Recent content by ceebeenq

caboose spotting Jetrock- Way freights or locals are one place where, if real lucky, we still might see a caboose today. A few railroads still use them for the crew .........although I can't think of a specific one right now. Otherwise the extra trainmen ride in a second unit or that leat...

favorites A little late on this thread, but :( I have some favorites I never saw. Thanks to books and magazines, I've become a big fan of my namesake road, and WP- which was part of UP before I ever saw any of it, but have railfanned its territory several times. Spectacular! I worked for...

that thing About a month ago I was at the BNSF yard in Galesburg IL and they were using a similar machine to blow out switches. (lots of snow and ice, about 10 degrees at the time) Sounded like a small jet. Seemed to be purely high speed air, no heat involved- I guess. ** VERY loud ** had...

flagging Ted, yet another response.... well flagging today is essentially performed by the dispatcher and/ or radio communications between trains. Radio is much better now than 20-25 years ago. If you have a scanner, you'll hear it sooner or later "Dispatcher, 4732 West in emergency at...

More on crews Ted, I forgot to say what a brakeman did. I can't cover it all, but here's *one* thing a head-end brakeman did in the territory I worked: (We operated in single track "dark" territory. ie, No block signals, CTC, etc) We had train meets dictated by the dispatcher and provided to...

Ted- I can tell you what it was like in the late 70's early 80's as I was a brakeman on the C&NW at that time. Typical over the road freights had the engineer and a brakeman in lead unit. Rarely was there a "fireman", which at that time meant a student engineer, but I did see this a few times...

Ricardo-- that is a great building and I especially like the rooflines. Fits in well . :thumb: Keep up the good work :D CBnQ

trains are here! Nscale4-- I bought a home after looking for months for the right combination of : close to busy main line, a couple acres, and not "too far" out in the sticks. ;) So, I'm about 2 miles north of the BNSF (former Santa Fe) in central IL. When the air is calm I hear them...

Trains " i think they have done Minneapolis/St Paul, Omaha/Council Bluffs, Detroit, and Cincinatti so far." Trainworm....they also have done Chicago. (Yes!) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Re: Trains......I've been subscribing since 1989 or so. And I try to locate older issues...

silly movies & tv Was "runaway train" the one with Jon Voight, escaped convict? most of the movies and tv that have had train scenes where the train was really important are pretty goofy and not accurate to real operations. Almost all, I'd say. What's more, I have met over the years, a...

apron George, I hope that apron isn't fastened too securely .......I would get up to answer the phone, forget to disengage and flip the workbench, put a kink in my neck and smash my shins all at once. :D I guess I watched the 3 stooges too much as a child. :D does sound like a good idea if...

This is probably not a new idea to many here but maybe somebody will benefit. One night, while assembling a couple kits and seeing, (sometimes only hearing) some small part go flying away from my fingers or tweezers or whatever tool I had ..........and onto the floor where they would be...

MRR Ralph, I have to agree. And I was recently looking at Nov '01 MRR-- chock full of how-to, advice, tips of all kinds, advanced and not so advanced. It is easy to be critical when we don't sit around the table and make the decisions on what to come up with every month. cBnQ ;)

Photos......? Maybe I'm missing the obvious, but where are the photos? I'd like to vote but..... thx cbnq:confused: :D

grinding foam ezdays--- I was experimenting a little last night: grinding foam in my Hamilton Beach blender. First, it's probably best to use the lighter density foam- I had the denser kind that is probably a little hard to chop up with the blender. (fabric stores usually sell 2 or 3...