MY calendar for August 2019

Shaddup-and-shoot! (Photo by BobbaLew.)

—The August 2019 entry of MY calendar is an extraordinary potshot.
I was in Altoona alone chasing trains, and heard one on my scanner climbing the mountain.
So up Sugar-Run road I charged. It falls parallel to the railroad near the top.
I turned into the access road to the old New Portage right-of-way, then toward New Portage tunnel.
Right off the right-of-way onto a dirt-track that parallels the railroad. My scanner barked the detector at 245. I still had a ways to go, splashing through puddles and parting shrubbery.
I drove perhaps a mile to an overlook I wanted. All tracks are visible below this overlook, but here it comes.
Out of the car! It was passing as I got out. Studied set-up was impossible. I ran a little ways, then hoisted my camera.
Shaddup-and-shoot!
The lighting was all wrong; into the sun no less.
Sheer desperation. There it goes; a potshot. One shot and it’s gone. And of course it wasn’t where intended.
It was the Slabber, extremely heavy. Double helper-sets were pushing. It was westbound on Track Three.
The Slabber is all open gondola cars loaded with two thick steel slabs.
The slabs were made at a steel-mill, and were destined for a rolling-mill to be rolled into thin sheet-metal for cars or appliances. The fenders for your Chevrolet may have once been in the Slabber.
“Slabber” is a term my brother and I made up. Double-stacked containers are a “stacker.” Steel slabs are the “Slabber.”
The Slabber is extra, not regularly scheduled.
#7248 is a Norfolk Southern SD70ACU, 4,500 horsepower, rebuilt from NS SD90MAC #7248, which was originally Union Pacific 3493/8019.
#7517, the lead unit, is a General Electric ES44DC, 4,400 horsepower.
I made the mistake of captioning both locomotives as alternating current. 7517 is direct current.
AC traction-motors are recent technology. Previous diesel locomotives were DC. AC works better at dragging heavy trains.
Pennsy’s GG-1, the greatest locomotive ever built, was AC. Pennsy’s electrification was AC.
Down to 15 mph toward the summit. A train slows as it goes up the mountain. The climb up Allegheny Mountain is 12 miles, 1,016 feet. The grade is 1.75-1.8 percent; not too bad, but fairly steep for a railroad.
Horseshoe Curve made that possible. Without Horseshoe the grade woulda been nearly impossible.
This photograph proves what **** **** told me. ****, who lives in Denver, photographs Colorado landscape. My artistic input is to pore through 89 bazilyun photographs to pick out what’s best.
This photograph is a potshot; the lighting is wrong. But it’s extraordinary.

Make ‘em laugh-2

(“2” because I may have titled a previous blog “Make ‘em laugh.”)

“Do I dare ask this or not?” I said.
“Uh-oh,” said the cute co-owner at the kennel where I daycare my dog.
Herewith the wildest flirt I ever did.
“I heard you suggest our going out for coffee some day.”
“Coffee?”
“US,” I said. “But not just you and me. Everyone who laughs at me when I appear.
Nuthin’ I’d like more than to waltz into that restaurant with four ladies draped all over me.”
“Look at that, Frank. What’s that old geezer doing with all them ladies? They’re hangin’ all over him! What’s his secret?”
“I’ll tell ya the secret,” I’d say. “Make ‘em laugh! Do that and they hang all over you!”
Every time I walk into that kennel, the wisecracks begin. “How ya doin’, sexpot!” I ask the cute one.
Another co-owner calls me “stud-muffin.”
They never charge me to daycare my dog. “This is a business,” I say. “Here’s five bucks and SHADDUP! It’s like the cost of daycareing my dog is to make you all laugh; which I apparently do very well.”
Ten years ago I woulda never said anything to that lady. Them days are gone.
Since my wife died I discovered my hyper-religious parents, et al, were WRONG.
They, among other zealots, marked me for life. My beloved wife had to die for me to see it.
A wild flirt I never woulda done, and it succeeded.
Make ‘em laugh, and you attract ‘em like flies.

“Sock-in-the-Wash”

Sergy. (Long-ago photo by BobbaLew.)

