In Notus, ID. A semi loaded with grain turned off highway in front of me and crossed the tracks…right in front of a train. The engine dead centered the trailer and it exploded. The tractor was on the other side and other drivers stopped on both sides. I don’t know what happened to the driver. What a mess.

Yikes,

that's no good.

Wonder if it was a farm kid driving to the elevator?

bunch of people around?

if so I bet video of it is on youtube in a couple of days

Here in town we have a couple of crossings that drop sharply on the south side. One day a rig got high-centered on one. Local guy convinced the driver that exiting the vehicle might just be a good idea. Train came through doing the normal speed in excess of what it should have been through town. Took the rig quite a ways down the track, didn't do any damage to the buildings along the track, but took out the crossing arms/signals there and at the next crossing. There are now signs warning trucks to not cross at those crossings. I am sure, people being what they are, that we will see a repeat someday anyhow.

Until recently I never knew you could swipe left on your i-phone and get instant camera. Missed filming stuff while fooling around trying to sign in.

Cell phones have cameras?

Bet that was a sight to see.

I was waiting a RR crossing one day, here comes the train by wheels all locked up with a old Ford Torino wrapped around the front. The whole mess just slid on by, took that long azzed freight train a long ways to stop. I heard the guy driving the Torino was skint up and drunk but OK.

I thought you gonna say “negro”



But anyway

Pics or it didn’t happen, at’s th rules eh!

Don't matter none.

it's kept off and locked in the glove box.

My guess was "Tranny"

I lived in one place in NW PA where I had to do a double take and step back to look down the aisle in the grocery store. There was a black lady doing some shopping. I'd been there a few months already.

Having grown up around a bunch of Mexicans, blacks, Asians of every sort, I thought that was about the whitest town I'd ever seen.

Heck, we had them in SoCal in the 70s and 80s.

Nothing on the news yet dbut friends following us said it was towing 2 trailers and the 2d one got hit.

My last one before I retired was in February. We hit a fully loaded semi full of grain right in the cab. I didn't even spill the can of Diet Dr. Pepper I had on the desk in front of me. We dragged him for over a quarter of a mile before we got stopped. Had to pull the driver out of the cab, he insisted on bringing a bottle of Crown out with him. Not sure if he had been drinking it or not, the firefighters and EMT's got there at about the time we got him out and they walked him to the ambulance and took off.

Black tranny lesbian I figured.

2C license plates?

Thought this thread might be about vaginas.

LOL

hahaha

Thanks for that!

I know that crossing well. Took out an empty livestock trailer there a few years ago. There will likely be a local "witness" claiming that the engineer didn't blow the whistle. Whatever. We got it all on video, and no, officer - you can't have it.

Took 'em months to replace the overhead crossing signals. The driver (female) said she "thought she was in the clear". Tune changed when she heard the "witness" BS. Don't give a rodent's anus what the outcome was.

Truck drivers all think they're the biggest baddest thing on the road.

Hunting fever got me , thought it was going to be a pie bald .
Lol , Kenneth

There are only 2 crossings there, 3d St. and Notus Rd. This was on 3d.

All crossings have a small sign on the side with a crossing number and a phone number. If you ever get stuck or break down call that number. Dispatcher will alert any train coming

Seen a trannny smack dab in the middle of downtown LA.
The big ritzy high rise sky scrapers smack square center of the place.
Durndest thing I ever saw, besides the live Sex show dinner theater in Kharlesrhule long ago.

Anyways stopped real quick to use a ATM.
Cpt Stanton and SSG Hodakowski waiting for me in the Van
Trot across the street
Some blonde chick in a nice blue dress already at the machine ahead of me
Wait my turn

" chick" gets done turns around
Adam's apple and needs a shave.
I'm just standing their dumbfounded as " chick" is walking away looking at it walking away.
SSG Ski starts honking the horn I look over him and Cpt Stanton are dying in the van laughing.
Then seen it all go down didnt know it was a tranny either.
What got them laughing so hard was me just standing their dumbfounded by it all as it happened.


🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤣🤣🤣

Our school bus used to stop on the middle of the tracks. Drive onto the tracks and then open the doors and look to see if a train was coming. Wtf

I would think to look before driving the first set of axels over and looking.

