Speaker 1: Oh hey, what's up, it's me. This is an encore
Speaker 1: episode of one of my faves. It's one of my
Speaker 1: favorite Etymologies of all of the Ologies, and it's just
Speaker 1: a very pure visit of like, what is a train,
Speaker 1: what's the locomotive, what's the deal? And I wanted to
Speaker 1: bring this one back because I've been seeing all these
Speaker 1: videos of this guy named Francis Bourgeois. I think his
Speaker 1: real name is Luke something, but he's just hooting and
Speaker 1: hollering and loving trains, and I thought a lot of
Speaker 1: us are probably wondering what's up with a train and
Speaker 1: haven't heard this episode, So we're pulling it up from
Speaker 1: the archives. I hope you enjoy. I'm on the road
Speaker 1: a ton this week shooting for CBS, and so I
Speaker 1: just needed a little bit of a rest to sleep
Speaker 1: before I hit the road again. So here you go.
Speaker 1: New episode next week, but enjoy this encore. Oh hey,
Speaker 1: it's your great grandpa's granddaughter who's also your wife, but whatever,
Speaker 1: because it's the seventeen hundred's Ali Ward and that'll make
Speaker 1: sense later. Back with another episode of Ologies, So this
Speaker 1: time we are off the rails with a real first
Speaker 1: class episode about train stuff, all kinds of train stuff.
Speaker 1: Who But before we get to this interview, some quick business.
Speaker 1: So thank you to patrons. I see you, I appreciate you.
Speaker 1: You make this podcast happen every week. I would not
Speaker 1: be able to pay an editor. Hi, Stephen, what's up
Speaker 1: to make the show without you? Guys? So patrons get
Speaker 1: extra content. They get to submit their questions to ologists
Speaker 1: ahead of time. They get some AMA videos once a month,
Speaker 1: in which I'm usually disheveled, and maybe two candid But
Speaker 1: that's part of what you get. If you ever want
Speaker 1: to spot other Ologites in the wild, there are t
Speaker 1: shirts and hats and bathing suits, etc. Pins at ologiesmerch
Speaker 1: dot com and on Mondays. I post your photos on
Speaker 1: the ologies Instagram in the things. So if you wear
Speaker 1: ologies merch around, just let me see it. Let me
Speaker 1: see it, kiddos, let me look at it. Also, I'll
Speaker 1: be in Portland on September fifteenth for an event called
Speaker 1: camp Ologies. It's a one day thing with some ologists
Speaker 1: who will be there. There's gonna be some weird crafting,
Speaker 1: a lot of science gabbing, some games, generally just an
Speaker 1: excuse to make new friends in the woods. And tickets
Speaker 1: are forty bucks. I'm excited to see some of you there. Also,
Speaker 1: thank you for rating and reviewing and subscribing and keeping
Speaker 1: Ologies in like the top twenty or so science podcast
Speaker 1: on iTunes with all the big shows that have like
Speaker 1: staffs and record in not closets. I'm somewhat I would
Speaker 1: say I'm in the orange area on a scale of creepiness,
Speaker 1: not quite red, but I'm an orange. And I read
Speaker 1: all of your reviews because it's just so nice that
Speaker 1: you leave them, and so to prove it, I read
Speaker 1: a fresh one each week, and this is a fresh
Speaker 1: review from twenty twenty two. This one is from Tenley Aaron,
Speaker 1: who wrote, my friend Max, who introduced me and the
Speaker 1: whole kitchen crew at Melt in Cincinnati to the show,
Speaker 1: thought he saw you dining at Melt while we were
Speaker 1: listening to Ologies in the kitchen and was going to
Speaker 1: go say hi. But I didn't believe it and talked
Speaker 1: to him out of it. As soon as you left,
Speaker 1: we saw online that you were in Cincinnati with caramel
Speaker 1: colored hair. At the time, I messed up my hair
Speaker 1: and I felt terrible ever since, so Tinley Aaron, don't
Speaker 1: feel terrible. Look we got a review out of it,
Speaker 1: and yes, that was me that that's really good. Go
Speaker 1: to Belt if you're in Cincinnati. Okay, Pharaoh equnology, y'all,
Speaker 1: this is the best etymology you will ever hear. It
Speaker 1: doesn't get better. This is going to be the best one.
Speaker 1: So let's do a drum roll before I break it down.
Speaker 1: It means iron horse, Pharaoh equin iron horse, and it's
Speaker 1: the study of trains, hulking, puffing, crushing, tireless, history altering trains. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Wendy at the Henry Ford Museum sets me up
Speaker 1: with a Pharaoh equinologist, and this dude is responsible for
Speaker 1: the care of a priceless collection of historical cars and planes,
Speaker 1: several locomotives, and an operational steam train. More on why
Speaker 1: that's like a huge deal later. And the last time
Speaker 1: I went to the Ford, I stood staring up at
Speaker 1: this massive coal powered steam locomotive, the Alleghany, which is
Speaker 1: two stories tall. It's as long as a twelve story building,
Speaker 1: and it could pull one hundred and sixty cars full
Speaker 1: of coal up the Appalachian Mountains train nerds. It's a
Speaker 1: two sixty six with a power output of seventy five
Speaker 1: hundred horsepower non train nerds. That's as technical as this
Speaker 1: episode really gets. I'll be honest with you. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to make everyone happy. Okay. Anyway, I was like,
Speaker 1: whoa trains? What? So we met up in this little
Speaker 1: classroom off the main museum entrance. And this guy has
Speaker 1: been on TV so much talking about transportation history that
Speaker 1: he is able to produce concise, factually accurate sound bites
Speaker 1: with correct dates. She's like a tennis ball machine. He's amazing.
Speaker 1: He's an absolutely inexhaustible treasure trove of train facts. So
Speaker 1: let's not miss this old bard for pharaoh equinologist Matt Anderson,
Speaker 1: how do you feel about the term pharaoh equinologists? Do
Speaker 1: you love it as much as I do?
Speaker 2: I love it. It's a lot of fun to say, and
Speaker 2: it's one of those terms that you know, when people
Speaker 2: first hear it, they're absolutely confused by it, but then
Speaker 2: when you break it down, makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1: Right what iron horse? Is that what they were called? Initially?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yeah, they were referred to as iron horses. And
Speaker 2: did any Western movie that you watch, you know they
Speaker 2: talk about the iron horse and so forth. But it's
Speaker 2: a logical, I think, description of a locomotive.
Speaker 1: Oh, one hundred percent. When I found out that a
Speaker 1: pharaoh econologist was a word, I lost my mark. I
Speaker 1: was like, you're kidding me. That's amazing. Whover thought of
Speaker 1: that's a genius. Okay. So once you have secured the
Speaker 1: most eneviable business card, what kinds of jobs can you
Speaker 1: do as a pharaoh equinologist? And what's your title here?
Speaker 2: I'm Curator of transportation here at the Henry Ford.
Speaker 1: How long have you had this job?
Speaker 2: I've had this job now for about six and a
Speaker 2: half years.
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, was it your dream?
Speaker 2: It was. I grew up in Michigan, not in Detroitble.
Speaker 2: We used to drive down here every summer to visit
Speaker 2: the museum in the village, So a chance to come
Speaker 2: work here was a dream come true.
Speaker 1: So did you see some of these trains when you
Speaker 1: were growing up, the same ones that you are in
Speaker 1: charge of?
Speaker 2: I did? I have a picture in my office of
Speaker 2: me as a six year old boy standing on the
Speaker 2: pilot of the Alleghany. So it's nice. It's very cool
Speaker 2: to come back here and now get to work with
Speaker 2: it every day.
Speaker 1: So did you realize when you were growing up that
Speaker 1: that was making that much of an imprint, or how
Speaker 1: do you become an transportation enthusiast who turns into a job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the enthusiast part's easy, right in trains and cars
Speaker 2: really since since Boywood. But you know, I never really
Speaker 2: considered that people actually made a living at museums, So
Speaker 2: it never occurred to me until I actually went to college.
Speaker 2: I initially was going to be a high school history
Speaker 2: teacher and then took a class called intro to Public
Speaker 2: History and learned about this idea of working in museums, archives, libraries,
Speaker 2: and thought, you know, that might be kind of fun,
Speaker 2: and so far it has been so quick.
Speaker 1: Shout out to the Museology episode with Ronnie Klein, who
Speaker 1: breaks down what it's like to work behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of all the exhibits that the rest of us aren't
Speaker 1: allowed to touch but really want to like so bad. Okay, Matt, Now,
Speaker 1: when you were growing up, were you into trains?
Speaker 2: I was, Yes, It took my first train ride at
Speaker 2: two years old and absolutely loved watching them go by,
Speaker 2: riding them, anything they had to do with them, playing
Speaker 2: them certainly, So definitely.
Speaker 1: Why do you think people like trains so much? Because
Speaker 1: I feel like there's two kinds of people. There are
Speaker 1: people who are into trains, and then there are people
Speaker 1: who are like, what, Yeah, trains are cool, Like train
Speaker 1: enthusias are into it. What happens to get people so
Speaker 1: into trains?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I've got sort of my enlightened intelligent answer,
Speaker 2: and then I've got my gut answer. I think the
Speaker 2: enlightened answer would be the trains are really unique in
Speaker 2: American history, and that they're so closely tied with the
Speaker 2: history of this country. I mean, we've had railroads for
Speaker 2: all but fifty years that we've had a nation, and
Speaker 2: you think about the role they played in the Civil War,
Speaker 2: you think about the trans Continental Railroad, the effects that
Speaker 2: had really even into the early twentieth century. It's really
Speaker 2: really fascinating study. But I think the simple answers. You know,
Speaker 2: we're just fascinated by big things, and on land you
Speaker 2: can't find anything much bigger than a train. It's just
Speaker 2: incredibly impressive. It's kind of awesome to see one, to
Speaker 2: feel one. You know, you feel trucks and cars, but
Speaker 2: not the way you feel a train, which kind of
Speaker 2: rumbles in your chest even before you see it. So
Speaker 2: that's that's an amazing thing.
