Now just crazy…

While we're on skirting, here's my favorite ice skater, and now neighbor. Such a great guy!

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As far as power skaters my favorite of all time is the Human Quad and Speed King...Eric Heiden. One of the greatest American Speed Skaters to enter the ice! If you know who he is, you have lived in good times...USA...USA...USA...USA!!!

THE MAN:

Won the following golds in Lake Placid: 500m, 1000m, 1500m, 5000m, 10,000m to sweep sprint and long distance evens in speed skating. Note he also competed in 3,000m but not in Lake Placid where only men competed in 5000 and 10,000m and only women competed in 3000m (his sister Beth was on the platform in Lake Placid with a bronze medal and also competed in cycling with a gold in road racing in the 1980 world championships.)

His five gold medals remain the record for Winter Olympics.

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If you lived during the days of this great athlete you were around in good times.
Before there was Michael Phelps the king of the pool was a Mr Mark Spitz. And Bonus...he had the Stach!

A Stach that even a Mr Shane Minks would be envious of...

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Mark celebrating Michael!!!

We probably should remember Mark's family is Jewish and he won his medals in Munich prior to the Palestinian Black September kidnapping and massacre of Israeli athletes including one American athlete competing for Israel, too.

While this was never mentioned in 1972, his wins likely were infuriating to the Black September group.

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ensign_beedrill said:

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Kansas City Southern Railway

The Kansas City Southern Railway Company (reporting mark KCS) is an American Class I railroad. Founded in 1887, it operated in 10 Midwestern and Southeastern U.S. states: Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. KCS owned the shortest north-south rail route between Kansas City, Missouri, and several key ports along the Gulf of Mexico.

The focus of the routes was the fastest way to connect Kansas City to seaports, since it was only 800 miles from Kansas City to the Gulf of Mexico compared to 1,400 miles between Kansas City and the Atlantic Ocean ports.

KCS operated over a railroad system consisting of 3,984 route miles (6,412 km) that extended south to the MexicoUnited States border at which point another KCS-operated railroad, Kansas City Southern de Mxico (KCSM), hauled freight into northeastern and central Mexico and to several Gulf of Mexico ports and the Pacific Port of Lzaro Crdenas.

Canadian Pacific Railway purchased KCS in December 2021 for US$31 billion. On April 14, 2023, KCS became a wholly owned subsidiary of CPR, and both companies began conducting business under the name of their parent company, Canadian Pacific Kansas City.

Kansas City Southern Railway as of 2009,
with trackage rights in purple (haulage rights are lighter)

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We get baseball Friday!

ensign_beedrill said:

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Wikipedia: "BNSF Railway"

BNSF Railway (reporting mark BNSF) is the largest freight railroad in the United States. One of six North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 36,000 employees, 33,400 miles (53,800 km) of track in 28 states, and over 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that provide rail connections between the western and eastern United States. BNSF trains traveled over 169 million miles (272 million kilometers) in 2010, more than any other North American railroad.

The BNSF Railway Company is the principal operating subsidiary of parent company Burlington Northern Santa Fe, LLC. Headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, the railroad's parent company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., of Omaha, Nebraska. The current CEO is Kathryn Farmer. ...

The creation of BNSF started with the formation of a holding company on September 22, 1995. This new holding company purchased the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (often called the "Santa Fe") and Burlington Northern Railroad, and formally merged the railways into the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway on December 31, 1996. On January 24, 2005, the railroad's name was officially changed to BNSF Railway Company using the initials of its original name. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway acquired BNSF Railway in February 2010, obtaining all of its shares and taking the company private.

BNSF and its chief competitor, the Union Pacific Railroad, have a duopoly on all transcontinental freight rail lines in the Western, Midwestern and Southern United States and share trackage rights over thousands of miles of track.

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South Simcoe Railway

The South Simcoe Railway is a steam heritage railway in Tottenham, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1992, the railway operates scenic rail excursions in the Beeton Creek valley of southern Ontario. It is the oldest operating steam heritage railway in Ontario and has the second-oldest operating steam locomotive in Canada. Excursions last about 50 minutes over 4 miles (6.4 km) of track from Tottenham through the scenic Beeton Creek valley to Beeton and back. ...

The railway has two ex-Canadian Pacific steam locomotives, the best known being an 1883 Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works 4-4-0 A2m #136, which was used in the 1970s CBC television series The National Dream. #136 helped build the transcontinental railroad, the Canadian Pacific, across Canada in the 1880s.

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And there's baseball tonight at Olsen Field!

ensign_beedrill said:

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And there's baseball tonight at Olsen Field!

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Wikipedia: "Louisville and Nashville Railroad"
The Louisville and Nashville Railroad (reporting mark LN), commonly called the L&N, was a Class I railroad that operated freight and passenger services in the southeast United States.

