Listening...

Dave H (MI) · Nov 20, 2015

...to all the train traffic lately. I can actually remember hearing the odd steam whistle when I was a real young one but I do like the sound of the diesels as they work their way thru town, the horn getting harder to hear as the crossings get farther away. My daughter was speculating that the increased traffic was due to harvest time and, of course, there are grain cars sitting on many a siding in the area so I think she is right. Funny in this country how we divorce ourselves from the realities of food production and it's incredible importance to the country and the economy. I doubt there are very many people around town who have even noticed the trains, let alone wondered about the harvest.

Dick2 · Nov 20, 2015

The trains run through our town at night; if we hear a train in the daytime it is a special of some kind. One that I happened to see was a circus train when they came to Phoenix. The suburb next to us has an ordinance against trains blowing their horn at any time at a crossing. The motorists have to look out for themselves at the crossings.

ss55 · Nov 20, 2015

I see a lot of coal trains running parallel to US Hwy 30 and US Hwy 12, year around.

keh · Nov 20, 2015

Gotta take care of those suburbs. Its common to see tall, expensive concrete walls built along the interstate to keep noise away from suburbs.

KEH

fixerupper · Nov 20, 2015

Dave, didn't you know our food is made in the back room of the supermarket and the ingredients show up out of the blue? In my neck of the woods all we see is grain hopper and ethanol tanker cars so that is about as closely related to ag as we can get. The closest real overland rail is fifty miles to the south where the UP runs along hwy 30. When I was a kid I could hear a train blow its horn in the evening at intersections on a track five miles to the north and occasionally on a track six miles to the east. The track to the north is long gone and I could maybe still hear the one to the east if my hearing aids are turned way up. I don't remember steam locomotives though my mother told me I would watch them when I was real little.

farmerwithmutt · Nov 20, 2015

For some reason ethonal gas cannot be pumped in lines it all goes on railroad cars sure see a lot of new cars. I wonder if it's because of corrosion on the old lines? Have heard a rumor that a new gas line is planned

WellWorn · Nov 20, 2015

Dave, I too like hearing the trains moving, and when the wind is right, I still can even though the tracks are about 14 miles away and 1000' lower in elevation. NS and CSX both have tracks out there, and I've actually seen the old Nickel Plate restored steamer ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_Plate_765 ) on an excursion run through the area a couple years ago.

You're also right that so few seem to have any clue as to what all is involved in bringing what they eat to market. Most of what we sell is direct sales, and we could easily spend as much time (IF we could spare it) in educating the consumer as in raising what we sell. "If your poultry and hogs are free range, do you still feed them grain?" [facepalm]

Goose · Nov 20, 2015

Burlington Northern has dual tracks that run a mile west of our house, as the crow flies. There is a steady stream of trains all day, mostly coal trains with loaded ones going east and empties going west.

Once in a while there is something interesting, like when a train of assorted tonnage will have three stripped airliner fuselages on special flatcars. I assume Boing makes the fuselages in their plant in Wichita and then ships them by rail to Seattle for adding wings and doing all the finish work. Don't know why, but there are always three at a time.

Also a mile west of my house is a town that has almost disappeared. All that's left is a large grain elevator, a house that the elevator owns and rents to an employee, and a township hall where residents of our precinct go to vote. And none of the grain is shipped by rail, although it once was. Now, it's all trucked out, with corn going west to ethanol plants and soybeans going east. The siding tracks are still there, but they're no longer connected. Guess the railroad is too busy with coal to bother with grain.

gtractorfan · Nov 20, 2015

I like having a set of tracks across the field from us. Once or twice over many years I heard the unmistakable sound of steam engine coming and sure enough it was. There's a restored one at Ft. Wayne occasionally taken out. This load of tractors went by a few weeks ago, I posted a picture on T.Tales then. I asked about it at the local J.D. dealer, I was told those would have been going for export out of the country.

