Episode 12: Responsible Railfanning

In this week’s episode of Off the Rails with Rowdy and Bethan, Rowdy and Bethan dive deep into a topic near and dear to them, "Responsible Railfanning." 

Here's what comprises this episode: 

1.) Introducing while Bethan loads up on the Red Bull. There's some buffering.

2.) How to safely foam. With some really, really big things happening in heritage rail space this year, we want to take a minute to talk about how to safely and respectfully railfan. 

3.) What do we do with heritage equipment that needs saving? The internet is full of last-minute emergency fundraisers and calls to save historic equipment, on tight timelines, and often, without solid plans for the future. How do we, as a community, museums, and railroads, be good stewards of our historic assets? 

4.) In the News - Appropriations! Rail Funding! 

5.) Questions. (This was filmed before our "fuel storage solution" was announced. :) 

Got a question or topic you want us to cover? Send it our way- we’d love to hear from you.

So grab your coffee, crank up the phonograph, and let’s go Off the Rails.

Become a sponsor and help keep Off the Rails 'On the Air'!

Thanks to Huffman Machining Solutions is proud to sponsor this Off the Rails podcast.  See how we can help with your next challenge at huggmanmachining.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Off the Rails, the podcast where steam locomotives meet modern macros. Joint executive director of the Mount Rainier Sonic Railroad, Beth Maher, and Rowdy Pearce, Superintendent, Professional Cat herder, and occasional how to go tour. Together they pull back the curtain on the wild, weird, and often hilarious world of tourist steam railroads. You'll get a front row speak to the ins and outs of this truly unique business. So grab your ticket, hold on to your sense of humor, and join us for a ride into the unpredictable world of steam. This is Off the Rail.

SPEAKER_04 0:37

Welcome to Off the Rails with Rowdy and Bethan.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Hey.

SPEAKER_04 0:44

It's going to be a uh an interesting day.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

We've had meetings today. Yeah. We've had meetings. I've been um in the trenches of matching funds for grants and Excel sheets, and then um something about trying to get your maintenance away department to sit in a meeting and focus.

SPEAKER_04 1:09

We love them all. I should have started my day with pancakes, that's all I have to say. Anywho.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

So welcome. Welcome to Off the Rails with Roudith and Bethan. Mm-hmm. Um, do you know that other people are calling you Roudeth now? You know that that's caught on.

SPEAKER_04 1:29

That's not the worst thing, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

It's definitely not the worst thing I've been called. So how are things going in the shop?

SPEAKER_04 1:35

Um they're on a scale of one to f they're probably vastly approaching a six. Well, so you moved things around. We did. We moved things around. This the five has now been put in the back burner building, as we've come to call it, which is the Rod House. Work will continue on the five, but not at a not at the pace that we've been working. The 70 is now inside the shop.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Yeah, so you called me yesterday The Ruin My Day, with um so backing up for a while. We've said we didn't know which engine was gonna leave first. Now, in our plans, turning the 70 out this year was not in our plans. Not, let me rephrase that, it was not in my plans. The shop crew um had been instructed to finish the five, turn around a passenger car, take a week or two of vacation, and um they told me to um respectfully go the hell. And by the time I came back from vacation post-Christmas, we had the 70 torn apart. The 70 was torn apart. Um, so we're the 70s boiler was in much better shape than we thought. So we sort of got to this point we're like, well, we'll UT it and see.

SPEAKER_04 2:50

To clarify, the 70s boiler was in much better shape than you thought. We thought it was in good shape.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

I don't know how many years I've been railroading, but my career in railroading has not prepared me for receiving good news. No. Um so up until this point, we've been saying, hey, it'll either be the five or it'll be the 70. You were welding, doing all the firebox work for the five. Um we've got tubes on site for the five. There's still the small matter of the barrel patch on the five. Um, but we have made a decision. And we are moving forward. The 70 will roll out of the shop before the five. Yeah. And we are not continuing work simultaneously because you want a steam engine fast. Well, and tubes.

SPEAKER_04 3:41

Well, so yeah, that what it boiled down to was that we have enough tubes now on site for the the 70 because we ordered the the needed that we needed to be able to make it work for the 70. Our tubes.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

The tubes for the 70 and the 5 are the same size. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 3:58

But what happened with the 5 was that the tubes that we ordered to replenish the tubes for the 5, when we ordered them, they were 10 to 12 weeks out from the day that they got paid for.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

And they've been on site for a hot minute now.

SPEAKER_04 4:14

Well, that the original order, yes. But then we ordered more to because the 70 has more tubes than the five. Yep, yep, yep, yep. So the tubes that would be coming for the five are now not gonna be here until August.

SPEAKER_02 4:28

Brutal. So we will be pestering the company we're ordering the tubes from because it was their mistake that they did not receive our payment because they put the wrong address on the invoice. Um, and we sent a check. So we will be pestering them to see if there is any way they can further expedite the tube order. But for now, um, the 70, we have enough tubes on site for the 70. We have now ordered tubes for the five, sort of again. Um, and the tubes for the 70 are going back in. Yeah. And the bad news is, depending on the date of delivery of tubes for the five.

SPEAKER_04 5:11

So let's let's just let's just back up because everybody's gonna stop and go, oh my god, they're not working on the five. We will continue to work on the five. We will put all the rivets in the boiler, we will put the front tube sheet back in it, we'll rivet that, we'll do the barrel patch, we'll do all the stuff, we'll put the running gear back together, we'll put the cab back on it, we'll do all the accessories, we'll fix the tender, get the tender ready to go. Basically, what it's gonna be is when August rolls around, then we will finally be able to put the tubes in it. And then hopefully kick it down the road within a month.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

Yeah. And you have been told by the evil management of the railroad that the 70 is gonna be ready.

SPEAKER_04 5:58

Well, that came back to the conversation we had last night about Yeah. Overtime. Mm-hmm. Work yourselves to death. Anyway, so the 70 should be it'll be out when it's out because we're we don't put dates on things. Um, but for everybody that's called me asking if they're gonna ride behind a locomotive on the 16th of May, well, we're not running a train that weekend, and I can't guarantee it. I thought we were. I think we are.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

I don't need to check the schedule now. Uh I had said May 2nd for the record. Uh yeah, I hope. Anyway, alright, so uh speaking of steam engines.

SPEAKER_04 6:34

Yeah, we went and uh we went for a field trip. Yeah. We were invited to go to uh Lebanon on the Albany and Eastern. That's in Oregon. That's in Oregon, and not as much falafel as I'd hoped. Uh and we went for a ride.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

It was a joke. Can you chuckle at it at least?

SPEAKER_04 6:55

To chuckle, I first have to understand the joke.

unknown 7:00

Ah, that's right.

SPEAKER_04 7:01

Anyway, so we went down to Sandy Anna excursion trains, went for a little ride with them, uh, out to Sweet Home and back for the winter rail excursion that they were doing. It was a photo charter.

SPEAKER_02 7:14

Photo charter light. Sort of, sort of, sort of. There were photo run bys. Yeah. Um it was filled with filled with rail fans. That was fun. So we got to see the 205, which is a 262 Mikado, which I explained to you.

SPEAKER_04 7:29

Oh, you just effed up.

SPEAKER_02 7:31

It's not a Mikato because a Mikato is a 282. It's a 262 Baldwin.