—The September issue of my Hemmings Classic Car magazine has a cover-feature of a 1954 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible.
It immediately reminded me of my sister’s first boyfriend, Sergei Serochnikov (“sir-gay”). My sister called him “Sergy.”
Sergei had a 1954 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible, powder-blue with a navy insert.
My sister died of pancreatic cancer almost eight years ago. She was slightly younger than me; I’m first-born of seven. Four of us remain.
My sister had a very hard life. She married four times. I’m only once despite being “heathen” and a “bleeding-heart Liberal” (her words; “heathen” is my wife’s aunt).
My parents were hyper-religious. My wife’s relatives were too, although not as judgmental.
Thankfully the last time my sister married she got it right. Her last husband seemed able to deal with her, or her with him. My wife was always the BEST friend I ever had, and she’s gone too.
“Sergy” was a really nice guy, a child of Russian immigrants. He was Class of ’61, I think, at Brandywine High-School. My sister was Class of ’64; I’m ’62.
My sister was madly smitten with “Sergy.” I used to criticize her, like it was all an act.
My father, probably angry my sister dated anyone, called him “Sock-in-the-Wash.”
Sergy took my sister to the Senior Prom, after a screaming Mexican standoff between my sister and my hyper-religious father, who considered dancing Of-the-Devil.
My mother settled it: “Oh Tom, I don’t think it will hurt.” So ended my father’s position as head-of-household.
Prom for me? Are you kidding? I never went to no prom. My wife didn’t either, but not for the same reasons.
At that time our family car was a 1953 Chevy, the infamous “Blue-Bomb” (it was navy-blue). It was the car in which I learned to drive. But a year late because at age-16 I was “too immature” — that is, I couldn’t worship my father.
Sergy let me drive his car. Top-down, but it was more a pig than the Blue-Bomb. It was probably better maintained — my father never did any such thing — but was a PowerGlide Six. (The Blue Bomb was also PowerGlide.)
PowerGlide was Chevrolet’s introductory two-speed automatic transmission. “Slip-and-Slide with PowerGlide.”
The engine was a 235.5 cubic-inch version of their venerable “Cast-iron Wonder” introduced in 1937. It was also called the “Stovebolt-Six,” because it could be overhauled with stuff from your hardware-store, e.g. stove-bolts.
The fact Sergy’s car was a convertible made it overly attractive to my sister. The guy who became my sister’s first husband bought a brand-new Pontiac convertible while I was in college.’64 or ’65 I think.
A ’54 Chevy was a turkey compared to Chevrolets for 1955.
Top-down is attractive, but would I consider such a car?
That magazine-car’s owner gets to relive his youth, but no way would I drive such a thing.
And convertibles were skonked by air-conditioning. Beyond 10 miles, no top-down for this kid.

“See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet”
(Long-ago photo by Bobbalew)

• “ See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet ” was Dinah Shore in the ‘50s.
• The Blue Bomb was the only car our family had that made an entire vacation-trip without breaking down — at least while I was growing up. It went all the way to Minneapolis/St.Paul and then back. 1960. (I coulda been driving then, but was “immature.” “Thomas, you gotta let him drive.”) It failed inspection just after 100,000 miles. (No lining on the brake-shoes.)
• The picture is just before my accident, which punched in the front. No bodywork; “just make it drivable.”

LA-DEE-DAH!

The other night I ordered three of my seven calendars, mainly two of my train-calendars that have to be ordered in July. The third calendar was the same site as one of my train-calendars.
I figgered it wouldn’t take long, and it didn’t. I ordered online.
One was my black-and-white All-Pennsy (Pennsylvania Railroad) Calendar from Audio-Visual Designs. I’ve had it since 1969 or so. I order two: one for myself, and one for my railfan nephew as a Christmas present.
Second and third were -1) my All-Pennsy color calendar, and -2) “Cars of the ‘50s,” both from Tide-Mark.
“Cars of the ‘50s” could wait, but Tide-Mark, the producer, quickly runs out of the All-Pennsy color calendar.
Tide-Mark offered a discount for my two calendars: 25% off in July. Just enter the discount-code.
Full price for my calendars qualified for free shipping, but apparently my two discounted calendars didn’t. I entered the discount-code, and the total cost of my order was the same as full-price free-shipping.
Rip-off! Some discount!
Discounted adds shipping, so the total cost discounted is same as full-price free-shipping.
Thank you, Tide-Mark.