Dude said it was a federal law and we had to stop on the tracks.

Also met the guy who is the voice of squidward on sponge bob square pants during that LA trip.
And the clown guy on Santa Monica pier with the multi colored wig.

#beenaroundgreatness...

👍👍👍🥴🥴🥴🤣🤣🤣🤣

Spectacular videos. Really feel sorry for the participants.
I grew up by the D&RG and SantaFe lines south Denver/ Englewood. Saw several through the years at least the aftermath. Brother found body parts, glad I missed that excursion.

???

If you had real evidence, video or otherwise that an officer wants for an investigation how could keep it from him?

I don't think so. They have to stop and open the door BEFORE the tracks, not on them. With the pay that bus drivers get, they get some real winners.

What makes 'grain trucks' explode?

CityBoyMike

The highest value "cargo" uses the lowest paid professional drivers.



Bruce

That'll make yer parts draw up.

Hey hey hey! And wheat.


RC, ever hear more about the driver?

I was on the bus MOFO I remember it as I stated.

Rode that bus 45 minutes every morning and afternoon for two years in Savannah Ga.

I sat up front first seat, I watched the door open and could look out my own seat window and see rails below me.

Still can believe you couldn’t get a few post calamity pics. I’m pretty sure you have an iphone.

Must be a Tennessee law. I buy it.

I thought this was going to be about a Himalayan Snow Cock.

Loop

Knew an engineer all the local RR guys called "Rotten Ralph"
Dude carried a camera.When he hit a vehicle at a crossing, first thing he did was jump down and take pics!
One sick S.O.B., just like you!

No kidding. I just tried it and "son of a...."

My parents and a younger brother got it that way. Crossing on a curve in winter.

Dang,

that's the scheidts.

All the road engines have a forward facing camera with external audio that records onto a removable hard drive. That drive also records data showing pretty much everything the engineer does before and during the incident, and a lot of other stuff. A crossing incident is by law a trespassing case, and local law enforcement has no authority over the data recorder. That belongs entirely to the carrier. After an incident, there is a secure chain of custody protocol regarding that hard drive because it will be evidence for the defense (the carrier) in a lawsuit if necessary.

As much as the local LEOs are accustomed to their authority, in these incidents they have none regarding the train, the crew, or the evidence (though a lot of them seem to have not got the memo). And this is why when your survivors try to sue the railroad (UP, at least) over a crossing accident, the plaintiff almost never wins.


My condolences, las. [bleep] deal, all the way around.

Mine was the Notus crossing. Last I was there, 3rd just had a stop sign.
Between Notus and Nyssa, we seemed to hit a lot of trucks during harvest time. But it's not like you can't see us coming if you bother to look.

I think it was only a week after I hit the truck at Notus, another crew hit a loaded stock truck just east of Parma. Don't these drivers talk to each other? That was a smelly mess.

That happens more often than most would imagine...

Semi hit by train in Webster Co.

Notus, Idaho...don't blink as you drive through town or you won't notice it.
Lived there back in the '70s. Quite a town. The cultural center of town was Moore's Market. You could buy ANYTHING, legal or otherwise, there.

I wasn't doubting what you said. I was saying what the law is. My 'I don't think so' was aimed at the driver. It didn't come out that way very well in print. Sorry about that.

I live in the Twin Falls area. A couple years ago, the county replaced all the rail crossing stop signs on county roads with yield signs. Now nobody looks. It's only a matter of time before someone gets nailed. The tracks here are all local spurs and Eastern Idaho RR is the only user, moving cars to warehouses in the area. The tracks don't get much use.

This morning's news has nothing about this. I assume the driver is ok.

I am no legal expert and I am sure these regulations change by locality but this makes no sense to me.
Law enforcement can’t request a court ordered search warrant for that evidence? FAA Investigators can and do for the black box pertaining to aircraft accidents but I guess I have never heard of one not being voluntarily handed over.

That doesn’t seem to be an attorney-client privilege situation, which is about the only route I know of to withhold evidence when under a subpeona.

Hell if I know….

True story ......

