twelve mile REB

Semper Fi

I would have loved to see the rest of that

Silly boy, it is a Monty Python skit.

Pat and I offer our condolences. We have also spent 53 years together and separation is unthinkable.

Thought hard about cancelling, 3200 miles round trip and then to try and run on one leg. Then again my 97 has been listening to FJT's song "The Wreck old 97" too darn much. However, decided that what the heck only 23 hours in the car one way. Then I went to get the oil changed in the car. What I witnessed would make a Chinese fire drill look organized 2 1/2 hrs. to change oil OMG. Then to the bank to get some cash that was almost as bad, was fate trying to tell me something? I sure hope not. Going to leave Sunday get there Monday night I hope.

Yes Mo there is always one, I'm not a picky eater then or now.

Damn that was my favorite C rat, had the most in it and nobody else wanted it.

It is an argument however, not a strong one. The existence of multiple gauges is more a product of greed than anything else. The idea that if you want to use my railroad you must use my rolling stock as well, was well established in the early 1800's. By the late 1860's the at that time Central Pacific and the Union Pacific railroads controlled overland freight between Omaha and San Francisco and simply started charging the originating railroad a premium to trans load to their rolling stock. After the Civil War and by the early 1870"s few freight hauling railroads failed to use standard gauge mostly for those economic reasons. The same can be said of narrow gauge railroads they used narrow gauge because of the cost of building wider road bed in most cases out weighed the cost of trans-loading. This is essentially what happened but isn't nearly as simple as I make it here lots of other things came into play. Chariot's were pretty much out of style by the mid 1800's anyway.

Every class A railroad in North America and Europe uses the standard gauge. If another Gauge is used it is used only at that particular facility because narrower or wider can not run on standard gauge. So if you are going to ship something cross country it would have to be standard gauge. So while there are lots of track gauges most of those are used in mines or short lines. The Equipment then being proprietary to that property. In order to ship cross country from those properties the commodity is delivered to a terminal and then reloaded onto a standard gauge car.

Does anyone remember when Larson's articles on cap and ball Navy's were published in the Chronicle.