P&LE scenario for testing purposes

[artimrj]

The CSX/old P&LE runs right behind my shop. A train runs by every 20 minutes. About 3 years ago they put a sign on the crossing gate down the road a bit that says "INCREASED RAILROAD TRAFFIC". The Monaca coal plant is across the street from me. They get 3 150 unit coal trains a week from out west, BNSF brings them in. Them at least 3 more local CSX units haul that much away. The BNSF units drop off their coal and refill with our brand/type. Supposedly our coal burns hotter and cleaner. A car carrier goes by once an hour, every day. About 10 container trains go by a day. The rest are mixed freight of covered hopper, tankers, a few box cars and a few flats.

I live about 200 yards from the bridge, over on the right side of the bottom picture, beyond the trees.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

Interesting, Bob, you see and hear the trains we model for real!

So I gather it is quite a busy bridge line now, the old P&LE with that amount of trains. Day and night rumbling over the bridge, right?

From the link I posted I learned that there were only 2 operating steel works left in the whole of Pennsylvania, and that was 10 years ago when that photo essay was written!

As to the coal, there is metallurgical coal and common "stoker" coal. For steel making the coal needs to have certain reducing properties. The other coal just needs to burn clean and hot, the less sulphur the better. Eastern US, like Va, W.Va. coal is high in sulphur I learned when reading in on Tori's COARW.
Check those H.A.E.R. archives, when searrching for the Beaver station photos I came across very detailed photos and drawing of the insides of a nearby nuclear power station, the Monaca and Aliquippa steel works and rolling mills and lots of other interesting stuff.

Is Youngstown still a steelmaking town or has that also been reduced to yet another part of the rust belt like the Monongahela Valley?

PS. Thomas Bontempo, the P&LE author is from Aliquippa, you both could have a beer together and talk routebuilding.

[artimrj]

Yeah I feel them too, they rumble the building I work in. The tracks are on 50 feet away. The tracks go right across the Beaver bridge. Our coal is called anthrocite, they want it out west. No clue what is happening in Johnstown. All the mills are dead and the towns have slowly turned in to ghettos. The best job in the valley is mine, I make tombstones.

[glenn68]

Bob,The coal out of the western Pa area was bituminous both steam and metallurgical grades. Most of the mines on the Montour produced both grades. Steam grade is used in powerplants and the metallurgical grade is used for coking and the steel mills. anthrocite is found in the Central and eastern parts of Pennsylvania. The coal fields of the southwestern Pa area is called Pittsburgh number 8 seam.
I love making long coal trains out of Brownsville Pa at the uppermost of the Monongahela railroad. Now that would be a cool route to build.
The making of tombs stones I would considered a art.


Glenn

[artimrj]

I always get anthrocite and bituminous mixed up, duh. Yeah stone work is sort of an art, basically I know how to manipulate the granite. Like the Egyptians, only no aliens came to help yet.

[glenn68]

I always get anthrocite and bituminous mixed up, duh. Yeah stone work is sort of an art, basically I know how to manipulate the granite. Like the Egyptians, only no aliens came to help yet.

You are funny! Heck not to go off subject, I figure working on head stones would be a great job.

Glenn

[artimrj]

It is a great job. 70 to 80 times a week I get to stand back and look at what I did. And I have the boss that everyone wants.

[dejoh]

Does anybody ever mis-spell copy on your tombstones?
In my business, it happens all the time
It was much more of a bother in the hand lettering days.
My shop is in site of the old C&EI mainline. (now the UP).
Very busy trackage.

[artimrj]

Yeah we get the occaisional misspelling. But most times the customer is at fault. It is usually a date though, they cant remember when grandpa was born or died. If it is their fault, since they sign a final approval, they they have to pay for repairs. If it is our fault we cut them a new stone. Our main problem is the setting crew chips too many stones or drops them or crashes into them with another stone or.... I do not set them any more, been inside for 25 years now, my first 10 I set everyone I cut. Now I am the computor nerd doing all the cad work and dealing with the major decisions that my two helpers can not make. Then I hand carve all the flowers and birds and holy objects and anything else that comes in. I am also the Stone Doctor, I fix things. Lawn mowers in the cemetery or back hoes crashing in to them. Kids get drunk and topple them over. People actually crash in to them with their cars and turn it in to home owners.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

It is a great job. 70 to 80 times a week I get to stand back and look at what I did. And I have the boss that everyone wants.

