Worth a Laugh....

[Kenneth and Tracie Josephson]

Here's something worth a  laugh or two, though the comments by Dan and myself may be offensive to some:

Dan Hammond wrote:

> ... fire up the flame-throwers.... we have an anti-transit establishment radical in our midst! ;-)
>
> On Saturday, August 12, 2000 5:53 AM, Kenneth and Tracie Josephson [SMTP:kjosephson at sprintmail.com] wrote:
> >
> > Dan Hammond wrote:
> >
> > > (Can anybody
> > > tell us if the PCC design is in the "public domain" or did the designs get
> > > gobbled up by Bombardier? We need good designs to replace to-day's transit
> > > junk!)
> >
> > It's funny, but when I asked this on Trolleycars.com last year, defenders of the
> > "Transit Establishment" immediately fired back on how high maintenance and
> > obsolete PCC technology was. One guy mentioned all the Bakelite and brass used in
> > the PCC's electrical system. It seems to me that automobiles and household
> > appliances have evolved and survived without Bakelite. Heck, you can rebuild a
> > 1940's and up automobile and replace all the Bakelite in it with newer materials
> > and it will still operate.
> >
> > Let's see, since certain materials such as Bakelite, brass, porcelain, cloth wire
> > insulation and braided cable covers are no longer being produced in volume/or as
> > traction material, we must discard the entire design and build a heavier, more
> > complicated, less reliable, more power-hungry machine around the newer materials.
> > Fantastic. And let's call the new cars "light rail" instead of "streetcars" or
> > "trolleys" (even when they run on the same lines such as in Boston, Pittsburgh,
> > Sharon Hill, Media, Shaker Heights, San Francisco, etc.)  so we can distance them
> > from their predesessors. Okay, let's apply the same logic to automobiles. A 2000
> > Taurus is not a 1949 Custom Sedan nor a 1929 Model A, so it's not an automobile.
> > It's a Personal Transportation Vehicle.
> >
> > Ken
> >