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Saturday, January 12. 2013

Sperry Rail Inspection Car

Cool machines. Cool business. A marriage of high tech with old tech. There is a wonderful romance in rail, isn't there? Rail is still a big business.


 




Posted by The News Junkie in Our Essays, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 12:28 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0)

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--there IS romance and mystery and symbolism all over the railroad. RR = rail road = ronald reagan --whose life and vision and attitude and aspect were always iron, spiked to wood/would, always had room for an parallel equal person, idea, policy, always knew where he was going, always stayed on track, always knew right how to get home, could carry the freight, pull the weight/wait, keep a schedule, blow off steam only at rest, conducter of business with all legal passengers, and always kept the red car last in line.

The dollar sign = an 'S' -for 'essen', ancient Celtic for food, eating, and the U S of A put a set of railroad tracks right through it, pointing up, or down, either way, your choice --or our choice.
#1 buddy larsen on 2013-01-12 13:58 (Reply)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1rWyyYfQaw

--listen to the boys' tempo and volume come up and go down like a train slowing down coming in and speeding up going out --

But most of all, listen to the fantastic Doppler Effect they blow through the chorus.
#2 buddy larsen on 2013-01-12 14:09 (Reply)
One more and i'll leave you be --but this is another song that has a sort of second channel thing going with itself --Canadian national treasure Gordon Lightfoot with the Canadian Railroad Trilogy -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzo6Otpgj-E
#3 buddy larsen on 2013-01-12 14:32 (Reply)
That's a good 'un Buddy. I remember hearing it in college for the first time back in the mid 70s.
#3.1 feeblemind on 2013-01-13 10:27 (Reply)
Meanwhile, the from-away whining classes who moved to Maine to get away from the tri-state area madness have forced the train to quiet its whistle as it moves through the picturesque shopping town of Freeport. Reminiscent of the carpetbaggers who were buying up the million dollar waterfront condos in Portland and complaining about those pesky lobster boats firing up their engines at 4 a.m.
#4 Hear My Train a-Comin' on 2013-01-12 15:05 (Reply)
Railroad technology is a fascinating blend of the old and the new. Norfolk Southern just replaced the whole section of rail bed from Columbia to Charleston south and to Charlotte north. Watching it was amazing - the machine chassises were definitely old school but retrofitted with new bedding machinery. The machine was about three boxcar lengths long. It pushed back the gravel fill, pulled out the rail nails, raised the rails, pulled out the old ties out, put the new ties in, filled the bed in with new gravel bedding and renailed the rails. If there was a rail fracture and they had to replace a rail (which they did in several places along the route I was watching them do), workers with torches would cut the old rail free, a new one would be put in place and they used thermite to fuse the new rail to the old rail without a break.

A lot of fun to watch and the railroad freight trains never stopped running the whole time.
#5 Tom Francis on 2013-01-12 21:07 (Reply)
Just finished a book entitled "Rival Rails", about the history of American RR, particularly western/transcontinental expansion.

Not a literary masterpiece, but a lot of fun to learn the players and history of this piece of Americana. It's worth checking out.
#6 DrTorch on 2013-01-13 09:27 (Reply)

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