13 years of slingin’ words

Yr Fthfl Srvnt has been blogging 13 years. And that’s only BlogSpot. Add one or two more years before that on my long-ago family website.
My bereavement-counselor tells me I’m lucky to possess the writing-jones. Most retirees my age are bored silly.
Years ago a coworker at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper was reading my family-website blogs. “Grady,” she said (explanation at right); “you gotta start blogging.”
I recently fired up my very first BlogSpot blog, and things sure have changed.
“Bluster-Boy” (the Almighty Bluster-King), my younger brother from near Boston, became a favorite sibling — although not by much; only four of us remain; I’m the first-born of seven.
Back then that brother was noisily badmouthing everything I said or did.
My wife died in 2012, and I had to give up on my dog five years later.
I also am no longer the person I was while married. It’s a shame my wife can’t experience the new me. She had to die for me to get there.
I also think my writing has improved. “Keep it short,” an ex-Messenger editor tells me. Cut-cut-cut! “You don’t need to say that,” advises a fellow retiree. “Let the reader fill in the blanks;” that’s me.
Eons ago my 12th-grade high-school English-teacher told me I wrote really well. Convinced by my hyper-religious parents I was stupid and abominable, I thought him joking.
“All it is is slinging words,” I told him.
Perhaps 30 years later I realized I could write pretty well. That was during my employ at Regional Transit Service (RTS), the supplier of transit bus-service in the Rochester (NY) area.
I was a bus-driver, and therefore a union employee. A friend advocated a union newsletter, and enlisted me to do it.
I’d be up until 3 a.m. crafting that newsletter in my computer. Most enjoyable were my “bus-stories,” written on tiny scraps of paper at bus layovers.
No time for editing, which usually ruined what I wrote. “Leave it alone,” my wife told me. “It’s good enough as is.”
In the ‘70s I did motorsport coverage for a small weekly Rochester newspaper. What I’m most proud of for them is my expository stuff much like blogging.
Once in a while I witnessed racing-action that got the muse cooking.
I started looking for a job as a writer. Public-relations, advertising, whatever. I interviewed a few places, but nothing availed itself. My Facebook calls me a “failed writer.”
My Rochester neighbor back then, an RTS bus-driver, told me Transit needed bus-drivers. I went with that; it was supposed to be temporary. It paid well, so I kept at it 16&1/2 years — despite upper-management posturing, and a rancorous clientele.
Then I had a stroke. That was over 25 years ago, and made me a mess. It ended my bus-driving, which I was tiring of anyway. It was caused by an undiagnosed heart-defect since repaired.
I run on what’s left; it killed part of my brain. When I was released I found I could still write.
Stroke-rehab wanted to get me a job as an unpaid intern. I suggested my union-newsletter was so much fun they find me a position at a paragraph factory.
They lined me up with the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, who hired me as I recovered.
It ended up being the BEST job I ever had. I did anything-and-everything, and was always encouraged.
When the Messenger finally computerized, I got eagerly involved.
Stroke-rehab wanted to get my job back as a bus-driver. “Not interested,” I told them.
“You’d make a lot more money,” they told me.
“But it wouldn’t be fun,” I said.
Long ago “If I were to write anything for this newspaper, the first thing I’d write about is presidents don’t wear hats.”
“So write it,” an editor said.
And they published it, beginning my weekly column. No pay; just slingin’ words. That column lasted a few months until I upset the flag-police. Long story; all I’ll say is I wrote my dog was more alive than my flag.
I worked at that newspaper almost 10 years. They even doubled my pay during a wage-freeze, so I could get off Social-Security-Disability, which limited my income, and therefore hours.
Suddenly I was full-time, but I could do it. Stroke-defects were minimal, and I kept getting better. Apparently sufficient marbles remained to do pretty well.
In the end I was doing that newspaper’s website. I was involved in the three earliest iterations. I’m sure quite a few more versions occurred since I retired.
Retirement was early at age-62 because I was getting unexplained “episodes” where it seemed my heart had stopped. They never dropped me to the floor— my heart would restart.
After 89 bazilyun tests a neurologist noted my “episodes” sounded like a blood-pressure medication side-effect. So I stopped taking the medication; no episodes since.
But stopping that medication was after I retired, which I did just in time. The Messenger shortly changed owners; I woulda been laid off.
Earlier a Messenger vice-president wanted to lay me off, but those first owners interceded. I was too valuable, and cheap as a stroke-survivor. That guy eventually got fired.
My job-title was “typist,” but I never typed anything. What they valued most were my computer-tricks. “How did you do that?” they’d ask. “That’s amazing!”
I’m sure that first blog was written while I was still at the Messenger. BlogSpot came after I retired. That first BlogSpot blog is one of many I posted at the same time.
“Is that a novel you’re writing?” people ask. “You should write a book.”
Perhaps; like to publish some of my blogs in a book. I have followers, and I also Facebook my blogs.
But how does one choose the best of 2,621 blogs? (2,622 with this one.) Beyond that, how does one stop a muse that won’t shut up?
I also have a viewpoint twisted by my tortured childhood. I’m first-born of holier-than-thou parents, who convinced me I was stupid and disgusting because I couldn’t worship my father.
Reams of material remain, and apparently I have a fabulous memory. I sling words well, but writing a novel wouldn’t be the fun blogging is.
Every morning as I eat breakfast, the pencil and legal-pad come out and I start slingin’ words. “What do I write about today?” I ask myself. The muse starts cookin’. Maybe it already did walking my dog. Often things happen that elicit a blog. I call ‘em blog-material.
I’m not bored, and I’m not lonely. I have the writing-jones.

