Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

The last time we were in Fallon, we saw a rail-served facility there that looked interesting. While searching for other information about railroads in Nevada, I stumbled over information about that facility, and today we decided to drive over to Fallon on a quiet holiday weekend when there wouldn't be anyone to complain about us taking pictures.

( Reload, Reload, OK! )

After photographing the magnesium carbonate reload, we started to make our way out of town, whereupon we stopped again to take more photos. I forgot to take any with my phone, but Lisa took a bunch of them and some video, which we will post later. What was saw was a large high sided rail car with one end hinged open and a person running a Bobcat loader driving into the car and coming back out with a front-loader full of a powdery substance that he dumped into a hopper truck. (I noted that he was wearing a respirator against the dust. Maybe you have to be able to see something to believe that you have to wear a mask to keep from inhaling it.) We couldn't figure out what they were loading; however, it was presumably relatively important given they they were doing it on a holiday weekend Sunday. In this case, the direction of the reloading was from rail to road, as opposed to the magnesia down the line.

From there it was on to Hazen, where we stopped to take photos of some railroad equipment that has been parked there for what seems years.

( MOWing the Tracks at Hazen )

I did not take pictures, but this spot in Hazen is also a rail reloading site, and it appears that they transfer the same fuzzy-looking stuff we saw the Bobcat moving earlier in Fallon. I forgot to take pictures of it, but it had a cotton-like texture to it. A little searching online and a suggestion from Lisa revealed that it was cottonseed, which is used in cattle feed. It's being brought in here in bulk carloads and transloaded to be used to mix in with other material to feed the large number of cattle raised in the Fallon area.

This was an interesting day if you are interested in railroads and the products they move and how they move them. I'm glad we had the opportunity to go have a look at it and get some photos.

This morning, after breakfast, I went to the Fernley Fun Center and bowled three games, managing 311 over the three games total. I think I should be able to do better than that. Had I known that there was a bowling center next door to the hotel where SMOFCon was being held, I would have tried to get Worldcon 76 to riff off our green-and-black shirts by trying to organize a SMOFCon Bowling on Friday night or Sunday morning.

When I got back home, Lisa suggested that we go over to Big R in Fallon (it's the larger store; Fernley is a satellite of it) and see if I could replace my stocking cap that I lost in Boston there. (We'd already bought a new Mag-Lite to replace the one that fell out of my pocket somewhere on the SMOFCon trip.) On the way over there, we stopped at Starbucks for me to buy a coffee for the road.

As we were coming out to the Astro, I said, "Is that puddle under the van from us?" Lisa had a look and said she thought it was, and that it was green, meaning leaking coolant. The Fallon trip was put on hold and we headed home, because Lisa said there was still coolant in the recovery tank; therefore, there should still be coolant in the radiator.

I watched the temperature gauge climb alarmingly as we carefully drove the 3 km home. However, after briefly touching the bottom of the yellow zone, it then quickly shot back down to normal level. We got home and Lisa investigated further. There was no further leakage. She postulated that there had been an air bubble in the radiator that caused the temperature spike, and when it burped, the temperature returned to normal. However, we needed to put more coolant into the engine, and with the sub-freezing weather here, we couldn't just put plain water into it.

We went to Pilot, refueled, and bought a container of pre-mixed coolant. I refilled the recovery tank, and we decided to head sort of toward Fallon to give the radiator a chance to digest it. Just outside of town, we stopped at one of the local casinos at a parking space with no existing leak marks, idled for a short time, then stopped the engine and waited for a couple of minutes. No more leakage. We headed on to Fallon.

In Fallon, we found some of the things for which we were looking, but not all of them. I bought a new stocking cap because I need a warm head covering in this weather, but I don't really like the lime green color. OTOH, it may help me be more visible when we go out for our evening walks. We also went to the Ace Hardware in Fallon and found a couple of other things. We further think we've figured out from where we bought the length of 3/8-inch flexible conduit for which Lisa has been trying to find fittings. To our annoyance, the store that sold us the conduit (Big R Fallon) does not appear to have any fitting that actually fit the conduit they sell! (They sell the 1/2-inch and 3/4-inch conduit and fittings for it, but not the smaller stuff, which is all special-order.)

After a long morning of shopping for hardware and other things, we returned home. Lisa went to bed (she continues to try and migrate her sleep schedule forward) and I worked on one of the WSFS projects I have on my plate. I'm still behind, and Worldcon 76 is poorer for it, but I'll see what I can do this coming week.