I Saw A Train Today!

[doctorwayne]

Those hoppers with the solar panels were ballast hoppers. I'm going to guess that the hopper doors may be electric and the solar panels either supply the power to operate them or charge batteries that operate them. This is just a guess. I can't think of any other reason for solar panels on a ballast hopper.

I dunno, Russ, I have a feeling that those are actually giraffe cars, with the solar panels there to power the decoder that controls the pop-up motion.

It put me in mind of this letter which my brother forwarded to me a couple of years ago:

Hello:

Have you dug out from the great storm of '08? I hear it was terrible
bad out your way. All the cows suffocated under the snow. They say
only the giraffe farmers didn't lose any livestock. People sure ain't
laughing at the Lumbertuses now. (well, they are, but not on account
of them raising giraffes) Hope CN's still got some of them giraffe
cars. They'll be needing them.

When I was a boy we got terrible storms—worse than this. But in those
days all the kids ate snow. If a bad storm blew in our folks would
make us go outside just to eat the snow, so it didn't get too deep. I
don't know why they don't teach the kids that in school these days.
It's a life skill.

Well, I gotta go oil my pocket watch now. Dang thing seems to be an
hour behind. I got a mind to send it back to Eatons.

bye for now,

Jebadiah Cavers


Wayne