* I took the boys out for a rail photo run on Sunday… We quickly saw that nothing was moving… and quite by chance, stumbled onto why. The picture, here, is taken from one of our favorite sitting spots… and one I’ve written about before. You’re on Sanford Road, in Churchville, NY, looking west toward Buffalo
Since we weren’t able to photograph any trains going by we decided to concentrate our efforts on what we had in front of us. This first picture is a very powerful zoom as well as some after the fact editing to touch things up a little bit. From the point of the shot to where the white truck used to the right of the shop, is approximately a mile. Note the bridge in the background.
What has essentially happened here, is the train that we’re looking at has lost a couple of cars. My guess, based on the damage we saw was a bearing failure on one axle.
This is a shot from the opposite direction, from Gough Road… which is in fact, little more than an unpaved farm lane.
Remember the bridge in the background from the first shot. Now check the map. Observe where route 33, Buffalo road, goes over the main line. This shot is taken from that bridge looking back east for Churchville, and Rochester. That’s the Churchville water tower to the upper right of the shot, perhaps three and a half to four miles away. The Union Pacific power you see on the right hand track is waiting to pull away some of the undamaged cars from the train.
Not very exciting, photography wise, but we found it interesting to observe the practiced ease with which the damaged cars were re-railed and moved out. I will admit that most times our rail fanning trips and of being all about the machines. On this occasion we had the opportunity to observe the human element at work. Particularly the teamwork.
* Since those pictures were taken, we have had an additional 4 to 5in. of snow. With any degree of luck I’ll have some snow covered shots to show you in the next day or two. They’re currently sitting in my camera, waiting to be downloaded. I could be wrong, but I get the genuine impression that this is going to be the last really heavy snowfall of the year.
* So I’m doing my normal rounds, this afternoon, and I notice that Hillary Clinton has decided that Bill Clinton’s impeachment back in 98 is off limits for her fellow Democrats to bring up. I won’t bother linking it, since it’s likely be in all the national outlets. She was in the Rochester area today pushing one giveaway or another, and the subject of her husband’s impeachment came up. She once again raised the phrase “politics of personal destruction” apparently neglecting the idea that her husband was already pretty much destroyed , and her along with it, particularly if you consider the behavior of both of them…. (“We ARE the President”) that led to that impeachment. Poor Hillary… First the David Geffen nonsense, and now this. One begins to wonder if Hillary Clinton is of the impression that she’s going to be able to sneak into the White House by virtue of a sympathy vote. She’s certainly playing the victim to the hilt.
* I’ve spent most of the last week, trying to determine what a was causing my wife’s desktop to continually reboot . I’ve replaced the power supply, thinking that to be the problem. As it turned out it wasn’t; there was a collector like capacitor on the motherboard in the power supply stream that was heating up breaking and resetting itself. That kind of fault happens often enough… I know of three different models of Dell, IBM, and a couple Compaq models…all of which do it. Fortunately I have a spare of the same model on the shelf, slapped it into service and it’s been fine ever since.
* So, they’ve supposedly found the tomb of Christ. The claim of course is that this disproves the Godhead of Christ. but did anybody happen to notice the season that they’ve released this information in? Easter is what, three weeks away? Wasn’t this the time period of the last supposedly final proof Christ is not who millions say he is? Forgive me, but I’ve been at dairy farms and sewage treatment plants that smelled better than this supposed “find”. I will guarantee you that what’s going on here, is not Almighty God, but the almighty dollar. Just like every time before.
Tags: BitsBlog, Nightly Ramble
