Can you use cell phones on trains?

On Sun, 02 Oct 2005 14:19:35 -0500, clifto <[email protected]> chose to add
this to the great equation of life, the universe, and everything:

>David S wrote:
>> On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 20:57:39 GMT, user <[email protected]> chose to add
>> this to the great equation of life, the universe, and everything:
>>> When a Conrail train meets a car, the train ALWAYS wins.
>>
>> When ANY train meets a car the train always wins.
>
>Not a bridal train, or a mule train, or a Soul Train.

Touché.

--
David Streeter, "an internet god" -- Dave Barry
http://home.att.net/~dwstreeter
Remove the naughty bit from my address to reply
Expect a train on ANY track at ANY time.
"Well, goodbye virgin alarm." - Dot Matrix

---

› See More: Can you use cell phones on trains?

Steve Sobol wrote:
> Quick wrote:
>
>> I used to live in Michigan and the line from NY City to
>> Chicago (Century Limited) ran through our back yard.
>> Those things take at least 5 to 10 miles to stop.
>
> But again, that's Amtrak, not commuter rail. Much bigger
> cars.

O... this was way before Amtrak... Before the railroads sold
the classic equipment to the Mexican railroad. What I rode
in was a freight engine.

By the way, the difference between a freight engine and a
passenger engine is that the passenger engine is equiped
to supply steam (primarily for heating) where a freight engine
is not. If you happened to own your own private railroad car
you used to be able go from here to there for 18 coach fares
and a switching charge on each end.

My father fulfilled one of his lifelong dreams by putting in a
blind bid for an observation car when they had the big sell off.
Being a college prof he was not really a "man of means". He
figured scrap value to be somewhere around $15K and put in
a bid for that. Won it. 4 suites, porter's room, silver service,
bedding, linens, curtains, paintings, furniture. Back third was
the observation lounge with wet bar. Paid to put in 100 ft. of
track at the local grain elevator and they let him hook up to
water, sewage, and electric for free. They use something like
10 or 12 34V batteries, each the size of a footlocker. Wrangled
some deal with a salvage yard for the price of hauling them and
we had a garage full of them. Switching charge, nominal fee
to haul it to Columbus OH (nearest passenger service), switching
charge, 18 fares to Ann Arbor for the OSU Michigan game...
25 to 30 people and it was about $50 a head including the
snacks and liquour. Yee-haw in style.

-Quick

On Wed, 05 Oct 2005 17:15:36 GMT, "Quick" <[email protected]>
chose to add this to the great equation of life, the universe, and
everything:

>By the way, the difference between a freight engine and a
>passenger engine is that the passenger engine is equiped
>to supply steam (primarily for heating) where a freight engine

Amtrak converted its fleet to head end power in the late '70s. Instead of
steam, the engine provides electricity (480V 3-phase), which runs the heat,
air conditioning, lights, stove in the dining car, everything. This has the
advantage that lights and ventilation do not depend on batteries when
standing still; also, steam lines had a nasty habit of freezing in the
winter. This is why most of their locomotives for more than 20 years ran at
full throttle (and full noise) even when standing still. The F40PH types
ran the HEP generator off of the main engine crankshaft. The newer ones
they started getting in the late '90s have, IIRC, a more sophisticated
arrangement so that the engine has to run at somewhere above idle but less
than full throttle when standing still. Some commuter railroads do it one
of these ways, while others simply use a separate engine/generator set in
the back end of the locomotive for the HEP. I don't think anybody in North
America uses steam any more (even the steam excursion trains have HEP
generators somewhere in the train).

>is not. If you happened to own your own private railroad car
>you used to be able go from here to there for 18 coach fares
>and a switching charge on each end.

Now it's a per mile charge plus switching charges. This fee was recently
raised by some bureaucrat who thought it would be a good way to increase
revenue and didn't realize that he was pricing most of the car owners out
of the market, thus actually decreasing revenue.

>My father fulfilled one of his lifelong dreams by putting in a
>blind bid for an observation car when they had the big sell off.
>Being a college prof he was not really a "man of means". He
>figured scrap value to be somewhere around $15K and put in
>a bid for that. Won it. 4 suites, porter's room, silver service,
>bedding, linens, curtains, paintings, furniture. Back third was
>the observation lounge with wet bar.