Chartered by the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1850, the road grew into one of the great success stories of American business. Operating under one name continuously for 132 years, it survived civil war and economic depression and several waves of social and technological change. Under Milton H. Smith, president of the company for 30 years, the L&N grew from a road with less than three hundred miles (480 km) of track to a 6,000-mile (9,700 km) system serving fourteen states. As one of the premier Southern railroads, the L&N extended its reach far beyond its namesake cities, stretching to St. Louis, Memphis, Atlanta, and New Orleans.
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By the end of 1970, L&N operated 6,063 miles (9,757 km) of road on 10,051 miles (16,176 km) of track ... By 1982, the Seaboard Coast Line had absorbed the Louisville & Nashville Railroad entirely. Then in 1986, the Seaboard System merged with the C&O and B&O (known as the Chessie System) and the combined company became CSX Transportation (CSX), which now owns and operates all of the former Louisville and Nashville lines.

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Ensign started this thread at 263 days. We've made it half way.

Tomorrow, we start on the downhill slide into opening day.

And I know my dessert thing fell flat on it's face. It's been a rough summer/fall. Here's a Mississippi Mud Pie I made yesterday.

mwm said:

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Ensign started this thread at 263 days. We've made it half way.

Tomorrow, we start on the downhill slide into opening day.

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trouble said:

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And I know my dessert thing fell flat on it's face. It's been a rough summer/fall. Here's a Mississippi Mud Pie I made yesterday.

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And it was delicious.

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Wikipedia: "Union Pacific Railroad"

The Union Pacific Railroad (reporting marks UP, UPP, UPY) is a Class I freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over 32,200 miles (51,800 km) routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Pacific is the second largest railroad in the United States after BNSF, with which it shares a duopoly on transcontinental freight rail lines in the Western, Midwestern and West South Central United States.

Founded in 1862, the original Union Pacific Rail Road was part of the first transcontinental railroad project, later known as the Overland Route. Over the next century, UP absorbed the Missouri Pacific Railroad, the Western Pacific Railroad, the MissouriKansasTexas Railroad and the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. In 1995, the Union Pacific merged with Chicago and North Western Transportation Company, completing its reach into the Upper Midwest. In 1996, the company merged with Southern Pacific Transportation Company, itself a giant system that was absorbed by the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad.

The Union Pacific Railroad Company is the principal operating company of Union Pacific Corporation, which are both headquartered at the Union Pacific Center, in Omaha, Nebraska.

Union Pacific has announced plans to acquire the Norfolk Southern Railway in a deal worth $85 billion. If approved by regulators, it would create the first transcontinental railroad network in the United States.

The original company, the "Union Pacific Rail Road", was incorporated on July 1, 1862, under the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862. President Abraham Lincoln had approved the act, which authorized railroad construction from the Missouri River to the Pacific to ensure the stability of the Union throughout the American Civil War, but construction was not completed until after the conflict's conclusion.
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The resulting track ran westward from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to meet in Utah the Central Pacific Railroad line, which had been constructed eastward from Sacramento, California. The combined Union PacificCentral Pacific line became known as the first transcontinental railroad and later the Overland Route.

The line was constructed primarily by Irish labor who had learned their craft during the recent Civil War. Under the guidance of its dominant stockholder, Thomas C. Durant, the namesake of the city of Durant, Iowa, the first rails were laid in Omaha. The two lines were joined at Promontory Summit, Utah, 53 miles (85 km) west of Ogden on May 10, 1869, creating the first transcontinental railroad in North America. Leland Stanford, founder of the Central Pacific Railroad which itself eventually was merged with Union Pacific, himself drove the golden spike, inscribed with the words "to span the continent and wed the oceans."
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Union Pacific logo

Union Pacific Railroad tracks in red, trackage rights in purple, and the special Chicago-Kansas City intermodal trackage rights in light purple

The Last Spike painting (1881)--by renowned California pioneer painter Thomas Hill--depicting Leland Stanford, founder of the Central Pacific Railroad, driving in the last and golden spike to join the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads at Promontory Point, Utah, on 10 May 1869, thus creating the first North American transcontinental railroad

The original Golden Spike used to connect the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railways in 1869 near Ogden, Utah was driven in by Leland Stanford and is on display at the Cantor Arts Museum at Stanford University

Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern Railroads, which are proposed to be merged into the first U.S. transcontinental railroad network

Union Pacific Railroad Big Boy 4014 Locomotive--a type of simple articulated 4-8-8-4 steam locomotive manufactured by the American Locomotive Company between 1941 and 1944--on the Texas A&M campus on 8 November 2019, pulling Union Pacific Locomotive 4141, "George Bush 41."

President George H.W. Bush in October 2005 at the unveiling of Union Pacific Locomotive 4141, a diesel locomotive painted in honor of George H. W. Bush--the 41st President of the United States--with a paint scheme based on that of Air Force One. This UP locomotive, on 6 December 2018, led President Bush's funeral train from Houston to College Station and is now on permanent display at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on the Texas A&M University Campus.