Speaker 1: I never thought about that, about the really visceral experience
Speaker 1: of having a train go by.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really you know, And you go to a
Speaker 2: railroad crossing and there's almost as a builds in climax,
Speaker 2: you know. You hear the bells and the lights start ring,
Speaker 2: kind of builds up the anticipation. Then you hear the
Speaker 2: whistle in the distance or the horn, and then yeah,
Speaker 2: the ground shakes underneath you as this thing goes by,
Speaker 2: and you just hear the rumble of that diesel motor.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: So side note, at least one person has been identified
Speaker 1: as being in a monogamous relationship with a steamy locomotive.
Speaker 1: So this German Man named Joaquin does admit though that
Speaker 1: he has this affinity for fixing things and that can
Speaker 1: lead to emotional infidelity with other objects. And a California
Speaker 1: woman named Carol is married to a train station in
Speaker 1: San Diego. She rides a bus forty five minutes a
Speaker 1: day just to hang out in the station and touch
Speaker 1: the walls and talk about our day, which honestly sounds
Speaker 1: like a healthier relationship than a lot of people have.
Speaker 1: I have never dated anyone who would ride the bus
Speaker 1: that long to kick it with me, especially while I
Speaker 1: was at work multitasking. Did you grow up with train
Speaker 1: tracks near you? Did you hear them or see them
Speaker 1: growing up?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yeah, we had train tracks not too far from
Speaker 2: where I was. And I grew up in a town
Speaker 2: that had two railroads and kind of typical of American cities,
Speaker 2: and we lost one of our railroads in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: A lot of lines have now been abandoned as the
Speaker 2: rows of kind of consolidated their operations. But now I
Speaker 2: would run out and watch watch trains on both of them,
Speaker 2: a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: What was the dumbest thing you ever put on a track?
Speaker 2: To be honest, like like everyone, of course, I put
Speaker 2: my share of coins on a railroad track, you know,
Speaker 2: to watch the pennies and the nickels get flattened. And
Speaker 2: you know, I probably shouldn't say this for publication, but
Speaker 2: at one point a group of friends of mine actually
Speaker 2: put jumper cables on a railroad track near a railroad
Speaker 2: crossing to activate the crossing. Is you know, fun to
Speaker 2: experiment how do those things work? And that that did it?
Speaker 2: So you know, it was a lightly used line. We
Speaker 2: didn't it was in the middle of the night. We
Speaker 2: didn't put anyone in danger, but it was it was
Speaker 2: kind of fun to do.
Speaker 1: Do I need to tell you not to do this,
Speaker 1: because don't do this. Don't do this. Also, with the
Speaker 1: distraction of the internet, now, kids would probably be like, uh,
Speaker 1: that prank is way too much work. It's too much
Speaker 1: laborious mischief. They run on electricity.
Speaker 2: The Yeah, the crossing signals are actually completed by what
Speaker 2: an effect is a short circuit caused by the train
Speaker 2: axle in the wheels passing over the track. So you
Speaker 2: jumper cable can create that same effect.
Speaker 1: I had no idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't try this at home.
Speaker 1: But did you go and find the coins after you
Speaker 1: flattened them?
Speaker 2: Of course? Yeah, yeah, and they fell off the tracks.
Speaker 2: You had to dig through the ballast and the stones,
Speaker 2: but I pulled them out. You know, It's amazing. There
Speaker 2: was really nothing recognizable of those coins after the train
Speaker 2: went over them.
Speaker 1: Oh man, quick aside for real, though, playing on train
Speaker 1: tracks super dangerous. People have suffered fatal consequences by putting
Speaker 1: even a penny on the track and then standing on
Speaker 1: another track not knowing which track the train was barreling down.
Speaker 1: So maybe outsource the work man. Pinterest led me to
Speaker 1: a designer in the tumbleweed strewn wilds of West Texas
Speaker 1: who sells necklaces hand fashioned from locally sourced quote train
Speaker 1: squashed pennies off the railroad tracks in Marfa sixty bucks.
Speaker 1: Pretty cute. Speaking of dusty vistas and westward expansion. I
Speaker 1: asked Matt for a quick history lesson, and he delivered. Now,
Speaker 1: can you give me a little bit. I know, this
Speaker 1: is like a huge question. I get this is a
Speaker 1: huge question. Can you give me your cocktail party history
Speaker 1: of trains in America?
Speaker 2: I could, you know. I think the railroad as a
Speaker 2: concept as we understand today really starts in eighteen twenty
Speaker 2: eight with the Baltimore, Ohio Railroad, which was the first
Speaker 2: common carrier railroad in the US, which means it wasn't
Speaker 2: just hauling stones from a quarry or coal from a mine,
Speaker 2: but it was carrying all kinds of freight. And it
Speaker 2: fascinates me that the first stone, the ceremonial cornerstone for
Speaker 2: that railroad, was laid by a man named Charles Carroll
Speaker 2: of Carrollton, who at that time was the last living
Speaker 2: signer of the Declaration of independence.
Speaker 1: So I was like, ooh, maybe I'll find out like
Speaker 1: a fun fact about this Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and
Speaker 1: pH boy, howdy kiddos did I Okay, I'm gonna be quick.
Speaker 1: First off, he was the wealthiest of all the founding fathers,
Speaker 1: with a fortune equivalent now to about half a billion dollars.
Speaker 1: He was from Maryland. He thought slaves should be freed,
Speaker 1: but not his what He also married his riend, and
Speaker 1: the mary married cousins had seven kids, most of which
Speaker 1: didn't make it, but one son was kind of like
Speaker 1: a rich n'er Dowell like you would expect to see
Speaker 1: in like an eighties movie about a frustrated rich father
Speaker 1: with like a deadbeat kid, or like now in like
Speaker 1: high political office. Anyway, Chucky c had a remarkable shelf
Speaker 1: life and lived pretty much for an eternity, like this
Speaker 1: guy was like in a live mummy. And so when
Speaker 1: it was time to lay the first railroad brick, they
Speaker 1: were like, haul out. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, that was
Speaker 1: his official name. Let's get him up here. He's ninety
Speaker 1: one years young, let's see him. He lived to ninety
Speaker 1: five until he didn't, and then there was a National
Speaker 1: Day of Mourning. Okay, that was a lot of information.
Speaker 1: But let's hop the bullet trained to Inpoville. Because Matt
Speaker 1: is a walking encyclopedia. He's about to give us the
Speaker 1: most succinct railroad history lesson maybe ever.
Speaker 2: You've got this direct link to fourth of July seventeen
Speaker 2: seventy six here at the start of the railroads. It's
Speaker 2: a great way I think of kind of passing the
Speaker 2: torch to the next generation in American history. And then, yeah,
Speaker 2: from their lines kind of built up around the United States.
Speaker 2: They started as regional affairs, like that that B and
Speaker 2: oh was supposed to connect Baltimore with the Ohio River.
Speaker 2: Other small states and communities built their railroads. In Michigan,
Speaker 2: we had fairly early railroads. Our first line was built
Speaker 2: in eighteen thirty seven and we had only been a
Speaker 2: state for a year at that point, basically. And then
Speaker 2: those smaller lines start to grow into each other and consolidate.
Speaker 2: The Civil War, I think is a big turning point too.
Speaker 2: And then after that you've got things like standard gauge.
Speaker 2: Now where railroads aren't aren't some more six feet before,
Speaker 2: some of them four feet eight and a half inches.
Speaker 2: They all became the same gauge, so we have a
Speaker 2: real interchangeable network. And then they peak right about nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixteen with the maximum mileage in the US. And
Speaker 2: then from that point it's been a slow story of
Speaker 2: kind of abandonment of lines or backtracking, if you're pardon
Speaker 2: the expression. And of course a lot of that is
Speaker 2: because of the automobile and then later airplanes as well,
Speaker 2: but railroads are still a vital part of American life today.
Speaker 2: We just don't think of them. They're They're like the
Speaker 2: plumbing in our house, you know, you just you take
Speaker 2: it for granted until something goes wrong.
Speaker 1: Oh god, that's true. Now is it hard for you
Speaker 1: because you also curate automobiles here? Do you have something
Speaker 1: in your head that's like a little trains versus cars? Like,
Speaker 1: are you ever are you ever like a little po'd
Speaker 1: at cars because of how they took over for trades.
Speaker 2: You know, I do wish that we had the robust
Speaker 2: passenger network that we had, you know, even just fifty
Speaker 2: sixty years ago, that we just don't have today. I mean,
Speaker 2: amtrack is out there, but it's really a skeleton of
Speaker 2: what we once had to it would be nice to
Speaker 2: hop into a train sometimes and take a trip, you know,
Speaker 2: some distance rather than having to drive there. So yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a little bit of meus like that. But you know,
Speaker 2: I also realized that railroads had a part in popularizing
Speaker 2: the automobile. You know, they saw the car not as
Speaker 2: an enemy when it first appeared, but they saw it
Speaker 2: as a possible ally. You know, farmers can bring goods
Speaker 2: from their farm to our depot rather than us having
Speaker 2: to build all these little branch lines that don't make
Speaker 2: enough money for us. But obviously cars grew a little
Speaker 2: farther beyond what roadsent is paid.
Speaker 1: And now what happens to abandon railroad lines? Like are
Speaker 1: they paved over? Are they just kind of sitting there?
