strictures

The LA Times has a long article on Albuquerque's mess by buying Chinese electric buses that don't work & wrecking a street by turning it into what the loons wanted to do to Ashland Ave. Albuquerque’s $133-million electric bus system is going nowhere fast

Whatever happened to flywheel buses? Where an electric bus would need at least 30-60 minutes to get a full charge [assuming 480 volt three phase power], a flywheel should be fully spun up in a few minutes.

Go to 5 Below & you can buy a charging pack for $5 & keep it forever, with no added costs other than the electricity to recharge it. I'm sure other stores have them cheap.

I often saw the IC's diesels in the open cut Downtown pulling freights. The IC even had a flyover about where the new McCormick Place building is so the commuter trains could pass over the freight tracks. Now, no freights go north of the connection to the St. Charles Airline, except for Metra MOW equipment. I doubt if the South Shore's Little Joes ever went north of Kensington. They were used for the SS's freight business in Indiana & Hegewisch.

I don't think so, because when the IC had that freight yard east of the Randolph Station, diesels did all the work, not electric locomotives.

The feds are worried that the Chinese rail cars will spy on us. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/could-a-chinese-made-metro-car-spy-on-us-many-experts-say-yes/2019/01/07/00304b2c-03c9-11e9-b5df-5d3874f1ac36_story.html?utm_term=.8faaaaddf66b

The red brick building on the river is the Reid, Murdoch Building. Originally it was a grocery warehouse. It was also used as a makeshift morgue after the Eastland sank. For decades it was owned by the city & called the Central Office Building, but was known to most people as Traffic Court. Now Brittanica has its name on the clocktower, which is just a front for the water tank. The original C&NW station was where the Merchandise Mart is now.

No, that's on the north throat out of Union Station. The bridge is all of the UP lines going over it. I believe it was once owned by the Pennsy & called the Panhandle Division, which went to the Pennsy coach yard.

Metra email Alert at 10:56 AM today: Train #336, scheduled to arrive Ogilvie Transportation Center at 11:28 AM, is operating 15 to 20 minutes behind schedule due to positive train control issues. Please listen to platform announcements for the location of this train.

What I really hate about the Alert emails that claim construction is the cause of the delays, is where is the construction zone? I'm always getting them for SB trains, prior to them getting to any of the stops I use, such as Rogers Park, Wilmette & Hubbard Woods. Other than the construction at the Deering Bridge & the Ravenswood inbound platform, I know it's got to be north of Hubbard Woods, because I rarely go north of there.

Except Evanston refused to change the street names to match the rest of Golf Road. So west of the North Shore Channel, it's Simpson St. on the Evanston side & Golf on the Skokie side. East of the Channel it's Emerson St. & at the east end it's Elgin Road. Now the original name of the street west of Skokie was Evanston-Elgin Road, but Skokie called Simpson when I was a kid in the 50s. There was an effort to get the entire street named Golf, but Evanston, being Evanston refused. The reason the street & the suburb are named Golf is that around 100 years ago, the president of the Milwaukee Road had a siding built next to a golf course for his private car & when anyone at the railroad wanted to know where he was, they said he was at "Golf". If you haven't seen it, you must see the Golf Police Station. It's could be the smallest in this country, as it's just one room at the south end of the Golf train station.

So far, that's the only Metra Alert email I've gotten saying PTC was the problem on the UPN, but there have have a huge number of mechanical failures this week, or is Metra lying & claiming PTC problems are mechanical ones? I just don't trust them to tell the truth lately!

Email received from Metra today at 12:07 PM: Train #323, scheduled to arrive Waukegan at 12:54 PM, is operating 15 to 20 minutes behind schedule due to Positive Train Control issue. Please listen to platform announcements for the location of this train. So PTC is now used on the UP North & screwing its schedules up, just like on the Burlington. I have an additional PTC question. Now that it's in use, does the FRA speed limit of 79 MPH still apply?

That is one ugly mess on that bus! I'll be sure to never ride it, no matter how bad the weather is! Same for the holiday train. I hate enforced & alleged merriment!

Best cylinders are moderately high security, usually with seven pins not five, like most household cylinders & padlocks.. The core is removable with a special control key, to allow rapid rekeying if necessary. CTA must have realized that after decades of use, they needed a new keyway to prevent all those old keys in circulation from being used. I remember some news articles that vandals & taggers had gotten hold of the current keys, which could be common across the transit and rail industries.