Chapter Notes: Wind River Canyon (Destination Unknown) · 1:13am Dec 10th, 2021
Out of Nebraska and into Wyoming, the train goes through the night and Sweetsong goes with it. Past forgotten towns and along a reservoir and into the Wind River Canyon, the train winds along and encounters Sweetsong’s least-favorite railroad feature: tunnels.
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Back in Ye Olde Times, locomotives often had names. For example, in the Great Locomotive Chase, the stolen locomotive was named The General, and it was chased by Yonah, William R. Smith, and the Texas.
[As an aside, aircraft often used to be named, as well. Seems like the tradition of naming machines has only stuck around with boats, where it’s unusual to find one that isn’t named.]
Anyway, while modern railroads don’t name their locomotives any more, some shortlines do. The Tuscola and Saginaw Bay railroad, for example, named its locomotives for cities they served: the City of Howell, the City of Saginaw, the City of Durand, etc.
In 2006, for reasons I don’t know, they re-formed as the Great Lakes Central, and started repainting their equipment blue with white highlights. It’s also a nice paint scheme, but not as good as the yellow and blue in my opinion. They also aren’t named for cities any more.
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*two things to note in this picture: locomotive 390 is re-lettered for the GLC, but hasn’t been repainted yet. The trailing locomotive is a leased unit, which you can tell by the X as the last letter of its reporting mark [last-letter X always means lease equipment, whether it’s on a locomotive or railcar, that’s why CSX’s reporting marks are CSXT].
I’ve never traveled in the Wind River Canyon, but if you get a chance to, don’t miss that chance.
I don’t know which predecessor road of BNSF picked the route, although from quick googling it seems likely to have been the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy RR.
This is one where my words can’t do it justice; luckily I was able to get some inspiration not only of how it looks, but what the view would be like from a grainer, thanks to Hobo Shoestring.
I mentioned before that various kinds of grain cars are more or less preferential to hobos. The so-called Cadillacs, with their high sides which prevents you from being seen, or the ‘shotgun grainers’ that have access holes and a safe(ish) place to hide and lie down.
There are also ones that have no floor at all, or large openings where you could fall thorough and . . . well, that’s not something that you want to do. The ‘shotgun grainer’ Hobo is riding is such a car, and you see a bit of it at the end of the video (around the 21 minute mark). You’ll also see the car in front of him has those access holes, too, and you can see the brake reservoir on that car (the cylinder-thing with pipes) and the brake wheel.
Fun fact, railroad cars have an A end and a B end. The B end is the end with the brake wheel; the A end is the other end.
Pizza Bites, I imagine, are basically a commercial deep-fried version of frozen pizza rolls. I’ve never had either; for as much as I like pizza, the idea of pizza bites/pizza rolls isn’t appealing at all.
Interestingly, when I was googling what pizza rolls are called, I got a sponsored ad for frozen pizza delivery from Goldbelly. I was curious that they were offering Detroit-Style pizza from Buddy’s for 99.00 so I clicked on the link. It’s three pizzas, and I can get them shipped, frozen, anywhere in the US it would seem.
While in my case it would be more sensible to drive the 40 miles or so to the nearest Buddy’s Pizza, they listed other store names I’d never heard of (Pequod’s Pizza, Picasso’s Pizza) . . . this isn’t an advertisement for them, but it looks like their business model is nationwide delivery of regional foods, sort of like a long-distance GrubHub. It’s something I’d never heard of until just now, and I’d be curious to know if any of you have ever used it . . . or if any of you would be willing to pay a premium for an old hometown favorite delivered to wherever you are now.
Angry Orchard is an American brand of Hard Cider, or for the Brits, cider. While it isn’t the first or oldest cidery in the US, it’s the most successful; they went nationwide in 2012 and currently have 40% of the domestic market.
Cider’s been around forever; in Julius Caesar’s time, there are reports of Celts fermenting crabapples. A Canadian traditional style uses McIntosh apples, and apples were historically pressed on horse-turned presses.
Fergus (the horse) probably isn’t supposed to eat the apples, but you can see he wants to.
If you’re looking for songs about being a hobo, you really can’t go wrong with Boxcar Willie.
Due to site rules, I can’t put any of the lyrics here, but suffice to say that Sweetsong understands the idea of riding where she wants and sings wherever she goes.
Fun fact! This is my 777th blog post!
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Triple-lucky! Buy a lotto ticket!
I have!
It's trippy. The rock under that area is heavily stratified, so as you travel along it you go deeper into history. All the way back to precambrian layers! (For you geology and/or history buffs)
These layers aren't just flat either. At one end they dip downwards at a slight angle in the direction the river is travelling. This throws off your eyes, especially when moving at a decent speed (ie, in a car), and so you could swear that the river next to you is flowing uphill. (For you who just like neat landmarks)
Not quite the same thing, but I won a gift card for Lou Malnati's, and had some Chicago stuffed pizza one game night.
Another fun chapter!