SPEAKER_04 7:34

That's a 262 Prairie. Yeah, I get right. Foamers are gonna tear you apart. Let her have it in the comments. Anyway, it's a beautiful locomotive. George Lavico got it out of the park in the 80s, spent 30 years rebuilding it basically in his garage, and then Rick Franklin bought it from him and took it to the Albany and Eastern where they've been doing little excursions with it here and there. And it was a fun little trip.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

Yeah, fun fact, all of the little brass screw slots are exactly lined up on the cab of the roof. Uh the green jacketing sure is pretty. Thinking we could add some color to the 70s jacketing.

SPEAKER_04 8:16

It's uh, it's uh, it was fun.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

It was fun. It was their consist is a lot different than ours. It's more lounge car. There was a there was a bar car on board. Yep. Um I checked out all of the kitchens.

SPEAKER_04 8:29

Yeah. I still wish I could have videotaped your your reaction to you. Coming out of a very restricted area in front of the owner of the room.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

There wasn't a sign on the door that said it was restricted. Um and I was very curious as to what the kitchen design was. So I let myself into the kitchen because it I saw that there was a really big grill in it. I wanted to see the ventilation, the storage situation. And I hadn't met Rick Franklin before.

SPEAKER_04 9:05

And he was sitting right there watching you.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

And I well, he didn't stop me. I went right by him.

SPEAKER_04 9:10

And as we're going, you know, you're probably not supposed to be in there. And then you disappeared and shut the door behind you. And the conductor, who we know, JJ, and I looked at each other and then looked at Rick, and Rick looked at me, and as the I don't know. I'm not sure. I can't do anything at this point. I did. She comes out of it and was like, oh, by the way, Beth and this is Rick Franklin, and the old oh shit! Look on your face was just priceless. I mean, to follow the script, uh, that is probably the best highlight for the trip. I don't know if you got any better highlights, but that was the best highlight for me and the rest of our staff, which were standing there.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

Well, uh, I tend to make an impression, whether I want to or not. He was a lovely gentleman. He is. He's a great guy. He's a uh who did not yell at me for being in his kitchen. And you got a hug out of it. I did. Um, and you want to know what was not the highlight of my trip? Probably the pizza. Yeah. Because what is my goal for this podcast?

SPEAKER_04 10:12

I don't know. Pizza awareness.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

No, I want to turn this into a sneaker. I I production is laughing. I want to, no, I specifically want to turn this into a podcast about food.

SPEAKER_04 10:25

Oh God. So is that why food consumed along the trip is on our list of things we talked about?

SPEAKER_02 10:29

No, I think that's because Jared wrote our agenda for us based on what I sent. And he knew that food was gonna come up, so he was trying to keep the food consumed along the trip to a fairly like small part of the agenda. However, so Rowdy has been telling me for years, oh, Abby's pizza in Oregon, it's the best pizza on the West Coast. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 10:48

Anybody in Oregon will probably agree that Abby's pizza is.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

Everyone knows I'm from New York, right? That's listening to this.

SPEAKER_04 10:54

Okay. Yeah, we there's the East Coast, West Coast thing going on. Anyway.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

No, there is no East Coast, West Coast. There is right and there is wrong. This is a black and white area. There is no moral gray area here.

SPEAKER_04 11:06

So everything that the West Coasters say is right, and everything the East Coasters say is wrong. And then when we go back to the East Coast, everything the East Coasters say is right, and everything on the West Coast is right.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

This West Coast is this godforsaken hellhole where there is no good pizza or bagels.

SPEAKER_04 11:22

I don't know what to tell you. Anyway, we went to Abby's legendary pizza, and unfortunately, I picked up.

SPEAKER_02 11:27

It was, let me, I want to explain this. It was a tortilla. It was a store-bought processed tortilla that had maybe some ragu, but they had like boiled all the flavor out of it. And then there was something plasticky that resembled cheese, but it was not. And then the only good thing about it is there were more black olives than anything else, so I ate all the black olives. And I got a garden salad and it was brown.

SPEAKER_04 11:54

We went to the worst Abbey's.

SPEAKER_02 11:56

I tried to order three things. I was like, hey, can I have a 14-inch pie with black olives, a garden salad, and a diet coke?

SPEAKER_04 12:04

And we went to the worst Abbey's. I was told that I talked too quickly. If you're listening to this, don't go to the Abbeys and if you want good Abbeys, don't go to the Abbeys in Albany. And if you work for Abbeys, and then you need to tell your folks in Albany to step up there again. That was shit.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Eric.

SPEAKER_04 12:22

Um yeah, Eric. Who is a Chicago native? What was the the text I sent you about, too? We're gonna go to Abbey's to load the mud butt for the next day. Well, okay.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

I don't know that Eric needs I don't know that he needed that error. So Eric tried to order a deep dish pie.

SPEAKER_04 12:40

Or was it just Eric?

SPEAKER_02 12:41

Well, so Eric tried Eric is from Chicago and he incorrectly tried to order a deep dish pie, and it also came served on the same flat north.

SPEAKER_04 12:50

Well, they they screwed up because that's not their deep dish. They screwed up, they screwed up because they tortilla. They called for me to go get my pizza, which was the Lingritia, and they had my spuds, which there's supposed to be chicken and spuds, but they don't have any way of cooking chicken there. So I went to get my spuds and my Lingritia was sitting right there next to it. It's like, oh, it's already out, I'll just take it with. And then they called my name again. I walked up and it was a pepperoni. I went, that's not my pizza. I have my pizza already. And they said, Well, where'd this pizza come from?

SPEAKER_02 13:20

I said, I don't know, but that's pepperoni. Regardless, so I I booked an Airbnb for us all under the condition that you all could fight over where you were sleeping. I was sleeping in the master bedroom that had its own bathroom because I refused to share a bathroom with you people.

SPEAKER_04 13:37

What do you mean by you people?

SPEAKER_02 13:38

That's exactly what I mean by you people, which was the right decision because you all started exploding around 3 a.m. Yeah, uh-huh. So I got to enjoy a train ride with all of you.

SPEAKER_04 13:49

Well, you drank and talked about your explosive diarrhea. But the best part about it was all the toilets in the Airbnb had bowets, the tushy wash. Bowdays and bid days. Whatever. But the okay, the other highlight was when you're trying to show me how to use it and you sprayed not only yourself, but the big but the watercolor painting on the wall. It's taken really out of context and sounds really bad. Not taken out of context. She reaches down and she says, This is how you use this. She turns the knob and water spray all over the room. Your face was in the toilet bowl.

SPEAKER_02 14:20

No, it wasn't. It it was at the time. No, you you moved. Um, and over three million butts love Tushy. And they have a catalogue of bidets and fiber gummies.

SPEAKER_04 14:38

So we're this this is how we're going into the next segment of the podcast. So we're gonna go from talk about butt washers and explosive diarrhea after Abby used to stay from responsible rail fanning.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

Okay, so yeah, transition. Um, so I was not sure of topics for this week's podcast. So please, y'all, leave comments. What do you want to hear about? What topics do you want? And I know that everyone keeps saying the rails to trails thing, and I have a lot of built-up like angst over that one. I feel like I need a month to prepare a legal defense before I do it. That's probably gonna be a good drunken history style episode, but that may not set the best precedent. So I know that one, but what else?

SPEAKER_04 15:24

If you're gonna if you're gonna comment about uh episode topics, go back and watch all the episodes to make sure that you're not re-making us repeat ourselves.

SPEAKER_02 15:31

That's fair. But anyway, so I was um trolling the internet as I as I do, and I went into a head of the torch because it's a moderated forum, um, which makes it maybe a little bit higher quality than some of the other Facebook groups, is because there's a lot less they should do this and just armchair quarterbacking and criticism, and that still exists, but maybe not as much. But it was all um the last week or two weeks, it's just it's been a massive amount of equipment.

