. And papers could be printed in one town and delivered by train all across a State or a region that day.

Trains made baseball the national sport, as teams from Boston and Chicago could be in the same league.

More here.