>was a kind of periodic clanking sound which I attributed to heat >expansion as the sun heated the rails. In the distance you could >usually hear cicadas filling in for the silence of a hot summer day. Not to mention that unique smell on the tracks on a hot, baking day -- the unique mix of wildflowers, oil, cinders, effluence spread from the passenger (and caboose) hoppers . . . attenuated by diesel emmissions, hot grinding brakeshoes and journal boxes and grinding steel wheel on steel rail dust when a long freight train passed by . . . I also noted the comment regarding regulation -- but lest we forget, regulation -- especially in the post-depression years -- was almost never something that happened in a vacuum. In the case of piggyback, you had the forward looking railroads (though one might say the DL&W's idea of having these piggyback platforms spread out along the line was a seriously flawed business model) trying to do interesting things, but you had the trucking industry, the highway industry and the Teamsters Union all throwing politicial and regulatory monkeywrenches into the works -- not to mention other railroads. And the railroad unions were busy naval-gazxing on work-rules issues and the like and could have cared less that the railroads were collapsing around them -- as long as they got the last dollar in the till when the trains ceased operating. In any case, as long as we're being evocative, maybe it's time to sit down with a cold drink and watch "In the Heat of the Night" which makes me perspire just watching it. Cheers, Jim Guthrie ELHS 1296 The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List Sponsored by the ELH&TS http://www.elhts.org To Unsubscribe: http://lists.elhts.org/erielackunsub.html ------------------------------
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