PLOP!

I don’t know this guy from the Moon! (iPhone photo by BobbaLew.)

—“It looks like Killian isn’t getting enough attention.”
That was my hairdresser, and Killian had just plopped himself in the lap of my hairdresser’s next appointment.
My hairdresser is a dog-person, and wants me to bring Killian.
“He’s starved for attention,” I said. “He’s rescued from a broken family, divorce. I’m all he has; I’m not a family.”
“Do you think he notices?” asked the plopee.
“Probably not,” I said; “but you are the third plopee.”
Every time a human appears, the tail wags, and Killian starts pulling, especially if the human smiles.
“You sure are a friendly dog,” the human says.
A velcro dog, a leaner. “Pet me, pet me;” nuzzle-nuzzle.
Killian is not my previous dog: Scarlett, another rescue Irish-Setter.
Scarlett was very much at home in my house, even after my wife died.
Scarlett was from a puppy-mill; we were her first family (my wife and I).
As soon as Scarlett died I started physically falling apart. “Get another dog, or else.”
Scarlett did the “bellies to the sky” bit. I’ve yet to see Killian do it.
I probably exercise Killian way more than I did Scarlett. But I’m not a family.
Killian follows me room-to-room. If I turn down a divergent path in my woods, that silly dog looks for me, then zooms past.
I don’t know if Scarlett woulda; I never let her run loose in my woods. I always walked her somewhere on-leash.
If I pass Killian nearby in my house, his tail starts thumping, and he paws the air: “pet me, pet me.”
“You’re lucky that dog so readily attached,” a lady told me.
“But I’m not a family,” I say. “I’m all he has;” except for complete strangers he befriends.
Every night we sleep together: me in my bed, and Killian on the bed, me petting.
“Here we are,” I say. “You and me in our strange little life.”

It’s no longer fun

“I gotta get outta here!” (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

—“I hope you got that!” I shouted to my brother.
He had been wedged between a grade-crossing stanchion and Track One at Brickyard Crossing. He was about 10 feet from the track.
We heard a westbound approaching at about 40 mph, and it was on Track One.
Never before had we seen a westbound on Track One. In our experience, Track One was only eastbound.
Phil Faudi, my Altoona railfan friend, said Norfolk Southern would never operate Track One both eastbound and westbound.
Yet here came a westbound on One.
“I gotta get outta here!” yelled my brother, grabbing his chair.
I was set up on tripod for telephoto toward Two and Three, so couldn’t get a shot. That required taking my camera off the tripod, changing lenses, and then re-aiming. A minute or two, yet here it comes! —I was about 15 feet from the track.
“When I was up at AR yesterday,” my brother said later; “Track One was signaled both ways.”
“Westbound ya gotta climb The Slide,” I exclaimed. The Slide is the ramp Pennsy built to get up to New Portage tunnel, which is higher than the original Pennsy tunnel. A 2.28% grade (originally 2.36%); not impossible, but steep.
The Slide was always eastbound down.
“I guess recent locomotive technology makes climbing The Slide possible,” I said to my brother.
Chasing trains over Allegheny Mountain is no longer fun.
Blame Positive-Train-Control (PTC) along with in-the-cab signaling. Lineside signaling is done. No longer are train-engineers calling lineside signal aspects on railroad-radio.
That’s how we chased trains.
“21E, west on Two, 254; CLEAR!” “Where’s 254?” “Just past Lilly.” “Summerhill?” “Maybe; we gotta boom-and-zoom.”
Nearly all the signal-towers are removed. Signaling is in-the-cab.
Old Pennsy signal-towers are gone. The one that silhouetted the sky at McFarlands Curve is gone. So is the one at 263 that had its eastbound signals on masts to be visible over a nearby highway overpass. So is the one at 249 over tracks Three and Four.
Defect-Detectors were also removed. 258.8 and 238.2 (or .1, or .3; I can’t remember) are gone. 253.1 is still there. Often those detectors were all we had.
Fortunately that railroad is busy. But in Lilly we waited over an hour for an eastbound, and finally gave up empty-handed.
The picture at bottom is the only eastbound we got at Lilly. After that we waited and waited and waited.
My brother is also com-pulsed to identify every train he photographs. Without engineers calling out signal-aspects, he’s often in the dark.
Sometimes he has to follow a train some distance hoping he’ll hear a radio-transmission that indicates the train-number.

Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian stops
in Tyrone. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Yrs Trly decided to try side-elevation this time, instead of the classic three-quarter approaching-train shot.
Above is Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian stopped in Tyrone (PA). It’s the most extreme side-elevation I took. Some tilt toward three-quarters approaching, or going away.
Just shaddup-and-shoot. You never know what you’ll get. A potshot might be extraordinary, while a well-planned shot might bomb.

The fact train-chasing is no longer fun prompted the following observation:
“Track One may be doomed, as is New Portage tunnel.”
“Never happen!” my brother snapped.
“Faudi said Track One would never be signaled both ways,” I commented; “but now it is.
On top of that we have Hunter Harrison (deceased) with his Precision-Scheduled-Railroading, which cuts infrastructure and employees. That pleases Wall Street = cut costs to maximize instant gratification.
Harrison cut Canadian Pacific to the bone. Now all the railroads are doing it. Witness train-length. Two miles long with only a crew of two. And that’s here. Some railroads get by with only one crew-member.
Loose-car railroading is time-consuming. Bypass yarding — even humping — with unit-trains; solid coal or crude-oil, or all-autos.
Helpers over Allegheny Mountain are also expensive. The future may be radio-controlled helpers, or radio-controlled distributed-power mid-train. They do that out west.
In fact with Positive-Train-Control and Trip-Optimizer railroading may no longer need humans; there already are self-driving trains.
Although I can imagine Faudi saying there is no way to get a long unit coal-train over Allegheny Mountain without humans to keep it from breaking.
I predict Horseshoe Curve becomes a two-track railroad,” I said.
“Norfolk Southern needs three tracks to ship coal,” my brother said. Faudi suggests four.
“Probably that controlled siding north of Altoona is toast,” my brother added. “As is that storage-track at ‘five-tracks’.”
“Only two tracks over Horseshoe,” I said. “10 years.
I think Tunkhannock Viaduct reduced to only one track from two, and Rockville Bridge no longer carries four tracks.”

Eastbound trash-train approaches Lilly; it’s probably empty. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

• A “grade-crossing stanchion” is the post on which the crossing-gates and flashing red lights are mounted.
• “Brickyard Crossing” is the only road-crossing at grade in Altoona. All others are bridges. It’s actually Porta Road, but it’s so lightly travelled an overpass wasn’t warranted. The railroad and railfans call it “Brickyard” because a brick-manufactory was once adjacent, but now it’s gone.
• “AR” are the telegraph call-letters of an old signal-tower beside Track One atop Allegheny Mountain. The tower still stands, but it’s abandoned.
• “New Portage tunnel” was part of a state-sponsored railroad in the “State Public-Works System,” a long-ago combination canal and railroad built to compete with the Erie Canal. The original “Public-Works” used an inclined-plane portage railroad to get over Allegheny Mountain, but it was so time-consuming and cumbersome it prompted the privately-capitalized Pennsylvania Railroad. A new portage railroad was built to circumvent the original inclined-plane portage railroad, and it included “New Portage tunnel” atop Allegheny Mountain. But it was quickly abandoned, and “New Portage Railroad,” including that tunnel, went to Pennsy for a dollar. A ramp —The Slide— had to be built up to the tunnel. Plus New Portage Railroad became a secondary over the mountain, but didn’t go to Altoona. It’s abandoned.
• “Positive-Train-Control” is gumint-mandated. Trains are controlled independent of human input, supposedly to skonk human error. I have a computer. What if PTC mucks up? Suddenly humans are needed to override PTC.
• “263,” “249,” ”258.8,” and “253.1” are all milepost locations from Philadelphia. Other signal locations were named the telegraph call-letters of old Pennsy signal-towers, e.g. “AR” and “MO.”