A few years ago there was a truck full of wood chips headed to the mill that got t-boned by a train. There was wood chips everywhere around the crossing.

Later, I was telling my wife about it and told her about the chip truck that got hit by a train and there was chips everywhere around the wreck.

She replied that the kids in the area must have loved finding that mess.

Wait for it .........

Freight trains are often an inconvenience but Amtrak seems to fugk up on a whole different level.

I got stuck on i5 4 or 5 years back when some dumb azz train operator tried to take a curve way to fast. Ran off the rails right onto the highway and into the trees.

Well, sure - if there's reason to believe that a crime was committed then I suppose that a warrant could be obtained after the fact. But I'm struggling to think of one example of a crossing collision even looking like an actual crime. Not saying it's impossible, but highly unlikely. In any case, that hard drive goes into a locked case and goes to the corporate legal department, where the only key to that case is held. That data is not allowed to be tampered with by anybody, including local law enforcement.

Your problem here is that (just like some first responders) you are conflating a civil matter with a criminal or traffic enforcement matter. Local law has no authority to enforce any imagined traffic control over interstate railroads or their train crews. They wouldn't even know where to start. Sure, it's been tried - but they always get slapped down, and for good reason.

One of the things an experienced rail learns is how to tell an officer "no" without getting tasered, tackled, or shot. We (the smart ones) don't even hand over our ID when requested for very important reasons. Heck, I wouldn't even give my name. It's fun to watch their faces when you respectfully don't comply.

I know the case you're talking about, and there's far more to the story than "some dumb azz train operator". But yeah - that was a clusterfork. A group effort, that was.

I guess I’ll take your word for it but an investigation doesn’t have to be in response to a crime.

Civil matters can have investigations too and I am having a difficult time imagining a car insurance claim involving a train wreck not requiring a police report, which I am guessing normally involves a criminal investigation to see if the driver was at fault.

In any accident, someone, maybe more than one, is a fault and all the legalities hinge on an investigation to find out who done it.
Does a railroad have the authority to issue citations to truckers who drive in front of trains?

Not that I know of but hell if I know. It seems to me it’d be whomever’s local jurisdiction it is, as to who would conduct the accident investigation. Highway patrol, city police, county sheriff, etc.

The big railroad operations do have internal law enforcement (I think under the federal DOT) but I was under the impression they concentrated more on things like theft or damage to the rail cars or tracks, etc. I guess it is possible that since RR are often treated differently than roads, a “crime” committed there would fall under the RR’s law enforcement jurisdiction. I still don’t see how there wouldn’t be a criminal investigation to see who was at fault in an accident and I don’t just mean between the driver and train operator.

Oh, the police can report and investigate all they want. They just can't walk away with the train data recording. But the police aren't going to "investigate" a crossing accident. They'll make a report. The car insurance company may choose to investigate, I suppose, but that's unlikely. An ambulance chaser may demand the evidence in court. That should be fun to watch.


What usually happens when a crossing accident lawsuit is filed (last I heard) is the carrier shows the video and data to the plaintiff's side, and the lawsuit goes away. The reason this evidence is so powerful is partly because of the documented strict chain of custody regarding the hard drive. There are unusual exceptions where maybe there was a signal failure and someone actually has a case, but the vast majority of these incidents are cut and dried cases of trespassing. Yes. Every time you cross the tracks you are trespassing. Permission is implied, except when you get hit by a train. You (as a car or truck driver) are required to be vigilant and to obey the traffic controls at the crossing. The basic railroad crossbuck sign is a legal traffic control that has a definition and attached requirements. Same as stop signs and yeild signs. No one has a right to be on the tracks in front of an approaching train. Cut...and...dried.

Train operation is so closely controlled and monitored that the odds of a crossing accident showing any fault of the carrier or crew are extremely low, but it has happened. The carrier can be liable if there is a claim and the carrier fails to prove the claim has no grounds. The video and data record is irrefutable proof, precisely because of how closely it is guarded.

