Facebook has become “unfriendly”

It seems to have become a tool for business-promotion.
“‘Like’ us and receive free coupons.”
“Liking” has been perverted. I thought “liking” was to be one-sided. This sounds like a business transaction. Tit-for-tat! Do this and you get a discount.
Facebook has also gotten extraordinarily technical.
A friend described it perfectly.
“It’s hard to navigate,” he said.
“You need to set parameters,” he said.
“Parameters, schmameters,” I thought. “I got better things to do.”
It reminds me of my newspaper’s website, which when I was doing it wasn’t too challenging.
Now it’s so complicated I no longer look at it.
Facebook is the same way.
Every night I get up around 1 a.m. to let my dog out.
When I do I fire up my iPhone to see if I got any e-mails while I was asleep.
I’ve gotten e-mails from people who were up after midnight.
The other night I got one from Facebook.
“See what you missed!” it blared.
Is Suckerberg monitoring my visits?
I clicked the e-mail, and once I got past the solicitation to get “Facebook for iPhone” — I don’t call that “viewing what I missed......”
I opened a gigantic e-mail of pictures and links to every “friend” posting I hadn’t viewed.
It went on-and-on through at least 15 screens. I gave up; I tired of scrolling.
That -a) a friend will soon turn 44, and -b) another friend photographed a pretty sunset (she attached a picture), are interesting, but “Hello Marsha” isn’t.
A lot of what’s on Facebook is like that, drivel.
I admit, I’ve always been mad at Facebook. That’s because they pulled a fast-one to get me to join, and/or, I was ignorant of what I was doing. To use my ignorance to get me to sign up is a fast-one to me: manipulation.
I also don’t like that Facebook is always different every time I visit. I always have to figure it out. They’re always dickering. They can’t leave well-enough alone.
—My brother-in-Boston refuses to get a Facebook. With Facebook your privacy gets tossed out the window.
—Another friend refuses to get Facebook: “I got enough real friends as it is.” True, and Facebook “friends” aren’t the same as real friends. Facebookers brag about how many “friends” they have. Some have thousands. I stopped at 47. My aunt has only one “friend,” my brother who set her up.
—Another friend, who has a Facebook, suggests “Facebook is for those lacking a life.”
I’ve been tempted to end my Facebook.
But I haven’t.
I have actual friends who use Facebook.
Although I’m sick of the ads with some lithesome big-breasted smiling hotty, displaying acres of cleavage, trumpeting mortgage refinance for Seniors (like me).
And ads of pictures I’ve posted on this blog as PhotoBucket links.
I put up with it, but hardly ever look at it.
And you can bet your bottom dollar I never click those ads.
I clicked one once for my high-school yearbook, and now I get e-mails every day suggesting I join: “only 25 bucks gets you instant gratification and meaning for your life.”
I’ve categorized those e-mails as “junk,” but they seem to have some cookie that unjunks them.

• “My newspaper” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger, from where I retired over seven years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years (over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern [I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well]). (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 14 miles away.)
• “Suckerberg” is of course Mark Zuckerberg, head-honcho of Facebook.

Be good to the earth

Be good to the earth, use 100 percent recycled aluminum foil.
Aluminum foil is available as recycled aluminum.
Soda cans instead of aluminum-ore?
My wife (now gone) and I were greenies; we used recycled aluminum foil.
I continue the tradition, being a greenie myself.
Recycled aluminum foil made by Reynolds was available at my local Wegmans supermarket. That’s what I bought.
A while ago Wegmans stopped selling it, but I noticed recycled aluminum foil at another supermarket I patronize.
It’s not Reynolds; it’s “If You Care” brand. They also sell the unbleached chlorine-free baking cups I use to make muffins. They work really well = non-stick.
“If You Care” purports to be “environmentally friendly.”
I also use paper-towels, toilet-paper, and facial tissues made by “Marcal Small-Steps,” made from recycled paper.
Another legacy of my wife.
Supposedly “Small-Steps” saves millions of trees.
Every Monday night I eat baked tilapia fish.
I wrap it in aluminum foil, and bake it 25 minutes at 350 degrees.
I noticed the other night I had run out of aluminum foil.
So I put it on my list I keep in my iPhone to purchase it at that supermarket that sells “If You Care.”
Okay, open new package to set up tilapia for baking.
“If You Care” recycled aluminum foil is rolled onto a cardboard tube, then taped to avoid unraveling.
So carefully remove tape. No can do! The tape itself came apart.
So remove enough foil to tear off the part with the tape.
Again, no can do!
The foil is splitting where the tape was. I’m getting two halves.
So, engage box-cutter and kitchen knife to try to unattach the tape.
No can do!
The foil continues to tear itself into two halves, even though the tape is removed.
Minutes have passed! I’m already up to 20.
Just getting to this aluminum foil is turning into an engineering nightmare.
More box-cutting. Now the foil is peeling off in tiny fragments. No longer am I getting the halves.
Utter frustration! I need that aluminum foil to make my supper. Already I’m up to a half-hour, and have wasted about three square feet of foil.
Finally, I gave up! Drive car 15 minutes back to store to exchange engineering challenge for foil I can use, even if not recycled.
“I’m mad as Hell,” I said to the callow service-clerk in the supermarket.
“I bought this stuff yesterday, and it’s just plain impossible. I need aluminum foil to make my supper, which is being delayed an hour.”
The clerk started poking around with my foil, which I knew he would. Time marches on!”
“How about you get another box of this recycled stuff, and I’ll see if I get the same problem.”
“We’ll try,” I said, as I marched hurriedly to the foil aisle.
I picked up both recycled and non-recycled.
But the kid got the recycled to work.
Back to my house with a functioning recycled.
But it’s the last recycled I’ll ever buy, unless I can get Reynolds.
I don’t need madness.
I was an hour-and-a-half late starting supper.

• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.
• “Wegmans” is a large supermarket-chain based in Rochester I often buy groceries at. They have a store in Canandaigua. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city to the east nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” It’s about 14 miles east. I live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.)

Corroborated

Five New York Central railroads from the Rochester-area to the Niagara Frontier.

The July issue of my newsletter of Rochester and Genesee Valley Railroad Museum came the other day (Tuesday, July 16th 2013). The newsletter is called “the Semaphore.” (Railroad signals were once semaphores — vertical was “clear,” horizontal was “stop,” and diagonal was “restricting.”)
Rochester and Genesee Valley Railroad Museum used to be an early chapter of National Railway Historical Society (NRHS). I think the Rochester Chapter was founded in 1937.
The group recently decided to break with National Railway Historical Society. The Rochester Chapter had various rail-preservation projects NRHS wouldn’t support.
Rochester and Genesee Valley Railroad Museum is pretty extensive. It has its own railroad, a preservation-shop, and a slew of equipment. It even operates an old trolley with overhead wire over part of its railroad.
Their railroad is not elaborate. It’s stick-rail, not welded, the old way of doing things; 33-foot lengths of rail bolted together. It’s only good for 10-15 mph.
The organization is volunteer. That is, its railroad was built by volunteers. Its operating-equipment was restored by volunteers.
I’ve belonged to this organization since 1985, mainly to get their newsletter. That’s to keep track of anything that might be of interest to me as a railfan.
Other than that, I’m not involved in club activities, although I’ve attended occasional meetings. I’d attend more, but they usually conflict.
The newsletter had an interesting article I found pleasing. It corroborates much of the alleged “railroad history” I’ve floated in this blog.
New York Central System came to dominate railroading in New York state.
Curiously there were five New York Central lines to get from the Rochester area to the Niagara Frontier.
One, of course, is the New York Central mainline. The others are the “West Shore” (the old New York, West Shore & Buffalo), “Falls Road” to Niagara Falls via Brockport, Medina, and Lockport, the “Hojack,” and the “Peanut.”
I think only the NYC main remains, now owned by CSX. Everything else was pretty much abandoned, although sections of the West Shore are still used.
The Hojack is the old Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg near Lake Ontario.
The RW&O wished to compete with New York Central, although NYC came to control it. I don’t know how.
I’ve read a torrent of opinions where the nickname “Hojack” came from; no one knows for sure. Most plausible is would-be passengers flagging down RW&O trains at flag-stops with “Ho Jack.”
The Hojack became a farm railroad, although Xerox located its plant along it east of Rochester.
The Hojack was so overgrown, crews assigned to it called it “the jungle run.”
West of Rochester, the Hojack was abandoned early. It didn’t serve much.
East of Rochester was only Xerox, and Rochester-to-Xerox was soon abandoned.
The New York, West Shore & Buffalo was financed by the Pennsylvania Railroad, an effort to cut into New York Central’s monopolistic hold on railroad traffic across New York state.
Completed, the West Shore pretty much paralleled the NYC main, often within sight of it, except it didn’t actually go into New York city. It used the west shore of the Hudson river, and ended up in north Jersey across from New York city.
In response to Pennsy’s efforts in New York, and partly because Andrew Carnegie was tired of paying Pennsy’s monopolistic shipping-rates for steel, the South Pennsylvania Railroad was proposed.
It was never built, but much of it was graded, and tunnels dug.
Financier J.P. Morgan decided enough! He gathered all the warring parties on his yacht in Long Island Sound and forged a deal.
The South Pennsylvania Railroad would go unbuilt, and the West Shore would go to New York Central.
The South Pennsylvania effort was abandoned, and pretty much became the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
South Pennsylvania’s tunnels were incorporated in the Turnpike, although they had to be re-dug to accommodate a highway. Probably widened.
One Turnpike tunnel has since been abandoned, and the Turnpike run over the mountain. It’s not a challenging grade, but would be too much for a railroad.
There were quite a few tunnels. The South Pennsylvania was traversing the southern part of Pennsylvania. There were more mountains.
Most of the West Shore has been abandoned, although two portions are still active. West Shore south of Rochester became the Rochester Bypass, and the line along the west shore of the Hudson is used by CSX to access the New York city area.
Regrettably West Shore never became Nickel Plate’s access to New York city. Merging it with New York Central skonked that.
Even during the ‘70s Penn-Central and Conrail were using the Falls line to get trains directly to Niagara Falls. A train to Detroit or Chicago via Ontario, Canada might use the Falls line, cross into Ontario, then reenter the U.S.A. at Detroit. That was more direct than going around Lake Erie.
Somewhere I have a crude black-and-white photograph taken in Fall, 1966 of a New York Central freight led by dirty Alco FAs diverting off the NYC main onto the Falls line.
The Falls line was built as Lockport & Niagara Falls, and acquired by NYC in 1853.
I think the Falls Road went all the way into downtown Rochester, but New York Central built a later junction on the city’s west side. My picture was at that junction.
The article implies CSX still operates the line from Niagara Falls out to Lockport, which means there must be a viable freight-source (or destination) out there in Lockport. Lockport was where the original Erie Canal used seven locks to climb the Niagara Escarpment. Now the State Barge Canal does it in three.
Conrail abandoned the trackage into Rochester in 1994, and sold the remaining trackage Brockport-to-Lockport to Genesee Valley Transportation in 1996.