SPEAKER_04 16:06

Um that's that's the danger of being scrapped, and we had the 20 days to get it out of here. And the panic response. Whatever the case may be.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

And then the other thing that's been prevalent on the internet is obviously the big boy tour. Um, and with that, I've had conversations with some friends back east about how Well, the East Coast isn't even ready for it. No, but how we make sure that we are keeping rail fans safe. So the bulk of this podcast episode is safe and responsible rail fanning.

SPEAKER_04 16:41

And how to get rid of your stuff.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

Which I that's also safe being safe and responsible around your passion for railroading. So, uh, where do you want to start? Do you want to start with equipment or safety? We go with the safety aspect of our. Okay. So I'm gonna tell when we reopened this thing 2023, 2024, we had at least one close call a weekend with a vehicle or someone taking photos or that sort of thing. And I think there was a lot of excitement about us being back. There's also a lot of general ignorance around railroad safety. And I'm gonna just drop a quick hot take. There is a lot of entitlement amongst rail fans.

SPEAKER_04 17:32

Yeah. And and I mean, there's just a one of the things I found was that there was just a complete and total lack of respect for boundaries. I mean, people literally just hopping over fences and barricades so that they could get the shot, or the sun's not right, or this or that. And we have to go out there, hey, you need to get out of there, you can't be there. You need to get out of there, you can't be there. Well, why not? And one of the things that would send me through the freaking roof, and I'd have to put on my professional face was the, well, we used to be able to do this.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

Or I've had um, you know, we used to be able to do this. Oh, don't you worry about it. I've been around Railroads my whole life. That one we get a lot.

SPEAKER_04 18:09

We get we get that a lot. And I think I get that more than I think. You know, the you're supposed to be a professional when you're out there and in the public and all that other kind of crap, but you can only have your buttons pushed so much before you have to go, I'm gonna turn my customer service voice on for you and tell you you're a fucking idiot and get the hell out of there.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

Yeah, I mean, I so if you are coming out to a railroad to take photos, to participate, whatever. I think the first thing to probably understand is the railroad doesn't owe you anything. Um if you've bought a ticket to ride, that's great. They owe you a good time and a good experience, right? They also owe you um your own safety and theirs.

SPEAKER_04 18:52

Because that's part of what we do. Stop, think about it. From 50 feet down the center line of that freaking railroad track, out either side, 100 foot wide, that's private property. It is private property. Technically, you're trespassing. If you're uh if you're on there in any way, shape, or form, you're technically trespassing. Now, the fact that we don't get the hell off of our property and let you stand there 25 feet away from the tracks and take your pictures, I mean, that's us assuming a lot of fucking risk. Look at, for example, when the uh Canadian engine went to Mexico.

SPEAKER_03 19:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:24

And they plowed that gal over going, you know, 50 miles an hour because it was all about taking the picture. She was more concerned with taking the picture than sitting back and saying, hey, I mean, it is what it is. But looking at herself in the picture, didn't see a locomotive coming, that sucker snapped her neck that quick. Very tough way to learn a lesson. And the thing of it is, is that we are behoop behovent, however you want to say it, to English is hard for you today. Don't make fun of my speech impediment. Um, you we are being held by our insurance companies. And when the insurance sits back and says, we prefer this, that's the way it is. One, two, three, four. I don't know how many accidents it's gonna be. How many does it take before you're no longer insurable as an industry? Not as a company, as a industry. What have our insurance people talked about us when we saw talk about possibly doing freight?

SPEAKER_02 20:23

Yeah, well, the insurance burden may actually lessen. Yeah. Because we're fully compliant then, right? Or then what you're hauling doesn't what you're hauling can't sue you. That's fair. Um, I mean that that's fair, right? So if if you're gonna go out and be a rail fan, if you're gonna go out and foam a railroad, which I believe foam is a I think it should be a verb.

SPEAKER_04 20:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

Um if you're gonna go out and foam. Please foam responsibly. Foam responsibly, buy a ticket, support the operation, right? I I think that's that's important. Um it's great to want to take pictures if you're not buying a ticket, buy some merch, man.

SPEAKER_04 21:03

You know, so there's support what what they're doing. There is uh a kid came up, rail fanner 4014 last year. If you're gonna do it, do what he did. He came up, he stood at the fence, we were sitting there, you know, about 15, 20 minutes to go time. And he, hey, can you come down and have can can I talk to you for a minute? I said, sure. So I got down there and he goes, This is what I do. He showed me some of his videos. He goes, Is there any way that I can put some cameras on your locomotive to do this? And it was just like, hey man, you asked. Yeah, come on up. I'll show you where to put the cameras, you know. And he put cameras all over the locomotive and he caught us a whole run to mineral impact. He didn't ride on the locomotive because he didn't buy a ticket or anything like that. He wasn't asking to buy a ticket, he didn't want to buy a ticket. He I think he did go for a ride, but he respectfully asked if he could. He didn't just sit back and say, Hey, I want to do this, and he didn't Let me do it. He said, Is there any way that I can do this?

SPEAKER_02 22:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:03

And I was like, Yeah, you asked.

SPEAKER_02 22:05

I mean, I mean, but like once a weekend, someone tries to climb in the cab without being asked. And some some of this is the physical plant that we operate on. Doesn't, you know, the platform is right there with the engine. But it's got a fence up on it. We've got we've got crossings right out like right out the gate. You know, there's a crossing by the bar. Um, and it's sort of it, you know, at a 90-degree turn. So it's a it's people like to take pictures in the road.

SPEAKER_04 22:31

Um but well the other things is too is that we get people, like for example, during when we're running a five-car train, a five-car train, a six-car train don't fit in our space worth of crap. So the locomotive is sitting right up next to that crossing where there is less than 15 feet from the side of the locomotive to the center of the lane, turn lane. And we get these guys that will literally stand there in the middle of the highway to take a picture of the locomotive. And now I can't sit out there and say, hey, you can't stand there because they're standing on the highway. But I can sit there and say to myself, that's really stupid. You're gonna not only possibly get hurt, but you're also gonna create a traffic jam in the process.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

Yeah. And I mean, it's just please be respectful, folks. I mean, and that's we've been in situations where people have been trying to take photos. There was one where the guy was trying to take a close-up of the running gear in a crossing, and I thought he was if he fell, his head would have come off. Oh, yeah. Like that was, and I mean, we've both been in situations as operators where we've almost killed people. And um that's not a good feeling either. That makes you not want a railroad more.

SPEAKER_04 23:42

No, right? There's I mean, there's there was one case last year where I actually had to open up the cylinder cocks and just lay on the whistle to get this gal to move out of the way as we were going by her at 15 miles an hour because she was literally standing at the edge of the ties. Yeah. And it's like, woman, you got 30 feet that you can stand, but it's for that perfect shot. Now, there's some people out there that do it smart when they want to get something like that where they set the camera up there and then walk away. There's still 25 feet back, is the with the with the zoom technology that there is now on cameras, you don't have to be standing next to the tracks to get your shot.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

Yeah. I mean, Operation Lifesaver for folks that um, you know, are operating tourist excursions and heritage excursions. No, foamers exist everywhere. But Operation Lifesaver has some really good resources for, you know, taking photos and safe photos on the train. We are, I signed us up for the Operation Lifesaver certification program at the ASLRA conference in Minneapolis. By the way, I don't think I told you that, but you're getting the emails.