Speaker 1: And like maybe we'll use them later with different types
Speaker 1: of locomotives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, We've got a great program in this country called
Speaker 2: Rails Trails, the Rails to Trails Conservancy, which has argued
Speaker 2: for the preservation of these corridors and a lot of them,
Speaker 2: particularly here in Michigan, where we had a lot of
Speaker 2: lines abandoned, get paved over and turned into all purpose
Speaker 2: recreational trails. So for biking, jogging, hiking, you name, it,
Speaker 2: so it's a great use.
Speaker 1: Side note, I had to see what they look like,
Speaker 1: so I checked the Instagram hashtag to see if anyone
Speaker 1: else had even heard of this, and Hi, hello, there
Speaker 1: were like thirty four thousand photos tagged rails to trails
Speaker 1: Good the Majesty. There's like tunnels and lush greenery and
Speaker 1: biking and trestles you can walk over. And so I
Speaker 1: went to rails totrails dot org and they have this
Speaker 1: interactive map. You can click your state you can find
Speaker 1: all the abandoned railway lines you can hike on. And
Speaker 1: I started getting I'm not kidding you, stomach cramps from
Speaker 1: excitement just because it looks so beautiful. But then looking
Speaker 1: at and retracing these abandoned tracks, it's a weird, kind
Speaker 1: of chilling reflection on late eighteen hundreds westward expansion in America.
Speaker 1: There's so much history there. Between eighteen seventy and nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: the railroads helped millions of East Coast Americans and immigrants
Speaker 1: head west into the sunset, but not without a steep
Speaker 1: and just tragic price paid by native populations. And as
Speaker 1: long as we're rushing briefly up on American history. A
Speaker 1: note about the Underground Railroad. Now, this was an escape
Speaker 1: network that freed, by some estimates, up to one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand slaves in America. Former slave abolitionist and activist Harry
Speaker 1: Tubman herself made thirteen trips to the South to free
Speaker 1: seventy slaves. But fyi, the Underground Railroad was neither literally underground,
Speaker 1: nor was it a railroad. It was a secret movement, yes,
Speaker 1: and it used rail terminology as code, like the terms
Speaker 1: stations and conductors, hence the name. So these are topics
Speaker 1: that deserve their own in depth future episodes, and they
Speaker 1: will get them. But anyway, go rail to trail yourself,
Speaker 1: because it's very beautiful.
Speaker 2: Theoretically, those corridors are then preserved, so if we find
Speaker 2: a need for the railroads later, we can put them
Speaker 2: back together and relay the track. But politically, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure how well that could happen, because people get so
Speaker 2: attached to those trails that they will not want the
Speaker 2: railroad to come back in if we ever get to
Speaker 2: that point, So who knows.
Speaker 1: And now, what happened in motor cities where you see
Speaker 1: kind of a robust rail line and then cars start
Speaker 1: to take over like in Los Angeles. What happened to
Speaker 1: the train system in Los Angeles or Detroit once the
Speaker 1: automobile came around, Did it kind of phase it out
Speaker 1: more aggressively, more intentionally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the automobile came at a bad time for railroads,
Speaker 2: obviously bringing in all of this change. But not long
Speaker 2: after the automobile piers on the scene, we have the
Speaker 2: Great Depression, where already we have railroad lines and streetcar
Speaker 2: operators suffering from losing traffic to the automobile, but now
Speaker 2: they've got this additional impact of the Great Depression. So
Speaker 2: they go through that period really not being able to
Speaker 2: invest and improve their equipment or improve the track and
Speaker 2: so forth. And then they get hit with World War Two,
Speaker 2: which all of a sudden, there's now curbs on automobile transportations,
Speaker 2: there's rationing, so people aren't driving. They're going back to
Speaker 2: street cars, back to railroads. Now, railroads, having suffered through
Speaker 2: the Depression, are kind of getting beat by too much traffic,
Speaker 2: and you have to feel bad for some of the
Speaker 2: lines which thought that this is kind of a rebirth
Speaker 2: of railroad passenger service, so they invest in new equipment
Speaker 2: at this time. But then, of course as soon as
Speaker 2: the war's over, everybody wants a new car and they
Speaker 2: get them, and then we're all fund the interstate highways and.
Speaker 1: Here we are, so to recap that, everyone said to
Speaker 1: trains like a later loser, I'm in a car. And
Speaker 1: then they were like, never mind, I'm back. We can't
Speaker 1: have cars because everyone is off killing each other. And
Speaker 1: the rail system was like, ah, you came back to me.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy I made you dinner. I needed you
Speaker 1: a card again with our initials, I'm investing so much
Speaker 1: into myself for your return. And then the war was
Speaker 1: over and we were like, psych, you suck. I'm spending
Speaker 1: my American dollars on metal cars. And the railroads were like,
Speaker 1: my train hard, it is broken. So what's going to happen?
Speaker 1: Is there another act before the credits roll on our
Speaker 1: romance with trains? Now? Do you get excited about the
Speaker 1: future of like, are you all up in hyperloop news
Speaker 1: or are you like, I'm strictly like terrestrial railroad vintage style.
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting to read about these new technologies
Speaker 2: hyper loop, maglev, whatever it might be. But then you know,
Speaker 2: I also think that we've got to proven technology in
Speaker 2: the railroad with the infrastructure already built. And yeah, it
Speaker 2: would be cool to ride in something that gost four
Speaker 2: hundred miles an hour, but I'd be perfectly happy with
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty miles on our traditional railroad routes.
Speaker 2: So we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: Before we can get off track. Let's just pump the
Speaker 1: brakes and cover quickly. How the hell does the train work? Okay,
Speaker 1: here's the deal. So super train enthusiasts, you are going
Speaker 1: to think this is too simple. If you notify me
Speaker 1: telling me that this INPO is too broad, I will
Speaker 1: simply respond with a link to Wikipedia. I just needed
Speaker 1: to know the basics, so I'm going to give you
Speaker 1: guys really broad strokes. Now. The first, like air quotes,
Speaker 1: trains were just rutways in the roads in Roman times.
Speaker 1: Carts could kind of just shimmey down with ease. And
Speaker 1: then in the fifteen hundreds in Germany they started pulling
Speaker 1: bins full of stuff on tracks by hands, and they
Speaker 1: called these huns. One hundred years later they were like,
Speaker 1: this is bull crap, let's use horses, and they made
Speaker 1: things called wagonways. Now, in the seventeen hundreds, a Scottish
Speaker 1: dude named James Watt invented the steam engine. Coal or
Speaker 1: wood is burned, which heats water, which powers motors to
Speaker 1: do things. Cut to eighteen oh four, the first steam
Speaker 1: locomotive hauled iron in Wales, and then by the eighteen
Speaker 1: thirties they were like, well, shoot, let's stuff some people
Speaker 1: in these Dingden cars. And then in the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: other power sources started cropping up, like electric diesel engines.
Speaker 1: Nineteen twenties nineteen thirties, diesel starts to take over. It's
Speaker 1: cleaner and more efficient, and steam engines begin to decline. Now,
Speaker 1: electric powered subways and streetcars. They work by running on
Speaker 1: rails and they grab power from the third rail or
Speaker 1: from wires overhead. Bullet trains like those in Japan and France,
Speaker 1: which rule those start cropping up in the late nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties nineteen seventies. They have speeds of over two hundred
Speaker 1: kilometers per hour. That's almost one hundred and forty miles
Speaker 1: per hour. That was a big deal back then, and
Speaker 1: then maglev trains kind of rounded the corner in a blur.
Speaker 1: If you're like, what is a maglev? Maglev is short
Speaker 1: for magnetic levitation, and that's because it's a floating in
Speaker 1: air people. Welcome to the future. So magnets levitate the
Speaker 1: train just a little bit, and then another set of
Speaker 1: magnets pull it forward. And the first commercial maglev train
Speaker 1: debuted in Shanghai on New Year's Day two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: and the latest train speed record was set by a
Speaker 1: Japanese maglev bullet train in twenty fifteen that went six
Speaker 1: hundred and three kilometers per hour. That is three hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy five miles per hour.
Speaker 2: Pretty good, pretty pretty, pretty pretty good.
Speaker 1: It's not as good as like a Boeing seven forty seven,
Speaker 1: which has a cruising speed of like five hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty miles per hour, or as fast as an actual
Speaker 1: bullet which rolls at like seventeen hundred miles per hour.
Speaker 1: But personally, I'd rather ride the rails than deal with
Speaker 1: flight delace or I guess if we're following this comparison,
Speaker 1: a very fast gunshot. So way to go maglev. Now
Speaker 1: what's next. A lot of folks are working to make
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's hyper loop fever dreams a reality. Now, this
Speaker 1: would be modular passenger pods that speed they hope at
Speaker 1: like seven hundred miles per hour in a vacuum chamber
Speaker 1: tube propelled by maglev. Now tests are happening in Nevada
Speaker 1: deserts all over the world. They're trying to figure this out. I,
Speaker 1: for one, am ready for this miracle of speed to
Speaker 1: happen to my travel butt, But I guess that would
Speaker 1: mean less epically long train journeys. What's the longest train
Speaker 1: trip you've ever taken.
Speaker 2: I've taken several trips from say, this part of the
Speaker 2: country out to Washington, d C. So not a long
Speaker 2: This is not going over the whole country. But you know,
Speaker 2: it's a nice overnight trip. You don't get too cramped
Speaker 2: in the train, and you wake up, you're refreshed, and
Speaker 2: you know you've gotten there and you've traveled when you
Speaker 2: otherwise would have been sleeping. So it's not as though
Speaker 2: you lose any time on an overnight train trip like that.