Funny thing about police reports. That's just another one of those things they're so used to that some of them can't wrap their mind around exceptions either. My last incident, the responding deputy handed me a report form to fill out. He said he was required by the Idaho State Police to have me fill it out. It told him it was required by my employer to say nothing and write nothing, and handed it back to him. Your problem - not mine.
Every crossing accident gets a visit from the local RR manager before the train moves again, and the LEO gets whatever limited information is required from him/her. But not the digital record. The LEA can request access to that from the carrier's legal department at a later date if they deem it necessary. I'm not privy to whether that's ever been a thing.

All the first responders need to know from a train crew is - are there any injuries that need immediate attention and is there any hazmat leaking or spilled? Everything else is internal matters, and UPRR crews are instructed as much in training.

Technically, I think yes. The class 1 railroads have their own police, and they have all the rights and responsibilities of the agency in whos area they're operating.

But why would they bother? I've never heard of them doing so.

Again - a crossing accident "investigation" is almost always as simple as, "here's your driver in front of our train. Here's the whistle blowing. Here's the speed. Here's the headlights. Here's the train brakes being applied before the impact." End of story.

It still boils down to authority. In a crossing accident, the only authority the LEO has is over the car driver. Maybe an analogy is in order. If you drive across an airport runway and get hit by an airliner, does the local PD investigate? No. They respond, and probably even make a report - but investigation is done by the DOT. Same with trains.

Now, if I, while operating the train, shoot some passing car driver out the window - then the local PD gets to have their way with me. It's all about the operation of the train. Locals have zero authority over that.

In answer to my "why would they bother?" Question....

Perhaps the reason I haven't heard of it is because so often there's no survivor to accept the ticket. I suppose it might look like a way to strengthen a defense, but I can't see it being necessary. And it would be adding insult to injury. Anyway - a question I never asked, because frankly, I don't care.

I assume you're referring to other accidents involving only the train or trains. The answer there is pretty simple. It's an industrial accident, and again, an internal matter. Unless of course there's damage or injury outside of the railroad, in which case the DOT would be involved. If the damage meets a certain dollar amount, the DOT may be involved regardless.

Local and state agencies have neither the authority nor the expertise to investigate railroad accidents.

Funny story. There was an incident in Weiser where one train collided with a car from another train, due to some operator error. All movement stopped of course, and soon there was a patrol car with two officers there. One officer boarded the locomotive and after being assured that there were no injuries and no hazmat leaks, he requested the crews IDs. The engineer politely explained that company policy stated that they were not to give up their personal info, and that a manager would soon be there and give him whatever was required.

Perplexed, the cop climbed off the train and didn't interact with the crew again. A few days later that engieer happened to be talking to the local railroad cop. The cinderdick told him that LEO had asked him, "who the hell does that guy think he is?" Cinderdick explained "the engineer was right - you were out of your lane."

We’re on different pages I guess. I have zero doubt that the vast majority of accidents involving trains end up being declared the vehicle driver’s fault. Zero doubt. An investigation by local police still needs to be made, right despite how obvious the situation is? Simply as a formality?

That, and if cars hit by trains are always a trespass issue, isn’t that a criminal case and thus, result in a criminal investigation?

Don't know what to say to explain it to you further. The data recording is all that is needed to "investigate", but the locals don't even have a reason to need it even if they had the authority. What are they going to do if there's evidence of any fault on the railroad? Write a ticket? For what? They have no legal authority over train operations. So who else else might want to investigate? A lawyer suing for the car driver or family.

So the lawyer files a suit, and being a smart lawyer, he knows to demand access to the data record. That's your investigation. The data record is going to show if the train crew was doing anything wrong. Anything. It's going to show the exact location. It's going to show if the headlights, bell, and whistle were functioning. It's going to show visually if crossing signals and/or gates were in place and functioning. It's going to show the visual condition of the crossing surface. It's going to show the client's vehicle where it doesn't belong. It's going to show the train brakes being applied and the impact following.

What else is there to know?

Edit: As for the trespass issue....that is typically handled by the railroad police department, to if it's handled at all. Again, it's the railroad that holds the evidence. Whether or not a trespass charge is persued is up to the railroad legal department.

I am not doubting you, I just am trying to understand how someone can simply tell a cop “no” when it comes to something they could use as evidence in an investigation (whether it is needed to prove a car driver was at fault or not). Nor can I understand how an investigation of the incident wouldn’t be conducted, if nothing else as a formality and for the insurance company.