SPEAKER_04 24:49

I already did.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

Um so you need to do the online training first. Yeah, you do. Um, but you know, just because you like the train trains, railroads, it doesn't mean you're entitled to anything. Please recognize that it's private property. Recognize that the people doing this are doing this for a living, right? That we are taking on a fair bit of risk.

SPEAKER_04 25:15

And I know that I think the thing of it is, is that you sit back and look at the origination of the term foamer, it it was a derogatory thing right off the bat. It wasn't a oh ha ha ha ha. It's not set it originally, it wasn't a merit badge. It was that's what railroaders called fucking idiots. You know, these guys are freaking morons, and you can't just say that they call them foamers right off the bat. No, okay, it's changed over the years. But that's the original, you know, you you talk to people like Doyle and George Lavico and all them, that's where they sit back and go, oh yeah, foamer was not something that was that that was you know a nice term back in the day.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

I mean, it's ask permission. Ask permission to do things. I mean, photo charters all the time. I see, you know, an engine sitting sitting there, the park folks, someone still goes and walks and tries to take a photo, dead center, middle of the gauge. Yep. And it's well, it's not moving. Yeah. But, you know, you don't you're not trying to try to do it. Again, you're not a crew member. You are trespassing aside from those things. You're not in communication with a crew. Do you know that railroad ties are slippery as shit? Shit everywhere in the Pacific North.

SPEAKER_04 26:29

Many years ago, we had a hiker go across the bridge and try to hike into the state land on the other side of the Squally River Bridge. We weren't running trains, nothing was going on. But she slipped and fell, smacked her head on the frickin' rail, and knocked herself out. She laid back there for 12 hours before anybody found her. Yeah. Now, who this was before you could sue people for a hot cup of coffee. Today's day and age, I could see somebody. The McDonald's lawsuit was legitimate. I I but in today's day and age, I could see somebody, whether it's legitimate or not, trying to sue because they were trespassing on your property, fell down, and hurt themselves. Yeah. So be responsible. Don't be dumb. Don't, you know, don't do what Calvin does for our YouTube and anything for the shot. You know, if the if the light is hitting the engine just wrong and you gotta go across the tracks to do it, guess what? You're not getting that freaking picture, especially on our railroad.

SPEAKER_03 27:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:26

If somebody, you know, goes across, goes through the fence and crosses into the area that we say is a no-go for the general public. I don't care if you got a camera in your hand, you're general public.

SPEAKER_02 27:36

You're gonna get told, get out. To be fair, I'd also love to hear from the foaming public that isn't operating, that isn't involved volunteering in a museum, that isn't an employee, that isn't a railroader. What do you think it's gonna take, right? To for railroads, right? We have a responsibility to educate and we try to do that. Um, what do you think it's gonna take to help us get the point across a little bit more, right? Like photo charters, things like that, doing rail fan events, they only make sense for us if we're selling tickets for them. Yep. For one. But they also only make sense.

SPEAKER_04 28:07

It goes back to what Eric and I said if we're able to control the public. Yeah, and it goes back to what Eric and I said in the podcast where we were talking about doing photo charters and all that other kind of stuff. We're not doing the photo charters for ourselves. We are doing the photo charters for the the people that want to do it.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

I don't really remember that part of the podcast.

SPEAKER_04 28:26

I was rather Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, that's that's something that we we talked about in that is that a lot of railroads. I know you talked about it.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

There was a when we do these, we lose money at it. Associated with putting microphones in front of you and Eric. Yeah. Anyway, please be especially, especially, especially all the time, but with the big boy tour coming up, um the problems with the general public, and and and this it's not just rail fans or foamers, it is the general public too. You look at when they went over Daughter Pass.

SPEAKER_04 29:00

Look at when they went over Daughter Pass a couple of years ago, and people were like, whoa, the the big boy kind of disappeared for a couple of years. If I were the safety-minded and the lawyers for UP, and I got on and I saw all these videos of all these hundreds of people crawling all over the railroad, and Ed's up there laying on the whistle, trying to get people to get out of the way, even though they've said, please stay 25 feet back. What would I say? I would sit back, I would go right straight to Jim Vera, and I would say, you need to get that thing off the tracks because it is a safety concern, and we're gonna get sued over it.

SPEAKER_02 29:32

I mean, and it's it's impossible to put signage everywhere on the railroad, right? It's impossible to bar access everywhere on the railroad.

SPEAKER_04 29:39

We can't do like they do in Europe and England, where they just put big fences up on either side of the railroad. You know, what do we do?

SPEAKER_02 29:44

What do the railroads do? Um, to to both encourage safety but not to promote the railroad industry as well.

SPEAKER_03 29:52

Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_02 29:53

You don't want to make them railroads sound like the devil and then have a negative public response. But at the same time, how do we get the point across, right, that safety is paramount?

SPEAKER_04 30:04

That doesn't involve being on the news because somebody got killed.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

Yeah. Um, okay, so let's uh wrap that up and move into the other uh responsible rail fanning. What do you do with your heritage equipment?

SPEAKER_04 30:21

Say that's responsible preservationism. Is that okay?

SPEAKER_02 30:26

Well, responsible preservation, rail preservation. I think you don't preservationism.

SPEAKER_04 30:31

I'm gonna George Bush and make something up.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

So something we see happen time after time again in the railroad community is it happened for context, it happened when we were on the phone talking this specific thing over last night.

SPEAKER_04 30:51

It did. Within five minutes, I sent you a post that was like, Are you a prophet?

SPEAKER_02 30:56

Yep. Um so what we see time and time again is equipment come up on the internet, and someone says, Hey, we've been given 30 days by the property owner to get this boxcar, this rail car, this locomotive, this X, Y, and Z off the property, otherwise it'll be scrapped. Help us save it. And there's this last-minute fundraising effort to try and save this piece of equipment and well, we just need money. Okay, where's it going? Who owns it? Who's going to own it? What's the plan for it? And so often these things aren't discussed. And like in a perfect world, there'd be some sort of funding pot, right? That something like this comes up and it's valuable valuable in preservation, which that's the other thing. What is valuable and what's not? You know, that sometimes beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but we also need to be fairly realistic in that we can't save everything. And saving 10% of things and curating a situation well and making sure that um, you know, whatever it is, the locomotive, the car, are taken care of. I very strongly feel that 10% done well is better than 50% done poorly.

SPEAKER_04 32:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:16

Um and s in preservation looks different, right, to everyone. Right now, we have a locomotive sitting in a barn that we don't have funds or immediate plans for use. That's our F unit. Yep. Um, there's body work that needs to be done. There's electrical work that needs to be done. It is a very good candidate for restoration and preservation. We don't have the funds for it now, but I would argue we're not being responsible or we're not being irresponsible about it, because it is stored inside in a relatively climate-controlled environment where we're able to keep rodents and animals and all of those things.

SPEAKER_04 32:56

If we go in and we fire it up once a month and let it idle, we prelube it, we keep every we we keep it in as as best a shape that we can keep it at this point. So we're keeping it from deteriorating any form.

SPEAKER_02 33:09

I would argue that's a do-no-harm situation. Yeah. Right? We're we're stopping the clock where it is now. Whereas if we were leaving that engine outside and we had no plans and no funding to do something with it for the next 10 years, then I would probably start to say maybe there's a better home for it.

