Showing posts with label trains. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trains. Show all posts
Sunday, May 31, 2026
Sunday, December 28, 2025
Sunday, December 07, 2025
Saturday, November 15, 2025
Tuesday, November 11, 2025
Thursday, October 16, 2025
compressed air train engine for mining.... and used as a piggy bank in a Lions Club fundraiser
Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Sunday, September 28, 2025
Monday, September 15, 2025
a 113-year-old Union Pacific box car that had been sinking into the ground of Cheyenne for 75 years, is getting a shot at restoration by a train nut who is also restoring a Pullman and Utah’s 1949 “Merci Car” in a workshop inside an old Atlas Missile silo site
An outfit car, sometimes called a camp car, provided housing and cooking facilities for railroad construction and maintenance workers and their families.
Saturday, September 13, 2025
Friday, September 12, 2025
Summer and Winter Resort Post Offices, and South Western Michigan resorts in the 1920s and 30s
According to the publication "Summer and Winter Resort Post Offices of the United States 1891-1966" by Chester Smith Jr., the Wabaningo Post Office began operation in 1897 and ran continuously until 1938.
The post office was open from June 15 to September 15 and served the Sylvan Beach Resort and other resorts in the area.
There were over one hundred resort post offices in Michigan that operated three or four months out of the year during the peak of the resort area in the 1920s and 1930s and 1600 resort post offices across the United States.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the Pere Marquette Railroad provided service from Chicago to West Michigan’s resorts, even running extra trains called the Resort Special in summer months.
Tuesday, September 09, 2025
1942. "Tulsa, Oklahoma. Loading rack at the Mid-Continent refinery, Tulsa station of the Great Lakes pipeline."
Saturday, September 06, 2025
OK... now Sacramento can gloat it has a hydrogen powered train. What's the big deal? It's not pulling cargo. It's a switcher. So... trainyard work. Not really doing much to change the world, or lower emissions on a scale that's noticeable
The locomotive will replace aging diesel switchers statewide, potentially eliminating up to 50,000 gallons of diesel fuel annually, according to industry estimates.
A 16 cylinder EMD uses 130-140 gallons of diesel per hour. All this depends on the amount of weight pulled, and the geography it's rolling over... if that's going uphill at all, it uses more fuel.
50,000 gallons a year. What's that good for? About 2 weeks of operating a regular diesel locomotive hauling a full load of cargo across the country, for a round trip, one time?
Not impressively eliminating much... that's the smallest fraction of diesel fuel measurable on an annual nationwide, or even statewide, use. It's about how much a single freight train uses round trip, from coast to coast, one time. There are a LOT more trains in use, all over the state, and the country, than that. We know, because they seem to crash alot, and get into the news
So, in 10 hours, about 1500 gallons, so, in 24 hours, about 3600 gallons.
In 7 days, about 21,000 gallons.
Thursday, September 04, 2025
Wednesday, September 03, 2025
the classic logos of airlines, car makers, railroad companies, and record companies have been collected by Reagan Ray, and you can see them all (but not on my blog, I'm just showing a sample of each)
but what will really blow out the cobwebs, is the record company logos
Tuesday, September 02, 2025
The EPA issued an internal memo warning of “substantial threat to public health and the environment” from the East Palestine train derailment just 10 days after telling residents it was safe to return home
The internal warning contradicted public statements from EPA Administrator Michael Regan, who told residents two weeks after the Feb. 3, 2023, derailment that “all families need to know that they are safe” and that air monitoring had not detected health concerns in the community.
Despite the internal concerns, the EPA encouraged residents to return home after a three-day evacuation and maintained publicly that the area was safe.
Two and a half years after a derailed train spewed toxic gases across eastern Ohio, none of the six Class I freight railroads have fulfilled promises to join a voluntary federal close call program designed to reduce rail hazards and prevent accidents.
FRA analysis published in 2024 shows that participating railroads (Amtrak and smaller freight and passenger railroads) have seen an approximate 20% reduction in total train accidents or incidents per million train miles since participating in the close call program, compared with a 3% reduction over the same period for non-participating railroads. And in several early pilot programs, derailments were reduced by as much as 40%.
Program advocates say the big “Class I” freight railroads’ reluctance to participate shows the industry failed to learn any lessons from the 38-car derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, in 2023 that engulfed 35 cars in flames and forced the evacuation of homes in a 1-mile radius.
For the last decade, more than 1,000 trains have derailed every year in the United States, and one accident a day, on average, surpasses $100,000 in damages, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
On April 3, 2016, an Amtrak train barreled down a track near Chester at an authorized speed of over 100 mph. By the time the train engineer saw workers and equipment on the track and engaged the emergency brake, it was too late. The train hit a backhoe with a worker inside at 99 mph. That worker and the track supervisor, who was hit by debris, were killed and 39 other people were injured.
Amtrak had joined C³RS, but in the midst of contentious contract negotiations and a strict new Amtrak zero-tolerance safety policy, rail unions had temporarily opted out of the close call program and a separate peer-to-peer safety feedback program.
The NTSB investigation of the accident revealed more than two dozen unsafe conditions, “many involving safety rule violations and risky behaviors by workers” across several levels of Amtrak’s organization, including track maintenance workers and dispatchers and management. The NTSB observed “an inconsistent vision of safety throughout the organization, hostile attitudes between labor and management about no-tolerance rule violations, and ill-equipped work crews.”
On April 3, 2016, an Amtrak train barreled down a track near Chester at an authorized speed of over 100 mph. By the time the train engineer saw workers and equipment on the track and engaged the emergency brake, it was too late. The train hit a backhoe with a worker inside at 99 mph. That worker and the track supervisor, who was hit by debris, were killed and 39 other people were injured.
Amtrak had joined C³RS, but in the midst of contentious contract negotiations and a strict new Amtrak zero-tolerance safety policy, rail unions had temporarily opted out of the close call program and a separate peer-to-peer safety feedback program.
The NTSB investigation of the accident revealed more than two dozen unsafe conditions, “many involving safety rule violations and risky behaviors by workers” across several levels of Amtrak’s organization, including track maintenance workers and dispatchers and management. The NTSB observed “an inconsistent vision of safety throughout the organization, hostile attitudes between labor and management about no-tolerance rule violations, and ill-equipped work crews.”
Sunday, July 20, 2025
Railroaders Memorial Museum in Altoona Pa (thank you George!)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/The_Railroaders_Memorial_Museum_-_Altoona_-_52311337295.jpg
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