Is it upsetting your world to think that a cop is not always the controlling authority?

Railroading is a special case. That place where you drive across the tracks? It's not public property, nor is it totally subject to local ordinances.

How does a local cop investigate anything railroad anyway? Does he have training in train handling or the General Code of Operating Rules? Does he have knowledge of the FRA regulations? Easy answer to these is "no". You'd be hard pressed top find a single cop who would even know what he's looking at or for, other than the smashed street vehicle. Even the foamers know much less than they think they do.

you have to be kidding! Blacks in PA? i am stunned, stunned i tell you!

what Free me says.
i responded to a rail car fire. rice on fire of all things. siding in one of the busiest terminals in America.
Our responsibility began and ended with traffic control.

Not at all.
I am intrigued by it.

FreeMe;
Good evening to you sir, I hope the day behaved and you're well.

Thanks for the insight into nuances of life that many of us aren't familiar with.

We used to have Canadian National which is owned by the government but still has it's own rules and maybe LEO and then Canadian Pacific which was the first one and was and still is I believe privately owned. I distantly knew a couple fellows who were LEO for one or the other, but can't recall which just now.

When the railway was built in Canada in the 1880's, the Federal government gave some pretty broad concessions of land to CP and as well there were rules like Federal law superseded provincial law something like a mile either way of center line of the tracks. It meant if one wanted to sell booze to the train construction crews, one needed a Federal liquor license if your establishment was within the federal land and a provincial liquor license if it wasn't.

If you ever make it up into this part of the world, there's a really excellent train museum in Revelstoke with one of the bigger steam engines inside. It's a huge old machine.

Thanks again for the adding to the conversation, like my cyber friend T Inman, I find all the rules and nuances really intriguing.

All the best and good luck on your hunts.

Dwayne

Hahaha. Tff. Winner winner....

Dwayne, is that CP land checkerboard like some railroad conveyed lands are in Wyoming and some other places in the western US? Holy cow what a bad idea that was...from a public access point of view.

Rather a rare occurrence where we lived.

Matter of fact, there was a town about 30 miles away, the KKK wanted to present them an award for never having had a black resident. The town had been in existence since around the Founding of our Nation. The town told them to fugg off and die basically.

The checkerboard RR lands were actually a good idea but poorly executed. It funded the RR building while it kept the greedy RR's from locking up all the access to everything. Where it went wrong was that congress didn't envision the corner access problem. They should have provided for a road width of access at every corner.

T Inman;
Top of the morning my friend, I hope you're finer than frog's hair thus far and all is going according to plan up north for you.

Going off of a bit of a foggy memory and incomplete grasp on the subject, yes I believe it was - but..

When my grandfather came here from Romania in the early 1900's he bought land from CP to homestead on and it was nowhere near the actual tracks. He was north of nowhere close to Fox Valley, SK which is 60km north of Maple Creek, SK which I want to say is where the CP line was.

All that to say, the feds at that time gave the CP huge chunks of land with the intent that they - the CP - would sell it to prospective settlers, which to a large degree happened.

For those reading who don't know this, there were a huge number of US folks who came up during this time - pre WWI - because land was so cheap across the medicine line. That's when my father in law's family came up from Minnesota as well and for the same reason. That and to get away from the Minnesota winters, which they actually did because the section of Manitoba they farmed was a bit of a better micro climate - a bit only though T.

Funny story about the liquor license thing.

While they were building the railway, you couldn't have a saloon in BC because - well it was very Victorian BC - but you could serve alcohol if you were a rooming house. So everyone had a big wall tent, with a cot in a sectioned off place behind the bar! Good to go.

Just outside of what was then called Farwell, now Revelstoke - again check out the train museum if you like that sort of thing - an Irish born entrepreneur came into town with two pack horses laden with a variety of spirits and what he thought was the correct BC provincial liquor license which would allow him to do business. However the BC NWMP Superintendent Johnson was on a campaign to rid the railway workers of their demon rum, so one of his constables seized the booze.

