Very pleasant surprise in my mail box

When I arrived home the other evening I opened my mailbox, the snail mail one, and removed a hand full of items including a magazine in a plastic bag. My lovely wife Linda gets a number of craft magazines and I assumed it was hers since all of the magazines I currently subscribe to arrive without any protective covering.

As I looked through the plastic at the back cover I realized that this was a magazine devoted to trains. Either that or Womens Day had taken on a large number of model railroad sponsors for the holidays. After I got settled into my easy chair I opened the plastic bag and removed my first copy of RAILFAN & RAILROAD magazine. My eyes were immediately drawn to the blue and yellow CSX locomotives in the lower part of the front cover. As I glanced up at the mast head I said “I know that skyline.” There across the water in the picture that makes up the front cover in bold white lettering was the subject of this months cover story.

“Three Rivers Railfanning”

Thats right, our beloved Pittsburgh is the subject of this months cover story. Inside I found an eight page story covering all of the rail activity in the Pittsburgh area in great detail. This accompanied by a number of very well done photographs. The author, Richard C. Borkowski Jr., obviously is a rail fan and did his homework before writing this article. He also did the photography work including the cover shot and I would love to know if he did it with digital or film. I plan to write a letter to the editor about the article so I may find out.

I stopped at Barns & Nobel in Waterworks Plaza on my way to work this morning and checked out their well stocked magazine rack to see if I could pick up a few extra copies to give to friends but found none. The help desk told me that while RAILFAN & RAILROAD is listed in their computer as one of the publications that they carry the had not received any at this store since last December. With the coming weekend being the one after Thanksgiving you won't find me within a mile of any shopping mall so I won't get the chance to check Borders in Monroeville which is my other haunt when looking for niche magazines that I don't subscribe to.

If you happen to find the January 2006 issue of RAILFAN & RAILROAD on a shelf somewhere do me a favor and buy a few extra copies for me and I'll reimburse you. Thanks!

Rail fanning and Ham Radio what could be better?

Well it has been a while since I have had time to work on the blog. While surfing the web last night I came across a site that I think will be of interest for most of you reading this. It's theme covers two topics, rail fanning and ham radio. What could be better? Here is a quote from the opening page of the site.

“We are a club dedicated to the love of trains and Amateur Radio. Why not enjoy both at the same time?
We like to see old trains and depots....we hope you do too! To that end, we present the "Amateur Radio Railroad Depot Society" or "ARRRDS"
We hope you have fun visiting the museums and learning about the history of that railroad. Why not take the mobile rig along or go portable and put out a few contacts. Maybe your radio club would like to have a weekend tailgate swap fest and expedition. There are a lot of awards to get for activating one of the depots. There are also awards for working these stations. We hope you will enjoy both!”

Follow this LINK if you would like to visit the site and see more.

Scanners on sale at Radio Shack

Thanksgiving Day Sale at the Shack

I was looking over the Radio Shack web site yesterday which by the way they have done a lot of work on. I'm not yet convinced that all of the changes were improvements but that is another story.

One thing that I did notice was that the PRO-97 will be on sale Thanksgiving Day for $149.95 which looks like a pretty good deal to me. I called the local store that I deal with the most and asked and they confirmed that indeed the PRO-97 is on sale and is available at the reduced price now. Not listed on the web site is the fact that the PRO-94 will be reduced to $74.95 but this is a Thanksgiving Day only special. If you are looking for a non digital hand held I think the PRO-97 is a pretty good deal. I like the PRO-94 but I believe it dose not have tone squelch or alpha tagging something that I demand in the new scanners that I buy. So if you are looking for a Christmas present for that rail fan in your house this could be a golden opportunity.

Union Pacific considers a train crew of one

Here is a disturbing story or at least it seems like that to me.



Union Pacific considers a train crew of one
Written by The Omaha World-Herald
Tuesday, 06 September 2005

MORRILL, Neb. -- Mile long coal trains rumble through prairie towns every day, raising little notice unless blowing a horn or stopping traffic at a crossing, according to this report by Stacie Hamel published by the Omaha World-Herald.

Union Pacific engineer Nancy Kohmetscher of North Platte says the need for teamwork is just one reason she's against the railroad's push for one-person train crews.

The work inside their locomotives, though, is the subject of intense debate as railroads attempt to negotiate to cut crews from two members to one. Whether those crews of one would be drawn from the conductor ranks or the engineer ranks is part of those negotiations.

The conductors' union filed a lawsuit in March over railroads' demand to negotiate one-person crews, which would require that agreements over the makeup of train crews be reopened.

Follow THIS LINK for the complete story

Youngstown Model Railroad Association Open House 2005

For you model rail fans out there here is upcoming event.
November 5th & 6th also 12th & 13th 2005
From 12:00 Noon to 06:00 PM



I have visited the web site and the layout is very impressive featuring both an O and an HO scale layout. Follow this LINK to see a photo array of the layout.

If you have the chance take a ride up and visit the group in Youngtown and say hello you can find a complete schedule and directions on the web site.

Trouble On The Tracks

Discovry Times Web Site Story

An intricate web of railroad tracks crisscrosses America for nearly 200,000 miles, carrying hundreds of thousands of passengers and 40 percent of all the freight in the United States. On average, one person a day is killed at a railroad crossing.

Did anyone see this show on the Discovery Times Channel? I came away with the impression that it was a hatchet job expose on the railroads. They did make the case that some of the railroads have tried to cover up grade crossing accidents claiming that they have gone so far as to erase tapes of radio conversations between engineers and dispatchers after an accident. I would have been more inclined to give the entire story some credibility had the source been someone other than the New York Times. They have not proved to be fair and accurate in their reporting on other industries and topics so I took this “report” with a large grain of salt. None the less it was interesting.