From what railroad?

--
David Streeter, "an internet god" -- Dave Barry
http://home.att.net/~dwstreeter
Remove the naughty bit from my address to reply
Expect a train on ANY track at ANY time.
"The subliminal part of the movie is that it's always moving toward death."
- Director Sam Mendes, on his film 'American Beauty'

On Tue, 04 Oct 2005 14:05:18 -0400, mw <[email protected]> chose to add this
to the great equation of life, the universe, and everything:

>On Sun, 02 Oct 2005 19:08:04 GMT, David S
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 20:57:39 GMT, user <[email protected]> chose to add
>>this to the great equation of life, the universe, and everything:
>>
>>> When a Conrail train meets a car, the train ALWAYS wins.
>>
>>When ANY train meets a car the train always wins.
>
>But Conrail, specifically lost the big battle.

??? Are you referring to some specific incident, or to Conrail being split
up between CSX and Norfolk Southern? I sure wish I had bought some stock
the first day of issue. After sinking 8 billion tax dollars into it, the
government sold it at $28 a share. Fifteen years later, after a 2-1 split,
those shares sold to CSX and NS at $110.

>Oh and thanks to David S, I have now wasted more time today reading
>his rotating sigs. 8-)

Glad to be of amusement. At last count, I have 1112 of them (although many
are specific to one newsgroup (not this one) and I never post them
elsewhere).

--
David Streeter, "an internet god" -- Dave Barry
http://home.att.net/~dwstreeter
Remove the naughty bit from my address to reply
Expect a train on ANY track at ANY time.
"Maybe we should not have humored [the American Indians] [when they asked
to live on reservations]. Maybe we should have said, 'No, come join us. Be
citizens along with the rest of us.'" - Ronald Reagan

David S wrote:
>
> From what railroad?

Doh... I've been thinking about exactly that, all day
since I started to write/remember that. This was
more than 30? years ago. I really should be able
to remember that. I can't remember which railroad
or which train it came from. I have a very vague
recollection of 5 or 6 railroads and partial names
of 2 or three famous trains. It was from one of the
more notable trains. I can't even remember which
part of the country it ran... I wonder
if this means I'm on my way out? Was it the
Twentieth Century Limited that ran from NY to
Chicago? The Twilight that ran up and down the
West coast? There was one that ran over the
rockies and one that went from the midwest into
the South. I think it was a newer car (relatively
speaking) as it was solid unpainted stainless on
the outside. It was the end car, rounded in the
back where the lounge was. Maybe I'll eventually
visualize the logo on the silver service.

sigh.... I feel sooo old,
-Quick

On Thu, 06 Oct 2005 06:00:50 GMT, "Quick" <[email protected]>
chose to add this to the great equation of life, the universe, and
everything:

>David S wrote:
>>
>> From what railroad?
>
>Doh... I've been thinking about exactly that, all day
>since I started to write/remember that. This was
>more than 30? years ago. I really should be able
>to remember that. I can't remember which railroad
>or which train it came from. I have a very vague
>recollection of 5 or 6 railroads and partial names
>of 2 or three famous trains. It was from one of the
>more notable trains. I can't even remember which
>part of the country it ran... I wonder
>if this means I'm on my way out? Was it the
>Twentieth Century Limited that ran from NY to
>Chicago? The Twilight that ran up and down the
>West coast? There was one that ran over the
>rockies and one that went from the midwest into
>the South. I think it was a newer car (relatively
>speaking) as it was solid unpainted stainless on
>the outside. It was the end car, rounded in the
>back where the lounge was. Maybe I'll eventually
>visualize the logo on the silver service.
>
>sigh.... I feel sooo old,

Did it have a dome? If not, it was probably from an eastern road (older
construction, lower tunnel clearances). Plain stainless wouldn't be from
the 20th Century, but it could be from another New York Central train. (The
Pennsylvania's flagship train NY-CHI was the Broadway Limited, but it
wouldn't be that either.) There are a lot of other possibilities.

There were more than one train on each of the routes you mention. Chicago
to San Francisco area, the California Zephyr ran on the Burlington to
Denver, the Rio Grande to Salt Lake, and the Western Pacific to Oakland,
while the City of San Francisco ran over the Chicago & North Western (not
Northwestern) until mid-1955, then the Milwaukee Road, to Omaha, Union
Pacific to Ogden, and Southern Pacific to Oakland. The CZ had stainless
round end observations with domes; the City was painted.