I’ve always thought the Falls Road right-of-way from Brockport into Rochester would make a good rail-commuter line. Something similar was done to an old railroad line in south Jersey. It’s very successful.
The article is titled “Six Ways to Sunday,” and six NYC branches are shown on the map. But only five go to the Niagara Frontier.
The sixth line is the “Auburn Road,” which as I understand it was the first railroad across New York from Syracuse to Rochester.
But it’s roundabout. It hit various small towns west of Syracuse, like Auburn, Clifton Springs, Geneva and Canandaigua. (Geneva and Canandaigua are now cities; Auburn might be too.) —It stops in Rochester.
The article also mentions the Direct Railroad from Rochester to Syracuse. The “Direct” took a challenge the Auburn avoided, crossing the Irondequoit Defile.
The Auburn was built about 1830, and skirts the Defile to the south.
The “Direct” was built in the 1850s, and crosses the Defile on a fill.
The Irondequoit Defile was once the outlet of the Genesee River, but ice-age glaciers blocked that. The Defile is not that deep, but wide.
On average the fill is about 30-50 feet, but at one point, over Irondequoit Creek, it’s 80-100 feet.
I find mention of the “Direct Railroad” rewarding. It corroborates what I’ve published in this blog. Thoughts about the Irondequoit Defile are mine. I know grading in 1830 was rudimentary. The Irondequoit Defile would have been impossible.
I suspect the “Direct Railroad” faced another difficult grading challenge, the vast Montezuma Swamp north of Geneva. The Auburn avoided that.
Much of the Auburn is operated by Finger-Lakes Railway, a shortline. It can do okay because it doesn’t operate under big-railroad work-rules.
But north of Canandaigua the Auburn no longer exists.
A tiny segment exists in Victor, but it connects to another shortline on what used to be Lehigh Valley’s mainline through Victor.
Lehigh Valley is also defunct. It’s not shown on the map, and the Auburn is abandoned into Rochester.
Lehigh Valley had a branch into Rochester, and in my opinion was the best railroad across Western New York — except it avoids traffic-generators like Rochester and Syracuse.
Most interesting to me is the “Peanut,” since I cross its old right-of-way four times just taking my dog to the park. If I use the back way to Canandaigua, I cross it two more times, and could cross it once more if I drove into Canandaigua from the north.
Years ago I took a hot-air balloon ride west of Canandaigua. What stood out was the right-of-way of the Peanut, which determined farm-field borders.
The Peanut doesn’t go from Rochester, but it starts in the area.
The Peanut was built in the 1850s as the Canandaigua & Niagara Falls. And the Semaphore says so, which agrees with what I published in this blog.
The Semaphore also states the nickname “Peanut” originated with a NYC executive when the line was merged in 1858. That the Canandaigua & Niagara Falls was a peanut-sized railroad compared to the mighty New York Central mainline.
That also agrees with what I’ve said.
As I understand it, the Canandaigua & Niagara Falls’ intent was to move Pennsylvania coal delivered to Canandaigua directly to the Niagara Frontier, stealing from a less direct routing via the Auburn and the NYC main.
But it never became dominant. It became a farm railroad, serving the little towns it passed through.
Quite a bit of the Peanut was abandoned in 1939, including the segment north of my house.
A section from the Niagara Frontier to Caledonia (“kal-uh-DON-yuh;” as in “don’t”) was active until Conrail abandoned Batavia to Caledonia in 1982.
A stub from Canandaigua to an Agway in nearby Holcomb was operated into the ‘70s. I remember a dirty Penn-Central Alco RS-3 switching the Agway.
Holcomb seceded long ago from adjacent Bloomfield village. It has since reincorporated with Bloomfield village. The Agway has been torn down. I live about four miles from Bloomfield village.
The Peanut crossed the major intersection in Holcomb. It had to be flagged.
The Peanut also crossed the major intersection in Ionia (“eye OWN-yuh”), but that’s part of the 1939 abandonment. The Ionia station still stands.
I’ve traced quite a bit of the Peanut. I’ve walked the old right-of-way north of my house (about two miles north).
The Peanut had various grading challenges.
North of my house is on a huge fill, and rivers had to be bridged.
That Holcomb RS-3 would have faced a short stiff grade getting back to Canandaigua.
West of Holcomb was another short stiff grade, but that was part of the 1939 abandonment. I’m not even sure where the railroad was, except I see the remains of a highway crossing.
The stone abutments for a crossing of Honeoye Creek (“HONE-eee-oy;” as in “boy”) in Honeoye Falls still stand. —I think the railroad-bridge was covered; I’ve seen old postcards.
I’ve traced the Peanut west of Honeoye Falls, but after that I haven’t.
The Peanut probably never should have been built. Promoters cashing in on the Nineteenth Century railroad craze. —Shipping coal directly from Canandaigua to the Niagara Frontier, instead of ziggity-zag via the Auburn and the NYC main.
People from small towns along the proposed route invested in the railroad. Proposed railroads were rerouted if more investment came from an alternate town.
Small towns wanted rail shipping. Investors wanted to make a killing.
But it was all pie-in-the-sky. Stealing coal-traffic from an established route, and/or growing tiny towns like Ionia, Holcomb, and Caledonia.
And so the Peanut came into being, silly but worth tracing. What I do is hike the old right-of-way, imagining trains chuffing lazily through beautiful countryside, hauling perhaps a car or two for delivery to a small-town team-track.
I used to do this as a teenager. I traced an abandoned farm railroad in south Jersey. Even found a few track spikes I still have. The railroad was Philadelphia, Marlton & Medford.
I dreamed of modeling the PMMR in HO-gauge; gigantic 4-8-8-4 articulateds hauling perhaps three 40-foot wooden boxcars of Jersey tomatoes for Campbell Soup in Camden.
On a railroad that made so little money it couldn’t afford to operate an elderly 4-4-0.
Which is why it was torn up — abandoned.
But the Semaphore repeating the same railroad history I’ve published in this blog makes me feel better. I felt pretty sure about what I said; I read it somewhere, but I don’t remember where.

