Chapter Notes: Idaho (Destination Unknown) · 12:52am Jan 7th, 2022
Sweetsong slept through Marias Pass, and missed the giant obelisk. She also missed Horse Mountain . . .
Still, she can always come back later and see it in the day. There’s always a train to take her near where she wants to go.
Special thanks to AlwaysDressesInStyle for pre-reading!
In the blog post for the last chapter, I forgot to mention the one boxing song Sweetsong knows . . . it’s The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel.
Talon and Thorn correctly identified the song she was singing. Obviously, it’s supposed to be a duet, but can be performed solo.
Unfortunately, Sweetsong slept through most of Idaho, so she missed Lake Pend Oreille, North Pole, and the Silverwood Theme Park. She didn’t sleep through all of it; Hauser Yard is in Idaho. Yardly Yard (yes, it’s really named that) is just across the border in Spokane. In case you’re curious (and I know some people will be), I found a map of BNSF’s Northwest division. It’s at a weird angle, I don’t know why, but it’s official BNSF documentation.
I don’t know for an actual fact that the fueling shed has cameras in it, but I would imagine that it does. If they put them in the rail yards, they’d put them in the buildings, too.
I haven’t covered fueling locomotives before, I don’t think. They usually have tanks that hold thousands of gallons (a Dash 8-40CW holds 5,000 gallons [19.000 liters] of fuel). There are dedicated fueling stations, either in the open or covered, at what I would assume are carefully calculated points on the railroad. You could assume that most through trains would need fuel at set points on the route, and put the infrastructure there.
The other option, which I think came up in a prior chapter, is bringing the fuel to the train. For smaller railroads (short lines), that’s usually how it’s done: they order diesel by the tanker truck full, which delivers it to the locomotive, wherever it is. Even Class I railroads do that sometimes; it’s not practical to drive a yard locomotive to the nearest rail yard that has a fueling stand.
I should also mention that while being covered in snow isn’t great for a human, ponies are kind of designed for that. Fluffy coats provide insulation, such that if everything’s working like it should, the snow doesn’t even melt.
IHOP is the International House of Pancakes. As their name suggests, they serve pancakes and other breakfast food. They are also, in fact, international. They do serve other food as well (burgers and burritos) . . . I have no personal knowledge, but I imagine that nobody goes to IHOP for their burgers. According to their website, they’ve got one called the “Big Brunch” which includes a pancake* in it.
This is everything right and wrong with America. If you’re going to IHOP, be traditional and stick to the all-you-can-eat pancakes instead of brunch on a bun.
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*It’s hash browns in a circle, which I suppose is technically a potato pancake.
Now for the song! Most of my audience probably knows this one. According to Wikipedia, the inspiration was Bobby Hart mishearing the lyrics in Paperback Writer. This song has also been covered by lots of bands over the years, including by the Finnish trio Jouko, Kosti ja Paavo.
This felt like the right chapter for this song, even though Sweetsong isn’t anywhere near a Clarksville. A quick google search reveals that’s a popular town name; there's a Clarksville in Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia (but spelled Clarkesville), Idaho, Illinois, Indiana (they have two!), Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio (they have three!), Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas (they have two), and Virginia. You could legit make a railroad that runs from Clarksville to Clarksville and if you sited it well, you’d never have to leave Ohio.
I’ve been to Clarksville MI, on the back roads. Not on a train, trains don’t go there. Y’all remind me later, and I’ll tell you about the road to Clarksville. Seriously, though, y’all gotta remind me, I won’t remember.
Can you imagine if Sweetsong was travelling with another pony and they sang duets?
The outro gif I wanted to use was too many megapickles for FimFic, so I’ll embed the YouTube video it’s from. Warning, it’s kinda sad and kinda epic.
Hmm... now I'm tempted to try one next time I'm there, just for the novelty of it. Far be it from me to stick to tradition.
Not that I'll ever get the chance due to personal circumstances (primarily because the nearest one's more than an hour's drive away), but hey.
My nearest IHOP is six and a half hours away in Niagra Falls, Ontario. Someday...
My God, I remember hearing that song quite a lot when that I was and a little tiny boy (with a yeah yeah yeah, the wind and the rain).
That video is interesting. It must have been shot in the 1960s or 50s because that locomotive must be from the 1860s or 70s. Look at that big diamond spark arrestor and enameled trim! They haven't run engines like that in quite some time, I don't think.