SPEAKER_04 33:29

Um I mean, I mean, the the it I'm not this is gonna ruffle feathers. Oh dear. But oh no. That locomotive, as long as I've been around here, has always sat outside, especially when it's not being used. It's just it's they used it in as a backup to a steam locomotive, whatever the case may be. We are one of the first people, other than Brian had it inside for a while. We are some of the first people that said we're not using it, it's parked inside out of the rain.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:57

I mean I mean, hill, when we opened back up, what was the first thing we did? We washed it.

SPEAKER_02 34:02

Yeah. We washed everything. I mean, and so equipment gets stranded for a whole variety of reasons. The railroad's been abandoned, or the railroad is out of service, or the equipment somehow got parked there. Right? Things happen for or it was gathered up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:22

We have to have that.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

We have to have that. No. And then you know, people amass these collections, the owner dies, and there's no clear plan for it. So, what do you what do you do in that situation? A lot of times they've been left outside. There's further rot and deterioration. So they've gotten to the point that, well, they may have been a good candidate for preservation, they are no longer a candidate for preservation because you're basically gonna be rebuilding the whole dang thing. Yep. Now, challenge is moving this stuff. If you're trucking it.

SPEAKER_04 34:55

Oh God.

SPEAKER_02 34:56

I mean, it's a lot of times there is no active rail connection. If there was an active rail connection, there is a very good chance that whatever it is would have already been restored or at least rehoused in a different area.

SPEAKER_04 35:08

Well, for us, if we were looking at like a passenger car that couldn't be interchanged, our line for being able to truck it stops at the state border. Maybe a little bit farther than that. And that's because of the sheer cost to truck it.

SPEAKER_02 35:22

The cost, I mean, the cost to truck something, because in a lot of the times you're getting cranes involved, you're sending like a car body and a separate load that you're sending the trucks. Um you have weight, you're have an oversized move. I mean, that cost is easily gonna be six figures.

unknown 35:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

I mean, maybe you might be able to do it for a little bit less depending on your circumstances.

SPEAKER_04 35:49

And like if you had train operators donated, that's the reason why I said if anything for us is going on a truck, it's the state border.

SPEAKER_02 35:56

And then because what are you doing with it? What's your agreement? What's your you know, railroad equipment don't have titles like a car does.

SPEAKER_04 36:05

For example, there are organizations that have things that we could use. And I'm not talking about steam engine things that we could use. There's there are organizations out there that we could use the cars, some of the cars that are sitting in their collection that they're not using.

SPEAKER_03 36:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:20

And when you reach out and say, hey, because when when we weren't looking for cars last time, I reached out to several organizations that had SP subs, that had the period correct things that we're looking for, that are just sitting and said, Hey, is there any way that we could acquire that from you? We will buy it. We don't want you to donate, we will buy it from you. And the answer was just a stout no. And in three years, they're still sitting in the exact same place. Yeah. They haven't been painted, they haven't been taken care of, they're stuck behind a warehouse somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 36:52

We had passenger cars here.

unknown 36:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 36:55

That we listed for free for a year and a half.

SPEAKER_04 36:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 36:59

Maybe a little bit longer.

SPEAKER_04 37:01

They were given away three or four different times. And part of the we had part of the given away is I told them you have X number of days to get it off the property.

SPEAKER_02 37:10

Yep. Well, and we we were in a situation where we didn't have money to move them, right? Because that wouldn't have taken away from getting the 70 ready, getting the 900 cars ready. We didn't have money to move them, but we said we will absolutely donate these to another organization. There were two or three that were interested that we were in the process of saying, okay, it is yours, but you have to move it.

SPEAKER_04 37:34

You gotta get it out of there. And what was the reason why we were letting those go? We were letting those go because we don't have the room for stuff like that around here. And we weren't gonna use them. We weren't gonna be able to rebuild them because they were in really bad shape. We said we need to get them out of here because technically they were sitting on somebody else's property. Now, those folks have been a little bit more forgiving now than they were before, where it was you have three years, get it out, or we are scrapping it.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

And we were, like many people, that you know, we said, hey, we know the situation is coming. We're not gonna wait until it's a totally desperate situation, and we're doing the there's 30 days to get these things out of here. But no one could move them, no one that was interested in them.

SPEAKER_04 38:18

And then what happened? We saw it. A guy came through the gate, and you know, because one of the folks associated with the board had reached out to him and said, Hey, they're looking at getting rid of these. Is this something that you want? And what was he? He was a scrapper, and he came in and he looked and said, I will give you X number of dollars per car.

SPEAKER_03 38:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 38:40

And by the time we got done cleaning up things on the property, those cars included, we'd made about $15,000 off that guy. Yeah. I mean, what it also boils down to is, you know.

SPEAKER_02 38:51

And I mean, they were so rotted.

SPEAKER_04 38:53

Oh, well, when so everybody's got that the people that know they're the the Canadian cars that used to be here, when they reached up to the one, then it was the last one that had been used, it had had people in it within the last 10 years at that point. They reached over with the excavator to roll it over onto what side so they could start, you know, taking it apart. And when he hooked it with the excavator and started to roll it over, all the seats, the floor and everything stayed behind, and the car body literally just peeled right off the the right off the frame, the entire length of it.

SPEAKER_02 39:24

Yeah, I've I've got a special hatred for 1950s Canadian car bodies. They rot. I know it's they rot, you get the warping with the side sheets, and then they all grow like mold underneath, and then they slowly buckle out and the windows seep. And if you don't have that little aerator pressure valve cleaned and ready to go between the windows with the double pane windows with the FRA glazing, it all just seeps in under the windows, and then it just rots away. Well, when I walk through it, and especially if they haven't removed the horsehair insulation, then they just smell, and then if you try and cut it out to do the replacement work, it's just yeah, people are gonna are.

SPEAKER_04 40:07

PTSD associated with it, clearly. People are gonna argue on that. Whoa, but it it's it's it's whatever works for you. Whatever.

SPEAKER_02 40:13

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, no, there's a will there's a will and money.

SPEAKER_04 40:17

With those cars, I was walking through them one day showing them the potential buyer, and I stepped on a spot and I went through the floor. Yeah. And the only thing that kept me from going through the floor, through the floor, was the carpet.

SPEAKER_02 40:27

So I really, really admire for their collections policy is Northwest Railway Museum and Richard Anderson. Um they like this past year, they gave us a spiker and the people mover.

SPEAKER_04 40:46

Um what happened with the Pettibone? Because I heard something about the Pettibone at one point in time, too. Like they're finally ready to let you know.

SPEAKER_02 40:54

I don't, you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_04 40:55

He wanted money for it to begin with.

SPEAKER_02 40:57

Yeah, I I don't think we're getting the petty bone. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 41:00

We don't need the petty bone.

SPEAKER_02 41:01

But um, but they have an incredibly well-managed collections um policy and program, and you know, they they inherited a mess just like the rest of us have in real life. Oh, yeah, look at all those steam engines and what they're doing now. Where a bunch of stuff landed in one spot, and they've very slowly, responsibly gone through and just decided, hey, this is where we have duplicates. Hey, this is not something that we're using, let's try and find another home for it. And I really, really applaud them for the work that they've they've done.