In this day and age, when we're lucky to have the few trains we do, people
forget (or don't realize) that the different railroads' trains competed
with each other, until the 1960s, when most of them realized that, thanks
to public subsidies for highways and airports (and the air traffic control
system), passenger trains were never going to be profitable again.

--
David Streeter, "an internet god" -- Dave Barry
http://home.att.net/~dwstreeter
Remove the naughty bit from my address to reply
Expect a train on ANY track at ANY time.
"No one in the White House staff, no one in this administration, presently
employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident....What really hurts
in matters of this sort is not the fact that they occur, because
overzealous people in campaigns do things that are wrong. What really
hurts is if you try to cover it up." - President Richard Nixon, early in
the Watergate affair

David S wrote:
> On Thu, 06 Oct 2005 06:00:50 GMT, "Quick"
>
> Did it have a dome? If not, it was probably from an
> eastern road (older construction, lower tunnel
> clearances). Plain stainless wouldn't be from the 20th
> Century, but it could be from another New York Central
> train. (The Pennsylvania's flagship train NY-CHI was the
> Broadway Limited, but it wouldn't be that either.) There
> are a lot of other possibilities.

Nope, no dome.

> There were more than one train on each of the routes you
> mention. Chicago to San Francisco area, the California
> Zephyr ran on the Burlington to Denver, the Rio Grande to
> Salt Lake, and the Western Pacific to Oakland, while the
> City of San Francisco ran over the Chicago & North
> Western (not Northwestern) until mid-1955, then the
> Milwaukee Road, to Omaha, Union Pacific to Ogden, and
> Southern Pacific to Oakland. The CZ had stainless round
> end observations with domes; the City was painted.

I remember the Zephyr. Double decker observation cars
right? He loved trains, he hated planes. More that you didn't
see anything or get a chance to relax than being nervous
about flying (although he did go for the back seats since
the tail often broke off intact -- not that anyone survived in
there anyway when that happens). We went to Hawaii for a
year (teaching grant at U of H) from Lansing, Michigan. Train
to the West Coast. Ocean liner to Hawaii... I don't remember
it being so much a cruise ship affair. Luxury liner was descriptive.
(We came back from India (I was 3) on the Andrea Doria the
trip before it went down).

Now I'm going to have to actually talk to my sister to see if
she has any pictures of it showing ID.

-Quick

> In this day and age, when we're lucky to have the few
> trains we do, people forget (or don't realize) that the
> different railroads' trains competed with each other,
> until the 1960s, when most of them realized that, thanks
> to public subsidies for highways and airports (and the
> air traffic control system), passenger trains were never
> going to be profitable again.

David S wrote:
> There were more than one train on each of the routes you mention. Chicago
> to San Francisco area, the California Zephyr ran on the Burlington to
> Denver, the Rio Grande to Salt Lake, and the Western Pacific to Oakland,
> while the City of San Francisco ran over the Chicago & North Western (not
> Northwestern) until mid-1955, then the Milwaukee Road, to Omaha, Union
> Pacific to Ogden, and Southern Pacific to Oakland.

The California Zephyr still runs from Emeryville, CA (south of Oakland)
to Chicago. Our family took it on a vacation a couple of years ago. I
tried to check the cellphone coverage along the way, but I kept being
distracted by the scenery.

On Fri, 07 Oct 2005 05:49:06 GMT, "Quick" <[email protected]>
chose to add this to the great equation of life, the universe, and
everything:

>David S wrote:
>> On Thu, 06 Oct 2005 06:00:50 GMT, "Quick"
>
>> There were more than one train on each of the routes you
>> mention. Chicago to San Francisco area, the California
>> Zephyr ran on the Burlington to Denver, the Rio Grande to
>> Salt Lake, and the Western Pacific to Oakland, while the
>
>I remember the Zephyr. Double decker observation cars
>right?

No, just domes. The Santa Fe's El Capitan had double deckers, which were
the model for the Superliner cars Amtrak built starting in the late '70s
and which are now used on all western long distance trains, plus the
Capitol Limited and Auto Train in the east. (Amtrak uses a few of the old
Santa Fe cars on the Heartland Flyer, which runs from Ft. Worth to Oklahoma
City.)

