The Atlantic & Southern Saturday Report

Started by Judge, January 05, 2019, 03:59:09 PM

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ReadingBob

Great update your Honor.  The only part I have trouble believing is that Greg behaved himself.  That seems a little far fetched.  ;)
Bob Butts
robertbutts1@att.net

There's a fine line between Hobby and Mental Illness.

GPdemayo

Quote from: ReadingBob on June 03, 2019, 12:54:39 PM
Great update your Honor.  The only part I have trouble believing is that Greg behaved himself.  That seems a little far fetched.  ;)


It can happen Bob.....not often, but it can happen.  ;D ;D ;D
Gregory P. DeMayo
General Construction Superintendent Emeritus
St. Louis & Denver Railroad
Longwood, FL

jimmillho

Quote from: GPdemayo on June 03, 2019, 01:31:04 PM
Quote from: ReadingBob on June 03, 2019, 12:54:39 PM
Great update your Honor.  The only part I have trouble believing is that Greg behaved himself.  That seems a little far fetched.  ;)


It can happen Bob.....not often, but it can happen.  ;D ;D ;D

I agree that it CAN happen, the question is DID it happen, or is that just hear say.

Jim

MAP

Mark

Judge

ATTENTION followers of the Saturday Report.  I reviewed previous editions of the Report this morning and noted there has been some interference with my prose.  I suspect it has to do with the recent update to the Forum platform.  I will be correcting the problems beginning this weekend, starting with page 1 and moving forward.  Sorry about the inconvenience. 

The Judge

Judge

#245
The Saturday  Report will be delayed until Sunday noon ONCE AGAIN!  Sorry.  I seem to have a different problem every week. 

deemery

Others have had similar problems cutting-and-pasting from Word. It's probably due to the hidden mark-up characters in Word.  Before copying, try this:  Select your text, go to Format -> Styles.  Change the bottom menu to show "List All Styles"  Now select "Normal (Web)", copy and paste.  See if that fixes the problem.

(Word is an abomination...)

dave
Modeling the Northeast in the 1890s - because the little voices told me to

Janbouli

Or just copy paste to a "plain text"app like Notepad which is on every Windows PC and probably an equivalent on an Apple . Or just write the text in Notepad.
I love photo's, don't we all.

Judge

Thank you for your kind suggestions.  For now, I am going to simply type my reports here instead of trying to copy and paste.  Thanks again.  I agree WORD is an abomination.  I used Word Perfect during my time on the bench and found it to be a much superior product.  But Microsoft has managed to convince the world that WORD is the platform to use and now we are stuck with it.  Saturday Report follows.

Judge

#249
    Saturday Report for Saturday, June 8, 2019.

    The Board of Directors met promptly at 0830 hours and immediately went into executive session to discuss the progress report, which was considerable.  The freight yard at Summit continues to be under construction and permanent wiring is expected in the next two weeks.  Appropriate knobs have been purchased from Hobby Lobby to attach to the hand throws for the yard.
    An SD9 loco was received from BLI, painted in Central of Georgia colors.  (Georgia, by the way, is correctly pronounced "Jaw-Ja.")  Beautiful model.  Unfortunately, the decoder was unsatisfactory.  However, a new decoder from TCS WOW Sound is going to be installed anyway so the faulty BLI decoder was a welcome addition to the trash can.
    More importantly, there were major gremlins at work this morning.  The Digitrax system is somewhat complex and for some reason the program track is inoperative.  That was only one of the problems.  Most of them were solved by telephone call to an expert who will arrive on the property Sunday for a complete inspection.  Ah, computers.  You gotta love 'em.
    Before lunch, we did manage to get one train move.  An SAL GP7 picked up a string of freight cars from the Sanlando yard and hauled it up the Ovalix to Summit.  The train orders required the engineer to pick up some cars from the Summit freight yard.  That was accomplished before lunch, which was at Smokey Bones. 
    After lunch, Greg Demayo and wife arrived on the property.  They were mainly on station to meet the new family puppy.  The CEO may post a photo of the vicious creature if he is encouraged to do so by his admiring public. 
    The Saturday Session adjourned around 1:30 p.m., to reconvene on Sunday afternoon.
    No Saturday Report next weekend.  Out of town trip planned from Thursday til Sunday.

    This week's story is one of those railroad legends that have many versions.  The version published here is the most credible.

                                                                                                     ORIGIN OF THE SAND DOME

    Some say the use of sand to give locomotives extra traction was a Pennsy invention.  Others say it came from the B&O.  Tain't so!  The first sanders originated on the Atlantic & Southern in the early 1860's, during the Confederacy. 
    The mosquitos in Florida during the summer are gigantic.  It has been recorded that they are so large and vicious that they can penetrate the bottom of a cast iron cornbread skillet held up for protection.  There was a time, during Reconstruction, when a bill was introduced in the Tallahassee legislature to make them the State Bird.
    In July, of '62, when it was the hottest, the 'skeeters were grasshopper size.  The pesky critters were naturally attracted to the road bed of the A&S and thousands of them swarmed the tracks, causing a slippery mess that seriously interfered with railroad operations.  For a week or two the A&S employed men to walk ahead of the engines with a broom and sweep the tracks, but this solution had little real effect because the 'skeeters would jump back on the track when the train passed.  And it was hard to keep men for more than a day or two due to the number of stinging bites the 'skeeters inflicted upon them.  Besides, the brooms soon wore out and he trains were reduced to crawling speed of merely 2 mph.  Finally, an employee in the Maintenance Department, whose name has been lost to the ages, came up with the idea of attaching sand boxes to the cow catchers on the locomotives in such a way that steams of sand would automatically be deposited on the rails in front of the wheels.  The sand allowed he wheels of the engine to squish the mosquitos without losing traction so the scheme proved to be an unqualified success.  It was soon adopted by other roads.
    Now-a-days, bat houses are strategically placed on railroad right-a-ways in Florida to control the mosquitos. A bat can eat his weight in 'skeeters in a day.  As a result, much less sand is needed by the railroad.  That is a significant cost savings considering sand is a scarce commodity in Florida.  Today, sand is primarily used by the A&S to add traction to the engines when they climb the 1% grade on the Ovalix. 
    And that's the truth, as related by Will Fixer, Director of Maintenance, A&S Railroad.

ACL1504

Maddie was three months old when this photo was taken. She is now five months old. She loves visiting the A&S RR and finds everything this CEO drops on the floor.

"If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed."
Thomas Jefferson

Tom Langford
telsr1@aol.com

PRR Modeler

Another great story Bill. Enjoy your trip.
Curt Webb
The Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad
Freelanced PRR Bellevue Subdivision

GPdemayo

Good one Bill.....if you think the "skeeters" are bad up here, you ought to visit the Everglades in July or August.....they are so big they make a B-29 look like a toy plane.  ;D
Gregory P. DeMayo
General Construction Superintendent Emeritus
St. Louis & Denver Railroad
Longwood, FL

ReadingBob

Bob Butts
robertbutts1@att.net

There's a fine line between Hobby and Mental Illness.

deemery

Modeling the Northeast in the 1890s - because the little voices told me to

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