This didn't sit well with the local BC Provincial Police who included the colorful "Big John" Kirkup who attempted to "re-seize" the alcohol from the NWMP barracks/shack but ended up being arrested themselves.

That then led to NWMP Sargent being arrested by the BC Provincial Police and it went sorta sideways from there. It ended up with the BC Provincial Police and most of the town more or less laying siege to the NWMP barracks/shack and having "Hanging Judge" Matthew Baillie Begbie summoned in to settle the matter.

For anyone interested, here's a bit of a bio on Big John Kirkup.

https://www.cascity.com/forumhall/index.php?topic=65794.0

Bio on Matthew Baillie Begbie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Baillie_Begbie

The last thing on Big John is that there used to be a local museum which was run by a one time teacher/miner turned politician/history buff Bill Barlee. Bill had collected all sorts of interesting BC historical artifacts in the '60's when it was considered old junk.

On display in Bill's museum was Big John's SAA Colt with a 5½" barrel - cannot recall if it was a .45 or .44-40 sorry - and his shot loaded cane which is what he used when in the crowded mining camps. He'd leave the SAA in the hotel and use the cane. In short order it got so he'd show up in a mining camp and leave a list of people h wanted to appear in court and for the most part they'd show up as asked, since the alternative was being "arrested" by Big John which usually meant being knocked out as well.

Folks might be shocked by some of our history up here as it wasn't all as prim and proper as too many believe.

Thanks for reading this far, all the best and good luck on your hunts.

Dwayne

PS;
Here's a Frederic Remington drawing of Kirkup from 1890 titled "Big Jack, The Mountain Sheriff"

Good! Just so I know I'm not wasting effort.

Hope I cleared that up some.

Thanks for the interesting info, Dwayne. I'm actually not much of a foamer myself, having been steeped in it for decades. But the Canadian railroad and its history does interest me.

Don't get me started on that subject! Can'o'worms.

terrorist attack.

FreeMe;
Morning sir, thanks for the reply.

I'll freely admit I had to look up what a "foamer" was and low and behold, found out that we lived beside one for 30 years!

Our rural property has had the same couple living next to us for the entire time, though they did subdivide and move into a new build. This summer Arthur passed at the age of 86, but he was a "foamer" of the first order and would discuss all manner of trains or failing that diesel engines with you as long as you wanted to listen.

When they had his memorial last weekend, both of his boys recalled how most family vacations were structured around visiting railway museums across Canada, the US and then the UK and France too.

While I love history, I prefer western North American history of the past 200 years mostly and the railway stuff up here across the medicine line is so linked to how we became a nation that it's tough or impossible to separate. For instance here in BC, they agreed to join the new Confederation of provinces back east under the condition that a railway be built within a decade was the original agreement I believe.

The CP didn't make the timeframe, but there was apparently enough progress to keep BC satisfied to stay in and not strike out on our own. Funny how history turns on little things, you know?

We - that is to say Canada - was supposed to get all of Washington and Oregon west of the Columbia - until one British Lord who was negotiating with the US delegation decided to offer to run straight down the 49th parallel - at least up to Vancouver Island. Then of course there were scuffles and negotiations for years as to who owned the Gulf and San Juan Islands...

Thanks again for the nuances of railway law and jurisdiction on your side though, I love learning this sort of detail.

All the best and good luck on your hunts this fall.

Dwayne

Good stuff Dwayne.

An unrelated but similar historical note is that supposedly the Idaho/Montana border was to entirely be the Continental Divide, but right at Lost Trail Pass they took the wrong ridgeline North when surveying the official boundary. Once they realized the mistake it seems they said F it, and took a longitudinal line directly north to the Canadian border.

Missoula, the Flathead, most (maybe all) of Glacier National Park, etc........roughly the western third of Montana...would be in Idaho.

Edited: please let me reiterate ‘supposedly’. I don’t need to be street jumped on here from folks who believe otherwise.

Interesting stuff there T, about the Continental Divide deal.

I sometimes find man made (described ??) borders hilarious. I guess they serve a purpose though, as screwy as they sometimes are.

Ya, who knows what the real truth is. A google search says this theory is a myth, but it is what we were taught in school growing up. I had a state senator as a JR High history teacher and he absolutely swore this was true and had researched it supposedly.

