Hobo Jungle

[healey36]

To be an RAF pilot during the summer of 1940 must have been a glorious thing, putting aside the relatively short life-expectancy and/or the chance of being burned beyond recognition. In my youth the books of Peter Townsend and Len Deighton filled my head with alot of romantic images of the Battle of Britain, Hurricanes, Spitfires, Bf-109's and the like. Despite all of the fear and carnage it must have been a great time to be alive.

[sarge]

It's been an interesting day, rather apropos to the conversation here.

You might remember a couple conversations that lead up to this. First was your (Healey's) photos of Frostburg, MD and the topic going to my travelling out to the very southwestern tip of Indiana to pick up my late uncle's trains, left to me in his will. At the time, the family was also going through the stuff in the attic of the house, and a very dry and crumbly pasteboard box had been retrieved with some stuff that belonged to my great-uncle.

We leave that train of thought to this; when Jon Born and I and a few others were talking of the airplanes our relatives built during WWII. Both my great uncle and my grandfather on that side of the family built P47 Thunderbolts in Evansville, Indiana.

Now, to today. In that box that came from the attic was a set of prewar foglights. A gent came up this morning from Virginia to look at my 1940 Chevy, so I pulled the box out to include with the car (don't know yet whether it sold). For the first time since I got back from that roadtrip fetching up all this stuff, I actually sorted through the box. Hidden away in the paper in the bottom were these:



They are enamel and bronze badges that go on the oil sumps of WWII Pratt and Whitney radial engines, in this case a couple from Ford-built P&Ws that had been shipped for installation in P47s at Evansville. I had no idea they were in with the car parts.

History made personal...

[v8vega]

I had a 500 Triumph and a 650, a friend had a BSA Goldstar, I was young back then and couldn't start it.
I had a Triumph TR-3, It was a old car then but back when they were still around, probably in the 60's sometime I don't remember what year it was, it had disc brakes back when the only thing that had disc brakes were Indianapolis race cars.
At that time I was extremely interested in hot rods and if it wasn't a V8 it was a pile of junk as far as I was concerned and I got it as temporary cheap transportation.
I loved it! Although my love of hot rods continued all my life I now have 3 modern sports cars. There still kind of old. I call anything with fuel injection, electronic engine management, and overdrive transmission a modern car, this started about 1986.

[healey36]

It's been an interesting day, rather apropos to the conversation here.

You might remember a couple conversations that lead up to this. First was your (Healey's) photos of Frostburg, MD and the topic going to my travelling out to the very southwestern tip of Indiana to pick up my late uncle's trains, left to me in his will. At the time, the family was also going through the stuff in the attic of the house, and a very dry and crumbly pasteboard box had been retrieved with some stuff that belonged to my great-uncle.

We leave that train of thought to this; when Jon Born and I and a few others were talking of the airplanes our relatives built during WWII. Both my great uncle and my grandfather on that side of the family built P47 Thunderbolts in Evansville, Indiana.

Now, to today. In that box that came from the attic was a set of prewar foglights. A gent came up this morning from Virginia to look at my 1940 Chevy, so I pulled the box out to include with the car (don't know yet whether it sold). For the first time since I got back from that roadtrip fetching up all this stuff, I actually sorted through the box. Hidden away in the paper in the bottom were these:



They are enamel and bronze badges that go on the oil sumps of WWII Pratt and Whitney radial engines, in this case a couple from Ford-built P&Ws that had been shipped for installation in P47s at Evansville. I had no idea they were in with the car parts.

History made personal...

Emblematic (pun intended) of a time when men/women/companies took severe pride in their work...I don't believe the Chinese or their taskmasters have that same sense of pride, but I might be wrong. Having personally suffered through a greater than fifty percent DOA rate, it is certainly not evidenced in the toy-train market.

Healey

[rogruth]

Healy,

Where did you get that 50% DOA info?For all toy trains?

I don't have a lot of locos but none have been DOA.

