Location

NW Mailing List nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Thu May 14 12:02:42 EDT 2015


And I saw the 2156 described as an “articulate”.  “Articulate” is a term used to describe someone who is handy with words.

The 2156 is an “articulateD”.  This means that it is made so that it can bend to go around curves.  

Remember, articulated locomotive are discussed by those who are articulate.

EdKing

From: NW Mailing List 
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2015 11:20 AM
To: N&W Mailing List 
Subject: Re: Location

Since when do we "PARK" engines?  Oh, since maybe 15 or 20 years ago.

More "Vocabulary Slippage," gentlemen.  

One "parks" an automobile or a bicycle, but one "ties down" (or even "ties up") an engine.  

Guess it's just part of the overall demythologization of railroading as a whole.  Along with railroaders dressing for work in baseball caps and tee-shirts and people saying "units" (for engines) and "grown throws" (for switches) and "grabs" (for grab irons) and "heads" (for signal arms,) and trainmen who would rather quack on their radio than give a hand signal (... or who don't even understand something as basic as talking to the engineman by the use of hand signals.)

Ah, but then our brilliant news media also calls railroads "train companies," calls enginemen "train operators," refers to individual cars (whether passenger or freight) by using the collective plural noun "trains,"  and uses the terms "Conductor" and "Engineer" interchangeably, as if there were not the lightest distinction between the two.  Oh yes, and the "train operators" (engineers)  "drive trains." And the degradation goes on and on.  Give me a break...

Yes, I must be an old-school curmudgeon.

A friend in Kansas, a 1955 Santa Fe man, just yesterday lamented, "I can't even talk to today's railroaders.  They don't speak the same railroad language I speak."  (Yeah, we were having a conversation over the Morse telegraph wire when he made this statement...)

Forgive the rant.  I just no longer fit in this world.  The world of old school railroading was a lot better.

This constitutes my blog for the day.  Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

-- abram burnett,
nove cumberlandhorodshchina, oblast pennsylvaniensis

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