Dave H (MI) · Nov 20, 2015

It's amazing how far you can hear a train if you have a little elevation on it. This house is on the side of the highest hill in SE Michigan, or so I am told. The bedroom window is on the track side of the house. I can first hear the northbound train when it comes into South Lyon...about 5 miles away or more. When it exits there it goes thru state land and crosses the Huron River thence into Brighton. I can hear every crossing until it leaves and head towards Howell, maybe 7-8 miles as the crow flies. Long time ago I had a CSX frequency on the scanner and there were sensors on the tracks that counted the axles that went over them and then broadcast a computer generated voice to ?????. No idea why they needed to know that info or who was listening besides me. Gave me some idea of how big the current train was.

gtractorfan · Nov 20, 2015

The weather affects how far the sound carries. If it's a still damp night the sound carries a long way. Wife and I are in our early 70's, old enough to remember steam trains. She grew up 11 miles from the nearest track and said sometimes she could hear the steam engines from that distance.

moresmoke · Nov 20, 2015

They use a slug of water to separate the products in the pipeline. The water won't stay separate from the ethanol.

Alot of the new tank cars were brought on line due to the crude oil shipping boom. Now there are quite a few strings sitting idle on unused tracks.

IaLeo · Nov 20, 2015

If you "train nuts"

want a good read about a boy growing up in Michigan who got involved with steam trains in his little town, read "The situation in Flushing". You probably will have to have your local library search for it. It is charming. Leo

D beatty · Nov 20, 2015

The Norfolk and Southern main line between Chicago and east coast runs on back side of farm about 1/8 mile behind house. There are over 125 trains a day through here.

dgasper · Nov 20, 2015

Sometimes I see Union Pacific trains with pusher engines on the tail end in addition to the ones at the front. No idea what is the advantage of that.

RogerinIowa · Nov 20, 2015

You can only put so much horsepower pulling a train or you will fail couplers. So you add pushers to make a bigger train. Saw a coal train on the CP line here in Iowa the other day that had two pulling, two in the middle and two pushing. Could be about 18,000 horsepower or more. One of the steepest grades in North America is here at Ottumwa Iowa on the CP line.

bradley martin · Nov 20, 2015

Those would likely have been heading for the port of Baltimore,... and from there they could go anywhere!!

Ted in NE-OH · Nov 20, 2015

I am about to go( in 6 hrs) to Seattle from Cleveland via Amtrak. Always enjoy the train ride.

G.Fields · Nov 20, 2015

Dave, what you were hearing was a defect detector. As you know they count the axles/length of the train, but they also have heat sensors that detect a bad bearing, or a sticking brake. The newer ones also detect dragging equipment.

Andy Martin · Nov 20, 2015

Finished product pipelines are usually batched to transport different products. Some companies use pigs to separate batches but most product is just shipped end to end. Only a few hundred feet of product gets mixed over more than a hundred miles. The mixture is downgraded as scrap into a lower value product. Water cannot be used to separate batches of finished product for several reasons: each product has a maximum water contamination amount, water in the pipeline is corrosive, and water in valves will freeze and make the valves stick. Water could be used in crude pipelines because there is always produced water in crude lines anyway. Crude and finished products are never batched in the same pipeline; the crude would discolor the product and put it off spec.

Ethanol attacks the welds in steel unless the welds are post weld heat treated. Existing pipelines do not have post weld heat treated welds, so ethanol is trucked to terminals and blended at the terminal as it is loaded into transports to go to stations. Some effort has gone into installing pure ethanol pipelines in high traffic areas but for the most part it's too expensive.

Hobo,NC · Nov 20, 2015

I have lived as close as 75ft to 400ft form the Seaboard Coast Line RR most of my life I don't hear'em :shock: About the only time I hear'em is when the 10:15 PM amtrak runs...

RedGreenGuy · Nov 21, 2015

Engineer for 34 yrs. We could run 10 more loaded coal cars per train with 1 locomotive on each end rather than both on front. Avg train with power on head 130 cars. Add 10 cars per train and every 13th train ran labor free.

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