• New York Central went down the eastern shore of the Hudson river into New York city.
• “Nickel Plate” is the New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad, called the “Nickel Plate” long ago by a New York Central executive because it was so competitive. The railroad eventually renamed itself “Nickel Plate.” Norfolk & Western Railroad bought the Nickel Plate years ago, and N&W has since merged with Southern Railway, to become Norfolk Southern. Nickel Plate never actually attained New York city; it stopped at Buffalo, NY.
• Small towns often had only “team-tracks,” where railroad-cars would be parked for unloading onto horse-and-wagon (later trucks).
• HO-gauge (half O-gauge) is 16.5 millimeters (0.64961 inches) between the rails. HO-gauge has become the most popular model-railroad gauge.
• “Campbell Soup” had its plant in Camden, NJ, across from Philadelphia, PA. It located there because of the prolific vegetable output of south Jersey.

Macho superiority

The other day (Saturday, July 13th, 2013) I encountered a strident expression of macho superiority.
I fell in behind a newish red Dodge Ram pickup, and on a thin panel below the tailgate was lettered “Real trucks don’t have sparkplugs.”
Well, yes, a gasoline engine uses sparkplugs to ignite the fuel mixture in its cylinders, and most pickups use gasoline engines.
Diesel-engines don’t use sparkplugs.
The fuel self-ignites when sprayed (“injected”) into the hot air-filled cylinder, at its point of highest compression (hottest), when the piston is at the top of the cylinder.
Large trucks, tractors and railroad locomotives migrated to diesel-engines. They’re economical and produce immense torque.
My how things have changed!
In my youth the goal was speed, signifying immense power-output at higher engine-speeds, allowing those higher speeds.
What every boy wanted was a hotrod or a Corvette, incredible top-end power and speed potential.
Speed of course is dangerous. To be able operate a car at high speed indicated the prolific size of one’s testicles.
Such power represented masculinity. The fact one’s car was faster than another meant the driver was a stud.
Diesel, at that time, was laughing-stock. Diesel was wimpy. Diesel could not generate the top-end power that signified incredible masculinity.
But that seems to have flip-flopped.
Now the symbol of masculinity has become the truck, preferably with a diesel engine, like the big-boys (the 18-wheelers).
I look in Corvettes and they’re usually driven by older gentlemen, bearded guys in their 50s and 60s.
The young studs and stud wannabees are choosing trucks, giant pickups standing tall with diesel engines.
Top-end speed isn’t what matters to these guys. What matters is low-end grunt. How much load can it pull?
The fact a lot can be pulled seems a measure of masculinity.
Dodge has a diesel option for its full-size pickups, a Cummins truck-diesel.
These engines generate immense torque.
No doubt the Ram I was following had a Cummins diesel.
You can tell these monsters by their sound. Diesel-trucks chuff. There also is usually a whistling turbocharger.
I think the Cummins diesel is turbocharged.
An even greater measure of masculinity is the size of the truck. The goal seems to be duallys (below), a pickup with four tires on the rear axle, dual tires at each end.