I used to commute on the Caltrain line between San Francisco and San Jose, and the engines were named for cities along the route. No "The City of," just the city name, except for one that was named County of San Mateo. I've seen some commercial jetliners within five or six years ago, with names painted under the pilot's port in fairly small letters, so that tradition might still be ongoing if not obvious.
Americans are beer-drinkers, and most American ciders taste very much like the brewers were trying to get them to be as much like beer as possible. I think Angry Orchard is so popular because it isn't as dry (sour) as most. It isn't bad but it isn't great either. (IMHO, of course.)
Fun fact: Johnny Appleseed roamed the West planting apple trees, not out of any sort of philanthropy, but because at the time, the US government was giving land grants to anyone who would "cultivate" acreage. Johnny planted a particular cultivar of cider apples, so that he could claim all the land they grew up on. It didn't work out for him, but a generation of cider-loving settlers were indebted to him.
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Fun fact
Johnny Appleseed planted about as many pear trees as apple trees. He also built some cider mills. He was also a missionary.
When he lived (late 18th to mid 19th century) "West" meant more what we'd call "Midwest" today - western Pennsylvania to Indiana. (+ parts of Ontario.) Not as many apples as Washington or Oregon but still has commercial orchards.
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When I was a kid, you wanted cider you looked for a roadside stand. The Amish were the only ones who sold it. You went to a grocery store, all they had was canned apple juice. (Thinner & non alcoholic. Sort of the difference between orange drink & orange juice.)
I'd go with "King Of The Road" (Roger Miller). It was a BIG hit - about 20 years before you were born. Surprised that you haven't heard of it.
But would you have pizza on a bagel, cause you can eat pizza anytime!
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Yep! Fascinating time in history, and he was a fascinating character. Appleseed's (Chapman's) descendants eventually made it out to the far West where the Chapman massacre trimmed down the family tree a bit. His pear cultivars were also notorious for making good pear cider (perry).
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Lucky you! I grew up in the desert on the border and didn't encounter cider (or perry) until I was nearly an adult! I can't remember ever liking apple juice back then, so I imagine it was the thin/watered-down stuff you describe. Typical of the era when people thought Tang was a good idea, really.
As I was rolling up from town
I saw the grain trains rolling down:
In each train a hundred cars
In each car a hundred tons
In each ton a hundred sacks
In each sack ten thousand grains--
And that's what cities get from trains.
--Leslie Fish
Given all the research you do, 777 blog posts is pretty impressive!
"and it was chased by Yonah"
...Different spelling, of course, but I still quickly found myself imagining a yak galloping along in the pursuit. :D
Cider was quite a big thing in the early United States, too; as I recall, that was one of the main reasons John Chapman, famous as Johnny Appleseed, went around planting orchards. Unfortunately, as I also recall, for the same reason, a lot of apple orchards in the United States got cut down in the era of Prohibition.
Thanks for writing!
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Ah, congratulations! :)
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Oh, interesting; we seem to have heard different versions of the Johnny-Appleseed-and-cider story (for one, as I heard it, he was actually planting a wide variety of cultivars, not very controlled, with most equally good for cider and some particularly good ones, or good eating varieties, produced by the natural crossbreeding), but we do both seems to have heard it.
(Though, of course, "the West" at the time included primarily places like Ohio, rather than the areas that would become better-known as "the American West" from when the country'd pushed further in that direction. I assume you knew that, given what else you mentioned, but I thought I'd mention it for anyone else reading this who didn't.)
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...Okay, either this information is much less obscure than I thought, or it's unusually common in this comment section. :D
(Though I'd either not heard or hadn't remembered the bits about pears and mill-building. Had heard the missionary bit, though.)
Aircraft are actually still frequently named, with titles ranging from the thoughtful to humorous. It's more that as fleet sizes have ballooned and aircraft are assigned to particular flights on an as-available/as-needed basis, the importance of aircraft names fell off. Limited production run aircraft sometimes place more importance on names (for instance, each of the 21 B-2 Spirit aircraft is named "Spirit of..." with a State's name); interestingly, the Concordes, despite being a highly prestigious aircraft, were not named.
Now I'm imagining how ponies would named their aircraft (airships?): Imagine getting on one to hear you're flying on the Cuddlebug or Ducky Bird today...
President Zalenskyy agrees that Blue and Gold is best.
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They really are good colors.
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Do you know if historically passengers would be ticketed on a specific aircraft, versus a flight route? Like you get tickets on The Atlantic Clipper instead of Flight 401 (for example)? I know that railroads typically named passenger trains and often named passenger cars, but the locomotives tended not to be, at least in the diesel era.
Oh, yeah, that’s really something to think about. Would a big company name them after employees (as some ship lines do) or other famous ponies? Would they pick aircraft-sounding names, or route names (like the Cloudsdale Express)? Other flying things that they admire? Might there be some sort of unwritten rule that different kinds of craft are named for different kinds of thing? Like military airships named for dragons, fast passenger aircraft named for pegasi (maybe Wonderbolts)? So many possibilities. . .
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Trump and Putin prefer White, Blue, and Red.