Since we are at music ... The "Yellow Dog Blues" (originally called the "Yellow Dog Rag"), by W. C. Handy, btw, refers to the crossing of the Southern Railway and the Yazoo Delta ("Yellow Dog") Railroad at Moorhead.
The Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad beame known as 'Yellow Dog Line', there was even an engine with that name
As always, coal. In the days when steam was king, there was a premium for "steam coal", that is coal with a higher calorific value. It is also called "thermal coal". There are still Welsh pits producing it.
Just one, the Ffos-y-fran coal mine. (And there's only a second place in Europe still producing the coal, in Poland the Śląsk and Wesoła coal mines of the Katowicki Holding Węglowy S.A. .) (Source)
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Setanta
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Sat 3 Mar, 2018 07:31 am
Speaking of The Rock Island Line . . .
Rock Island is one of the "Quad Cities," Rock Island and Moline in Illinois, and Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa. I've been there, too. I had an aunt who lived in De Soto, Wisconsin, just north of Prairie du Chien. Sometimes we drove up the Iowa side, and sometimes we drove up the Illinois side. Alas, we drove rather than riding the train.
I've been on Amtrak trains on bad tracks with some serious side sway but this is ridiculous. Pioneer Railcorp just purchased a stretch of bad tracks connecting Ohio and Indiana and they're reconstructing the tracks. This was obviously shot with a telephoto lens, which exaggerated the problem, but still, it's bad.
US is woefully behind in all kinds if mass transit but in reality whether e screw up the land with hiways or high speed trains, it somehow all just takes away the beauty of the environment
My father was fond of telling people how, as a little boy, I astonished him and the adults present by explaining the difference between the Walschaerts and Stephenson types of valve gear. I don't remember it at all. Apparently my uncle had said he didn't see how the steam got in the cylinders. I think he had thought to gently mock me for my obsession. If, indeed, I did know the difference, I had forgotten it until just now when I checked Wikpedia.
As a child, when visiting relatives, we often passed a nearby factory having a working setam crane. And I'd always asked my father to drive slowly because I wanted to watch the crane moving on the rails.
In 1972 I worked for the UK Ordnance Survey (the government mapping agency) and had to go to Avonmouth Docks. I discovered they still had in daily operation a mobile Fairbairn type crane, with a curved box girder like the picture below. The crane I saw was much smaller, it was mounted on a standard gauge rail chassis, and propelled itself by a vertical cylinder on each side, each connected to a driving wheel. There was much hissing and leakage of steam; the curved arm was distinctly rust coloured (wrought iron I think). I felt the ground shake as it passed on the worn tramway type rails on the dock. It must have been 100 years old even then.
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