A Dodge Ram dually.

Fenders have to be installed each side of the pickup-box, since the extra tires are outside the pickup-box.
Sometimes those fenders are sheet-metal, but they’re quite often fiberglas.  Often they get hit. I’ve seen partially disintegrated extender-fenders flapping in the breeze.
I wouldn’t touch one of those behemoths with a 10-foot pole!
I’ve never got into profiling.
I like fast cars, but only because they’re fun to drive. I’m not interested in racing or profiling.
I’ve been invited to race hundreds of times, especially on my motorcycle.
I pass. I’m not Mario Andretti. I don’t have the moves or reactions, nor do I have the nerve to take risks.
What determines my choice in autos is not what image I wanna project.
It’s what do I wanna do with it.
I suppose chasing trains is my biggest requirement. —I’m a railfan and have been since age-2 (I’m 69).
To successfully chase trains I need All-Wheel-Drive and high ground-clearance.
You get high ground-clearance with a truck, but I can just imagine chasing trains with something the size of an aircraft-carrier.
I’ve chased trains down narrow dirt roads where a dually would be way too big.
I also can’t imagine driving to Altoona (PA; where I chase trains) in a truck.
Nor chuffing along to a diesel cadence.
What I need is an SUV. It has the ground-clearance of a truck, yet rides like a car. SUVs are often All-Wheel-Drive. They’re not a Jeep, but a Jeep wouldn’t be a pleasant cruise.

My new Ford Escape, purchased used with only 3,000 miles; it’s 2012.

I am now on my second SUV, a Ford Escape (at left). My first was a Honda CR-V. The Escape is my CR-V replacement, although slightly bigger, and I’m sure heavier.
And it solves some of the problems of the CR-V, namely a side-hinged rear-door that hit my garage-door, and relative dog-unfriendliness.
My Escape has a top-hinged rear-door that clears my garage-door, and the earlier Escape (mine is a 2012) is the most dog-friendly SUV I’ve ever seen, at least at that size.
My Escape also happens to have a V6, not available in the CR-V (it was an inline-4).
I liked my CR-V, but I like my Escape more.
I’m very impressed. Although I could do without some of the Escape’s styling gimcracks.
I suppose my Escape projects an image, but if so that image is function.
Charging a narrow farm-track, chasing a train, without worrying about holing the oil-pan.
Navigating icy conditions easily with All-Wheel-Drive.
And navigating byways too narrow for a diesel pickup.
A youngish guy lifts weights in the YMCA Exercise-Gym where I work out.
He drives a white Dodge Ram pickup with a large “Ram-it” decal in the rear window.
What does that guy see in that thing? He doesn’t need it. He’s a nice guy. Why does he need such an abomination?

• My current dog is “Scarlett” (two “Ts,” as in Scarlett O’Hara), a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s eight, and is my sixth Irish-Setter, a high-energy dog. (A “rescue Irish Setter” is an Irish Setter rescued from a bad home; e.g. abusive or a puppy-mill. [Scarlett was from a failed backyard breeder.] By getting a rescue-dog, we avoid puppydom, but the dog is often messed up. —Scarlett isn't bad. She’s my fourth rescue.)
• “Turbocharging”is to drive a supercharger with an exhaust-driven turbine. The supercharger forces more intake-air (and fuel, if gasoline) into the engine.
• I (we) drove the CR-V 10 years. My wife died April 17th, 2012.
• I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym, appropriately named the “Wellness-Center,” usually three days per week, about two-three hours per visit. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city to the east nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” It’s about 14 miles east. —I live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.)

Supposition alert!