If it is a myth, why they randomly stopped at the point they did and then went straight north is equally murky. Some sources say the surveyors went north to south, so they couldn’t have made this mistake, but other sources say differently. Who knows, but it always gets locals riled up…

Interesting. Maybe it was just so someday we could have stickers on our pickups with Idaho representing a pistol.

Speaking of the Idaho and Montana border, and railroads.....
When they were digging the tunnel through the top of the Bitterroots for the Milwaukee Road, there was an Idaho crew working from the west and a Montana crew working from the east - racing to the middle. The 8700' tunnel was completed in 1908, and those surveyors must have been more talented because the opposing crews were within inches of matching up perfectly in the middle.

Nothing like a myth to get folks riled up!

If you look at a map of the Louisiana Purchase, this seems highly probable. map If so the survey started in East Arkansas. One surveyor started at the mouth of the Arkansas River and went North, and another started at the mouth of the St. Francis river and went west. Where the lines crossed, a monument was set, and they started laying out townships, from that baseline west and range line North. Called the Fifth Principle Meridian. miles

What we were taught about the origin of the name 'Idaho' was a myth. Supposedly it was an Indian word meaning some variation of 'The Sun on the Mountains'. BS. It was just a name made up by a land promoter in Colorado.There's a story about how it got attached to Idaho.

What's a cell phone?

For joy, here's a scene in a Chicago burb from Friday. No catastrophe. Couldn't believe the lack of common sense the old democrat looking idiot drivers had dealing with this situation, as if they never needed to make a decision for themselves. Complete clusterfuuck ensued shortly after this picture in the intersection. Amazingly no crashes.

MtnBoomer;
Good afternoon to you, well it's afternoon here and we're Pacific time so unless you're in Hawaii now, then good afternoon, I hope the day is behaving for you.

Thanks for the photo, despite it making me both wince and shake my head.

One supposes that if one cannot park across one set of tracks, then obviously parking across two is twice as good, no?

Unlike FreeMe, I know very little about trains, other than they're really, REALLY heavy and aren't easy to stop.

Way back in the day when we were farming, we had to fill 3 or 4 what were known as "producer grain cars" and they were parked on a dead end siding. When we'd filled the first one, we found this device - long pole with a shoe that'd fit on the track and the train car wheel - and began to roll the filled car out of the way. Well, the siding wasn't completely level and away it started to creep. Just at a walk mind you, but on it's own..

My brother found a chunk of wood, like a 4x6 chunk, and threw it under the wheel. It split like a toothpick and had absolutely no affect on the mobility of our full producer car.

Luckily one of us figured out that there was a manual brake on the back of the car, a wheel as I recall that we turned and it applied a brake, which stopped the car before any harm was done. Well other than that chunk of splintered dunnage.

Anyways, trains and ships don't seem to have the same ability to brake as say sports cars might, that I do know.

All the best, thanks again for the photo and good luck on your hunting season.

Dwayne

Was working a local switcher one day long ago. Pulling out of an industry track at 10mph, there was a crossing next to a warehouse. You'd think it's unlikely to hit anything at that speed. But bell&whistle and all, this truck pulls right in front of us as we enter the crossing and we hit him square in the cab. Made that nice tractor look unpretty. Driver jumps out and yells, "just who the hell has the right of way here?"

You'd think a guy would already have that figured out.

I guess you get used to thinking you're the biggest thing on the road, and looking for stop signs and 200 ton locomotives ceases to be a priority.

I can't imagine being a trucker and not in awe over the power of a moving train at any speed. But, it doesn't surprise me, nothing surprises me about the sorts of truckers, yours truly exempted, that I meet. With very very few exceptions I generally regret speaking to them! LOL However, sometimes when I am really tired, really smelly, and really bored I feel like I fit in and found my calling, albeit, obviously, more intellectually astute! LOL

FreeMe, thanks for sharing your knowledge here.

The wrecker hooked up and went backwards with him. I had no legitimate way to get out of there so just shutdown and watched the show for about ten minutes. A week ago I posted about a car crashing into the back of a stalled truck/trailer. Darn things are a hazards, going or stopped.