Author: QuiltLady

WOW A to Z challenge is moving right along. I can’t believe we’re already on the letter P!

Have you ever seen a long train with engines on both ends? Did you notice that often the engines are going in opposite directions? There is actually a term for this 😀

Push–pull train – A term for a configuration of locomotive-hauled trains, allowing them to be driven from either end of the train. Also known as “Top and tail” train with locomotives at both the front and back.

Another term that is bit obsolete is that of the Porter – who is an employee who performs various physical duties, chiefly but not exclusively involving lifting. Various types of porters include:

• A baggage porter assisting with luggage
• An operating porter assisting with safe working duties
• A station porter assisting with general station duties
• A lad porter also known as a junior station porter

Now those are great definitions, but I don’t have a #RailArt picture for either one 😀 But I do have this awesome one I captured a short while ago for one of my favorite vintage cartoons, Peanuts (Snoopy has always been a favorite) 😀  as well as some fun penguins, an abandoned passenger car and an unreadable PINK #RailArt.

A to Z challenge 

OPEN WAGON A form of freight hauling car for bulk goods. These are typically seen around here as lumber cars, but when we lived back east you would see them as coal cars and where I grew up they were agricultural in nature.

A to Z challenge 

NOSE CONE –  U.S. term for a detachable front-end assembly popular in US rapid transit car design.

These #NUN cars are proof that these cars just run back and forth all the time. These pictures were taken months apart in 2 different locations without any alterations 😀

This bottom picture is just really cool colors!

A to Z challenge 

MILK TRAIN – In the U.S., milk trains ran from the countryside to the cities making numerous stops at minor depots to pick up cans of fresh milk, making them a colloquial expression for a very slow train.

I don’t see milk trains here in lumber country, let alone any with #RailArt, but it’s fun to imagine a time in the past when these were a frequent occurrence. 😀

I call these first two,  #MoustacheMan and #MonsterEyes

Monk, Mere and the Miscellaneous are pretty obvious!

LINK & PIN An obsolete method of coupling rail cars, consisting of manually dropping the coupling pin into the draw bar as the cars joined. Extremely hazardous to the brakemen of its day, it was outlawed in the United States by the Railroad Safety Appliance Act of 1893.

Today’s #RailArt was bright and “L” related. Half the trains around here have empty LUMBER cars, but only until they get to town and then leave full 😀

K is for KODACHROME. Is the song stuck in your head yet. I know it was mine right after hearing that single word even though I was really young when it was released, it stayed popular for many years and is still played on some classic rock and roll stations 😀 So, I had to go with this definition for today! Read all the way to the end of the definition and that too brings its own little laugh 😀

Per Wikipedia Kodachrome is the  Southern Pacific Santa Fe Railroad‘s red, yellow, and black paint scheme, which resembled the packaging of Kodachrome (a KODAK registered trademark) color transparency film.  It is a method of color transparency, but more commonly known as a type of color film the company started marketing in 1935.

The same color scheme was instituted when the merger between Southern Pacific and Santa Fe was assumed to be approved. Hundreds of locomotives were painted in Kodachrome colors before the merger was denied. 😀

Just for some added nostalgia for some of you, here’s the song Lyrics by Paul Simon to make you smile. It really had a catchy tune. 😀

Paul Simon was working on a song with the title “Coming Home” when the word “Kodachrome” came to him. He had no idea what it meant, but knew it would make for a much more interesting song than “Coming Home.” The song became an appreciation of the things that color our world, and a look at how our memories are framed to fit our worldviews.

Paul Simon YouTube

Another term I had never heard (and have no actual picture) of is the JANNEY COUPLER / KNUCKLE COUPLER – An automatic coupler patented by Eli H. Janney in 1873. I do have a diagram I found as well as a couple of “J” #RailArt pictures 😀

A to Z challenge 

Another good term to learn is INERTIA.

INERTIA is the force that holds the universe together. Literally. Without it, things would fall apart.

This is one of those terms that a TRUE definition can be clear as mud so I’ll offer you up a couple choices 😀

A) “The property of matter by which it retains its state of rest or its velocity along a straight line so long as it is not acted upon by an external force.”

B) “Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to any change in its velocity. This includes changes to the object’s speed, or direction of motion. An aspect of this property is the tendency of objects to keep moving in a straight line at a constant speed, when no forces act upon them.”

C) “Inertia is a passive property and does not enable a body to do anything except oppose such active agents as forces and torques.“

But Newton’s First law, the Law of Inertia really says it best for the layman “if a body is at rest or moving at a constant speed in a straight line, it will remain at rest or keep moving in a straight line at constant speed unless it is acted upon by a force.”

All that said, there are no #RailArt pictures for Inertia itself so I’ll offer up these random images 😀