--
David Streeter, "an internet god" -- Dave Barry
http://home.att.net/~dwstreeter
Remove the naughty bit from my address to reply
Expect a train on ANY track at ANY time.
"At a stage in life when other men prosper, I'm reduced to living in
Philadelphia." - John Adams, "1776"

On Sat, 08 Oct 2005 18:03:17 GMT, CharlesH <[email protected]> chose
to add this to the great equation of life, the universe, and everything:

>David S wrote:
>> There were more than one train on each of the routes you mention. Chicago
>> to San Francisco area, the California Zephyr ran on the Burlington to
>> Denver, the Rio Grande to Salt Lake, and the Western Pacific to Oakland,
>> while the City of San Francisco ran over the Chicago & North Western (not
>> Northwestern) until mid-1955, then the Milwaukee Road, to Omaha, Union
>> Pacific to Ogden, and Southern Pacific to Oakland.
>
>The California Zephyr still runs from Emeryville, CA (south of Oakland)
>to Chicago. Our family took it on a vacation a couple of years ago. I
>tried to check the cellphone coverage along the way, but I kept being
>distracted by the scenery.

Yes, but now it's run by Amtrak, using Superliner cars instead of regular
cars with domes, and it runs on the Southern Pacific (Donner Pass route)
instead of the Western Pacific (Feather River route) between Emeryville and
Salt Lake City.

(The SP and WP, as well as the Denver & Rio Grande Western, are now parts
of Union Pacific, known to some railfans as Borg Rail.)

--
David Streeter, "an internet god" -- Dave Barry
http://home.att.net/~dwstreeter
Remove the naughty bit from my address to reply
Expect a train on ANY track at ANY time.
"Y'know, this administration doesn't need an opposition party. We do just
fine by ourselves." - Toby Ziegler

What's this got to do with VZW???

It seems to be an ongoing conversation between you and one or two others
that would be better taken to regular Email. Seems like all you want to do
is demonstrate your superior knowledge of trains, which is a big bore for
most of us!

Bob the Printer wrote:
> What's this got to do with VZW???
>
> It seems to be an ongoing conversation between you and
> one or two others that would be better taken to regular
> Email. Seems like all you want to do is demonstrate your
> superior knowledge of trains, which is a big bore for
> most of us!

ummm, the original question was "can you use cell phones
on trains"... when you consider it's a very small leap to "can
you use cell phones in cars" how exciting did you really
expect this thread to be? And I don't think anyone is trying
to demonstrate their superior knowledge but to share a
bit of (pretty much lost) American heritage.

-Quick

"Quick" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]...
> Bob the Printer wrote:
>> What's this got to do with VZW???
>>
>> It seems to be an ongoing conversation between you and
>> one or two others that would be better taken to regular
>> Email. Seems like all you want to do is demonstrate your
>> superior knowledge of trains, which is a big bore for
>> most of us!
>
> ummm, the original question was "can you use cell phones
> on trains"... when you consider it's a very small leap to "can
> you use cell phones in cars" how exciting did you really
> expect this thread to be? And I don't think anyone is trying
> to demonstrate their superior knowledge but to share a
> bit of (pretty much lost) American heritage.

I have no problem with discussing use of cellphones on trains,
but a discussion of trains is just too far off-topic for this newsgroup.

--
John Richards

"Bob the Printer" <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> What's this got to do with VZW???
>
> It seems to be an ongoing conversation between you and one or two
> others that would be better taken to regular Email. Seems like all you
> want to do is demonstrate your superior knowledge of trains, which is
> a big bore for most of us!
>
>
>

They're trying to find a place to put the multiband, multimode train
repeaters, of course!

Every car will have them. They'll even let Nextel customers have
service....

--
Larry

"Quick" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

> ummm, the original question was "can you use cell phones
> on trains"... when you consider it's a very small leap to "can
> you use cell phones in cars" how exciting did you really
> expect this thread to be? And I don't think anyone is trying
> to demonstrate their superior knowledge but to share a
> bit of (pretty much lost) American heritage.

That's true, but your conversation with the OP has degraded to simply
conversation about different types of train cars, etc, with nothing actually
pertaining to use of cell phones on trains!