Texas Hobo
Well Known Hobo
We Texans do love our cars and pickups. It can and does get quite congested in the urban places, and suburban crawl is bring congestion here.Never again will I go near that place!
We Texans do love our cars and pickups. It can and does get quite congested in the urban places, and suburban crawl is bring congestion here.Never again will I go near that place!
Nope.How did I miss the naked man on a motorcycle?! I love motorcycles .
Circus trains were kinda of big deal in the 90's , Walthers came out with a set in HO .I can’t believe you have elephants on your layout Jazz, that’s a first for me here....lol
I forgot one or two things
4. Driving in the rightmost lane possible. Germans learn (and it is the law) that you drive in the rightmost lane possible on the open Autobahn.
5. Germans don't get their license until a minimum age of 18. They are a bit more mature when they learn. It is also much more expensive to get the license. So they treat it with more respect
In the US, people think of a license as a teenage "right of passage" and with most states allowing driving around 16 or 16.5 years old, which is exactly the wrong age to put the responsibility of driving on someone, US drivers do not learn proper driving skills from the start. (16 is the wrong age, as, according to those experts who track development, kids at 16 are going through the same brain development phase as a 3 year old -- figuring out about consequences for actions, or in the 16 year old case, re-learning it in the 16 year old case -- something that should already be learned when learning to drive and not the phase of brain development to be in when learning to drive [this info was given to me by a HS teacher I know who was at a conference learning about education and learned from the development folks about the phases of brain development]).
Because so many folks stop in here, I will post my question for the largest viewing: Do some rail companies run their switch heaters all winter long? I see fairly large propane tanks located at the ends of sidings, which causes me to wonder how often the tanks are refilled.
Example
Example 2: "Heaters can also be manually controlled by dispatchers at a central control point or snow sensing systems automatically start heaters as soon as the snow falls."
Spent 14 years over there. Had my International License. Germans are NOT better drivers.
Elephants? Are you kidding, GARY! John Allen even had dinosaurs on his layout!
JazzDad - Your bringing up the propane heaters is interesting to me. I knew that I had seen guys with burners going around and thawing out turnouts, but I had not given thought to automatic heaters.
That reminded me that after looking at my 15 YO grill, and that I need to replace the flame scarred hose and regulator after the fire ... I have decided that I will just replace the entire grill!
The Spousal Unit requests one that is a smoker as well.
MIKE - NOT bragging, but have you beat! Four of us put Rod's three steps up on his front porch one night. He laughed about it and drove it off with a couple boards.One time at a party, 4 of us picked it up & “reparked” it next door, facing the opposite way.
Terry- when I did interstate road trips(esp during daylight hours), I tried to get in the middle of a pack. Those packs had a tendency to MOVE without drawing the attention of HPO & everyone operated to the benefit of the pack(Johnny Law only tended to look up if he was going to pull over the whole pack. I’ve heard of troopers doing that before, but never firsthand experience.
Taking off is optional, landing is mandatory.there has never been an instance of a plane failing to return to earth!
I have three "rules" I abide by to avoid getting snagged on the highway
1. Never be the first or last in a pack. Drive in the middle of the pack if possible. (Ie, don't stick out)
2. Drive in the right most lane possible for the traffic conditions. People are accustomed to the fast people being on the left so by driving on the right you give the appearance of being slower than you might otherwise be. (See #1 above -- don't stick out)
3. Don't drive more than the local "grace" speed for your area. (10 over for example) unless you are in point #1 or the overall traffic is going faster.
It all boils down to "don't stick out".
I've only gotten one ticket on an interstate or divided highway in my life -- back in 1989 in Indiana when I was ignoring all the rules above. Driving across country to my grandmother's funeral in Utah (living in Mass at the time) with my parents in the car, I was in the left lane, alone, doing about 80-85 in a 65 zone. I was tired as we were trying to cross the country as fast as possible with multiple drivers and was not paying attention. The officer tailed me in an unmarked car and interestingly pushed me up to a speed of about 90 or more before I started to pull over and let him pass, ie, he was trailing me closer than I felt comfortable going and I slowly increased speed. As I started to move over to let him pass the lights came on. He only wrote me up at 83, and was generally pretty nice and professional about it, and I had 3 months to send the $55 fine in (no personal checks accepted). As it neared 3 months, I sent in a personal check as I was not paying attention to the fine print, and they politely returned it to me and gave me another few months of time to send in the certified check. Which I did. Luckily Mass and Indiana were not in the same interstate compact at the time so it never got reported to Mass and never hit my insurance. Now-a-days with the internet and everything now digitally connected, that wouldn't happen that way.