Speaker 1: I was going to do a helpful as side here
Speaker 1: about how if you do overnights, get the sleeper car,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, it's worth it. But the real news
Speaker 1: is that I found out that a lot of trains
Speaker 1: have a hopper system for the toilets, which mean they
Speaker 1: just dump it out raw on the tracks, like bye bye.
Speaker 1: And I found that out from a site called toiletguru
Speaker 1: dot com, where this one random dude just answers everyone's
Speaker 1: questions about toilets. And on that site, I also learned
Speaker 1: that Hitler's toilet resides in a very remy auto repair
Speaker 1: shop in Florence, New Jersey, where it was actively casually
Speaker 1: in use for years. And that's very weird and also
Speaker 1: fitting for someone who has a legacy of being the
Speaker 1: world's biggest turd. Anyway, let's get in some nuts and
Speaker 1: bolts of interesting terminology train language, train glage. If you will,
Speaker 1: shall we? Okay, can you give me a little bit
Speaker 1: of an overview of what a train is because I
Speaker 1: learned recently that the train and the locomotive are two
Speaker 1: different things. Train enthusiasts are like, how dare you not
Speaker 1: know that? But can you give me the parts of
Speaker 1: a train anatomy?
Speaker 2: Yes, nothing drives a pharaoeconologists more crazy than people calling
Speaker 2: locomotives trains. But yes, the locomotive is just the engine,
Speaker 2: whether it's a diesel electric or a steam locomotive, that
Speaker 2: in itself is not a train. It's not until you
Speaker 2: couple cars to it that you have a train. So
Speaker 2: it's the locomotive and the freight cars, the passenger cars,
Speaker 2: whatever it might be. All of those together form a train.
Speaker 1: And now what's that caboos doing? Is it?
Speaker 2: Whatever?
Speaker 1: The last car is a caboose or does a kabooz
Speaker 1: have to be read and cute?
Speaker 2: Cabooses tend to be read and cute, just because red
Speaker 2: was a fairly inexpensive paint color and it was highly visible,
Speaker 2: and the point is to make the end of the
Speaker 2: train visible to following trains in case of some kind
Speaker 2: of emergency stop or something. But yeah, the caboose is
Speaker 2: much lamented. Those started to fade away by the late
Speaker 2: seventies early eighties. Now they're all but extinct, extept for
Speaker 2: local trains or maybe moving through rail yards or something.
Speaker 2: But yeah, every time I see a train go by
Speaker 2: without a caboose, it feels like, you know, reading a
Speaker 2: sentence without the period at the end. It's just not complete.
Speaker 1: It's like texting grammar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: What Okay, I never knew that. Also, I just looked
Speaker 1: it up and the word caboose was lifted from ship
Speaker 1: talk that was the little room that sailors would cook in,
Speaker 1: probably from some Dutch word, and it's used in train
Speaker 1: language because the caboose was the hangout car for the crew.
Speaker 1: Isn't that cute? They're like, I'll be in the back,
Speaker 1: gonna go kick it in the last car. Also in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: there's a place called the Red Koboos Motel that began
Speaker 1: when a guy in the nineteen sixties on a dare
Speaker 1: bid on nineteen cabooses in an auction and to his shock,
Speaker 1: learned that he won them. So he was like, uh,
Speaker 1: he turned him into a hotel at which you can
Speaker 1: still stay. It's like one hundred and sixteen dollars a night.
Speaker 1: They also have a honeymoon sweet caboose with a jacuzzi tub.
Speaker 1: Just saying I think you should spend your wedding night there.
Speaker 1: You don't have to take the suggestion, but maybe you should.
Speaker 1: But really like check the Yelp reviews first, because I
Speaker 1: don't want to run anything. Now, what happens when train
Speaker 1: enthusiasts or pharaoh or fellow pharaoh ecunologists get together? What
Speaker 1: are those parties? Like?
Speaker 2: They're pretty fun? You know, there's a lot of slide
Speaker 2: showing and nowadays, you know, show your pictures on the computer.
Speaker 2: What have you here to show? You know, look at
Speaker 2: this train I wrote, or look at this great photo
Speaker 2: of the composition of the image that I captured. You know,
Speaker 2: I waited in the rain for three hours to get
Speaker 2: this shot. And that's what they do. Or there's talk
Speaker 2: about the history of railroads, or a lot of them
Speaker 2: are model railroaders, so they talk about what they've been
Speaker 2: doing out there, or show you the latest improvements of
Speaker 2: the model road, or you dream a little bit about
Speaker 2: things you'd like to do, like to see railroads in China,
Speaker 2: we're still using steam until very recently. You know, people
Speaker 2: will travel to those places just to have that experience.
Speaker 1: Okay, now what about model trains? Do people like the
Speaker 1: hands on experience? Maybe we all love playing god a little.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the model railroad allows you to kind of play trains,
Speaker 2: to live out that that fantasy that you've always had.
Speaker 2: You know, as a kid, I had model trains. I
Speaker 2: didn't do much more than just run them around as
Speaker 2: fast as I could for fun. But some of these
Speaker 2: modelers they get seriously into it, you know, in that
Speaker 2: they actually run freight on their model railroad, and they
Speaker 2: dispatch the trains and they switch out the cars. You know,
Speaker 2: heaven forbid you touch a car pick it up by hand.
Speaker 2: You've got to move it, just like the railroad with
Speaker 2: a locomotive. So that's pretty serious stuff. You know, It's
Speaker 2: still play, but at a far more advanced level than
Speaker 2: what we were doing as kids.
Speaker 1: So the Henry Ford Museum has this whole area of
Speaker 1: model trains overseas by at least when I last went,
Speaker 1: some kind white haired gents who were eager, as I'll
Speaker 1: get out to answer questions. So my main question was
Speaker 1: do you ever get on the tables and stomp on these?
Speaker 1: Like Godzilla? But I wanted to preserve the mystery, so
Speaker 1: I didn't ask, when you are taking care of the
Speaker 1: locomotives here, which you have known personally since you were
Speaker 1: like six, what does that involve? Because the locomotives that
Speaker 1: you have at the Ford are massive. What do you
Speaker 1: have to do to keep those up? Do you have
Speaker 1: to dust them? Do you have to make sure that
Speaker 1: squirrels don't live in them? What do you have oil them?
Speaker 1: What happens?
Speaker 2: We are lucky in that a lot of our signature locomotives,
Speaker 2: particularly the Allegheny that massive when we have on the
Speaker 2: floor that has always been inside for as long as
Speaker 2: we've had it, and that's one of the real challenges
Speaker 2: with rail preservation. These things are just so big, and
Speaker 2: you leave them outside, they get exposed to weather and
Speaker 2: overtime they're going to degrade. So we're lucky there's not
Speaker 2: too much we have to do with the Allegheny other
Speaker 2: than maybe dust it off a little bit, or because
Speaker 2: the cab is open and kids can climb up there.
Speaker 2: We've got to make sure that there's no damage. We
Speaker 2: have replaced all the controls with replicas, so if something
Speaker 2: gets broken, it's not damaging an original piece. It's a
Speaker 2: different story for our operating steam Railroad out in Greenfield
Speaker 2: Village there, we do have a crew of locomotive specialists
Speaker 2: who are out there working on those locomotives every day,
Speaker 2: maintaining them, oiling them, cleaning them, cleaning out the ash,
Speaker 2: doing regular maintenance with them. And we like to say
Speaker 2: out there we're not just preserving the equipment, we're preserving
Speaker 2: the skills. I mean, there's nowhere else in the country
Speaker 2: other than at railroad museums where people are doing that
Speaker 2: kind of work every day.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a good point. So hot tip, Pharaoh equa
Speaker 1: files to work in a ding dang museum, dig into
Speaker 1: your scrap books. I feel like an employer can't turn
Speaker 1: you down if you have a picture of yourself as
Speaker 1: a human puppy sitting on their exhibit, Like legally they
Speaker 1: can't say no. How many trains and locomotives do you
Speaker 1: have here at the museum and do you have a favorite?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would pick My favorite would be the sentimental one,
Speaker 2: the Allegaty, which I think a lot of people would
Speaker 2: pick as our favorite just because it's so massive. But
Speaker 2: we have a large collection. We've got off the top
Speaker 2: of my head, we have about seven or so locomotives,
Speaker 2: closer to ten when you count the diesel electrics. A
Speaker 2: few of them operate, most of them are just static displays.
Speaker 2: And then we have several cars beyond that, passenger cars,
Speaker 2: freight cars, box cars. We have two cabooses, for example,
Speaker 2: and they run the gamut from a replica of an
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty Civil War era passenger coach up to Henry
Speaker 2: Ford's private railcar that he used, which was the equivalent
Speaker 2: of the Lear jet of the nineteen teens in nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: Well, you could have your own private railcar where you're
Speaker 1: just like, hey, I'm going to roll up with my
Speaker 1: rail car and take me over here. It's like your
Speaker 1: second home.
Speaker 2: Yes, if you had sufficient means, you could buy your
Speaker 2: own railcar. I think he paid something like one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty thousand and four, which sounds like a bargain today,
Speaker 2: but of course in nineteen fifteen sixteen, that would have
Speaker 2: been big money.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, god, FYI I asked a website, and
Speaker 1: by today's standards, that would be equivalent to a train
Speaker 1: car costing three point seven million dollars, which is like
Speaker 1: the cost of a small private jet. Yeah that's Oprah money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And they would just put it onto
Speaker 2: the back of a regularly scheduled train and you could
Speaker 2: ride in privacy off to New York or Washington wherever
Speaker 2: you might be going. Oh that's the.
Speaker 1: Way to live. I mean, it is funny that a
Speaker 1: dude who pretty much invented the automotive industry, it was like,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to hop a train. We do them both. Now,
Speaker 1: where do you guys get these locomotives? Do you buy
Speaker 1: them on Craigslist? Where do they come from?