“No pretty girl will talk to you!”

“You look familiar,” I said to a pretty young girl at my nearby Petco. “I think you’re a store-employee.”
“Killian!” she shrieked. I always take my dog into Petco. “He’s such a ham!”
What’s notable here is Yrs Trly initiated a conversation with a pretty young girl. Ten years ago I woulda avoided her.
I’m a graduate of the Hilda Q. Walton School of Gender Relations.
“No pretty girl will talk to you!”
If I learned anything at all since my wife died, Hilda and my hyper-religious parents were full-of-it.
A year-or-two after my wife died, I inadvertently began befriending various ladies.
Then a pretty lifeguard at my local YMCA swimming-pool said hello to me by name. I later cranked up the nerve to say hello back.
Ten years ago I couldna done that.
I thereby spun Faire Hilda in her casket. 14,000 rpm, etc., etc.
I can imagine Hilda labeling my many female friends “sluts.”
WRONG. No sluts for this kid!
Hilda and my parents are history. I’ve made too many female friends, and I like it.

• A recent crotch-rocket motorcycle might be capable of 14,000 rpm. A Detroit V8 will start tearing itself apart at 8,000 (if it gets there).

On flirting.......

“No pretty girl will talk to you!” I said that to *****, a lifeguard at the Canandaigua YMCA swimming-pool.
“Yet here you are talking to me,” I said. I think ***** liked I implied she was “pretty.” —And I said it offhandedly, not a proposition.
“Flirting,” I call it, for lack of a better word.
I was repeating the pompous posturing of Hilda Q. Walton, my hyper-religious Sunday-School superintendent neighbor, who convinced me all pants-wearers, including me at age-5, were SCUM. (I bet her husband was fooling around.)
Recently I was in Altoona (PA) to chase and photograph trains with my younger brother. We’re both railfans.
We stayed at the motor-court where we usually stay. When I pulled up to check in, a lady I recognize was behind the counter, and she recognized me.
Having not gone in yet, I waved. She smiled. (I flirted, as it were.)
Faire Hilda spins in her grave. 14,000 rpm, enough to power Florida south of Orlando.
If I learned anything at all since my wife died it’s to flirt.
That’s partly *****’s doing. She said hello to me in passing a few months ago, and I cranked enough nerve to later say hello back.
I’m sure Hilda was horrified.
Amazing success, and despite my many flubs, ***** and I became great friends.
“Why in Hell’s name am I friends with *****?” I ask. I’m 75 years old, and never was Adonis. *****’s a “looker.”
She’s married, yet when I walk into that pool, here comes ***** smiling. “Talk to me; make me laugh!”
Strike up a conversation. Often it crashes, but if so t’ain’t my fault. Move on to someone else, and ladies seem to love the attention.
That motel clerk was smiling. “Still chasing trains?” she asked. That motel is 255 miles south of my home, but that lady recognizes me. She has hundreds of clients, many of which are regulars.
But I stand out. I’m one that flirts. And obviously she likes it.

• A recent crotch-rocket motorcycle might be capable of 14,000 rpm. A Detroit V8 will start tearing itself apart at 8,000 (if it gets there).

“Breaking news.....”

The only television this kid watches is the NBC Evening-News with Lester Holt.
And I don’t always watch all of it, since it’s often touchy-feely toward the end. I switch to my train-videos instead.
But I dare not miss the latest 3 a.m. Tweet® from the Great White Throne in the White House.
It’s also depressing I pay Spectrum (used to be Time-Warner) 89 bazilyun dollars per month to have their video-recorder in my house.
My TV is cable, and I record that news so I can watch it during supper, which I may not get to until 9 p.m.
I was in the Canandaigua YMCA swimming-pool a few weekends ago to do balance-training on-my-own. A guy I see there fairly often remarked how CNN is always “breaking news.”
“Yeah,” I exclaimed. “The NBC Nightly News does that too.”
Since when is a chicken-barbecue “breaking news?” That’s exaggerating of course, but every broadcast starts with “breaking news.”
Used to be “breaking news” was a 15-minutes ago plane-crash. Flooding in Ohio Valley was the past couple days, but it’s “breaking news.”
Organizers of that chicken-barbecue phoned the Mighty Mezz incensed their chicken-barbecue didn’t make the front page, above-the-fold. “We even supplied a picture,” they complained. A blurry smartphone jpeg of grinning organizers shaking hands in front of a giant chicken statue.
“That’s the trouble with you guys,” they’d wail. “Too liberal! Let us take over and your readership would zoom. You’d be free of mistakes, and our chicken-barbecue would skonk Crooked Hillary.”
All of this is exaggeration of course, but there is so much “breaking news,” it’s no longer breaking news.