SPEAKER_04 41:34

Um, and what it boils down to, and I think that this is something not everything needs to be safe. Not everything needs to be safe. But the other thing is, too, because I mean, we got some that happened up here in the pacif in the Pacific Northwest. I'm not gonna point fingers and name names, but they just have to grab onto everything. They're and they're doing it right now. They're picking up steam locomotives and passenger cars and they're pulling them all into one spot. And you sit back and look at it and go, you must plan on living forever because there's no way you're gonna be able to do anything with all of that. You know, they got, I mean, that there's like I said, there are a few organizations out there that got passenger cars that if we had them, we would be using them. We would be maintaining them, we would be doing, putting them back into service and actively using them. But instead of being able to go in and say, hey, are you gonna use that? Is there any way that we could possibly get a hold of that? It's just that you're roadblocked at the door. No, that's ours. We're gonna do something.

SPEAKER_02 42:27

And we're having conversations. Someone approached us, and I'm not gonna get into the specifics, but uh, about equipment that we have on site. They're saying, hey, do you have a use for this? What is your long-term plan? We have something that may fit your operation better. And instead of saying no, well, and I immediately said no because you all started harassing me. Um I didn't. I planned on doing nothing with it.

SPEAKER_04 42:47

It was other people on the staff. No, technically he's your staff.

SPEAKER_02 42:53

I'm just higher on the food chain than he is. Right. But saying, um, hey, you know, let's have a conversation about this. Let's see if it makes sense.

SPEAKER_04 43:01

It's not, and it's it it it's a the right way of doing it because it's like, hey, this isn't something that's gonna happen tomorrow. This could be a multi-year thing to happen. But are you interested?

SPEAKER_02 43:11

And you know, uh again, what what are we saving? Does every single boxcar and reefer car need to be saved? No. Right? We see that all the time come up. That someone with the very best of intentions wants to save it because it's cool. Right? There's other ways to do preservation, though.

SPEAKER_04 43:29

There's taking photos, there's taking measurements, there's recreating logos and paint schemes and some of that the boxcar situation, it would be cheaper to build a replica than it would be to save the original.

SPEAKER_02 43:40

Or, you know, like but there's there's different ways, right? Even you know, you're scrapping a passenger car. Okay, what are you doing with the some of the accessories in it? Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_04 43:49

Um Well, what like was that conversation that we've had? That some of these cars that we've looked at that is you know what, it would be actually cheaper to build. The brand new one that looks the look than it would be to restore one. And there are places doing that. And another thing with preservation, just in case it gets I'm going to bring up the other the side trip that me and Nate and Chris went on, because I think that it's important to have that conversation too. Is we went and looked at a locomotive sitting in a park. You actually haven't told me about your locomotive sitting in the park yet. Well, for one, it's smaller than the 70. The 70 would reign superior. We're not going to get into that because uh I know that would be a big derailment, and people are probably going, oh, well, tell the difference. But we're sitting there watching, looking at this thing. And there's kids crawling all over it. Which is cool, great. They're crawling all over it, they're doing something with it. But then Chris gets up on the tender and he's standing on the oil tank and he points, he goes, I can literally look through the tender cistern at the ground. And the first thing I thought was, oh, cool, because I'd seen a kid do this, is at some point in time a kid is gonna jump from the oil bunker onto the cistern and go through it. And I'm sitting there looking at it, going, this thing, yeah, okay, they paint it, they do all that other kind of stuff, but it's not being preserved. It's the deterioration is being slowed. And what's gonna happen when somebody royally gets hurt? Yeah, you know, oh, guess what? Now it's in it's it's a oh, we got to get completely and totally rid of it. And what do cities do when they don't know how to get rid of something? They throw it in the dump. And I'm sitting there looking at that, going, okay, this would be a cool locomotive for somebody to have. It would it would work out somewhere. I don't know if it would work out for us, but it would work out somewhere. And there are people out there that would actively come and take that locomotive to their railroad, rebuild it, and use it. If you roll in there to the to that particular city and say, hey, I would like to look at getting this locomotive and taking it away, the city is not gonna say yes because they're gonna sit back and all the memories made on that, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're gonna roadblock it. And it's gonna continue to sit there going slowly downhill. Now, am I saying that you need to go start plucking steam locomotives from parks? No.

SPEAKER_02 46:08

Aren't you though? No. That's one of that is sort of what like one of the bees you have in your bonnet. That one? Well, then you just have a locomo- you have a thing for locomotives in parks. Well, yeah. I am known for following you around playing some Sarah McLaughlin in the arms of an angel when you go walk by things that are sitting there.

SPEAKER_04 46:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:31

It's one of my favorite things to do.

SPEAKER_04 46:33

I've I saw, I looked, and went, yeah, the headache associated with this. Did you actually And then I actually turned around and looked at a collapsed bridge and started feeling good about myself.

SPEAKER_02 46:42

Did you actually bring the UT machine down?

SPEAKER_04 46:44

No, it got forgot. They had threatened to.

SPEAKER_02 46:49

Then I was like, they were gonna bring the UT machine down to start UTing some of the accessible areas of the damn engine. And it was anyway, I was waiting for a phone call.

SPEAKER_04 47:02

But the but the thing of it is that we stood right there and looked at it and went, you know, even yes, it's a good candidate for somebody. But even if you said, yep, we want to go out to this locomotive, the the pain in the butt to get it out of that park. I'm not talking about moving, I'm just talking about getting the city to save the city.

SPEAKER_02 47:21

Well, so you have so you have chains of ownership, right? So let's when Ed Ellis um in Iowa Pacific went splat.

SPEAKER_04 47:34

That's a really nice way of putting it.

SPEAKER_02 47:36

One of the biggest challenges with all of the equipment that had been purchased all over the country was who owned the fuckers. Bleep that out, Calvin. Um but you know, there were so many different liens and co-owners. So let's in preservation, who the hell owns it? Yep. That's that's your first thing. Do you own it? Do you own it? If you don't own it, you get ownership of it. That's that's the first thing.

SPEAKER_04 48:05

The second that happened here. I'm amazed. I am amazed. I am amazed a certain person hasn't shown up on the property in the last three years and said that own engine is mine, I want it back.

SPEAKER_02 48:15

Okay, so you have ownership. You have how the heck are you moving it? Right? And how much that is that gonna cost? Do you have six figures to start? Yeah. Maybe less. I mean, if it's a caboose, like I'm not talking about cabise.

SPEAKER_04 48:32

Yeah, cabooses don't count, neither do trolleys.

SPEAKER_02 48:34

Cabise and trolleys are well, I oh, oof, hot takes, hot takes. Um, so how the hell are you moving it? Where are you putting it, and what sort of agreement do you have in terms of liability and insurance on it? Because you can't just move a car to another railroad and then you know, assume that they are going to assume the liability for it. How are you working on it? How are you, you know, preventing further deterioration of the thing, whatever it may be? And then past that point, what is its use? Yeah. Um, how many others are in existence? Um, all the all of those things, you know. Uh do we have other what what is the use for this in preservation? And I think that's a hard conversation.

SPEAKER_04 49:28

But production's getting antsy in the pantsy back there. So what I will say to draw this to a conclusion is have a long-term plan for whatever the hell it is you have on your property. If you don't have a long-term plan on it, you can't walk out there and say, hey, I can't, I don't know if I can use that or not, start really thinking about that. Find a home for it that they might be able to use it.

SPEAKER_02 49:47

My conclusion of this segment is if you're on the internet taking a photo of something that you have posting a photo that you have taken while illegally trespassing on a railroad, and your sentence starts with, they should. Yeah, you're a problem.

SPEAKER_04 50:03

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 50:04

Yeah, that's that's it. That's my hot take.

SPEAKER_04 50:07

That that's your hot take. Well, my hot take could probably go a lot longer, but we'll go over that at a different point. Anyway, in the news. In the news.