Speaker 2: We've gotten them from a variety of places. The Allegheny
Speaker 2: again as an example, we got from the CNO Railway itself,
Speaker 2: the company that bought that locomotive. And it's a great
Speaker 2: story with that engine because the CNO hauled coal, so
Speaker 2: you know, they were resistant to adoptees electric locomotives. They
Speaker 2: stuck with steam because of some loyalty to their primary
Speaker 2: business there. But the Alleghany was built in nineteen forty one.
Speaker 2: We got it in nineteen fifty six. Ures, so that's
Speaker 2: you know, fifteen years of operation, which is not long
Speaker 2: at all for a locomotive. Typically they'll run for decades,
Speaker 2: not just fifteen years.
Speaker 1: This was retired just four years older than my current
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven pre.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they kind of gave up the ghost on col
Speaker 2: decided to move to THEESEL Electrics, So we got that
Speaker 2: from the railroad. We've got another locomotive which we got
Speaker 2: from a local energy company here which used it as
Speaker 2: a switching locomotive in their own yard. We've got other
Speaker 2: pieces that have come in some cases from private collectors.
Speaker 2: People who bought this equipment and then for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: decided they didn't want it anymore and then gave it
Speaker 2: to us.
Speaker 1: Well, have you ever cried about a train?
Speaker 2: I have cried sometimes about just the passing of the
Speaker 2: railroad in general. Like I talked about those two lines
Speaker 2: that grew up in my hometown. You know, I had
Speaker 2: a favorite between the two, and of course the favorite
Speaker 2: is the one that's abandoned now. So you know, it's
Speaker 2: sad to think because I would just love to be
Speaker 2: able to ride that line again, to go that route,
Speaker 2: travel that distance, and I think it probably is never
Speaker 2: coming back at this point, so it's just just exists
Speaker 2: in memory.
Speaker 1: I wonder if a lot of people do long transcontinental
Speaker 1: hikes on abandoned railroads. I know that you said that
Speaker 1: they were turning them maybe into trails, but if anyone's like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to traverse the country based on the old
Speaker 1: rail lines.
Speaker 2: There are people who do that. And you know, rail
Speaker 2: lines really do make ideal hiking trails because they go
Speaker 2: off into some very wild areas. You get some beautiful
Speaker 2: scenic views that you can't get from the expressway or
Speaker 2: anywhere else. And also because they're designed for railers, they
Speaker 2: tend to be fairly leveled too, that the grades are
Speaker 2: not steep, they're very gentle.
Speaker 1: Did you watch STAMMI me as a kid.
Speaker 2: I did. Yes. I think about that scene when they're
Speaker 2: on the bridge they're running from the locomotive. Yeah, we've
Speaker 2: all had nightmares like that, I think.
Speaker 1: Have you ever gotten to drive a locomotive?
Speaker 2: I have. Actually, I got a chance to fire on
Speaker 2: a steam locomotive once, which hotter than hell, if I'm
Speaker 2: saying miserable. In fact, our own crew, it's been in
Speaker 2: the nineties here in the Detroit area. The last couple
Speaker 2: of days they were talking about in the cab. They
Speaker 2: measured it at one hundred and thirty five hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty six degrees I think. And they're working in those
Speaker 2: conditions throughout the day, so a lot of water and
Speaker 2: a lot of rest breaks. But yes, I got to
Speaker 2: shovel coal into a locomotive, which is far more challenging
Speaker 2: that you might think. It's not just shoveling into the
Speaker 2: hole and that's it. You've got to get that coal
Speaker 2: spread evenly inside the firebox. So there's some real skill
Speaker 2: in it. And I also got to operate a diesel
Speaker 2: electric locomotive, which is a lot of fun. And the
Speaker 2: big takeaway from me from that was how quickly those
Speaker 2: locomotives can get away from you, even the slightest till
Speaker 2: you pick up speed very quickly, and you start to
Speaker 2: realize what a skill it is to control that much weight.
Speaker 2: And you know, I was just running the locomotive no
Speaker 2: cars behind it, so it would have been even more
Speaker 2: difficult in that situation.
Speaker 1: So side note. I got to drive a locomotive once,
Speaker 1: just like a few hundred feet on a test track,
Speaker 1: and I just hooted the horn the entire time, and
Speaker 1: I have no regrets. How do they test people's ability
Speaker 1: to drive a locomotive, because that seems like a thing
Speaker 1: like you can't just go practice at a church parking lot,
Speaker 1: like when you're getting your drivers, Like, how do you
Speaker 1: learn how to do that without killing everyone?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's equivalent to an apprentice program, whether it's on
Speaker 2: the actual operating business railroads or on a railroad like
Speaker 2: ours you're at Greenfield Village. You know, you learn under
Speaker 2: the study of someone who knows what they're doing, and
Speaker 2: you learn by doing, going through the experience, practicing, and eventually,
Speaker 2: you know, you get to the point where you don't
Speaker 2: need the apprentice supervision anymore, and you're off on your.
Speaker 1: Own woo, so you just have to watch over someone's shoulder.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like learning to be a surgeon, I guess. Also,
Speaker 1: and I had nowhere else in this episode to put it,
Speaker 1: so I'm just going to add it here. The Hogwarts
Speaker 1: Express Train is an actual steam locomotive in Scotland. You
Speaker 1: can ride it. It's called the Jacobite and it even
Speaker 1: crosses the bridge to Hogwarts, which is a twenty one
Speaker 1: arch viaduct. Just in case you're like, oh no, my
Speaker 1: bucket list, I have done all the items. Well there's
Speaker 1: new one, kiddos. Okay, let's get to the rapid fire around.
Speaker 1: We got a truly staggering number of questions. Okay, Spencer
Speaker 1: tof wants to know why was I told as a
Speaker 1: child that putting salt on a train track was illegal?
Speaker 2: That's an interesting question. I would say it's probably because
Speaker 2: putting anything on a train track is illegal. You know, theoretically,
Speaker 2: even being near the train track is illegal. It's private property.
Speaker 1: Oh no, oops, this gets sad.
Speaker 2: The railroad owns that corridor and for obviously, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's very dangerous to walk too close to those when
Speaker 2: the train is coming. And it's surprising the number of
Speaker 2: pedestrian fatalities there are. And you know, theoretically, anybody in
Speaker 2: that situation, it's the pedestrian's fault because they shouldn't have
Speaker 2: been there in the first place. But now we have
Speaker 2: people who are you know, tuned out of the world,
Speaker 2: listening to their iPhones and so forth. And yeah, even
Speaker 2: for as large as they are, you know, a fast
Speaker 2: moving train can sneak up on you much faster than
Speaker 2: you might think.
Speaker 1: So, right, so it's illegal to breathe on a rail,
Speaker 1: it would be, theoretically, yeah, just in case you're like
Speaker 1: tempting the grim Reaper by train sounds relatively unthreatening. Just
Speaker 1: please know that the Federal Rail Administration says that train
Speaker 1: related deaths are at a ten year high. Almost nine
Speaker 1: hundred people in the US were killed due to train
Speaker 1: related incidents last year, five hundred and seventy five of
Speaker 1: them trespassers abundantly in their twenties and thirties, walking on
Speaker 1: active tracks or hopping freight trains. And I went to
Speaker 1: do a little bit more research, which landed me on
Speaker 1: a Wikipedia page called list of selfie related injuries and deaths,
Speaker 1: and it was really sad. I could not read through
Speaker 1: it all. Let's just say I did glance and I
Speaker 1: saw the word train a lot. So, kiddos, playing on
Speaker 1: trains is statistically one hundred times more likely to kill
Speaker 1: you than a shark, if I may get some lack
Speaker 1: of morphological on you. Now, if you want a selfie
Speaker 1: with a train, go to a museum. Don't do any
Speaker 1: trespassing on any tracks. Okay, that's because I care about you,
Speaker 1: love dad.
Speaker 2: Really, the only place you can be is if you're
Speaker 2: at a crossing. In that case, you shouldn't be stopping.
Speaker 2: You should be just crossing and going about your business.
Speaker 1: So no salts on train tracks. Also, no people on
Speaker 1: train tracks. Al Martinez wants to know what's the current
Speaker 1: thinking on high speed rail in the US, both across
Speaker 1: the country and high population states such as California, Florida, Texas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've got some movement toward high speed rail here,
Speaker 2: though our high speed rail is a shadow of what
Speaker 2: they have in Europe, where they're doing two hundred miles
Speaker 2: an hour or better. Here, you know, one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty miles is considered a pretty high speed, and we've
Speaker 2: had some success in short corridors. The difficulty is that
Speaker 2: Amtrak runs on a lot of freight owned railroads, and
Speaker 2: of course the freight op want to run freight trains
Speaker 2: on there too, and high speed passenger trains and slower
Speaker 2: speed freight trains don't mix well, as you might imagine.
Speaker 1: Whoa that speed difference was news to me, although thinking
Speaker 1: of huge bins of coal on like a bullet train
Speaker 1: does seem a little excessive.
Speaker 2: That's why, really the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston
Speaker 2: now is really the showpiece, because Amtrak owns most of
Speaker 2: that right of way, so they can run at whatever
Speaker 2: speeds they want.
Speaker 1: Oh, I never knew that. I always wondered why California's
Speaker 1: train game was just so poor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now they have to share the space, and of
Speaker 2: course those a lot of cases, those tracks were built,
Speaker 2: or at least the right of ways were laid out
Speaker 2: in the nineteenth century, so they were designed for slower speeds,
Speaker 2: and if you want to run at higher speeds, you
Speaker 2: need longer, straighter stretches to track more gentle curves, so
Speaker 2: a lot of that has to be rebuilt. That's why
Speaker 2: it's just in some cases simpler to build a brand
Speaker 2: new track, like they're doing with the high speed rail
Speaker 2: out in California.