Stone masonry is an ancient art and craft, held in high esteem throughout the ages. Many of your forebears' work still stands and has withstood thousands of years.
Even if headstones and grave ornaments might not be in the same league as artistic sculpture or architectural decoration, the people who buy your work do it with a purpose.
The tactile result of your work and craftsmanship helps them to cope with their grief and move on with their lives, knowing there departed loved ones are right there where that headstone of yours stands.

I work in insurance, all I ever get to see of my work are figures and graphs. The boss is never satisfied in the current climate of greed and fear.

I do sense a certain bitterness in your words after reading many of your postings over the past months, but that is perhaps better left to private conversation, if it needs to be discussed at all.

[artimrj]

Bitterness? I am just an ex Marine who has pride in his work when way too many people in the industry could care less. If the troops are bitchin, then they are happy, it is when they are quiet you have to worry.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

Bitterness isn't the right word perhaps, but I often sense a certain feeling for nostalgia in people playing and even more, creating for this sim.
You are a competent route builder, Bob, your NEPA is a model route that sets an example of being complete, self contained and fulfilling.
We create our idylic, arcadian, little worlds, where the world is still "ordered" according to our order. We try to ignore the reality of "what has the world gone to"?

I live on a different continent, in a different culture, in a different economy and trade/profession. The US has always been the land of plenty, where the word "impossible" doesn't exist to me and most of Europe.
I cannot really relate to or compare how it must be to watch whole cities, industries and generations go to waste in the process of global economic change. Like what has happened in your vicinity, from Cleveland all the way down to Pittsburgh and beyond. I hide myself in those HAER archives in awe over man's ingenuity but see in Google Earth that nothing has been left.
Indeed the last job standing will be that of the undertaker.
I cannot imagine all those mines, railroads, steel works, rolling mills and all that goes with it, the once might and pride of the industrial power of the US just being gone with nothing to replace it.
How many of this board's members fathers, grandfathers and those before must have toiled and labored in those industries we try to recreate in our layouts?
The process of globalism is just too big and too complex for most of us to understand. And because we are loosing what we have it is all the more bitter to us compared to those who labour in the present day steel works of India, in the textile mills of Vietnam or the factories of China. Producing our goods, clothes, cars at prices so low we cannot resist. These people who often come from extreme poverty have everything to gain but also don't know where their path will lead them and wether it will ever end.

Societies inevitably come and go. Only their monuments carved in stone will remain and most of these are memorials and headstones in all kinds and sizes.

So, playing trains in TS2012 for many of us is a form of escapism, to bring back the days when we thought the world was still in order.
It also explains why there are relative few young people active in our scene, who cares abot old fashioned trains these days?

Hope this makes sense as an explanation, I didn't mean to offend so we'd perhaps better leave it here. This board is about Railworks and no place for personal philosophies of mine.
I've got lots to do with my subject, these scenarios for the P&LE.

[artimrj]

Nothing offends me, my skin is like leather. Yes you do ramble a lot, but there is nothing wrong with that as long as you are making sense. So far you are. My dad, his dad and his dad all were Mill Hunkies. Great Granpap came over on the boat from Czechloslovakia to avoid Hitler in 1939. My real name is Artimovich. New country new name is what Great Granpap said. In 35 years we figure I cut 45,000 stones. And to be cynical, sometimes I am really glad I make tombstones, especially when I get road rage. I scream at people and tell them I will make your stone. Maybe you think thats bitterness, but it's not, just my way of thinking.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

Okay, back to the P&LE!

Since it is a water level route, how is CSX' train length and motive power in general? Most photos show only 2 or 3 big modern Diesels up front but offer no car count.
The yards as modelled by Thomas hold only about 60 car trains, save for the extra long bundles at West Aliquippa and near the Edar Thomson works. I presume these were added after steam traction was abolished.

I don't know yet where CSX division points with engine change are, most roads nowadays assign their power from start to end of a run and only change crews/refuel on the way. Thomas modelled two such crew change/refeuling points on the NS part of his route. Original P&LE didn't need those, for it never had really big road units and long hauls.
Are DPU's and pushers used by CSX on through trains using the P&LE and B&O tracks going over Sandpatch?

[artimrj]

I see at least 3 big diesels hauling 150 coals hopper or 120 containers or 90 autoracks. Sometimes there are 4 engines, but the 4th one is not smoking so I assume it is not running.