Just in case any of you missed it, there is a great clip on the railway channel of the Welshpool railway. Cab view down the track. You guys living in England make me so jealous to have that stuff on your doorstep! The tourist railroads here in the good ole US of (F)A all exit through gift shops and I suspect there all powered by batteries :-) Rob
Welshpool railway
Apr 09, 2007
10 Replies
In message , Rob Kemp writes
Hmmm.
Welshpool is not in England.
Best wishes, Rob.
I had a trip on "The 1880 Train"
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near Mt Rushmore and that definitely was not using batteries. It was a steam engine and a state law (passed in the very early 20th century) meant that it had to be run on used automobile engine oil and boy could you tell!!! I also learnt on that trip that the whistle signal used by US trains approaching level crossings is a Q in Morse Code. Royal Navy ships carrying Queen Victoria would blast that signal meaning "We have right of way because the Queen is on board". The American railways adopted it for their own use to indicate right of way at crossings.
True, but it's still on the doorstep. _Everything_ in the UK is on your step (say he, living in mid-Northern Ontario, where we drive 140 km for a Saturday afternoon shopping trip.)
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You live in Elliott Lake? (A former mining community where impoverished pensioners are encouraged to buy a house for a song, as long as they don't mind living literally in the back of beyond.)
Canadian railways use it too, although whistling at many crossings in urban areas is not required, except in emergency, provided the crossings meet federal safety requirements re lights, barriers, etc.
The steam cog railway up Mt. Washington NH uses coal, and lots of it.
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Blind River, on the Sudbury -- Soo line, now leased by Genesee Wyoming operating as the Huron Central Railway.
Not far off - at least it's on the TCH. Where do you shop? Sudbury or the Soo? I have a friend in Dryden - 350km from Thunder Bay or Winnipeg.
We go up to the Soo about once a month to visit with the model railroad club there, which has a storefront at the Wellington Mall. I'm a member of the EL MRR club, go up there every other week or so. Don't drive as much as we used to, put only about 24,000km on the car last year. We walk to most places in BR.
The used oil reg is in South Dakota, I don't know if any other states adopted it. As to the whistles, we stayed in Rapid City (near Deadwood) and the railway (road?) runs through the centre of town with level crossings every couple of hundred yards. Makes for a superb alarm clock as the early freights blast a Q at every one ;o)
Don't for get us too. Standard gauge just up the road.
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Cheers,
Rob (training to drive a 101).
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