Until the cows come home...

My dad recounted a story from his days as a banker the other night: He once asked a prospective dairy farmer if he knew anything about raising cows. The farmer replied that he didn't, but the cows knew.

Happy thoughts?

Last Wednesday, I was having dinner with my dad when I heard The Partridge Family's "C'Mon, Get Happy" on the TV. My first thought was surprise that "The Partridge Family" was on in primetime; before I could turn around and determine that it was, in fact, background music for some Disney movie, the thought occurred to me that it might have been a commercial.

Now, for the core of my thought: You could probably use the song "C'Mon, Get Happy" for ads for any product except life insurance...

Oddball on the tracks...

Every now and then, I'll see something while train watching that will baffle me. Tonight was one such night for me.

Coming home from dinner tonight, we were stopped at the crossing for Greenridge, (I think the exact time was 10:24 PM, but I'm not sure--it was close to that, but I didn't look at the clock at the exact moment the train passed). A CSX engine (a wide cab model, but I don't know the exact type of engine) passed southbound with a single Amtrak Auto Train car carrier. I know it was an Amtrak carrier--I could read that in the streetlight.

My first thought was that something went wrong with the carrier and it was being taken back to Sanford. However, that doesn't seem to make sense to me--it seemed to be running at normal track speed--at least for a freight train. If there were a serious enough problem to require it to be pulled from the consist, wouldn't they need to move it beck to Sanford more slowly, and why not take it to Lorton? On the other hand, I'm hard-pressed to think about where else the carrier might come from. If it were accidentally left off yesterday's train, I'd think it would have simply been put on today's train. If it's returning from maintenance in Beech Grove, I'd think Amtrak trains would take it to the Washington area (perhaps not D.C. per se due to wire clearances, but the Cardinal could take it to Charlottesville or Alexandria, and CSX only handle it to Lorton), or mix it in with freight cars (though all Amtrak cars have "do not hump" written all over them--that seems like it might be problematical)--a special CSX move from Indiana seems wasteful and unlikely.

I've also got to wonder if passengers cars were in the carrier. If so, there will be some seriously ticked-off and upset people in Lorton tomorrow morning.
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