Speaker 1: Just quick aside, I figured he was talking about the hyperloop,
Speaker 1: but there's a different high speed rail. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: workers in front us No, California broke round on an
Speaker 1: electric California high speed rail. Litt'll cost maybe one hundred
Speaker 1: billion dollars, but it may be done in twenty thirty.
Speaker 1: Train expectations are so low in LA that we're just like,
Speaker 1: that's fine, We're fine riding motorized razor scooters in traffic
Speaker 1: while you'll work it out. PA Foxhall wants to know
Speaker 1: why is there such a huge variation in train track
Speaker 1: sizes and whips all over the world. Why isn't there
Speaker 1: more standardization? Essentially, Yeah, that's a great question. That was
Speaker 1: a problem here in the United States.
Speaker 2: In fact, it's one of the major factors that cited
Speaker 2: for the reason that the South loss of the Civil
Speaker 2: War is that they had a mishmash of different track sizes,
Speaker 2: some of them five feet wide, some of them six
Speaker 2: feet wide, some of them the standard four feet eight
Speaker 2: and a half inches were in the North. They tended
Speaker 2: all to be the same gauge, so you could move
Speaker 2: a car from one railroad line to another without having
Speaker 2: to stop and unload everything and reload it. No around
Speaker 2: the world, You're right, there are different standards, and often
Speaker 2: it's just based on local preference. I mean, here in
Speaker 2: the US we have four feet eight and a half
Speaker 2: inches because a lot of what we learned we learned
Speaker 2: from Great Britain, where they use four feet eight and
Speaker 2: a half inches for their gauge, and it seems to
Speaker 2: be on the whole sort of the ideal. Anything wider
Speaker 2: than that gets to be kind of difficult to cumbersome.
Speaker 2: Anything more narrow than that you can't carry as much freight.
Speaker 2: So you know, for whatever reason, that's that's what we've
Speaker 2: gone with.
Speaker 1: Is that a more round number in metric or four
Speaker 1: feet eight and a half inches is very specific, it is.
Speaker 2: And it's really not anymore round in metric.
Speaker 1: I never knew that about the Civil War. That's amazing. Also,
Speaker 1: four feet eight point five inches rounds two and also
Speaker 1: nonsensical one hundred and forty three point five to one centimeters.
Speaker 1: So okay, he says.
Speaker 2: The story I've heard is that that was the width
Speaker 2: of and I think it's just a myth. But the
Speaker 2: width of the wheels on Roman chariots where about four
Speaker 2: feet eight and a half inches, and that's like the
Speaker 2: width that accommodates two horses. Who knows?
Speaker 1: Okay, I was curious, is this accurate? And how wide
Speaker 1: are horse bots? So I did a little investigating and
Speaker 1: I found a paper titled more Prophometric Measurements and Animal
Speaker 1: Performance Indices in a study of forms of Brazilian support
Speaker 1: horses undergoing training for a venting, and according to their statistics,
Speaker 1: point five to five meters was the average width of
Speaker 1: a horse butt, which converts to one point eight feet,
Speaker 1: so times two horses is three point six feet with
Speaker 1: fourteen point five inches a little over a foot between
Speaker 1: the horse butts for tail swishing.
Speaker 2: I suppose, for whatever reason though, that's the number that
Speaker 2: we settled on. You know, one number is as good
Speaker 2: as any other, frankly, as long as every track is
Speaker 2: the same number.
Speaker 1: Wow. I wonder if there's a they have special yard
Speaker 1: sticks when they're putting that together, Like, how do they
Speaker 1: make sure they do?
Speaker 2: We've got out on our row. We've got gage rods,
Speaker 2: which are just metal pieces that are measured to exactly
Speaker 2: four feet eight and a half inches, and that's I
Speaker 2: should say, measured from the inside surface of the rail,
Speaker 2: not from the center of the rail or something. So
Speaker 2: we can put that out there and check every so
Speaker 2: often to make sure that our track is perfect gauge,
Speaker 2: it's obviously a problem if the gauge gets a little wide.
Speaker 2: You know that the wheels are wide and the compensate,
Speaker 2: but if it gets two wide, you've got a car
Speaker 2: on the ground and that can be a big problem.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a pretty big, heavy problem. What are
Speaker 1: the railroad ties made out of?
Speaker 2: For the most part, they're made out of wood treated
Speaker 2: wood treated with creosote, usually to prevent rotting or where
Speaker 2: to make them last a little longer. And the kind
Speaker 2: of wood they use varies and be oak, it might
Speaker 2: be pined, just whatever might be available locally. They have
Speaker 2: in some cases moved toward concrete ties, particularly with higher
Speaker 2: speed railroads, is because those last a little longer and
Speaker 2: they're less prone to kind of stretching and shrinking in
Speaker 2: the heat.
Speaker 1: There's something about creosote that smells so good. I don't
Speaker 1: know why.
Speaker 2: It's a classic railroad smell. Yeah, the coal smoke and
Speaker 2: the creosote.
Speaker 1: Oh for sure, did anyone make a country song about
Speaker 1: that coal smoke and koreoso?
Speaker 2: If they haven't, they should so.
Speaker 1: Side note, there are some good sad country songs about
Speaker 1: trains I found out, like Willie Nelson's City of New
Speaker 1: Orleans about the flagging power of the rail system in America.
Speaker 1: But in terms of wheepcore, perhaps nothing could beat the
Speaker 1: George strait did. He called trains make me lonesome?
Speaker 2: And the next thing that we knew, some old train
Speaker 2: came passing through Han daddy got home and we ain't
Speaker 2: seen him.
Speaker 1: No mo wunder what trains make me long lonesome? I
Speaker 1: got so sad for George straight, And then I just
Speaker 1: started reading about his history. But George, what the hell?
Speaker 1: According to Wikipedia, when George was in the fourth grade,
Speaker 1: his father and mother were divorced, his mother moved away,
Speaker 1: George and his brother were raised by their father. Dude, George,
Speaker 1: you just threw your dad under the bus or the
Speaker 1: train so hard with that song. Now, in the name
Speaker 1: of single dads everywhere, I hope at some point George
Speaker 1: bought his daddy a three point seven million dollar train car.
Speaker 1: Is just an apology, all right? Onward? Also, this next
Speaker 1: question is from your favorite Mars expert from the Areology episode. Okay,
Speaker 1: Jennifer Booz wants to know why do the trains go
Speaker 1: too fast sometimes and do rail Is there not a
Speaker 1: good way to limit the speed on certain parts of
Speaker 1: the track.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this is an issue now that we've been
Speaker 2: dealing with the last ten years or so in the
Speaker 2: US the adoption of positive train control, and one of
Speaker 2: the advantages railroads have over any other kind of transportation, frankly,
Speaker 2: is that they are on a fixed guideway. They're on rails,
Speaker 2: so theoretically there should be some automatic way to stop
Speaker 2: them without worrying about them swerving and crashing off the
Speaker 2: side of the road. And what we're trying to do
Speaker 2: now is pass legislation that will put in automatic control
Speaker 2: units in a locomotive cab so that if the signal
Speaker 2: the equivalent of a stoplight on a highway is read
Speaker 2: and the engineer for whatever reason disregards that signal and
Speaker 2: does not stop, the locomotive will automatically lose power, slow down,
Speaker 2: and stop. But we're facing some of the same problems
Speaker 2: that they did when they tried to make all the
Speaker 2: tracks the same gauge. You know, every railroad uses a
Speaker 2: different system, and to try and get everything to work
Speaker 2: universally is taking a lot of money in a lot
Speaker 2: of time, more so than we might have anticipated. But
Speaker 2: it would make us safer, I think, and prevent some
Speaker 2: of the accidents we've seen in recent years.
Speaker 1: Right it must. I mean when you see the news
Speaker 1: and it's like there was a trained derailment that was
Speaker 1: possibly influenced by texting, you're like, oh my god, that
Speaker 1: was not a problem in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's Yeah, it's frightening enough when you hear
Speaker 2: about people driving and texting, but when you're in a
Speaker 2: railroad situation, it is just it's im worrant because you
Speaker 2: know that the engineer is a professional. You trust the
Speaker 2: crew to deliver people safely, and if somebody on the
Speaker 2: crew is texting, it's just a it is a direlection
Speaker 2: of duty. And those kinds of distractions. The railroads police
Speaker 2: very very thoroughly, and I mean that's a fireable offense.
Speaker 2: If you're caught doing that, there's no second chance.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, yeah, I imagine you can't even like eat
Speaker 1: a sandwich when you're operating a train.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you're there that you got the one job
Speaker 2: to do and that's what you better be doing.
Speaker 1: Right like smoothies, only no hummus and chip dip too involved. Okay,
Speaker 1: Lindsay Loeper wants to know why were villains and old
Speaker 1: movies always trying people to railroad tracks? Was this something
Speaker 1: people were actually afraid of?
Speaker 2: That's a great question, you know. I frankly, I'm not
Speaker 2: aware of any specific incident in history where someone was
Speaker 2: tied to a railroad track by a villain. It may
Speaker 2: have happened, but you know, I think it's become kind
Speaker 2: of a Hollywood trope and it probably comes back to
Speaker 2: the early silent movies when that was done. But railroads
Speaker 2: were seen as dangerous as they are dangerous if you're trespassing,
Speaker 2: you in the wrong place.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, a short distance away, Snightley Whiplash was up to
Speaker 1: his favorite past time, tying women to railroad tracks. Wait wait,
Speaker 1: wait wait Okay, So according to the Straight Dope, these
Speaker 1: incidents have happened, but the victims tended to be men,
Speaker 1: and they occurred after this crime was popularized in fiction
Speaker 1: in dozens of plays, the first of which was an
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty three British production called The Engineer. Now, a
Speaker 1: bunch of historians think this was a way for us
Speaker 1: to comprehend our own fears just about the power of industry.