A torrent of supposition is flying around because of this oil-train catastrophe in Quebec.
It’s because I’m a railfan amidst other railfans, and unfortunately there’s a few things we think we know about railroading.
It’s also because we’re far from the disaster, and are getting our reports from the media, who can be just as misinformed.
A friend of mine, who would be all-too-familiar with the occasional stupidity of workers, wonders if the train’s operator forgot to set the train’s brakes when parked, so it ran away causing the disaster.
I have a hard time imagining that, although it’s possible (see end of blog).
I’ve read two possible scenarios: -1) that teenagers (or possibly terrorists) released the brakes, or -2) the local Fire-Department shut off the only running locomotive that would be maintaining air-pressure to keep the brakes on.
I no longer understand how train-brakes work. I know how they worked at first. Air-pressure took the brakes off, and lack of air-pressure applied them.
I think this is still true. If an air-hose coupling parts releasing the air-pressure, the train-brakes set (the train “goes into emergency”).
But train-brakes are more complicated now.
At Transit, our buses had “air brakes.” The bus’s motor worked an air-compressor to maintain 100-150 pounds air-pressure in a holding-tank.
The brake-pedal released this air-pressure to apply the brakes. Floor the pedal and you got full pressure to the brakes. Just caress the pedal and you might get only a 10-pound application.
I think something like this might now apply to train-brakes, although as I say I don’t understand.
So, for such a system to keep working, something has to maintain air-pressure.
I’ve read various reports.
The train had four locomotives, and was parked because one was on fire, or a tankcar was on fire — sounds like a frozen wheel-bearing (a “hot wheel”).
(What was on fire has never been made clear.)
The local Fire-Department had been called to put out the fire.
The train’s engineer shut down three of the locomotives. One was left running to maintain air-pressure.
The Fire-Department shut down that locomotive, so now the train-brakes could bleed off, and the train run away.
It’s a train, an assemblage of 73 cars. There’s bound to be a minor air-leak somewhere.
With that locomotive no longer active to maintain air-pressure, you’re asking for a runaway.
Unfortunately the train-engineer wasn’t around to not allow this shut-off.
I’ve also read about teenagers tampering with train-brakes. While that’s entirely possible, they’d have to be knowledgeable. Train-brakes are very sophisticated, although it’s possible to try a few things until the train starts rolling.
I like the Fire-Department story, that they were ignorant of the significance of shutting down that locomotive.
I also received an e-mail decrying the use of a rudimentary line to move such dangerous cargo. My earlier friend noted the line was “secondary.” —I’ve never heard of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway.
My friend was wondering if a secondary line would have Automatic-Train-Stop (ATS). ATS is a system to apply the train-brakes to stop the train if the engineer doesn’t respond properly to a restrictive signal.
But I don’t know as ATS keeps the brakes set. It just stops the train. I have this on a train-video. ATS stops a Northeast Corridor train, then the engineer restarts it.
I have since received a Reuters story that seems to have it right.
Each car of a train has independent-braking. A wheel cranks chains or cables that set the brakes. It’s a last-resort safety-measure. If a train is parked, someone has to set these independent brakes, in this case the train’s engineer.
That person doesn’t have to set brakes on all the cars, just enough to keep the train from running away.
The train-engineer set brakes on 11 cars. The train was parked on a 1.2 percent grade (1.2 feet up for every 100 feet forward), not very steep, but steep enough to cause a runaway.
Setting independent car-brakes is time-consuming. It’s one car after another.
It was a heavy train. Prevailing wisdom is the engineer should have set 20 cars, maybe 30, not just 11.
Okay, this is the most plausible explanation yet, like the media finally got it right. Not just winging it with wild supposition. (Everything I’ve read previously was filled with wild supposition = first right-or-wrong.)
But on the other hand, a locomotive left running to maintain air-pressure is also credible. The railroad’s rules say all locomotives are to be shut down.
But the engineer left one running, perhaps to maintain air-pressure to offset the shortage of cars on which he set independent brakes.
Once parked the train ran away, and disaster ensued.
One also wonders why it “exploded” when it derailed. Crude-oil is flammable, but not explosive.
Investigation is trying to determine if the train also had explosive cargo.
Then too the crude-oil leaked into the town’s storm-drain system.
That crude was of course on fire. Fire was distributed all over the town via the drainage-system. Some even drained into a nearby lake, causing fire on the lake.
The Reuters story sounds plausible, that the train’s engineer didn’t set enough independent car-brakes to hold the train even if all locomotives were shut down.
It sounds like he took a shortcut that destroyed a town.

• “Transit” equals Regional Transit Service, the public transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY, where I drove transit-bus for 16&1/2 years (1977-1993). My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. I pretty much recovered.