SPEAKER_02 50:15

Uh, the big boy is going on tour.

SPEAKER_04 50:18

May God have mercy on their souls.

SPEAKER_02 50:20

I know. I really, I very much feel that we all should probably set Ed Dickens a box of chocolates for putting up with the foaming community, like myself included.

SPEAKER_04 50:30

I actually, I so I'm gonna I'm gonna really piss some people off and say, I think the big boy looks good with white walls.

SPEAKER_02 50:38

Yeah, I do too. I I have a slight issue with the 4547 the Honda, but anyway.

unknown 50:46

Oh, whatever.

SPEAKER_04 50:47

I I no, no, it's the 1616, and the one it left with was the 1776.

SPEAKER_02 50:52

1776 is fine.

SPEAKER_04 50:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:55

Anyway, uh, let's move on. Um, big boy tour. I think that we all should probably send Ed Dickens, like, I don't know, some bubble bath calming serum. I I've never met the man, I don't know what he likes. Uh, a bouquet of yellow lab puppies. I I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 51:14

I mean, like I said, God have mercy on their souls for that, because I mean I mean, for one, it's a swing and dick thing to be able to run that thing, the amount that they run that problems. Sure. But then you look at the flocking crowds that they have to do.

SPEAKER_02 51:28

Imagine your blood pressure staying stable through that.

SPEAKER_04 51:31

I mean, I remember talking with Doyle McCormick about when they were doing the freedom train, and they're going through these crowds, which are literally parting right in front of the locomotive and then closing behind the train as it goes by. And going, how do you keep calm in that situation?

SPEAKER_02 51:46

I my husband and I just had a the, you know, this logistical planning for the rest of the year. And I was not successful in advocating for a trip back east sometime around the second week of July.

SPEAKER_03 52:02

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh-uh.

SPEAKER_02 52:07

However, with everyone, it's still I'm I'm it's not off the table for me to bomb out back east with Martin. Cool. I know. It's just another steam.

SPEAKER_04 52:20

Like, I'm judging myself and I'm judging myself for it, but I mean, even if they ever did make it to Portland, I probably still would not go look at it.

SPEAKER_02 52:28

I don't think, wasn't it in Portland a few years ago? And we got home?

SPEAKER_04 52:32

It was supposed to come up to Portland and they nixed it.

SPEAKER_02 52:34

Oh, they nixed it.

SPEAKER_04 52:35

And every yeah, none of us think everybody, everybody got pissed because they nixed it. And you know, stop and think about that. Okay? All these people up in the Pacific Northwest are getting pissed because that thing isn't coming up here. Have you stopped to answer the question of can it even come up here? Can it? Are there physical restrictions of a locomotive that damn big? I mean, look at some of these freaking curves that got tunnels built around them. And, you know, the whole front end of the locomotive goes like this and the boiler sticks out.

SPEAKER_02 53:06

Hey, hi, hi, deep breath, deep breath, deep breath.

SPEAKER_04 53:09

I don't know, I I know. It goes back to the responsible rail fanning thing. That's one of the things that pisses me off when I see the comments of coming up through.

SPEAKER_02 53:16

To be clear, I'm saying this part because there is an ongoing theory. Um, Alan Maples has an ongoing theory that every time we mention his name, we take a shot, and he knows that we like drinking. So, to be clear, if if the big boy tour, if I were going to foam the big boy, I would be taking my oldest flying east to foam somewhere in the vicinity of the Everett Railroad. And then probably drive several hours out of my way to either get a slice of pie from Jersey or New York, somewhere in New York State, because back to pizza. Congress update. Okay, so 116 members of Congress have made a bipartisan request for appropriations. That would the the letter requests $4.4 billion for Amtrak with $3 billion for the National Network and $1.4 billion for the Northeast Corridor, $1.5 billion for the Federal State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail Grants. I have the rest of the notes on my phone. So $1 billion for Chrissy, which we've talked about a lot. $500 million for railroad crossing elimination programs, $500 million for restoration and enhancement grant programs, which provides operating funding to establish, restore, or increase intercity passenger rail service. Now, this is not a transportation bill. This is an appropriations ask. And my guess is that the full amount, despite the bipartisan support, and it does have good bipartisan support from about 27% of Congress.

SPEAKER_04 55:04

It's still not 50.

SPEAKER_02 55:05

My guess is less money will be funded.

SPEAKER_04 55:10

Oh, guaranteed. Um gotta fund that war in Iran, don't you know?

SPEAKER_02 55:17

Triggered. Why do you do that? Because you know it's gonna completely derail me. The sound is the wind up. I know, it's but you know it's gonna just completely take me out of the jack in the box. Uh-huh. That's what my job is. So we we absolutely, I absolutely believe that there will be approach appropriations funding for railroads. Um, the recent transportation bill passed um 341-88. Good news. Um, however, um, with the IIJA, which is the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the funding is routinely cut to a lesser level. So this is a great time to write your congressperson and say, I support railroads and particularly appropriations funding and plans that maintain CRISI funding. Amtrak, I know we shit on Amtrak a little bit last week, and I said that it wasn't necessarily critical infrastructure, and I do think it is. I do think that tourist railroads could be funded, but that's not what we're, you know, we're we're focused on the current things. And also ask um your congresspeople to support uh increase to 45G tax credits and indexing those funds. I just sometimes I just want to talk about politics. What?

SPEAKER_03 56:48

No.

SPEAKER_02 56:51

I actually and I have not called one of my congresspeople in at least a week. This is gonna go longer than 10 minutes, Jared. I call them regularly. Okay, we're gonna move on. Um, questions from our listeners.

SPEAKER_04 57:08

Good God. I'm reading them right now.

SPEAKER_02 57:11

I know you weren't prepped ahead of time.

SPEAKER_04 57:13

Uh, why wouldn't we use a steam donkey pile driver for maintenance away activities? I am very certain you can answer that question yourself.

SPEAKER_01 57:23

Oh, come on. Why not? A little bit of boiler work, move it out on a What was that?

SPEAKER_04 57:31

We were in a meeting today and we talked about, you know, actually getting into the 21st century. There are better.

SPEAKER_02 57:38

So we did meet with uh um like a compliance software folks today, and um in a moment of what I'm sure will be remembered, uh she asked how we were doing our current programs, and Rowdy pointed to the 1926 typewriter behind him and said, Well, that's how our lead guard in the shop fills out his report. Anyway. Um, I mean, why wouldn't we use a steam donkey pond for maintenance away activities? Well, that's just it would probably increase our maintenance burden a little bit. Quite a bit. Quite a bit. Okay. Anyway, um there is a question about mallets. Mallets. I don't care. You're you're making fun of me. You've been uh you mess up your word thought. Okay, the problem is you get twice as many problems.

SPEAKER_04 58:26

Let's read the question so people know what you're tangenting about. Genuine question with diesels now being so much more expensive than steam, would it make sense to buy off one of the non-operating logging malleys or a large mainline fr freight steam engine for freight operations, factoring in the tonnage it could pull?

SPEAKER_02 58:45

Well, we have the issue of our curves with particularly large engines, and then we have the issue of what the what what did I call Double Trouble.

SPEAKER_04 58:56

Double trouble.

SPEAKER_02 58:57

Given our collection of steam locomotives, I would rather have two engines operating at once than to have one boiler powering two steam locomotives.

SPEAKER_04 59:07

Yeah. Because that's exactly what a Mally is it's a one boiler powering two steam locomotives. And you're supposed to get efficiency out of that. You probably do, but your polling power increase is not enough for one locomotive. I mean, yes, Black Hill Central uses them. There's there's a few out there operating, sure.

