For Anti-Rail Fans

[kevin_standlee]

Not everyone loves trains the way I do.



The sign can be seen on trailers in the industrial park near where I work in the Bay Area. It means that the trailer must not be loaded on intermodal rail equipment because it's not built to handle the higher loads encountered in rail service. I find it amusing that whoever designed the sign decided to use a steam locomotive to indicate a train. As it happens, there has been at least one case of Union Pacific steam hauling an intermodal freight, when the UP Steam Team were taking one of their steamers out for a shakedown run after repairs. The Steam Team likes to pull their weight, and it's best for the locomotive to run under load, so when there happened to be a train coming through Cheyenne needing a crew change, they tacked on the steamer and took it up the line. I wish I'd seen that one.

As with most of my photos, this one is CC-licensed if you want it. I shot it while out taking a walk after lunch. It turns out that per my pedometer, one lap around the logistics park in which I work is about 2 km.

Comments

[garyomaha.livejournal.com]

People who know I like trains keep giving me steam-related paraphernalia. I smile and thank them, as Those Who Really Know Me look on with amusement because they know my thing is diesel.

[garyomaha.livejournal.com]

I should probably add diesel and more recently (like the last 20 years or so) also electric.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

And for Lisa it's also electric. She'd be delighted if UP electrified its main line. OTOH, she recognizes that the traffic is too light so far. Her hoped-for future: natural-gas turbine engines. (The current flirtation with natural gas conversion of existing diesels is but a transition period while the infrastructure necessary to distribute gas to terminals is built up and to re-use older engine, rather than having to go through the pain of scrapping the entire fleet fairly quickly as during the steam-to-diesel changeover. Once you have that, gas turbines are a relatively easy step.)