Stuck again

Lessee, 4:15. I got time to mow the paths and the front-yard.
The paths seem dry enough. I’ll just avoid the wet.
I arrowed my giant zero-turn mower around the back of my house, fixin’ to mow the paths on the north side.
Down a path I went. It looked muddy ahead. I turned around.
I attacked another path.
Easy as pie!
Uh-oh, wetness ahead. I turned around again.
I attacked a third path. It didn’t need it, but I kept going. No puddles ahead, but a muddy spot.
The mower got stuck again.
I got off and tried to re-angle it.
It stayed stuck.
I called Brenda Tripp, who pushed me out last time.
“Are you stuck again?” she cried. “I’m home, but I’ll call my brother and see if he can help.”
She called back right away. “My brother is in Honeoye Falls, and is coming home. He’ll stop at your house in about 15 minutes.”
My sneakers were slathered with mud. I figured I’d collect trash for the next day in those 15 minutes, but I dared not go in the house with those sneakers.
I was putting the sneakers back on as Brenda’s brother pulled in.
I don’t even know his name.
“The only way out of here is to back up the path,” I said. “There’s no place to turn around. It’s all wet.”
I got on, started, and her brother pushed the front. In fact, big strapping dude that he is, he lifted the front. That thing weighs at least 700 pounds.
On to the relatively dry.
I backed up the narrow path, which is hard to do. I slammed adjacent trees, and almost got stuck again.
“I’m puttin’ this thing away,” I shouted, as I backed into the clear.
“Any time,” her brother said, as he got in his truck.
“Thanks,” I said. I should have asked his name.
I put the mower away, but realized I could still mow the front yard.
No wetness there. Perhaps 15-20 minutes.
The rest of the paths went undone. I ain’t riskin’ gettin’ that thing stuck.
That’s twice this year, but I’ve realized it’s not such a disaster.
That mower is heavy, but people push cars out of snowbanks.
I remember guys pushing a bus out of a snowbank when I was at Transit.
It’s just that I’m alone, and need another person.

• My “zero-turn” is my 48-inch riding-mower; “zero-turn” because it’s a special design with separate drives to each drive-wheel, so it can be spun on a dime. “Zero-turns” are becoming the norm, because they cut mowing time in half compared to a lawn-tractor, which has to be set up for each mowing-pass. I mow about 3.1 acres, which I couldn’t do without that zero-turn.
• “Brenda Tripp” does my indoor painting.
• “Honeoye (‘HONE-eee-oy;' rhymes with 'boy') Falls” is the nearest village to the west to where I live in western New York, a rural village about five miles away.
• “Transit” equals Regional Transit Service, the public transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY, where I drove transit-bus for 16&1/2 years (1977-1993). My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. I recovered fairly well.
• RE: “alone.....” —My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.

From the vaunted “Would that my wife could see this” file......

I had to patronize Lori’s Natural Foods the other day, otherwise known by me as “The Funky Food Store.”
Lori’s specializes in exotic and supposedly healthy foods.
They’re somewhat expensive, comparable to “Whole Foods,” what my deceased sister called “Whole-Paycheck Foods.”
I buy only a few things at Lori’s, namely -a) oat-bran, which comes in bulk, and I can’t get anywhere else, and -b) grape-juice by the case, which I can’t get by the case anywhere else.
The grape-juice also happens to be organic (and kosher), and a case might last a couple months.
Lori’s is not like a supermarket. Groceries fill most of the store — although there’s also a “wellness” kiosk — and cashiers are at one end to cash you out.
They stand behind a long counter. You wait in a single line, and they call you over. There aren’t single cashier stations with conveyor-belts.
Shopping Lori’s is entertaining. You’re liable to be accosted by an employee in a grape outfit, or a dancing banana.
The stock-people are all hippie long-hairs. Everyone seems to be carrying a walkie-talkie.
Lori’s hires the freaks no one else would hire for fear of frightening conventional people.
The iridescent Mohawk haircuts died purple.
There used to be a really cute checkout-girl who was very attractive.
But for the acres of tattoos. Her entire arm and shoulders were covered.
She disappeared, I guess, or gravitated to management.
I stood in line to cash out, and a tall guy called me over.
Okay, lots of facial-steel, nose-rings, a tongue-stud; this is Lori’s.
Then I noticed the things in his ear-lobes.
Giant wooden discs about an inch-and-a-half in diameter. That is, his ear-lobes had stretched around the discs.
Would that my wife were around to see this. She died over a year ago, and I miss her dearly.
Thankfully my wife was not into steel. I raised a fuss when she wanted to get her ears pierced — I let that happen.
Occasionally the YMCA Exercise-Gym, where I work out, has cute girls there.
De Facto dress seems to be in effect: the guys wear tee-shirts and the girls stretch tank-tops with bare shoulders and athletic bras. Everyone wears shorts or tights.
One girl stands out, and is often there. She’s very cute, but has a tattoo on her lower back. UGH! I can’t deal with that.
Which is why the sales-girl at LeBrun Toyota was so attractive. No steel, no body-art that I could see.
Maybe she had a Harley insignia tattooed to a buttock. Boy, would that deflate my interest.
How may girls have turned me off because they were smoking?
The checkout guy was also awash in body-art; tattoos everywhere.
There is a trainer-guy at the YMCA with tattoos all over his legs. Again, UGH!
There also is an attractive trainer-girl, but she has a tattoo on her ankle. Scotch that one.
Another trainer-girl looks nasty and ugly, but no body-art. I’m friends with her.
What do these people do when they tire of their body-art, when no one will hire them?
As I understand it, tattoos are forever.

