Running Bear's January 2019 Coffee Shop

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Bruette

Well-Known Member
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Workers in replacement of retaining wall, near Hazelwood, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1906
Historic Pittsburgh image collection
 

Bruette

Well-Known Member
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Maryland Rail Commuter Service (MARC) is a regional rail system with three lines in the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area.� The rail system is administered by the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) and is operated under contract with CSX Transportation and Amtrak.
MARC's Penn Line, which carried 19,000 riders a day between Washington, DC and Baltimore is operated by Amtrak employees.� Its known as the fastest commuter rail line in North America with trains operating at speeds as high as 125mph.� With 14 stations, MARC's Penn Line gives rail riders direction connections to Amtrak, Baltimore's Light Rail system, and DC's Metrorail subway.

Commuter Rail: Could Amtrak be the answer?
 

GarryCBQ

Well-Known Member
Howdy .... 15F here.

Reporting the Deep Freeze in the News, they did a story about railroads in Chicago "lighting fires in tracks" as if the switch heaters they showed were a new innovation just for the Polar Vertex. Such heaters have been used for several decade by railroads...... Keeping us informed. LOL

Willie .... More nice layout photos from you. Good to see them.

Louis .... Those are interesting photos of MARC trains.
'
 

bnsf971

Gomez Addams
Staff member
I don’t know if anybody who is not a Vietnam veteran is aware, but the jungle juice produced there was not pure alcohol with flavoring. It had some pretty hard-core ingredients.
 

Bruette

Well-Known Member
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https://www.facebook.com/StarvinMar..._yHG0UmpctuRJrFJkZgMYXy9ac5bRolvOkRJdNIebLuC3
Cloverland Dairy Building on N. Monroe Street and Windsor Avenue. Baltimore, MD Marvin Welch - ‎Baltimore's Past and Present Memories
(If you don't have a cow, call Cloverland now) That was the milk I grew up on. I kept the milk man busy. My Nanny told me I drank at least one quart of milk everyday. Bless her heart she happily paid for every drop.

It must do a body good. I was 6' tall when I was 10. I never broke a major bone in my body, other than a pinky toe. That is until I took a swan dive off of my ice coated brick porch steps in december 2017. When Johns Hopkins extracted bone marrow from me they had to use a never before used tool to get through my extremely dense bone. The surgeon told me he had never seen bone so dense. For a minute I thought he was talking about my head ;)

Jim Henson's 1965 commercial for the Cloverland Farms Dairy in Maryland was one of the first times he used the Chroma-key technique to insert a background. For the first time, Jim could hide a group of puppeteers while still giving his character, the Cloverland Cow, dynamic and complicated movement.
 

Bruette

Well-Known Member
I don’t know if anybody who is not a Vietnam veteran is aware, but the jungle juice produced there was not pure alcohol with flavoring. It had some pretty hard-core ingredients.
I had never heard that, but I bet it did have some kick!
 

Boris

Beach Bum
Reporting the Deep Freeze in the News, they did a story about railroads in Chicago "lighting fires in tracks" as if the switch heaters they showed were a new innovation just for the Polar Vertex. Such heaters have been used for several decade by railroads...... Keeping us informed. LOL

Garry: The local news broadcast(s) in NYC, covered the story, including an interview with a near hysterical commuter who was totally frightened by the thought of her train running over flames on the tracks. They then sent out teams of reporters to NY Penn and GCT to see if Amtrak and the MTA were doing the same thing. Most frightening part was an interview, with a MTA PR person, who unequivocally stated that the MTA was unaware of the practice. Might explain why the MTA shuts down during relatively minor snowfalls.

As you noted this is a common long time practice.

Boris
 
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Bruette

Well-Known Member
Speaking of Vietnam, yesterday was the anniversary of the Tet Offensive

Many saw it as proof America could not win. In reality it was one of the American military's finest battles. Completely outnumbered and caught off guard those brave Allied soldiers over came the odds and won!

Vietnam veterans are as good if not better than any soldier to ever serve.
 