• RE: “my train-videos......” —I’m a railfan, and have been since age-2.
• The “Mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over 13 years ago. Best job I ever had. I was employed there almost 10 years — over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern. (I had a heart-defect caused stroke October 26th, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well. That defect was repaired.)

Raining in Cresson

It’s a-rainin’. (Screenshot by BobbaLew.)

—As a railfan Yrs Trly views a streaming webcam in Cresson, PA.
It’s mounted on Station-Inn, a bed-and-breakfast for railfans. The camera looks out on the old Pennsy main through Cresson. The railroad is Pennsy’s west slope up Allegheny Mountain. The view is pictured above.
It’s not much to look at — not photogenic — but great fun to watch. I know what I’m watching, coal, crude-oil, the Slabber, the trash-train. And stackers galore. I’ve seen ‘em for real.
And left-to-right is uphill. Locomotives assault-the-heavens, and helper-locomotives are often needed.
The other side of the mountain is Altoona (PA), once the railroad’s locus of operations. Altoona was very much a railroad town. Much is gone, but massive Juniata shops nearby remains.
The railroad is now Norfolk Southern, but originally was the Pennsylvania Railroad, as laid out across PA about 1850. Pennsy lasted a long time, and became very powerful. That railroad became a main trading route with the east-coast megalopolis.
Railroads west of Pittsburgh were merged into Pennsy to feed its main stem. Pennsy went all the way to Chicago and St. Louis.
Pennsy merged with arch-rival New York Central in 1968, but that quickly went bankrupt. It had costly commuter operations, among other problems. Freight-shipping was moving to trucking, especially with the Interstate Highway System.
Trucking was more flexible, and railroading owned its right-of-way; highways are gumint built/maintained.
Penn-Central was succeeded by Conrail, instituted by gumint to save northeast railroading. Many northeast railroads were failing.
The old Pennsy across PA became Conrail, and Conrail eventually privatized. Conrail broke up and sold in 1999. The old Pennsy main across PA went to Norfolk Southern, and the old New York Central across NY state went to CSX Transportation.
Many old railroad branches were abandoned or sold to independent short-line operators. Short-line railroads don’t operate under the union-rules of the big railroads.
Many of the commuter operations became gumint entities.
I run that Cresson webcam most every day. I run it as background.
The railroad is still very active. My brother and I often visit the Altoona area to photograph trains — he’s a railfan too. Wait 20 minutes and you’ll see a train.
And Allegheny Mountain is thrilling. To get over it railroaders have to operate at “Run-Eight” climbing. That’s full fuel-delivery for a diesel locomotive, the equivalent of pedal-to-the-metal.
Descending is even more challenging. Brakes (on the cars) have to be used gingerly -a) to keep the train from running away downhill, and -b) to avoid breaking couplers, which breaks up the train.
I watch that webcam a lot. If I hear “rumba-rumba-rumba” I drop everything. “Sounds like O7T,” I shout. That’s Amtrak’s westbound Pennsylvanian. The Pennsylvanian is the only daily passenger train left on this storied railroad. There used to be hundreds. 04T is eastbound.
I pretty much know the train-numbers. Every time a train passes a signal, it’s engineer has to call out the signal-aspect and identify his train on railroad radio.
I take my scanner along so I hear that.
He’ll radio the signal location: “04T, east on Two” (Track Two), “242” (the milepost signal location; “CLEAR!” If I’m east of milepost 242, I’ll see the train.
I fired up the webcam the other day. Sun out here at home, but raining down there.
Cresson is about 250 miles south. Earlier that morning it was cloudy here at home, but the clouds went south. I could see a cloud-bank way farther south.
If I drove to Altoona, I’d drive into rain.

• “KRESS-in.”
• The “Slabber” is a unit extra of all open gondola cars loaded with two heavy steel slabs per car. The slabs are being transferred to a rolling-mill to be rolled into thin sheet-metal. A “slabber” is very heavy, and may need two helper-sets to get over the mountain. “Slabber” is a term my brother and I made up.
• The “trash-train” is another unit extra of all trailer-on-flatcar (TOFC) flatcars loaded with containers filled with trash and garbage. It usually stinks.
• The west slope of Allegheny Mountain is not as steep as the east slope, but the railroad often uses helper-sets on it.

