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"Price" wrote me a letter in response to my
posting a letter saying that I was glad the members of the list had
finally seen fit to talk about the Penn Central instead of toy trains or paint
jobs for toy cars ( i see there is a posting for details about a toy car in the
list this morning after the moderator specificaly asked every one to get back to
railroad topics, oh well). In that letter he included a sort of linear device on
the left hand side of the page making it impossible for me to include it in this
posting but i'll quote a few of the points he made and speak to these points in
an attempt to clear up the questions he may have raised for other
members.
No I did not intend to be facescious(sp.?)
in refering to toy trains. If your modeling efforts take hour upon hour of
painstaking labor......so what?
When I was a monk at a russian
orthodox monestery we were taught the discipline of "hseychism" which
involved painful fasts,saying "Lord Jesus Christ,son of god have mercy on
me a sinner" 5000 times in sucession while contemplaing your navel
PAINSTAKINGLY! What it made us was a bunch of hungry morons contemplating our
navels! In England there is a garden tractor racing fraternity an I saw on tv
the other day a nut who had suceeded in building a flying lawnmower! I hope he
took pains with that thing, hell a man could get killed!
All this is to say that an interest in
anything is worthy or not and the amount of time you may spend doing that thing
does not convey it worth if the activity had no worth in the first
place.
Now as to whether the list is large enough
to maintain membership from folks with diverse interests...well of course the
interests must be limited to railroad topics in general an the Penn Central in
particular, and I did not contend that toy train enthusiasts were child
molesters though you could of course be both. So mr (Ms.?) prices comment that
even former employees could be welcomed in a Penn Central discussion group are
acurate enough. (wonder why price wrote "even" former
employees...hmmm).
But lets get something straight..if your
connection to the Penn Central is limited to building motorized pieces of
plastic that resembel Penn Central equipment then you have no connection to the
Penn Central and no matter what period of time you spend modeling these pieces
of plastic they can never be more than toys and if you would pitch every one in
the dust bin and spend the money that you spend on toy trains on an Amtrak
ticket you would be doing 1000000% more for the cause of railway preservation
than all the modeling you could do in ten lifetimes.
Or if you
love railroad equipment there are many many tourist museums and railways who
would love to have your help and money. As my friend Jim Albright (an old friend
from the time I spent on the Boston & Maine) used to say,"the only
railway preservation is a pair of shiny rails"....he also used to say that
"a railfan is just a photography enthusiast whos afraid to take pictures of
naked women" but i dont want to get all the photographers mad at me so I'll
remind you that it was Jim who said it.
As for Price's comment that
he feels it was former employees of the PC that helped to doom the
railroad..well he or she cant tell me nuthin,"hell, i was
there!"
My motivation for speaking to
the Selkirk yard question was to point out an aspect for consideration in regard
to wages and seperation agreements which I hoped could answer a question and in
some small degree further sholarship concerning the Penn Central. So I can tell
you about the general condition of locomotives during the days after the merger,
but as to whether a b-unit had 5 portholes or 6...well git your rear end down to
your local tourist line,help to paint a b..and you can count em while your
there, (or I could tell you about the time I ran one into the wall at the Boston
roundhouse,But thats another story)
thanks for listening Boomer
s
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