[healey36]

Roger - Just my personal experience. I have had bad luck (?) with the few new pieces I've purchased over the years:

MTH 9E - dead out of the box (NOS, still dead)
MTH 392E - good
MTH PS2 Doodlebug - defective speaker out of the box (repaired by MTH)
MTH Railking M-10000 - good
MTH Railking L1 Mikado - dead out of the box (repaired by MTH)
MTH Railking FT-3 - good
MTH Lionel Corp 254E - good
MTH Lionel Corp 265E - dead out of the box (repaired by Catoctin Mtn Trains service center)

Lionel 6-28665 LRRC Berk Junior - dead out of the box (repaired by Lionel)
Lionel FA A-A - good

Williams NW-2 - good
Williams GG-1 - good

Okay, thats only a 42% fail rate. Maybe I'm just snake-bit when it comes to acquiring new pieces, but that would seem to be an unacceptable out-of-the-box experience.

Both the 254E and the 265E were traditional motors...the 265E had a defective e-unit.

Healey

[webenda]

Healy said, from personal experience, his model trains have been DOA 42% of the time.

I have had good luck. The only DOA I have is an MTH engine that my LHS sold for $25 on the condition I never bring it back to them for repair. They had already spent close to a year, returning it to MTH repair three times, only to have it returned DOA with the same symptoms. It only growls, will not move. They gave the customer a new one and sold the chronic DOA one to me. It is the only MTH engine I have, so make it 100% DOA for my personnel MTH experience. I took the electronics card out and replaced it with a Radio Shack rectifier. It now runs beautifully in one direction only.

[rogruth]

Healy,

That 50% is correct for your trains.

Of my 17 bought new locos from Atlas,Lionel,K-Line,Williams and RMT none were DOA.
The only problem I have had was a whistle that,after two years of use,decided to blow all
of the time.It was returned to Williams and returned to me fixed in six days.

I must say that all but three of my locos are conventional.I have no MTH locos.

[healey36]

I have pretty much stopped buying new stuff. The last two new items I purchased were an MTH-Lionel Corp 299 outfit with a 254E locomotive, and an MTH-Lionel Corp Lakeshore Ltd. set manufactured for LCCA that featured a 265E locomotive. I purchased both with traditional motors figuring they would be bullet-proof. The first, the 299 set arrived and ran great...it's very nice. The second, the Lakeshore Ltd. set is very nice but the 265E arrived with a bad e-unit. I called MTH and they told me not to mess with it...just return it to them or a service center for warranty repair. The guys at Catoctin Mountain Trains took care of it, replacing the e-unit.

I'm not an MTH basher...once I got the issues sorted out everything pretty much runs flawlessly. The only remaining problem I have is the 9E, which seems to have a problem resulting from the battery having gone dead. I bought it from a shop that was going out of business, new, but I think it had been up on the shelf for a long time. Mitch had advised that it most likely requires a reset...I just haven't gotten around to sorting that out. For now it's a shelf-queen.

The Lionel Berk-Junior, I have no idea what was wrong with it...it was dead as a door-nail when it arrived. It was the last piece of the LRRC Western Union set from about ten-fifteen years ago. Lionel repaired it and sent it back and it runs great. Doesn't smoke worth a hoot, but that's not really important.

I just accept it...it is what it is. That said, I don't think it should be that way, and based on what you guys have said, it normally isn't.

Healey

[MurphOnMillerAve]

I'd love to see somebody compile statistics on how many locomotives owned by individual hobbyists have run from the day they were removed from the box; how many engines have become "Shelf Queens," with owners giving up on them. Would that be called a "reality-check" ?

[John Webster]

On Friday evenings in the summer cars gather on the local town square. This is believed to be the only surviving Vulcan, a 1913 roadster. Crank start, cable operated external band brakes on the rear wheels only.







The car was built about a half mile north of the town square. Vulcan went bankrupt about 1916 but almost identical Erie cars were built in the same plant in 1917.

