Story notes: S.C.S. Livery (Como Salsa para los Tacos) · 2:51am Sep 15th, 2020
New chapter of Taco Bell Espionage, yay!
As always, thanks to MSPiper for pre-reading!
Taco Tuesday’s tomorrow, don’t you know.
Beemster is named for a type of Dutch cheese
Union Station in St. Louis is a famous landmark. Opened in 1894, it looks like a castle in front and boasted the biggest trainshed in the entire US at the time of construction. At one time it hosted 22 different railroads, the most of any union station*
By the 1950s, its glory was waning. Parking lots replaced some of the tracks, and by the time Amtrak came along, it only hosted four trains a day . . . it was hard to justify a 42 track trainshed for eight trains. So Amtrak moved to an Amshack a bit further along the route (now they’re at the Gateway Transportation Center, which is a block away from Union Station).
Some stations of that era were demolished, or were abandoned and left to rot (Michigan Central’s Detroit station, for example); this one was preserved. In 1985, a $150 million renovation saw it repurposed with a hotel, shopping, an aquarium, a lake, an indoor ropes course, and apparently Build-A-Bear’s headquarters.
According to Wikipedia, it’s one of the largest adaptive re-use projects in the US.
The powerhouse is just behind it, and while I was unable to find out if it’s the actual Union Station powerhouse (repurposed) or something new built on the site in the style of an older building, it does have a giant brick chimney which doesn’t seem like the kind of detail an architect would add just to make it look like it used to be a power plant.
Besides generating electricity (which is one thing it could have done), back in the day passenger cars were heated with steam, and often in a terminus station, they were uncoupled from the locomotives. To keep the steam heat going, steam hoses would be hooked to the consist, which of course meant you needed a plant to make steam. Obviously, they would also hook electric power to the cars.
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*In the earliest days of railroads, each railroad built its own stations wherever they wanted to. And that was well and good, until you wound up with big cities that had lots of railroad stations scattered wherever--it was obvious that the smart thing to do was build one central station that most or all of the passenger railroads shared, and that’s what they did in lots of big cities. Even smaller towns if two or more railroads went there--such as the Durand Union Station, formerly served by the Ann Arbor RR and the Grand Trunk RR [the latter was formerly owned by the Queen of England, incidentally].
As I’ve mentioned before, liveries are a place where horses, wagons, and sundry supplies could be rented. Sort of the U-Haul of the day, and it would a natural name for a business that specialized with matching ponies with clients who needed a pony.
New Bern Transport is “an exclusive carrier of PepsiCo brand products.” Given that Pepsi spun off what would become Yum! brands years ago, they certainly don’t actually used New Bern Transport, but I was unable to find out who they do use. It could be their own in-house shipping company, or they could contract with other carriers (for liability or tax reasons) . . . if you work for Taco Bell on a shift where delivery trucks arrive, let me know.
One service the blog posts serve me is a last-minute research check, and as I was typing up the part about New Bern, it occurred to me that I could just google-images “Taco Bell semi truck” and probably get a picture of one, since this is the internet and people have all sorts of different hobbies and if trainspotting is a thing, why wouldn’t truckspotting also be?
As best as I can figure, McLane Co. handles at least some of the restaurants (image search led me to this article which states that “McLane is the lone distributor of food products to Taco Bell restaurants in this area [New Jersey].”
“Nailed on and Folded Over”
Traditionally, after they’re fitted, horseshoes are nailed on. The pointy end of the nail protrudes through the hoof wall, and the final step in shoeing is to fold those ends over (or flatten them) against the hoof.
Of course Starlight Glimmer is the mastermind behind this operation.
A couple of hours of horseshoeing videos on Youtube have enlightened me on that process. They’re strangely appealing to watch.
Would make for an interesting story idea, if you ask me. Although I have a bunch of ideas currently on a waiting list, personally.
actually, my local taqueria does a tostada and enchilada special on Tuesdays.
Tacos are on Friday... but they're fish tacos, so taco Friday it is!
5355494
Now to fit a KGB reference somehow.
5355503
5356233
You're right, I was confusing it with this one
- MLP: FiM
- Adventure
- Slice of Life
Deleted scenes and side stories from Onto the Pony PlanetA Morning At The Farriers
You know there were steam loco's that had no boiler? They just had a tank for steam, and got filled up from a stationary plant. Useful for shunting (I think that's what that's called) and like moving stuff around on rails in factories.
5355503 5355538
My cousins raise horses, and I've actually seen the re-shoeing process up close. It's rather fascinating, once you get past watching nails get yanked out of and driven into the horse's hoof. They're driven into the very edge of the hoof which is essentially the equivalent of a toenail. You can find all this stuff on YouTube, so I won't go into it, but TL;DR, it's really cool to watch in person.
5355546
U know the name or anything. For as mush as I've looked into steam engines Ive never seen any like that.
5355546
I beleive they were used in places where battery electric engines had a good chance of detonating the flour, coal, or explosives?
It always fascinates me that the subject of horseshoes was never addressed. We know ponies have them (we see them throughout the show) but to my knowledge ponies never actually wear them. The few times they wear shoes they wear hoof-shaped variants of regular shoes.
5355546
They must be really useful engines.
5355591
s3.amazonaws.com/rrpa_photos/19655/Scan14921.JPG
They were nicknamed "fireless cookers" and besides being used in places where fire or exhaust was an issue, they were also popular with places that had lots of steam. The one in the picture was used as a switcher at a Pennsylvania power plant at least into the 80s.