SPEAKER_02 59:30

But for us For the record, the last time we um talked shit about them on this podcast, I did get a photo from Black Hill Central saying, we are listening to your podcast over the shop speakers as we fight with these, and it was they didn't say as we fight with these fuckers right now.

SPEAKER_04 59:48

Yeah. But that's how I interpreted it. Blackie Mosier always told me that all a mallee is is double trouble. Now, a man like Blackie Mosier saying that, I am gonna take take that into account. You got two steam locomotives underneath one boiler, is basically what it is. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:03

It doesn't, it doesn't make sense to me. I'm gonna take the next one. I'm gonna skip around. Jason Markowitz was one of my volunteers at Adirondack. Oh. Jason is a problematic person from New Jersey who's got a Jeep problem and once wrote a letter to the editor about how terrible I was. I would argue that we're friends now. Umwithstanding, because he sends me photos of his cat's cat. And uh I've used pictures of his cat feet as a double for Monty's feet when Monty isn't participating, and because about once a quarter he ships me bagels from Jersey.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:43

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:43

From a Jewish deli in Jersey.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:45

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:45

So Jason, I believe, well, he may think that the sun rises and sets on Rowdy, I believe he is also antagonizing me with his first question. Rowdy, is that your presidential platform? And if so, Rowdy Pierce for President 2028. This is in reference to Rowdy's suggestion that to increase the tax base, we legalize prostitution.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:08

Tax the hell out of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:09

Will you be running for office and is that the entirety of your presidential platform, or do you have other things you would add to it?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:15

I think there is other things that I would add to it. But I mean, that's definitely something I would put on the table. I mean, stop think about it. Stop thinking about it. That's a lot of money.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:29

What else is on the table here?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:32

Hmm. I'd have to think that one over a little bit more. But I I would definitely put other things on the table outside of We'll get back to now.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:40

For the record, I also had a text from Melanie, which was one of my former volunteers at Adderon, if he was like, hey, it's not a bad idea. And I was it, maybe it's something in the water up there.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:49

When you drive or when you drive home, go when you're going down Highway 7, just start looking at the massage signs on either side of the road and start counting how many of them there are. Then you factor in that each one of those probably get anywhere between 15 and 20 participants a day. We all know what's going on inside there. It's not massages. Now, if they're in there and say we say, all right, they're they're going 200 bucks. If we put 75% tax on that, I mean, just Highway 7 alone would probably.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:19

Do you feel that he's dealing in reality?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:23

I'm gonna take the fifth.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:28

Well, they were no help. Um and then the second question.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:31

Well, then we brought back liquor and look at how much we're taxed on it. I mean, Jesus Christ, 100% here in the state of Washington.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:38

The second question is has anyone checked the price of sailboat fuel?

SPEAKER_04 1:02:41

It's just inexpensive. It's tacked too.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:44

I'm gonna guess that Jason knows that my retirement plan is still to find a sailboat far, far, far away from train tracks, and enjoy sailing tropical waters with my husband. And sail and right, what are my goals, Rowdy? We've had this conversation before.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:03

Buy a sailboat, leave your kids behind. Yep. Die.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:08

Oh, that fake tan with a like the leathery the leathery sailor skin, right? I'm gonna go bleach blonde, gonna get a boob job, and listen to Jimmy Buffett. And drink a lot of rum, even though tequila is my drink of choice. But I'm gonna make changes. That that is my retirement plan is just dot rock on a sailboat with a lot of alcohol and to just look taxenermine before I am.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:33

There you go. Could your railway store tank cars or container cars, etc., with the revenue car storage, use some of the propane and the cars also burn in steam engines, or store tank cars full of oil to store store for revenue and also burn this oil. Is it a proven fact selection of sources of fuels? You can also get cheaper prices per gallon.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:57

I would be very interested in car storage. Okay, car storage.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:03

The really only legitimate thing in that question.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:06

I I am inter I'm interested in car storage. Um I rather like our um I mean fuel storage. I uh we have Bethin is working on fuel storage, let's put it that way.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:23

Um question: fuel storage. Could you find an old tank car or two to park at the yard and use as stationary already do?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:32

I well, we do, but I also think that I have a better solution to fuel storage.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:37

Kelvin, insert picture of the fuel car here.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:40

Um but I think that my my long-term solution to fuel storage will be better than what these folks are proposing.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:47

Um how do the economies of running a steam locomotive versus diesel scale up? I would imagine that running something larger than a logging micado would quickly close the gap in terms of maintenance. Yes, that is very true. It doesn't scale up. And the thing of it is, is I I mean, I think that this is part of the problem here, is that people are, you know, the foamy crowd are clinging to what we say. Oh, steam engine is cheaper to operate than a diesel. So let's just go back to running steam engines. No. We live in this little bubble here at Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad that for whatever reason, for us.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:23

And some other places maybe, right? Go back to our episode where we talk about the economics of running steam.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:30

Well, I mean, for example, the the Santiam, the locomotive we're being pulled behind, they get all their oil donated to them because Rick knows everybody with a construction company in the Willamette Valley, and they just bring it over there and fill the locomotive up. They don't have the maintenance facilities though, do they? No, they don't. So that makes it harder. That makes it harder. So maybe not just specifically for us, but lots, a few other places, it makes better sense for what we are doing to run the steam engine than at Does the diesel. Okay. Is that fair?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:02

Yes. I had one more question, um, which was I believe in jest, and I will not throw the person under the bus. Someone asked who's doing our wardrobe lately. What? You know, as influencers.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:17

Oh god.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:19

Do you want to take that?

SPEAKER_04 1:06:21

I just put on whatever the hell I feel like putting on in the morning. Technically, today's my day off.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:26

I don't set foot in the store.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:28

Refuse. Genuine question.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:30

Oh, wait a minute. We already did that.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:32

How do the I think I think we're done. No, no, no, there's one more here. I think we don't have to do them all.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:37

How do they kind of do anything we're doing?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:38

You already, it's the same one. It's a double one.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:42

Yeah, Calvin's moving towards the camera because he's sick that that's tired of listening to us.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:46

Do you want a wardrobe designer? Fuck no. Do you think you can use one? Hell no. The last time you put a suit on, you wore tennis shoes with it. I did. It was embarrassing. And my dad wore a tuxedo with red converses. It was that that would be a better style decision than your Reebox or whatever you wore. They're sketchers. With the white bottom. And the thing of it is.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:09

It was embarrassing to walk around with you. But that I was comfortable. And who was complaining about their feet by the end of the day? It wasn't me.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:19

I have. I have bad feet.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:23

I do too.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:24

Mine are worse.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:25

That's why I wore the biggest thing. You got a donor tooth in there.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:28

Anyway, it's it's it's an embarrassment.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:30

Ah. Seriously, so that's what feet things are.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:32

Thank you for checking into this week's episode of Off the Rails with Rowdy. No name Pierce. And Bethon. You mean no middle name? No. No, you have a name and a reputation. Uh-huh. But Rowdy, no middle name Pierce. There you go. And Bethan.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:48

And that wraps up this episode of Off the Rails. A huge thank you to our totally real, definitely not made up production crew. Sound design by Microphone. Catering by Cornelius Cobb. Track maintenance provided by Rusty Switches, and marketing brilliance courtesy of souvenir. I'm your host, reminding you to keep your hands inside the train at all times, because around here, things always go off the rails.