rants

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Rants and Musings

#1: There is a serendipitous quality to the interlocking I've ended up modeling. To no one's surprise, I am sure, model railroading, and particularly prototype model railroading, is a man's game. There are women out there in the hobby, but you mostly hear someting more like this in the hobby press...
"Meet Bob and Carol. Bob has been in the hobby for 55 years and built his four level Atlantic and Overdone RR in his basement, with some clever devices to make sure Carol could get to the washing machine. Carol even helps Bob out on the railroad - she enjoys making trees."
Luckily, though, thanks to meeting some great folks in the hobby, I've had no problem being taken seriously. Nonetheless, I get a chuckle and a sigh out of modeling (completely by accident) the only interlocking on the PRR whose telegraph letters are also the name of a feminine hygiene product. Take that patrirarchy!!!

#2: I really wish Amtrak would reinstate the old PRR instructions to identify the Horseshoe Curve in travel. It would spice up the trip a little bit, show some pride in the history of train travel, and prevent inane comments at railroad Mecca like this one (overheard on the Pennsylvanian enroute to Pittsburgh):

"The train just keeps going around in circles. Maybe that's why it takes so long to get anywhere."

AHHHHHH!!!!!

#3: On this same trip, I got a look at how poorly Amtrak gets treated. For whatever reason, we ended up chasing an NS trailer train up the Mountain, which had us constantly running into 'Approach' aspects and crawling along under speed. NS dispatchers wouldn't get it out of our way until Johnstown, when they finally sent the trailer train down the Sang Hollow Extension. By this time, of course, we were a good half hour to 40 minnutes behind. If NS had just held that trailer train for 10 minutes in Altoona we would have had no problem keeping schedule. The PRR sometimes had weird ideas about what constituted a 'priority' train, but they would not have pulled anything like this. And people wonder why Amtrak can't stay afloat...

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