Text 807, 193 rader
Skriven 2012-07-18 03:38:02 av Roy Witt (1:387/22)
    Kommentar till text 773 av Richard Webb (1:116/901.0)
Ärende: Darwion award candidate
===============================
18 Jul 12 00:32, Richard Webb wrote to Roy Witt:

 Roy>>> thing as a 'walkman' screaming in our ears at the same time. It
 Roy>>> was the pennies layed on the track and disapperance after the
 Roy>>> train passed that still puzzles me.

 RW>> Right, vibration shook 'em off the tracks.

 Roy>> If so, they were shook pretty bad, as we could never find them.
 Roy>> More than likely they were squeezed into a few thousands (.001) of
 Roy>> an inch and stuck to to the wheels. Kinda like copper shim stock...

 RW> Oh yeah, shook pretty good.  AS I said, every once in awhile you
 RW> could get one to stay and find maybe pieces of it, but most of the
 RW> time they were just thrown off by the vibrations.

What were we to know about vibrations and a penny stock squashed into
pieces at the ripe old age of 8 or 9 years? We were told that they'd be
squashed, but no one ever said that they'd disappear.

 Roy>> Dunno...I wasn't there. I have noticed that the freight cars headed
 Roy>> south are 'hoppers' full of concrete materials and those hoppers
 Roy>> going north are full of sand and gravel. Plus they're perhaps a 1/2
 Roy>> mile long or more and they have to travel slow because they're
 Roy>> still in the city limits, even though the diesel puller is outside
 Roy>> the city limits. With the silent crossings being constructed in
 Roy>> town, I expect more pedestriANS will be silenced down the line.

 RW> Oh I'm sure.  YOu can find with those long coal trains going through
 RW> the mountains where the front engine is braking while the back engine
 RW> is still pushing.  Anybody who doesn't understand the principle of
 RW> inertia should watch a train start rolling or come to a stop.

Especially attempting to stop. That's what I think when I see a load of
gravel in the hopper of an 18 wheeler coming off the freeway at freeway
speeds of 65/70mph, even though the ramp speedlimit is 45 mph. And then
they think they have the right of way over traffic that is already on that
ramp.

 RW>>> Yes, as a kid I used to use the railroad tracks as a
 RW>>> shortcut between places, but this was a siding serving a
 RW>>> couple of factories, and you could hear a train moving a
 RW>>> good distance off.

 Roy>>> We had to walk the tracks to get to the swimmin' hole, under the
 Roy>>> trestle.

 RW>> Yep, the railroad trestle over the Cedar River in Vinton,
 RW>> IOwa, close to the school for the blind was the illicit
 RW>> activities spot.  I remember hanging off that trestle once
 RW>> lookingup at a freight train cause I was caught in the
 RW>> middle of it when a train was coming.  My home town though,
 RW>> which I was referencing earlier, those sidings for the
 RW>> factories were good shortcuts, made a square corner a 45
 RW>> degree if you did it right.

 Roy>> The yard up there in Illinois had a turntable and lots of sidings.
 Roy>> We were always chased out of those yards. Had to cross the yard to
 Roy>> get to the fishing ponds on the other side.

 RW> YEp, much like the yard in Burlington, which was actually in
 RW> Burlington. The railroad shops were out in WEst burlington, almost
 RW> like a mini switching yard there too, but the actual train yard with
 RW> turntable adn all was Burlington itself. Back when I worked with
 RW> homeless folks I got to know quite a few hoboes who could tell you
 RW> horror stories about the railroadbulls at the yard in Burlington. IF
 RW> you were heading east across the MIssissippi river and you were a
 RW> hobo hopping a freight you prayed there wasn't a tow going under the
 RW> railroad bridge, because they'd hold the train in the yard and the
 RW> bulls would go peeking in every open boxcar for illicit riders, so if
 RW> you hopped it going through town you hunkered down and hoped that
 RW> bridge was ready for business.

I've heard stories about those bulls, but havn't seen any of it up close.
It seemed like every RR employee was on the lookout for youngsters
crossing the tracks at the yard. A chase would always ensue and when we
made it to the 'other side' the chase ended. Don't know what would have
happened had we been caught, since we were always faster than those fat
bellied RR workers. 8^)

 RW>> But there again, you'd hear the trains long before they came through
 RW>> the Burlington Northern shops north and west of there, and just east
 RW>> of the bn shops was where  the switch was located for that set of
 RW>> sidings. A guy still had plenty of time to get fair warning though
 RW>> and get to a good spot to leave the tracks.