5355630
So for some reason I sifted through Derpibooru's images tagged 'screencap' and 'horseshoes'. There's one shot of a pony wearing a metal horseshoe: Troubleshoes in Appleoosa's Most Wanted.
derpicdn.net/img/2015/5/4/888981/large.png
5355494
She’s smart, has good connections, and a loose moral compass.
derpicdn.net/img/2020/8/16/2424113/large.png
5355503
They really are. I’ve also seem some videos with severe corrections (due to neglect) and learned a bunch from that, too.
I do have one with ponies getting shod (Lavender Fritter, Peachy Sweet, Apple Leaves, and Caramel).
There’s a great scene in Saddlesoap Opera’s epic (which I can’t remember the name of, sadly), where Derpy gets heavy iron shoes for . . . reasons.
Derpy is not a pony to be crossed.
5355516
Hey, Taco Friday is good, too. Also totsadas and enchiladas are perfectly cromulent foods, and worth enjoying on a Tuesday.
Also, I had somehow forgotten the word ‘taqueria’ until your comment.
5355526
Not quite KGB, but here you go . . .
derpicdn.net/img/2015/4/4/865082/large.jpg
5355538
You’re mixing that up with one of the OPP side stories--Apple Honey doesn’t do farrier work.
(unless I’ve legit forgotten something in that story, which honesty is possible)
5355546
You’re dern right I knew. In fact, if somebody made a RTR model of one, I’d have it (as far as I know, nobody does).
edit: just checked, in fact I can buy a resin shell of the one pictured below that fits Bachmann’s 0-6-0 chassis. Assmebling it is probably in my skill level . . .
edit edit: Also some were used in mines, too, and some of them were really basic.
(This one’s actually compressed air, but I’ve seen the same concept with steam, where all you get is a pressure vessel, running gear, and a place to sit to run it. I suppose you wouldn’t really need a cab in a mine anyway.)
5355550
Yeah, I’ve never seen it done IRL, but I’d like to. If I get a chance, I’ll totally be there watching.
The clipping of the hoof is also kinda terrifying.
5355628
Anywhere that you had a risk of igniting things, or where exhaust gasses could be a problem, or where you had so much steam you didn’t know what to do with it all. They obviously had a limited range and weren’t fast AFAIK, but for industrial use that really didn’t matter.
5355630
We don’t know for sure that they don’t (games like horseshoes or using horseshoes as decorations were traditionally done with used shoes, and why would the ponies make new shoes if they never wore them, just for games and/or decoration?), and I think that sometimes ponies have left shoeprints in the ground, indicating that they do have shoes on. As 5356074 pointed out, there is at least one example in canon of a pony wearing a shoe.
I think that that’s one of those things you can decide to go with or not. Obviously, their anatomy in canon isn’t accurate, and it’s reasonable to assume that they might have come up with a better alternative to nailed-on shoes (good hoofcare, proper walking surfaces, etc.)--we’ve certainly used alternate shoe types IRL, from Roman-sandal type shoes to modern hoof-boots.
But, as I mentioned in one of my stories, the problem for a working pony is when you lose one of your boots in the muck and can’t find it again. A nailed-on shoe can’t easily be lost.
5355638
They were.
One of them kept in revenue service into the 80s in Pennsylvania, at a power plant (who would have had all the steam that little loco could want). I don’t know its history off the top of my head, but I would guess it was built in the 30s.
5356238
Oh yeah, watching the hoof getting clipped makes you cringe at first until you remember it's basically a giant-ass toenail. Hell, they even have 'emery boards.'
5356249
The ‘emery boards’ seem more sane. But your’e right, it’s a big ole toenail, and needs big ole toenail clippers.
You probably know that they also use that same rasp (well, a similar one) on the teeth . . . as a human, never go to an equine dentist.
5355628 Explosive flour?! That reminds me of that time that Aunt Jamima pancake mix was actually explosive stuff instead. I think it was in time of war or something. Not even sure if it's a true story, just some random shit I heard once.
5355591 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireless_locomotive
5356237 u wood.
5356074
Oooh, good catch! Weird way of wearing horseshoes, but that's probably because it was easiest to animate it that way.
5356242
Of course, you generally wear boots because you want to avoid your feet getting wet, but I see your point.
It's also interesting to wonder whether ponies hammer in their horseshoes or whether they use something akin to the Princesses' slippers that stay stuck well enough, but can easily be removed. Hammering would certainly keep them stuck, but it also means you can't easily take them off again, which given that ponies generally want to do things like bathing, sleeping and holding things or other ponies, that would make nailed in horseshoes quite uncomfortable in the longer term. Nevermind the damage they do to hooves for the more aesthetic ponies like Rarity.
Interesting as usual; thanks. :)
"#not a ramble about why St. Louis should have been the gateway to the West instead of Chicago"
...Should those two city names have been reversed there, though? I thought St. Louis was called the Gateway to the West?
5356237
Hm, interesting, those things on the cylinders that appear to be convection fins. I'd guess they're actually to help keep the cylinders warm as the air expands.
5356224
I am now picturing someone going through her file: "Smart, good connections, loose moral compass. Put her in government."
5356326
5356242
I recall read one story (never finished) that had Sweetie Bell explaining to a human that she didn't have horseshoes because she "was too young to get piercings".
5380130
That’s a pragmatic and effective way to run the government. And probably how she got a job at the Friendship School, let’s be honest.
On the one hand, that’s an odd way to put it; on the other, that’s technically correct.
Any chance you have a link for said story?
5380960
Chapter 5: Side Quest. Upon review, it was Applebloom.
5380966
Thank you!