handicap-access catapult

My wife of nearly 40 years has surmised the handicap-access for the Newark train-station — a system that RG would be proud of.

Photo by Thomas R. Hughes (my nephew, a railfan like me).

Southbound Acela booms past the ancient Newark train-station on the Northeast Corridor in Delaware.

A northbound commuter-train pulls up to the Newark station on the track with the southbound Acela visible on it; the crew gets off; and they wheel the handicap-access catapult out from deep within the “bowls” of the station.
A happy wheelchair-patron is wheeled into the catapult bucket, the crew tightens the launching springs, and then let’s ‘er rip, lobbing the patron-and-his-wheelchair high across the blocking railing, across the 5-6 foot gap between the platform and the tracks, and into the car.
Crippled Granny yells “WEEE-HAAA!”
If a handicapped patron is terrified of “conforming” to such a gizmo, there are tidal-flats on the Delaware River filled with ice, and it’s ice-flow for him.
Triumph of engineering, baby. If he can’t see that, it’s ice-flow for him!
Ain’ nuthin’ ya can’t do with the faith of a mustard-seed, and a tanker-load a’ diesel. Yessireee Bobby! It’s a miracle, I tell ya!

The Newark train-station has a handicap-access ramp on the track farthest from the station. There ain’t no handicap-access to the platform. (Commuter-trains rarely use that track.)

“RG” is R.G. LeTourneau, who founded LeTourneau University in Texas, where my brothers got their engineering-degrees. Before the university, RG did a newsletter famous for tree-crushers and similar heavy gizmos. His solution to the ozone-hole was to install large ducts from the Los Angeles basin (where ozone is heavy) up to the stratosphere, and pump the ozone up where it belongs.

My tub-thumping conservative brother-in-Boston loudly insists “bowels” is spelled “bowls.”