Order more-or-less restored

At age-75 I occasionally get stinking computer hairballs.
My cheering-section (my wife) died over seven years ago. I hafta solve these problems myself.
Facebook, which I rarely look at, would no longer post anything. My browser was Firefox 67.0.4, the most recent update.
I post these blogs on Facebook — as a link. I also had a photograph to post.
I called my brother in northern DE, a Facebook maven.
“Maybe it’s your browser,” he suggested. “Facebook may have switched to only Internet-Explorer and Apple’s “Safari.” (And perhaps Google Chrome, which he uses.)
So I fired up Safari. “As I understand it,” I said to my brother; “my Facebook is stand-alone, and any browser can access it.”
Facebook under Safari wanted a login. I provided a FB password I had on my desktop. “That password is old. Three months ago your password was changed.”
-Hairball number-one.
Next was trying to fly a blog on BlogSpot, my blog-service.
My usual BlogSpot interface wanted my Google-account.
“WHAT?” -Hairball number-two.
I couldn’t do anything for lack of a Google-account.
I had no idea what a Google-account was. What I perceived was a mysterious firewall that prevented me from doing anything.
Things were adding up; I was climbing the walls. I began to question my existence.
I tried resetting my Google-account password, and entered that into my BlogSpot entreaty. Nyet! And of course passwords are mere dots. I can’t see if I mistyped, and stroke-survivors often do.
I shut down and went to bed, It was almost midnight already, and I’d have to drive up to Mac-Shack, 25 miles, in hopes ****** would appear to repair the mess I made.
And Mac-Shack is computer repair, not fixing messes.
Plus I don’t think ****** could get me back on Facebook.
The other night I fired up both Firefox and Safari. Firefox had my Facebook address. I copy/pasted that into Safari.
Facebook wanted a password, so I clicked “forgot password” to reset my FB password. I came up with something that wouldn’t prompt “used before” and “old password.” I also wrote down my new password in a small notebook.
I also noticed an icon that made my typing visible.
Viola! I could see what I was typing, and suddenly there was my Facebook.
“We’ll try this,” I said, and I posted a blog-link.
Then “we’ll try this.” I posted the picture that prompted my earlier madness.
I e-mailed my DE brother: “I guess I’m now Facebooking via Safari instead of Firefox.”
If Facebook did indeed walk away from Firefox, “Thanks for telling me, Mark!” (Another Facebook secret.)
It was becoming apparent I could “change password” fairly easily. It helped I could see what I was typing.
I Googled “What is a Google-account?” Seemed it was little more than my e-mail-address and a password.
So change Google-account password. The usual techno-leaps: a secret code was texted to my iPhone. This was similar to “change FB password.” It helped I could see things. Typing blind invites mistypes: (“Naughty-naughty; passwords don’t match!”)
Suddenly my BlogSpot interface reappeared.
Order restored, more-or-less. I could skip Mac-Shack; leave poor ****** alone.

• I had a stroke October 26th, 1993 from an undiagnosed heart-defect since repaired. I pretty much recovered. Just tiny detriments; I can pass for never having had a stroke.
• “Mark” is Mark Zuckerberg, founder and head-honcho of Facebook.

Face-to-face communication learned 70 years late

“One-to-three words at a time,” I thought to myself; “followed by a three-to-four second pause.”
Maybe that way my attempt at striking up a conversation won’t bomb. People love to talk, but getting started with a complete stranger is a struggle.
I was walking my dog yesterday along Lehigh Valley Rail-Trail, and two earlier attempted conversation strike-ups struck out.
There was a guy riding a bicycle. “What?” he exclaimed.
Next were three ladies on bicycles. I sailed right over their heads.
There also was a jogger I avoided. Don’t interrupt!
“You keep going..... (pause),” I said to my last contact; ”and you’re walking into..... (pause)“ “ a lot of mosquitos.” (She was walking her dog.)
I coulda said “mosquito-city,” which bombed with bicycle-guy.
Don’t use figures of speech. They always need to be explained.
Not with my wife. She was used to ‘em, and wanted to figger out what I said.
Now she’s gone, and I hafta learn verbal communication.
Talk too fast or use a figure-of-speech to strike up a conversation and neither work.
And striking up conversations is always worth it. The person smiles that he-or-she was recognized.