 Roy>> Illinois Central ran through Freeport, where my grandfather (clark)
 Roy>> would get on board as the conductor of the Land-O-Corn, ride it
 Roy>> into Iowa and back to Chicago and then back to Freeport where he
 Roy>> got off...all of that track is gone now and so are the yards and
 Roy>> the depot. Used to be 3 or 4 sets of tracks ran along the
 Roy>> Pecatonica River (Pecatonica was native American that meant - muddy
 Roy>> water). Sometimes it resembled a flow of mud too.

 RW> YEp, my mom's dad was an engineer for C B & Q, and then for
 RW> SAnta Fe.  One of her uncles who lived in MEdia, Il. not too far from
 RW> where you grew up iirc was a fireman in the steam days.

Hmmm. Media is in Chicago. Freeport is about 120 miles to the west of
Chi-town, on Illinois/Interstate 20...

 RW> <snip>

 Roy>> Nice thing about that trestle is that the top is wider than the
 Roy>> structure that supports it. No way you could climb under the top
 Roy>> and get to the safety of the supporting structure in time to let
 Roy>> the train pass overhead.

 RW> YEah that makes it an adeventure.  I wouldn't care to fish
 RW> out there, but I might throw a trotline off it, tie it to
 RW> the trestle and come back for it later and see how many fish I'd
 RW> caught <grin>.

 Roy>> I supposed tying a rope around a few ties might give you an
 Roy>> advantage though.

 RW> yEah were I to fish it that's rpobably what I'd do, have it
 RW> ready to just loop around me and drop off, get to the
 RW> supports that way, have it over some ties and then climb
 RW> back up after the train passes.

 RW>> I used to use another place near downtown Burlignton, Iowa
 RW>> as a cut through to make a 45 out of a 90 degree and cut off about a
 RW>> quarter mile if i was walking to the south end of town, the main
 RW>> line ran between buildings of a boiler factory,

 Roy>> We had one of those too. Stover Steel. My grandpa Witt worked there
 Roy>> around the time the US entered WW1 and on to the mid to late 1920s.

 RW> THis one was same vintage, Murray Iron works iirc.
 RW> DIfferent name now, but it's still in business, friend of
 RW> mine's a machinist for 'em.  My xyl sold him some "joe
 RW> blocks" is waht he called them that were her ex husbands.

Stover went belly up during the depression or after WW2 ... Jo Blocks were
called that because the inventor's name was Joe something. He was a Swede,
I think. They're precision metal blocks that are lapped to size and
they're supposed to have a tolerance of plus or minus .0001"... If you
gave them some finger-oil and rub a few together, they'd stick together if
you needed a stack to make up a set thickness of blocks. Too expensive for
a machinist to buy, but they were easily lost for whatever reason. I have
a few odds and ends in my tool box that I used to check the accuracy of my
'mics' ...

 RW>> and a guy could walk those tracks through there. My dad saw me take
 RW>> that shortcut one night and raised seven different colors of it with
 RW>> me later.  hE maintained there wasn't enough room to get out of the
 RW>> way, and might have been right on that one when I think about it as
 RW>> a rational adult.

 Roy>> 8^) Like my dad, he had already been there as a youngster himself
 Roy>> and knew all about it. The first 20 or so years of your life were a
 Roy>> reminder of his youth.

 RW> YEah that's what he said at the time.

 RW>> At the time I would have said I could hug teh wall of one of the
 RW>> buildings and probably get by, but now I wouldn't care to.

 Roy>> Too close for comfort in m book.

 RW> Yeah in mine too now, but then I didn't worry too much about it, I
 RW> was just saving steps.

 RW>> I know I didn't care for hanging below that trestle with my hands
 RW>> curled around a railroad tie either.

 Roy>> I'll bet!

 RW> NO that was not a fun twenty minutes or so.  I'm guessing 20 minutes,
 RW> couldn't tell you for sure, but my arm muscles sure hurt.  Thing is,
 RW> I'm not sure that river was deep enough if I let go to be good to
 RW> land in, that mighta hurt pretty bad too.

LOL! Been there and done that. Dropped on my knees to a block of concrete
just under the water's surface. I didn't have much fun that day.

                R\%/itt

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