As Spokane is my home town, I'm always happy to see it show up in these stories. :) I know exactly which train yard she's talking about. It's also right next to Felts Field, so might want to watch things a bit carefully so as not to be surprised by any planes.
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Now that song is going through my head! (Yes, the one from Twelfth Night!)
Will be interesting to see her get caught actually.
Parking your local service/regional service locomotive someplace accessible and sending in a retail tanker truck is, in fact, quite a common thing. You aren't the only one to document such happenings.
Refuelling a Baby Tunnel Motor
Thank you, as usual, for the blog post and for the chapter. :)
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Well, if it happens in the course of your journeys, report back
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I can’t see just IHOP being the reason for a roadtrip, but if you happen to be that way, well. . . .
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I wasn’t around when it first came out, but listened to a lot of oldies/classic rock (depending on who you ask, lol) when I was younger and honestly if it’s a song about a train, it has my interest.
It would be interesting to do a deep dive and find out what locomotive they used. I think there’s a number of them still around, often converted to other fuels . . . IIRC, the diamond stack was common on woodburners to prevent lineside fires from cinders, but I’m honestly not all that much of an expert on steam locomotives. It would be an old one, though, I do think by the early 1900s every new steam locomotive was sporting a more conventional stack (could be wrong on that, though).
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Good advice for Sweetsong . . . although probably her normal flying keeps her low enough that being clipped by an airplane isn’t much of a risk. I figure she doesn’t tend to fly much above treetop level, since there’s little point for what she’s doing.
I’ve been through Spokane on the Empire Builder decades ago, although I’ll be honest I don’t remember it much. Woulda been the late eighties, I think. Maybe early nineties, I can’t remember exactly when we took that trip out West.
You’ll have to keep an eye out for a pegasus looking for a train to hop, or earning bits singing in a public park near the tracks.
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Not familiar with Twelfth Night, although it sorta tickles at the memory. Wasn’t there a Shakespeare play called that?
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The real question is what do they do if they catch her? Handcuffs could work as hobbles on her legs, but they don’t have any way to restrain her wings . . . maybe wrap her up in something?
And honestly, I could see the rail bull being all proud of himself for catching her (assuming she lets herself be caught) and then finding out that the local police want nothing to do with it, since arresting Sweetsong implies interplanetary incident and who wants to do that paperwork. I can almost imagine the conversation.
“Yeah, I caught her trying to hop a train.”
“Did she damage any property? Steal anything?”
“No, but she was trespassing.”
“Let her go, we’re not dealing with that.”
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I’ve seen it on a shortline, although they were using a smaller straight truck to do the refueling. Also, as I was researching the story with Google Maps and their satellite images, you can clearly see a tank truck by a locomotive outside Shelby, MT, IIRC. It’s one of the places she visited, anyway; I’d have to go back and check to give you an exact location.
And it makes a lot of sense; dedicated fuel infrastructure is not cheap, and you’d only put it where you really needed it. Everywhere else, you’d just get it delivered to where the locomotive is.
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You’re welcome!
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Yep! When our equine jedi wrote, "...yeah yeah yeah, the wind and the rain..." he was (appropriately) paraphrasing a line from the closing song of that Shakespeare play, lamenting the foolishness of lost youth.
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Huh, interesting. So does that imply that there’s a movie (I assume) of Twelfth Night that ends with The Monkees?
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I've seen weirder.
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When I was in college, we did A Midsummer Night’s Dream (IIRC) set in New York City, and the faeries were played as hookers. To make it more immersive, we trashed the lobby, disabled half the lights and gelled the rest a sickly green, replaced the nice chairs with broken plastic ones, and had actors playing bums in the bathrooms.
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Thinking about it, I can see how that would work really well! I have to admit... I love that sort of stuff!
I once saw a whole run of the history plays, each set in a significantly later and later time period, until the last was in the modern era. Worked like mad to convey to the audience the passage of time between monarchs. Then there was a Much Ado set just after WWII... Dogberry and his guys were a troop leader and boyscouts. Great fun!
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Ooh, that would actually be really cool. I assume that they did them over a period of time, rather than all in one go?
Sort of in one go... One on Friday, three on Saturday, and three on Sunday. RSC touring show at Yale, *unintelligible mumble* years ago. Quite a marathon, but totally worth it!