More fun with the trains

[Absent Minded Farmer]

Looks like the cat is poised for a strike on the train....it just has that aggressive look they get when they are ready to pounce. I didn't know about the Japanese relationship....good for them.....I guess.

Their relationship with cats is a bit mind boggling.

To illustrate & keep this train related....

A station in Kinokawa adopted a stray cat & made it station master, to get more visitors & hopefully bring some sorely needed economy to the failing station. She had a uniform for official outings, an office, a salary, a train named after her & eventually they remodeled the station to look like a cat. She's had a few successors since passing in 2015. I was going to say, the current station master is Nitama, but she just passed four days ago. The current station master is now Gotama.

Mike

 

[Absent Minded Farmer]

Some of my usual blabbering: When I was a young lad playing with my Lionel, very simple layout...on the floor in my room, the track in a circle and an engine and a few cars.....I didn't like the track because it didn't look like the real thing. Then, some time later in life, I guess "Scale railroads" were born and the two rail was born...I guess that's when it happened. I was glad to see that but never had a train other than the Lionel.

I was watching a program on TV decades ago and the subject was the trains in the Australian Out Back.

The program discussed the lack of a standard track width (for one example) causing riders to stop several times over a 500 mile trip between 2 towns. The stops were caused by the fact that the rails changed physical characteristics and you had to get off one train and get on another that fit the rails for that distance. I think there were 3 or 4 iterations of that.

Last, in another instance, Out Back again, there was a train that was able to make the 500 mile journey without stopping. Apparently the scenery was nothing but desert, desert, desert. The railroad had a problem with engineers going to sleep while operating their trains on the trip due to boredom. So the owners put a switch above the engineer that had to be reset in a short period of time...forget the number. The engineer had to get partially out of his seat and reach up to reset the switch. If the switch didn't get reset in the allotted time the train would stop........that had to be a real bothersome requirement especially for engineers that made a career out of operating that train.....human nature being what it is, I wonder if any of them ever brought along a roll of quacker (Duct) tape to tape the switch in place so that they could take a nap??????

Wouldn't doubt someone taped one up.

EMD & others used a dead man valve in the cab. If you set something heavy on it, like a tool box, you could go do what you needed to & come back.

They still run narrow gauge sugar cane trains down there. Don't know if that multi-gauge setup is still running or not. Will have to ask my mate.

A neat crossing setup....

Mike

 

[RedMF40]

Their relationship with cats is a bit mind boggling.

To illustrate & keep this train related....

A station in Kinokawa adopted a stray cat & made it station master, to get more visitors & hopefully bring some sorely needed economy to the failing station. She had a uniform for official outings, an office, a salary, a train named after her & eventually they remodeled the station to look like a cat. She's had a few successors since passing in 2015. I was going to say, the current station master is Nitama, but she just passed four days ago. The current station master is now Gotama.

Mike

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How does this deep knowing of cats and Japan come to you? Do you get there in your travels? That’s pretty incredible about the cat train station, even for a cat-lover like me.

 

[Absent Minded Farmer]

How does this deep knowing of cats and Japan come to you? Do you get there in your travels? That’s pretty incredible about the cat train station, even for a cat-lover like me.

I've always liked cats & trains & Japan is known for both trains & cats. Would love to visit Japan, at some point & check out their vast rail network. Just like Amtrak, they have weekly & monthly passes where you can travel system wide in that period of time on the one pass. The month long one was $285, which I thought reasonable. It does not cover the shinkansen (bullet trains).

Best I can do is check out live cams & videos for now.

Mike

 

[Texasmark]

Wouldn't doubt someone taped one up.

EMD & others used a dead man valve in the cab. If you set something heavy on it, like a tool box, you could go do what you needed to & come back.

View attachment 135062

They still run narrow gauge sugar cane trains down there. Don't know if that multi-gauge setup is still running or not. Will have to ask my mate.

A neat crossing setup....

Mike

Nice informative reply.....thanks!

 

[Texasmark]

Wouldn't doubt someone taped one up.

EMD & others used a dead man valve in the cab. If you set something heavy on it, like a tool box, you could go do what you needed to & come back.

View attachment 135062

They still run narrow gauge sugar cane trains down there. Don't know if that multi-gauge setup is still running or not. Will have to ask my mate.

A neat crossing setup....

Mike

Nice informative reply. Thanks!

 

[Texasmark]

Their relationship with cats is a bit mind boggling.

To illustrate & keep this train related....

A station in Kinokawa adopted a stray cat & made it station master, to get more visitors & hopefully bring some sorely needed economy to the failing station. She had a uniform for official outings, an office, a salary, a train named after her & eventually they remodeled the station to look like a cat. She's had a few successors since passing in 2015. I was going to say, the current station master is Nitama, but she just passed four days ago. The current station master is now Gotama.

Mike

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Nice informative reply.....thanks!