Rail wins

(This blog was written a few days ago.
Now, interestingly, as I begin keying it in, a gigantic disaster has occurred in Quebec not far from the Maine border involving a crude-oil train.
Proving yet again the old saw “If anything can go wrong, it will.
Apparently the train ran away untended after being parked, cars derailed, then four tankcars leaked crude into the town’s sewer-system destroying much of the town when the crude caught fire.
This puts the kibosh on the allegedly enviable safety-record of railroad crude-oil delivery.
At least it wasn’t an ethanol-train, but the fact this happened makes crude-oil trains look bad.
Proponents of the Keystone Pipeline could have a field-day.
If that pipeline caught fire out in the middle of nowhere, it wouldn’t destroy a town, which many railroads go through.
Railroads are pretty safe any more, but accidents happen.
The crude was labeled “toxic” in news reports, which it is, but it wasn’t a giant release of chlorine, which would gas people.
But it did catch fire.
Tragic as this disaster was, I doubt the Keystone Pipeline will be built, that oil-refineries will move away from crude-oil trains.
Railroad operation will just have to be made safer, if that’s possible.
And the tankcars made more crash-proof [less likely to rupture].
I saw an aerial-view of the crash-site. Tankcars were piled up like an accordion.
We used to have a rule at Transit. The only way to stop a bus was kill it.
Just because the shift-lever was in neutral didn’t mean the tranny was. A bus in neutral could take off on its own and take out a wall.
The only way to avoid such a calamity was shut the thing off.
No doubt the brakes were set on this parked train, but something took them off.
Should a train go untended?
One time I saw a train stop on Track Two in Gallitzin, PA [“guh-LIT-zin;” as in “get”] before entering the tunnel and descending The Hill into Altoona.
An engineman got off to pick up a sandwich at a nearby delicatessen.
But the engineer was still in the cab. The sandwich-guy was probably the conductor.
If the train started running away, the engineer was still in position.)


(Photo by Justin Sullivan - Getty images.)

A lot of continental crude-oil is gravitating toward shipment via railroad.
It’s not because the Keystone Pipeline wasn’t built, as I thought.
It’s happening because the refineries decided shipment via rail makes more sense.
Shipment via pipeline would be slightly less expensive.
But pipeline is not as flexible, and pipeline shipment has other problems.
Building a new pipeline required eminent-domain to establish a right-of-way. Railroad right-of-ways already exist.
And of course there are many more of them.
Shipping to various locations is fairly easy.
The Keystone Pipeline was not as flexible. Crude shipped by it had a specific route. To get to its final refinery it needed to be transshipped.
In which case you engage the railroads anyway, or another pipeline.
Another problem is the pipeline needed to be primed. You gotta prime it with crude to begin shipping crude.
Yet another problem is the nature of what’s to be shipped.
Some crude is bitumen, thick tar-sands, that won’t flow through a pipeline unless diluted, in which case the refiner has to get out the dilutant.
Shipment of bitumen can be done undiluted via railroad tankcar.
It may take steam-heat to drain the tankcar, but the refiner is not removing dilutant.
Oil-refineries all over the nation are jumping on the bandwagon.
Bakken crude, extracted on North Dakota, is being shipped in unit-trains to the final refinery.
Using Bakken crude and bitumen gets away from using imported crude.
A younger brother works in an oil-refinery in northern Delaware.
It’s the same oil-refinery my father worked in.
It opened in 1956, and was designed to process sour crude, heavy with sulfur.
It received its crude in tanker-ships.
That refinery opened as “Flying-A,” and has since been through at least six, maybe seven, different owners, including Texaco and Valero.
Valero closed it, but PBF Energy rook it over and restarted it.
That refinery has since installed vast railroad unloading facilities.
Trainloads of Bakken crude arrive and feed the refinery.
Bitumen feeds the refinery too.
Refineries all over the nation are doing this.
The Keystone Pipeline project has become kind of moot.
Pipeline proponents have taken to criticizing the environmental impact of railroads versus pipelines, but their statistics are skewed.
The pipeline proponents play the environmental card because refineries are going with railroads.
The pipeline proponents documented every railroad spill down to five-gallons, yet didn’t include five-gallon spills in pipeline advocacy.
Trainloads of crude are crossing populated areas, and the populace can get up-in-arms.
A couple weeks ago I viewed online video of a long crude-oil train crossing Lancaster County in southeastern PA.
That video was allied with a newspaper-article that sounded the alarm.
Did they have any idea what more dangerous stuff is traversing their county?
A crude-oil train is not a trainload of propane or ethanol.
Crude is flammable, but it won’t explode. Disregard the news-reports.
If a trainload of chlorine wrecked it would gas the populace.

• “Transit” equals Regional Transit Service, the public transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY, where I drove transit-bus for 16&1/2 years (1977-1993). My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. (I pretty much recovered.)
• “Tranny” is transmission.