[v8vega]

Posted by galaxy on Thursday, June 26, 2014 1:45 AM

V8Vega

There are 275,000 teachers in Calif. Their union spent 4.7 million in the 2010 governors race and another $290,000 to elect lawmakers, I don't have to tell you what party.




this was copied and pasted from Model Railroaders Elliott's Diner

We won't win any prizes from RAY,a retired teacher, I am sure, but:

Here, teachers in my district are crying in their coffee saying they haven't had a contract or raise in 2 years. ANd thusly they have recieved a "0%" raise! They think they deserve a RAISE every year! Automatically!! They claim teachers should recieve MORE than "Zero". Their AVERAGE salary is well into the $60-70K a year range for starters, well enough to live here in these here parts, and more than double what we live on{MOH with 2 jobs plus my disability}, and we PAY for health inusurance costs and have high deductible out of pocket costs.. Last "raise" I got was $10.00/MONTH or $120.00 a year, and they take ou tmore for helath care{medicare} and we on SS feel like "ZERO" as we had a couple years with NO COLA {cost of living adjustment}at all. MOH's last raise was a whole $0.10/hour at one job and NOTHING at the state-agency-adjunct-sponsored primary job in the way of a raise, even MOH's at one year anniversary! {so we really don't feel sorry for the teachers}

It also costs about $21k/per student per year to "educate" our young people in our local school district. The room/board/tuition/book allowances and Meal plan package for the local UNIVERSITY {highly respected, multi-curricula school and adding a legal school to its 'repertoire' for lawyers} is only a cost of $18,700 per student per year! THAT is "wrong" when a full college costs less than to educate a high-schooler or elementary schooler? and we don't put up high school students, they live at home, and we charge them money for lunches OR they bring their own!

Teachers ARE wonderfull! DOn't get me wrong!

But I am tired of the teachers crying "poverty" when the fed poverty level is at $15,730 for a houshold of 2, and MOH's one job doesn't even pay that! ANd they get things like 403 Bs, MOH has NO SUCH plan at wo*k!

If they really want "poverty wages" I'd be glad to reduce school taxes and pay out, say $16k /year in salary to each to be nice for their salaries!!

Oh, and our school district was found by the state auditors to be "hoarding money" that should have gone to reduce school system debt {and it was in the many millions of dollars they were hording}, not just a few. I understand a "prudent reserve", but not 10 of millions of dollars, unless they are going to build a new building! {they aren't}This year they passed a budget with only a slight increase, they would not have gotten it to pass had they INCREASED like they do every year, with that extra funds stash fiasco!

Hmm i guess I SoapBox a bit.

[rogruth]

V8,

Please remember that the above is NOT true of all school system.

One other point I would like to mention is that most teachers do NOT have any paid holidays.
They get paid for a certain number of days per year.Because the school is closed it is not a paid holiday.
Most teachers have their pay divided by 12 if they are paid once a month,etc.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Teachers have long been targets of sniping, with focus on a variety of criticism. From my perspective, as a retired teacher, I always considered what I did to be a privilege, involving a wide variety of skills, some of which were learned/honed in college and some of which were learned in the classroom. Every minute of every day, I was fully energized and gave it my all.

To the whiners and skeptics, I have always invited them to try it for a day - NOT babysit or play games and be cute - but actually inculcate knowledge, lead, inspire, manage, discipline, attend to myriad special-needs, counsel, defend, promote, follow curricula, not teach to the standardized test while teaching to succeed on them, battle intruders, endure the occasional caustics mouths of politicians, administrators, sociopaths, future inmates, and "specialists" out-there-everywhere, all of whom know best, and the condescenders, permanently at-the-ready to instruct the teacher on perceived unworthiness. (Have I left anything out?)

Personally, I had a good old time of it being of true service, and was elected Teacher of the Year , more than once, received the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation award for creative, out-of-the-box curriculum innovation, and heard and felt - the most gratifying reward of it all - the tears and hugs of every student in the building , spontaneously bestowed upon me throughout the day our principal informed the school I was retiring.

Besides being born an American, blessed with my family, and raised a Catholic, I consider being a teacher the great privilege of my life.

So, there you have it, my voice offered to address the lets-have-fun-and-bash-teachers voices out there. Shocking? Aw.

P.S. If you were able to read this, thank a teacher.

[v8vega]

I don't have any problem with teachers at all but I have a BIG problem with 275,000 of them in Calif. being forced to pay union dues which the union uses to elect Democrats in Calif. The teachers union and other public employee unions have destroyed this state.