Greg@mnrr

Section Hand
Good Morning Everyone................still cold found out that yesterday morning the low was -29 below zero and today even colder, but a warm spell this weekend at maybe 43 degrees and rain!

Layout again today...cleaned ballast off the rail webs where I ballasted yesterday and then clean the tops of the rails. A few areas have to "plant" brushes and small trees. Run a few trains if time permits.

Short 'n sweet today.

Greg
 

GarryCBQ

Well-Known Member
Boris ... Interesting about the news people reporting about MTA and switch heaters.

Johnny ... Good to hear the update about Dena.

Greg .... Good to hear warmer weather is on its way.

Louis.... I like the milk truck photo. .... Notice the milk truck behind the SD9


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Sirfoldalot

Days Gone Bye!
Staff member
Lots of reading and looking this morning. We are 49 - that's somewheres near 92 degrees warmer than MARK - WOW!

The area north and west of LA is getting hit with rain this morning and they say that this weekend will bring more rain.
I was looking at the radar map and it looks as if it will miss us here - not sure at this time as I see sunshine out the window.
High is expected to reach 62 today - that's 10 degrees cooler than yesterday.

Spousal Unit is packing a few things to wander back out to take care of her mom again this weekend, so I will be stag except for the company of my two fur babies. Sunday I will go to Bunco friend's hoe for SuperBowl party, but I could care less who wins. I wanted it to be KC and New Orleans playing since GB was out of the fray..

With those temps - LOUIS - you better bring the Brass Monkey in off the porch! Did you look it up, or do I need to tell you how it came about?
 

Bruette

Well-Known Member
Sherrel fortunately I don't have a brass monkey and I don't know where the saying comes from, enlighten me please.

Have I led a sheltered life?

On the Super Bowl, I'm with you, Saints and Chiefs would have been fun to watch. There will always be a call for an asterisk if the Rams win and the Patriots, enough already! ;)

I really don't like the Patriots, going back to 1976 and the rivalry with the Baltimore Colts. I routed for them once, against the Bears when Raymond Berry was their coach, that was a disaster. As a football fan I have to respect Belichick and Brady, but I don't have to like them.
 

Sirfoldalot

Days Gone Bye!
Staff member
OK - LOUIS -- This is it in a brief version.
Back in the olden days of sailing ships and cannon balls - the cannon balls were stacked in a pyramid on a brass frame, called a monkey, to keep them from rolling around. This frame was originally steel, but the balls would rust to the frame - so it was changed to brass.
When the temp got real cold the brass frame would shrink and the balls would fall off! Hence the saying that it was so cold that it would freeze the balls off of a brass monkey.
 

Sirfoldalot

Days Gone Bye!
Staff member
Longer version:
Every sailing ship had to have cannon for protection. Cannon of the times required round iron cannonballs. The master wanted to store the cannonballs such that they could be of instant use when needed, yet not roll around the gun deck. The solution was to stack them up in a square-based pyramid next to the cannon. The top level of the stack had one ball, the next level down had four, the next had nine, the next had sixteen, and so on. Four levels would provide a stack of 30 cannonballs. The only real problem was how to keep the bottom level from sliding out from under the weight of the higher levels. To do this, they devised a small brass plate ("brass monkey") with one rounded indentation for each cannonball in the bottom layer. Brass was used because the cannonballs wouldn't rust to the "brass monkey", but would rust to an iron one.

When temperature falls, brass contracts in size faster than iron. As it got cold on the gun decks, the indentations in the brass monkey would get smaller than the iron cannonballs they were holding. If the temperature got cold enough, the bottom layer would pop out of the indentations spilling the entire pyramid over the deck. Thus it was, quite literally, cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.
 

Bruette

Well-Known Member
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Eastbound Ore Train with B&O hopper cars has just exited the double tracked Susquehanna River bridge leaving Northumberland Yard and will soon use the back or circle line thru Sunbury, Pa. as it heads for the grade up the Shamokin Branch to the Lehigh Valley RR connection at Mt. Carmel. Nace Tower is just ahead in this photo from 1956 by RW. Robert Wanner- Pennsylvania Railroad
 
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