Speaker 1: So getting tied to the tracks with a train barreling
Speaker 1: at you is kind of like an old timey black mirror,
Speaker 1: but like a cpa toned looking glass if you will.
Speaker 2: It seems like, I think, a good way, and it
Speaker 2: builds up the drama too in the movie, because you
Speaker 2: see the train in the distance, you see it coming,
Speaker 2: you see the heroin or whomever it might be, struggling
Speaker 2: to get out. So I guess it's a great trope,
Speaker 2: But yeah, one that's been around a long time.
Speaker 1: Never trust a curly mustache exactly. That's your first clue.
Speaker 1: This guy's got some rope and a curly mustache. You're
Speaker 1: gonna end up on a train track.
Speaker 2: Look out for snidely whiplash.
Speaker 1: Julie Noble wants to know, how is it the people
Speaker 1: who live near tracks don't hear the trains anymore? Do
Speaker 1: you think that people get so used to it that
Speaker 1: it just becomes like part of breathing for them?
Speaker 2: If I may quote one of my favorite movies, The
Speaker 2: Blues Brothers that scene where they go to Elwood's apartment
Speaker 2: and he's by the l there in Chicago. Jakes's how
Speaker 2: often does the train go by? Elwood says, so often
Speaker 2: you won't notice. I think there's some truth to that.
Speaker 2: I myself, I live on near the airport, so you know,
Speaker 2: we have airplanes flying over fairly constantly. At a certain point,
Speaker 2: you just tune them out, you know, they become background noise.
Speaker 2: We can get used to a lot of different things.
Speaker 2: It's the same for people who live along the railroad tracks,
Speaker 2: and you kind of get used to it and the
Speaker 2: sound just eventually fades away and disappears, buried in your subconscious. Now.
Speaker 1: For more on this, look up neural adaptation or sensory adaptation.
Speaker 1: The first Google results use living close to train tracks
Speaker 1: as an actual example. Right, I live on Busy Street,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure there are so many more ambulances than
Speaker 1: I realized. But yeah, Julie Noble says, I live a
Speaker 1: block and a half from a track, and we'll be
Speaker 1: on the phone, windows closed, and the other person will say,
Speaker 1: oh my god, is that a train? And I seriously
Speaker 1: don't notice that?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: Carrie's true, I wants to know why do commuter trains
Speaker 1: like Chicago's Metro have to rent track time from the
Speaker 1: rail road lines. So I guess there's freight interference during
Speaker 1: rush hour. That's kind of what you were talking about. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's been a big shift the railroads as soon
Speaker 2: as they started losing money on passenger business, which really
Speaker 2: goes back to the twenties, if not before. But railroads
Speaker 2: got out of the passenger business, especially after the highway
Speaker 2: system in the late nineteen fifties through the sixties. Amtrak
Speaker 2: came on the scene in nineteen seventy one. And yes,
Speaker 2: Amtrak basically is a tenant or a guest on the
Speaker 2: freight railroad. Now, theoretically the freight railroad was supposed to
Speaker 2: give preferential treatment to Amtrak, but in the real world
Speaker 2: it doesn't always work out that way.
Speaker 1: I had no idea that that was like a shared situe.
Speaker 1: They have like a time share on the tracks essentially,
Speaker 1: am I the only one who thought that Amtrak has
Speaker 1: been around for like a century. Okay, John Worcester, I
Speaker 1: love this question, says Back in the day, railroads seemed
Speaker 1: to have become the authority for setting the correct time
Speaker 1: and history.
Speaker 2: How did that happen? Yes, and that's one of the
Speaker 2: railroad's legacies that's with us today. Standard time and time
Speaker 2: zones in the United States. Prior to that, every town
Speaker 2: kind of decided noon was whenever the sun was the
Speaker 2: highest point over city hall, the church, whatever it might be. So,
Speaker 2: you know, that's fine if you live in a world
Speaker 2: that's only you know, maybe fifteen twenty miles of radius,
Speaker 2: but not so good when you're on railroads where time,
Speaker 2: especially in those days before they had electronic signaling, you know,
Speaker 2: the timetable was absolute. If a train had to go
Speaker 2: by at one ten PM, then it better be there
Speaker 2: at that time because other trains are counting on it
Speaker 2: so they can pass it safely and whatnot. So railroads
Speaker 2: very early standardized time. You know, they went nationwide and
Speaker 2: what eighteen eighty three, I think somewhere thereabouts. And with
Speaker 2: that now railroads could coordinate their schedules more efficiently and
Speaker 2: then more safely.
Speaker 1: Frankly, yeah, no one wants to be on a platform
Speaker 1: being like, is it noon or two? I don't know.
Speaker 1: My horse got thirsty, so it's got to be eleven.
Speaker 1: You're like, what Sunday, November eighteenth. Eighteen eighty three, all
Speaker 1: of the US railroads synchronized their clocks, and then way
Speaker 1: later in nineteen eighteen, standard time became an official law,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't until two thousand and five, with the
Speaker 1: advent of tech, staying when I'm on my way became
Speaker 1: standard language to mean I haven't yet left the house,
Speaker 1: so just order without me. Do you get as jazzed
Speaker 1: about subways as you do about locomotives.
Speaker 2: I do. I'm I'm particularly fond of the Washington Metro system,
Speaker 2: and they opened up the new Silver Line, you know,
Speaker 2: not quite all the way to Dulles, but I made
Speaker 2: a point. My wife and I traveled out there. We
Speaker 2: simply rode there to the end of the line and back,
Speaker 2: so I could say I've done that mileage. So I
Speaker 2: have ridden every mile of that subway system. I haven't
Speaker 2: done every other one. But some people do that. They
Speaker 2: just travel around the world traveling different does subway systems.
Speaker 2: It's a good time for them.
Speaker 1: Now do you look out the window the whole time
Speaker 1: or do you just like read a book and kick back.
Speaker 2: I like to look out the window. I like, you know,
Speaker 2: you can't really do that when you're underground. But I
Speaker 2: love it when you're above ground because again you get
Speaker 2: a different view on things and especially fun there when
Speaker 2: you're running through the media and of I sixty six
Speaker 2: to kind of laugh at all the traffic that's stuck
Speaker 2: there going nowhere. Haha. I'm going by at thirty five
Speaker 2: miles an hour. Have a good time, sucker.
Speaker 1: So it's a showden Freud thing. Yeah, a pharaohecronology showden
Speaker 1: Freud sure rolls off the tongue brook boson this question,
Speaker 1: which I also like to ask, do you have a
Speaker 1: favorite movie that takes place on a train?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a great question. I have a few favorites.
Speaker 2: Actually I could talk about. One is maybe the greatest
Speaker 2: train movie and one of the greatest movies of all time,
Speaker 2: and that's Buster Keaton in The General from nineteen twenty six,
Speaker 2: one of the highlights of silent cinema, and he did
Speaker 2: some incredible stunts in that movie that Osha would not
Speaker 2: allow any but he to try today, but absolutely worth watching.
Speaker 1: Was there any trainsponting in Trainsponding?
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the trainspotting they were doing was a
Speaker 2: different sort than actual train spotting. There were tracks involved,
Speaker 2: but they were not railroad tracks. We'll leave it at that.
Speaker 1: Oh God, I never really got that pun.
Speaker 2: I like The Great Locomotive Chase with Fess Parker. It
Speaker 2: was a Walt Disney movie made nineteen fifty six, great
Speaker 2: Civil War adventure story, but actually based on the same
Speaker 2: story as The General, but it's more kind of by
Speaker 2: the facts for the Great Locomotive Chase. I also love
Speaker 2: the first gen Wilder Richard Pryor joint movie Silver Streak
Speaker 2: from nineteen seventy six, which is like kind of a
Speaker 2: Hitchcocking story. Speaking of Hitchcock, north By Northwest has a
Speaker 2: great railroad scene in it too, on the twentieth century limited,
Speaker 2: So lots of great train movies out there.
Speaker 1: Oh did you see the murder on the Orient Express recently?
Speaker 2: I did, yes, strictly to see the trains. I'm not
Speaker 2: particularly Nagatha Christie fan, but you know, got to go
Speaker 2: see some trains in the movie. So not enough of
Speaker 2: them anymore.
Speaker 1: You're not a Johnny Depp fan. He looked busted in that.
Speaker 2: I gotta say that he did.
Speaker 1: I would feel bad saying this, but I don't. Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Bassett wants to know how to train stack up in
Speaker 1: terms of efficiency and cost against semi trucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's really no more efficient method of overland travel
Speaker 2: than the railroad, and you can't beat that. Downside, of course,
Speaker 2: is when it comes to delivering that freight, you've got
Speaker 2: to take things off the train and load it onto
Speaker 2: a semi truck for that last mile, so to speak,
Speaker 2: whereas with a semi truck you just leave it on
Speaker 2: the truck and take it right to the door. There's
Speaker 2: been a lot of intermodal transportation now in the last
Speaker 2: few decades where items will come safe from Asia and
Speaker 2: they'll travel by ship in these large forty foot containers,
Speaker 2: and then that container gets moved by a giant crane
Speaker 2: onto a flat car and it can move by rail
Speaker 2: to some point in the middle of the country. And
Speaker 2: then that container gets moved off the flat car put
Speaker 2: onto a semi trailer and then can be delivered. So
Speaker 2: you're not unpacking the objects, you're just moving the actual trailer,
Speaker 2: for lack of a better term, the container.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's kind of like a lego goes from this
Speaker 1: thing to that thing to that thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, very much like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: pretty pretty slick.
