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Today a credit card arrived at our home for one of our children who is grown and hasn't lived with us for over 20 years.
The next thing you know these stupid companies will be sending credit cards to "Occupant."
FOR MEN ONLY: If you were in the middle of a forest and you said something, and there were no women around to hear what you said. Would you still be wrong?
In Japan, it is against the law to watch television in your car, unless the parking brake is set. It would certainly reduce the number of auto accidents in this country if it was against the law to use a cell phone from your car unless the parking brake was set.
"It is a funny thing about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it." -- William Somerset Maugham
Alexander Graham Bell was born 150-years ago in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was not only the inventor of the telephone, but he founded the National Geographic Society.
Rock Island's Superintendent of Rules, Joe Bakeman once said, "GM can build the finest locomotives in the world, but they can't build a door."
"Canadian Pacific gives it's Engineer Trainees track profile books which have signal location, curvature, grades, etc. all printed in one smallish flip chart type book. Quite handy when you transfer to new territory." -- Bob Mackie, Revelstoke BC (CPR)
"My own party is no longer a defender of the workaday majority. It's no longer a defender of the middle class. It has, instead, run off with the same Gucci-and-Pucci set that the Republicans dance with, abandoning the K-mart crowd. Some people say we need a third party. I wish we had a second party" -- Jim Hightower (ex-agriculture commissioner for the State of Texas.)
They are re-paving North Main Street a little at a time. They are uncovering the cross ties of the old double track street car line that ran down the middle of it. Most of them still look to be in good condition after 55 years. I guess it is because they were buried and protected from the elements.
Every time I go by there, I pick up a couple of the bricks. Better mine than part of some land fill. I know they are re-using some of them, but many are just thrown in a dump truck and hauled away with the other debris.
When I get home, I wish I had saved a few more of them.
The Yuppies out on Camp Bowie were able to save the brick pavement on the boulevard, I don't under stand why North Fort Worth didn't do the same. The bricks are like new.
The only time a toilet will continue to run, is when you get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and don't wait to see if it shuts off before you go back to bed and try to go back to sleep..
FOR WOMEN ONLY: Few women admit their age. Fewer men act it.
"The best time to plant a tree was thirty years ago." -- Source Unknown.
Many of us never liked the "Safety is my Responsibility" slogan. Although we believe 100% in its message, it makes it appear that the company wants a mantra that if repeated often enough, absolves them of any responsibility.
I believe the people who think it is alright to have locomotives without amenities such as air conditioning are on the same mental plane as those who think it is alright to leave crews stranded on trains after their hours of service have expired, and then wring their hands because the company is short of rested crews.
An Amtrak collegue told me that they are furnishing their engineers with head phones that double as ear protection. My father flew airplanes in 1918 and during the 1920s that had no cabin -- just an open cockpit. They had to wear earphones.
It's scary when you think that prior to about 1850, locomotives had no cabs and the crews were exposed to the elements. I guess now that they have "re-discovered" earphone, the carriers would do away cabs altogethers, if they didn't need to protect the onboard electronics.
"You can get a lot further with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word" --Al Capone
Now that Employee Empowerment is back, maybe serious thought should be given to clearing all employees records of discipline received under the infamous UPGRADE "justice system." It should be done anyway with the merger, just as we did with the KATY merger.
A VP who is no longer with the company was said to have wanted "every engineer to be working with a Level II hanging over his head."
In Fort Worth, the parking lot companies furnish air conditioned kiosks for their attendants.
Jim King is a member of the the "Railspot List" on E-mail. Railspot members ask and answer questions about railroads and railroading in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. Members include both professional and amateur rails.
Jim says, "When I drove through Winnsboro this past summer, a former Marshall and East Texas grade crossing was readily visible on FM515 on the southeast side of Winnsboro. I seem to recall that the tracks were still in place right up to the highway. There's a historical marker located in Rhonesboro at the intersection of FM1002 and TX154 that mentions the M&ET RR."
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Cy Martin is a locomotive engineer at Centennial Yard in Fort Worth, Texas.
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