[PRCo] Re: New Orleans trackwork symmetry

Mon Feb 7 22:11:50 EST 2011

Why?   Do you smoke?      :<)

Please take that as a joke.   

Back when I quit smoking, and that was about 25 years ago, someone asked me if food tasted any better.   I told him I couldn't tell any difference.   He persisted.   The next question was, "Do you use as much salt?"   I thought about it and said, "Honestly, no.   I've almost quit using salt."  It was then that I realized that I could finally taste food.   I never liked French cooking until then because it seemed tasteless.   I tried it again and suddenly a whole array of spices came out that I never tasted before.   I've since gone crazy sort of like those blokes on the Gluttony Channel (they lie and call it the Travel Channel) who eat anything from food to worms.   Bob, I can start out at the beginning of the week with German (that was yesterday).   Today was Indian.   This evening was Italian.   I think tomorrow might be southern Indian because I have to go to Harrisburg.   During the week it might also include Vietnamese, Ethiopian, Chinese, Thai ... whatever I can find.   

First time I had alligator was in a seafood restaurant in "beautiful downtown" Scranton.   (Not very beautiful and not downtown)   The gator was lacking something but I was still sitting in a blue cloud then.    Today I can taste the difference between gator and chicken.   It also probably has a lot to do with what the chicken was fed (free range or factory fed) and what was in the swamp that the gator ate and how each was cooked.   

On Feb 7, 2011, at 8:57 PM, bobrathke at comcast.net wrote:

> 
> But then, EVERYTHING tastes like chicken.  :-) 
> 
> 
> 
> Bob 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "John Swindler" <j_swindler at hotmail.com> 
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org 
> Sent: Monday, February 7, 2011 7:54:15 PM 
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: New Orleans trackwork symmetry 
> 
> 
> 
> Your right, Bob.  Does taste somewhat like chicken.  Had some last Wednesday near Cape Canaveral.   
> 
> 
> 
>> Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2011 22:13:40 +0000 
>> From: bobrathke at comcast.net 
>> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org 
>> Subject: [PRCo] Re: New Orleans trackwork symmetry 
>> 
>> 
>> I remember PRC operators carrying fold-up seat cushions to their PCC runs in summer months. 
>> 
>> These were the same 1" thick seat cushions (coiled spring wires inside mesh seat and back panels) that people used in their automoribes in the days of vinyl seat covers and no air conditioning. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I had some exotic food in New Orleans in 2009, but no alligator.  However, I dined on alligator at the Rosen Plaza Hotel in Orlando in 2010. Y ou know what they say - it tastes just like chicken. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Bob 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net> 
>> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org 
>> Sent: Monday, February 7, 2011 3:11:49 PM 
>> Subject: [PRCo] Re: New Orleans trackwork symmetry 
>> 
>> The late Dick Lloyd, who was the operating manager at the Baltimore Streetcar Museum when I joined about 25 years ago, used to regale us with stories about Baltimore Transit.   He used to prefer running Peter Witt cars in the summer to PCC cars.  Why?   The Witts had a wooden seat on a post which he felt was much more comfortable on a scorching summer day south of the Mason Dixon line.   He claimed operating a streamliner, with a leather motorman's seat, gave the motorman a case of "PCC Seat" which was analogous to an adult form of diaper rash.   
>> 
>> A lot of southern streetcars had wooden sets with air spaces in them.   They may have been hard as rocks but they were a lot more comfortable on a sticky 95 degree day than having your posterior superglued to a leather seat.   
>> 
>> The first time I witnessed an air-conditioned transit vehicle was in a city that really needed one in the summer.   Would you believe Big D - little a - double l - a- s.   That was back in 1959.   Today we take them for granted.   
>> 
>> Ah yes, Bob, there was a big difference between a summer day in Nawlins or Mobile or Dallas or Houston and a day in June in Chicago with a 50 knot wind off the lake.   I spent several days in the Chicago area in 1959.   The first allowed me to make a round trip to Milwaukee on the North Shore.   By the time I had lunch at Zion the mercury in that little glass tube had climbed to 100 degrees.   The next morning I went into a movie house in the Loop for a couple of hours in order to warm up ... the wind off the lake was biting ... must have been around 55 degrees and I was in a sport shirt.   
>> 
>> New Orleans in the summer?   I never saw anything but hot and sticky.  The reason for cayenne peppers in your Cajun food is to make you perspire and the sweat evaporates and cools the skin.   
>> 
>> I can get even farther off track.   Some of you may have seen the cooking shows on PBS television years ago by Paul Prudhomme ... the rather stocky chap from New Orleans.   His nephew runs a cajun restaurant in Columbia, Pennsylvania (12 miles west of Lancaster) called Prudhommes Lost Cajun Kitchen.   Great food.   Blackened cat fish, alligator, shrimp, jambalaya, rice and beans, and so forth.   All the good stuff.   They also sell neat t-shirts with pictures of alligators ... "Come to Prudhommes for a piece of tail!"   The catered my granddaughter's wedding and did a great jo 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Feb 7, 2011, at 1:16 PM, Herb Brannon wrote: 
>> 
>>> What do you think of the seats in the cars ? 
>>> On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 12:51, <bobrathke at comcast.net> wrote: 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Attached are three photos I took at the end of the St. Charles line in 
>>>> November, 2009. 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> I like the symmetry of the cross-over trackwork.  It's broad gauge, so I'm 
>>>> on PRC topic.  :-) 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Bob 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -- Attached file removed by Ecartis and put at URL below -- 
>>>> -- Type: image/jpeg 
>>>> -- Size: 76k (78735 bytes) 
>>>> -- URL : 
>>>> http://lists.dementia.org/files/pittsburgh-railways/tn_IMG_6444.JPG 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -- Attached file removed by Ecartis and put at URL below -- 
>>>> -- Type: image/jpeg 
>>>> -- Size: 134k (137315 bytes) 
>>>> -- URL : 
>>>> http://lists.dementia.org/files/pittsburgh-railways/tn_IMG_6446.JPG 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -- Attached file removed by Ecartis and put at URL below -- 
>>>> -- Type: image/jpeg 
>>>> -- Size: 139k (142797 bytes) 
>>>> -- URL : 
>>>> http://lists.dementia.org/files/pittsburgh-railways/tn_IMG_6447.JPG 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Herb Brannon 
>>> In Cuyahoga Valley National Park 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>                                                 
> 
> 
> 