Why!


GN.2-6-8-0

Member
Why...Why do some guys get it in their heads to abbreviate certain words in this hobby.
Honestly, most don't bother me but lokie for locomotive and cabeese for caboose or cabin car.....DRIVES ME NUTS!!!!

Lets the flames soar :D
 
lokie I dont get, loco makes sense; but Cabeese is in the Texas and Gulf Coast RR Official Terminology book:

Cabeese (ca be s): n. pl of caboose

"There are 8 cabeese on track 5. Train 387 needs topped off and a caboose swaped it's ready to depart."


goose, geese; caboose, cabeese... get it?

I do if for the fun of it...
 
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Lokie is part of the big boys' lexicon, so it's not like some widdo boy decided to call his toy lokie a lokie. It may have been regional for all I know. I wouldn't use it myself...sounds a bit childish to my ears.

I am surprised to learn that cabeese is considered to be legitimate, but the very few times I have typed it for posting on a forum it was to be tongue-in-cheek, and I have always taken it the same way when others have used it.

-Crandell
 
Disclaimer:

The Texas and Gulf Coast Railroad is my freelanced line...

sorry for the confusion! :rolleyes:
 
I've heard guys who work on CN lines call the locomotive things like lokie, POC, POS, thing, motor, go cart, Geep, buggie-----um------so I guess my calling my lokies that is just a part of the grand tradition-------so there HARRUUUMPH:p:p:p;):rolleyes:
 
lokie traces itself back to England, where strange names (to us yanks) are more commmonplace (and probably why it seems more commonplace in Canada): bonnet instead of hood, boot instead of trunk, and so on......
 
Crummy

So - why is the van or truck used to carry crews out to their train called a "crummy"?

I grew up in Washington State, and we always called more than one caboose - cabeese.
 
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that used to be the nick name for a caboose

now where did the term caboose come from anyway??

rumor is that it was the (dutch i think?) term for the galley on a ship. (That's the kitchen/eating area for all you landlubbers...)
 
noun
  1. The last car on a freight train, having kitchen and sleeping facilities for the train crew.
  2. Obsolete.
    1. A ship's galley.
    2. Any of various cast-iron cooking ranges used in such galleys during the early 19th century.
    3. An outdoor oven or fireplace.
[Possibly from obsolete Dutch cabuse, ship's galley, from Middle Low German kabūse : perhaps *kab-, cabin; akin to Old French cabane; see cabin + Middle High German hūs, house.]
 
I think those are fine.

What I hate is people who replace you with u and so on.

I did it a lot because I was a young child growing up with the internet. Luckily in 8th grade, I forced myself to type out you. It isn't that hard people!

That is an internet wide thing though for me :D
 
I don't really mind it. It more carried over from texting as a habit then just one day starting to type like that. Say you send 4,000 texts a month and you save 4 characters (which is on the light side for most) a text by using abbrevaitons thats 16,000 keys you didn't have to type a month. And over the course of a two year contract thats 384,000 keys you didn't have to press or put the wear and tear on the phone. Say it takes you about 1/3 of a second to type one character thats saving you around 17 hours a year. I have always had Palm's with full QWERTY keyboards so I usually type out words but it does save alot of time in the long run if you think about it. Sry 4 bein off topic btw. hehe I just had to do it :D:D:D
 
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Some books that my sister had for Pittman shorthand had even more interesting shortforms for words.

Then there were other ways---all this before the internet/computer----:eek::eek::rolleyes:
 
For me its alot cheaper. If i talked instead of texted I would have to get unlimited talk which A famiy plan for 2 people with unlimited minutes is $200. and a the same plan with 700 minutes and unlimited text is $110. On verizon that is. With texting you can have 5 conversations going at the same time :D
 
Seems to me it would be easier to talk to them than to text a message, a lot cheaper too.

Sometimes it's valuable to have a printed record of a communication (I use text and email at work). In those cases, I never abbreviate words. In fact, I can't bring myself to abbreviate words I text to my brother or my wife (save for the rare LOL, which only gets used if I actually do it). But, I've always been an English nerd, so pay no mind to me.:p
 
To further hijack this thread, I really hope that people posting here remember we have many members who are not native English speakers. It's hard enough for them to follow a thread without throwing in IM speak on top of it. I know it's like a second language to many of our younger members but it's rude and thoughtless to treat a post here as an IM or text message.
 



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