weather will be nice. any plans besides yard work?

welcome to talkback!

we'll be open all weekend, but may be having a bit of a cook-out at the in-laws on sunday afternoon...
mmmm...steaks!
if i'm lucky, there will be corn on the cob. i usually eat that last as a "dessert" because i love it so much!

thank you for the welcome , that sounds good a cook out .

Friday again!!! any plans ? I'm going out of town to visit an old friend .

Daughter and her husband are coming by for the weekend. We're talking about heading over to Stitches, the comedy club at the Host on Friday night. And if the weather holds, we may head up to the bike swap at the Velodrome up near Trexlertown on Saturday.

going to see my mom for mother's day on Saturday. this will probably be her last, and she won't even know it's me. Then on Sunday church, then the family is taking me out to dinner. that should be lovely.

what's a bike swap? never heard of that before. sounds obvious..but you never know!

Sorry to hear about your mom. If you're not afraid to click, the underlined words are links. I have a Mac, so I can open any link, read any email. I have no fear of the link.

happy mothers day sorry to hear about your mom my thoughts and prayers will be with you and yours .

thanks salina...I mean that.
Dowhat...checked out the link. That's quite the to-do! Thanks!

work saturday, then sunday - church, maybe a cookout??

Visited City and why? at Circa Antiques and Historical Artifacts tonight. Like why? says, they ROCK!

Herb Faire at Landis Valley Farm Museum on Saturday...take mother in law to lunch on Sunday for Mother's Day. Stop by Lititz Moravian Church to wish my mother a Happy Mother's Day! Just one whole day of sunshine would be fabulous!

anytime

On Saturday, we rode bike on a bit of the Heritage Rail Trail in York County.
A bunch of these little rail cars came on by.

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Made a little YouTube of some of the unusual "engines."



Wondered about the purpose of these extra rails, usually as the tracks passed over a bridge.
And also about the need to cable adjoining rails together like this? Any railroad buffs out there?

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I know, I know!

1. The little railcars are motorcars or "speeders". But "speeder" is more of a railbuff term, than a railroad one. They were used by maintenance folks on the railroad in decades past. Now they use hy-railers (pickup and other trucks with little rail wheels that can be lowered from under the bumpers - the GMC in the video above is a hyrailer). Although a few smaller RRs still do use speeders. The private motorcar owners even have their own group and everything: http://www.narcoa.org/

2. The extra rails are guide rails. In case a train would derail on a bridge, they would hopefully keep the rail cars from "driving" off the edge.

3. The wire is a bond wire. It helps in carrying the electrical current through the rail. Signal systems and road crossing signals are all activated by low level currents that travel through the rails (one rail is positive, one negative). When you get a train on that section of rail, it shunts the circuit, and therefore the crossing gates activate, or the signal system knows a train is present, etc. Now the rials pictured have long since had their electrical stuff disabled and scrapped, but the remnants remain.

Thanks for the info and the link. Never had seen nor heard of the little buggers before. Was very cool to view the slide show on the website.

Later as we were heading on down to Shrewsbury to get some lunch, we saw 'em all parked at Glen Rock. Seems they had stopped for water ice. Must be interesting to see 'em hauled off and onto the tracks. A little crane? Brute force? Or somehow they just drive 'em off and on?

Been on a few "rails to trails" but never before one with tracks. They had a rule: Please don't try to race the trains. :-)

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Photo = parking area at Seven Valleys.

I think they just push them on trailers. Some speeders (all? - I'm a little out of my expertise here) had a jack and turntable on them. There was a jack in the middle of the underside of the car. You spin it down and it would lift the car then you could spin it on or off the track. I always liked the bigger forms of RR power.

It's a neat hobby for sure. I never got into it because I lack the money, time and talent. There's 2 groups that I can think of off-hand that offer regular rides in speeders. http://www.maandparailroad.com/ The Maryland and PA preservation group runs a little historical village in Muddy Creek Forks, PA (so. York county). Along with the few buildings they have a couple miles of the original Ma & Pa restored and they run a 'train' of speeders on it. (look under calendar on the left hand side).

The East Broad Top RR is about 2 hours away in Orbisonia, PA. http://www.ebtrr.com/ They are an original narrow gauge RR (rails are only 3 feet apart, compared to the normal 4'8.5") They run steam as well as short speeder rides.

BUREAUCRACIES LIVE FOREVER!! (email making the rounds a few years ago.)
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Q: The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?

A: Because that's the way they built them in England, and of course English expatriates built the US railroads.

Q: Why did the English build them like that?

A: Because those first rail lines were built by the very same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge the tramways used.

Q: Why did they pick the 4 feet, 8.5 inch span for the tramways?

A: Well, because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which had that particular wheel spacing.

Q: And why did the wagons use that particular odd wheel spacing?

A: Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagon wheels would break on the older, long distance roads in England because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

Q: So who built those early old, very rutted roads?

A: Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And those ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match, otherwise they suffered broken wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome the wheel spacings were all alike.

And there you have it -- the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

So the next time you are handed a Specification/ Procedure/ Process and wonder "What horse's as$ came up with this?" you may be exactly right, a horses as$ it was. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.

AND if you are not yet convinced being a bureaucratic horse's as$ is cool and important....

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, know that ancient horse's as$es control many things (and modern "horses as$es" control everything else). You know those two slender rockets attached to the sides of the huge main fuel tank on which the Space Shuttle is perched? They are solid rocket boosters made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.

The engineers who designed the boosters would have preferred a noticeably "fatter" design but the boosters must be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains and the space rockets have to fit through the tunnel which, as you now know, is plenty wide enough for exactly two horses' behinds.

So, a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's as$.