Speaker 1: And then when you're done, you can take the shipping
Speaker 1: container and make a coffee shop in Brooklyn out of it.
Speaker 2: You can, or yeah, a small house or something or someone.
Speaker 1: So I looked and you can buy a four hundred
Speaker 1: square foot house made out of a shipping container on Amazon.
Speaker 1: It'll cost you thirty six thousand dollars and the reviews
Speaker 1: are very bad, said it was overpriced. Then I found
Speaker 1: one for fifteen grand on Etsy. But really, these shipping
Speaker 1: containers are like two thousand dollars used if you just
Speaker 1: want to pinterest it up and put a little elbow
Speaker 1: grease into some diy living in a metal box. Also,
Speaker 1: this next question is what when I was a journalist
Speaker 1: at the La Times, I learned was called And I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna bleete this because this is one of the
Speaker 1: very few non sweary episodes, because I work with the
Speaker 1: Henry Ford on a children's show. But this question is
Speaker 1: the full question. It's the great question you save for
Speaker 1: the end of the interview just in case it sicks
Speaker 1: up your rapport to all and they tell you to
Speaker 1: go to So Dan Goding asked the awkward and wonderful question.
Speaker 1: What was Henry Ford's role in trains in America? And
Speaker 1: is that over weird for you to be working at
Speaker 1: the Henry Ford when Ford was much more of an
Speaker 1: automotive proponent proponent than perhaps the locomotive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Henry Ford is nothing if not a study in contrast.
Speaker 2: So this is another example. I think he would have
Speaker 2: counted himself a paraohequinologist. He used to talk about when
Speaker 2: he grew up here in Dearborn, running down to the
Speaker 2: Michigan Central Track and waving at the engineer as he
Speaker 2: went by. A lot of the locomotives we have in
Speaker 2: our collection he personally collected. He built that replica Civil
Speaker 2: War era coach for the dedication of this museum because
Speaker 2: he thought he had to have a proper train here
Speaker 2: for the ceremony. He actually owned a railroad for a
Speaker 2: few years. He bought the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton which
Speaker 2: WHI is a local line here that runs from the
Speaker 2: Detroit area down to the Ohio River. He invested something
Speaker 2: like fifteen million dollars improving that railroad. He had all
Speaker 2: the engineers wear spotless white uniforms. Maybe not the best
Speaker 2: color choice in retrospect.
Speaker 1: That's like wearing a white jumpsuit on Day twenty seven, dude,
Speaker 1: if you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: He had them polish up the locomotives with shiny brass
Speaker 2: so they looked their absolute best. So you know, he
Speaker 2: actually loved railroads. And you know, I don't think he
Speaker 2: set out to build the Model T with the intentive
Speaker 2: killing railroads. He was probably surprised, like many other people had,
Speaker 2: how quickly the automobile caught on and how effectively it
Speaker 2: wiped out other competing transportation methods. But you know, he
Speaker 2: traveled by a private railcar. He he enjoyed trains right
Speaker 2: up through the end of his life.
Speaker 1: So there you go, the King of cars, Dug trains.
Speaker 1: What's the coolest train in the world.
Speaker 2: That's a great question. The one that's operating in front
Speaker 2: of you right now, I would say, and I think
Speaker 2: a lot of faraowecnologist would agree with that.
Speaker 1: Whatever you see rumbleby is the coolest, exactly right, yep.
Speaker 1: Is there any flimflam about trains you'd like to debunk
Speaker 1: any myths that you're like.
Speaker 2: Come on, people, Well, that the one that we already
Speaker 2: talked about about what is a train versus a locomotive?
Speaker 2: I think is a pretty big one. So I'm glad
Speaker 2: we got that taken care of.
Speaker 1: Right, And last two questions always what's the suckiest thing
Speaker 1: about your job? What's the hardest or most annoying thing
Speaker 1: about your job that you're like.
Speaker 2: Uh, well, you know, I have a lot of people
Speaker 2: who will walk up to me and say, wow, you
Speaker 2: must have a dream job. And I have to say
Speaker 2: it's enjoyable. This is not to cut on it, but
Speaker 2: you know, it's not as though I walk through the
Speaker 2: museum with a box of popcorn every day looking at
Speaker 2: the exhibits. I mean, it has its bad days too,
Speaker 2: And one of the challenges I think is the frustration
Speaker 2: and not being able to get definitive answers to some things.
Speaker 2: You know, when a lot of these early pieces, not
Speaker 2: just the locomotive, but everything we have in the museum
Speaker 2: was collected in the late twenties early thirties, record keeping
Speaker 2: was not what we might have today, so you know,
Speaker 2: there are certain answers that will never be able to
Speaker 2: find here. So that can be frustrating, and you know,
Speaker 2: it can be difficult to try and tell all the
Speaker 2: stories that you want to tell because you just don't
Speaker 2: have the time to go into the detail. There's all
Speaker 2: some other pressing activity you have to take care of.
Speaker 2: So yeah, those are frustrations, but on the whole it's
Speaker 2: a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: So a lack of omniscience, we'll just shock it up
Speaker 1: to not knowing everything in the known universe and space
Speaker 1: and time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if I could know that, this job would be pie.
Speaker 1: You know. And what's your favorite thing about trains or
Speaker 1: your job?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, this is well, my favor I can answer
Speaker 2: about my My favorite thing about trains is I get
Speaker 2: to work with them my job. My favorit thing about
Speaker 2: job is the trains. But now my favorite part of
Speaker 2: the job, what I really love here is that, you know,
Speaker 2: there are few jobs out there where you can get
Speaker 2: instant gratification. You know, when I'm up there in the
Speaker 2: office banging away at the computer, buried in books, I
Speaker 2: get kind of frustrated. I can walk out into the
Speaker 2: museum here and I can see people actually enjoying the
Speaker 2: work that we do and you know, hopefully learning something
Speaker 2: while they're here too, So that's really rewarding. And I
Speaker 2: think the best part about the job and the best
Speaker 2: part about trains. You know, I mentioned the size, but
Speaker 2: I no one will ever beat the magic of a
Speaker 2: steam locomotive. You know, they are in a sense living creatures.
Speaker 2: You know, they hiss, they roar, they make noises, smells
Speaker 2: and sounds that you just don't find anywhere else. And
Speaker 2: we haven't used steam locomotives in any big capacity in
Speaker 2: this country for more than sixty years now, and yet
Speaker 2: people still know what they sound like, they still love them,
Speaker 2: and they still I think for a lot of people,
Speaker 2: are the first thing that comes into your head when
Speaker 2: you think train.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that who like absolutely lowing smoke? Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1: And where can people find you or do you have
Speaker 1: anything any train resources to point to?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they can find me right here at the Henry
Speaker 2: Ford in Dearborn, Michigan. They can come out and see
Speaker 2: some of our stationary locomotives in the museum, or they
Speaker 2: can ride behind a live steam locomotive through Greenfield Village
Speaker 2: on our track.
Speaker 1: This has been amazing. Thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 2: I learned so much my pleasure.
Speaker 1: So the next time you see a train, feel free
Speaker 1: to audibly say woo woo. For so many reasons, and
Speaker 1: also please no selfies near trains, and they're not paying
Speaker 1: me to make this episode, but to see some of
Speaker 1: their historical artifacts, including trains. Check out the Henry Ford
Speaker 1: on Instagram. Innovation Nation is shot there and it's on
Speaker 1: CBS Saturday Mornings, where you can find episodes online. I'm
Speaker 1: in every episode In case you want to have some
Speaker 1: Aliward content that doesn't usually involve the F word. Ologies
Speaker 1: is at Ologies on Instagram and Twitter, and I'm Ali
Speaker 1: Ward with one L. There are more links up at
Speaker 1: aliward dot com, slash ologies. There's merch at ologiesmerch dot com.
Speaker 1: Thank you Shannon Feltis and Body Dutch for being merch queens.
Speaker 1: A link to the Campology September fifteenth event in Portlands
Speaker 1: just in the show notes, and thank you to Aaron
Speaker 1: Talbert for being wonderful admins in the Facebook Ologies podcast group.
Speaker 1: I said last week that it's the only reason I
Speaker 1: really go on Facebook anymore, but I'd like to issue
Speaker 1: a correction and say this week photos of my brainiac
Speaker 1: and wonderful cousin Brooke Rennick getting married were a highlight.
Speaker 1: They were definitely a reason to scroll. Congratulations to you
Speaker 1: and Lauren. Congratulations to Stephen Ray Morris for being just
Speaker 1: coolll and to Nick Thorburn for being very good at
Speaker 1: writing and performing theme songs such as ours, which is
Speaker 1: titled Ali at the Museum. If you stick around through
Speaker 1: their credits, you know I tell you a secret, and
Speaker 1: this one for OnCore episodes. I like to give you
Speaker 1: a new secret. So here's a freshy for twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: This is just more of a life tip. If you
Speaker 1: like hard boiled eggs but you hate how they make
Speaker 1: your refrigerator smell like Satan's outhouse, what you need to
Speaker 1: do is get one of those silicone bags that you use.
Speaker 1: It's like a ziplock, but it's made of like rubbery silicone.
Speaker 1: Those things don't let anything out, and you can put
Speaker 1: hard boiled eggs in there and you'll be like, I
Speaker 1: forgot I even had them, because my refrigerator doesn't smell
Speaker 1: like farts.
Speaker 2: It's the best.
Speaker 1: So that's my secret. It's a secret tip. Pierwalks, you
Speaker 1: can get up, dude.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of fun.