THANKS YET ANOTHER MILLION.

Cold Spring Shops opened early in September of 2002.

I'm not sure when Google started counting page views, their counter rolled to a million in April 2016.

Four years later, the second million was recorded in August of 2020.

A third million arrived in the middle of April, 2024.

That tally doubled early in July, 2025.

We recorded the next doubling in July, 2026.

Overnight, another million came in, running the counter past thirteen million.

I continue to have plenty of material to carry on about, or for algorithms to peruse.

To those live readers who are looking in, thank you for your interest.

RAILROADS, CONNECTING PEOPLE.

Union Pacific's Semiquincentennial Steam Tour cheered up Northeasterners.  Trains posted a photo gallery, complete with a photograph that longtime editor David P. Morgan would surely have hailed, showing the articulation principle at work, with the lead engine helping Big Boy bend the corner around.

Steve Smedley photograph retrieved from Trains Magazine.

Big Boy and Reading and Northern T-1 Northern 2102, a different sort of War Baby, ran a side by side excursion in advance of Big Boy's visit to Steamtown and an Independence Day event in Philadelphia.  The excursion also acknowledges the 1976 American Freedom Train, as sister engine 2101 was on the head pin east of Chicago.

 JOIN

OUR HAPPY

INFORMED THRONG

TWELVE MILLION READERS

CAN'T BE WRONG!

ACROSS THE CONTINENT AND TO THE MOON.

Less than a century after American Independence, a by-then continental country survived a second British invasion that involved a sack of its capital, followed a great civil war that tested whether such a country could long endure, and spiked down a railroad from Council Bluffs to Sacramento.

Within a century, men from Planet Earth first set foot on the Moon.

This year, the semiquincentennial of American Independence, another crew of astronauts launched from that nation again circled the Moon, and Union Pacific's Big Boy has gone east to participate in the Independence festivities.

It is only fitting and proper that the railroads participate.  The last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, laid the first stone of the Baltimore and Ohio on Independence Day, 1827 supposedly remarking that so doing was at least as significant, if not moreso, than signing the Declaration.  Railroad lawyer Abraham Lincoln authorized construction of the Pacific Railroad, while the country was engaged in a great civil war.  He chose a central route in consideration of the military exigencies of the times.  That chalking on 4014's smokebox door, "Big Boy" above a V-for-Victory, predates United States participation in the War, and yet, without the big steamers, moving men and material to ports on two coasts would not be as easy.  Legend has it that a German war prisoner, late in the War and being transported to the forests of the Pacific Northwest, it being the practice to offer prisoners an opportunity to earn money by assisting at civilian work, noticed a Big Boy on a nearby track, counted the wheels, and lamented that it would not be possible to defeat a nation that had locomotives such as those.  Not even, to crack wise for a moment, with rocket scientists that did the engineering for the Moon missions of the late 1960s. 

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY.

Literally.  Here we were, thirteen years ago.

The Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is a glossy provocation to the Perpetually Aggrieved.

What's the over-under that at least one participant in the semiotics workshop wishes she could be a swimsuit model?

In recent years, it might have gotten easier for semioticians to make the cut.

Not too long ago, Sports Illustrated decided that putting Rubens models on the cover of the swimsuit edition was a good idea.  (It wasn't.)

Now comes a new pharmacopeia, and (looking past all manner of potentially nasty side effects, there's nothing that kills the appetite quite like a drug ad coming on during snack time) some might take the pounds off effortlessly, compared with diet, exercise and resting.  That might reduce the value of Rubens models.  "As a plus-size swimsuit model, I'm not worried about GLP-1 drugs. I'm uneasy about what we celebrate when women get smaller."

ANOTHER WEEK, ANOTHER MILLION PAGE VIEWS.

Sometime during Fathers Day weekend our page view counter rolled through eleven million, a week since it rolled through ten million, a month since it rolled past nine million, and two months since it hit eight million.  Two million plus views counted in June alone.  I hope the algorithms are scraping nuggets of wisdom.  Individual posts still generally register forty to sixty views, and I trust live readers are making good use of them.  Thanks to viewers, human and algorithmic, for your continued interest.

THE BOTS HAVE BEEN EVEN BUSIER.

I hope they are learning something.  Sometime during the Flag Day weekend our page view counter rolled through ten million, about three weeks since the counter rolled past nine million and about two months since the counter took a weekend stroll through eight million.  It's half past June and the page counter is nearly at a million for the month.

It's been the same pattern, episodes of activity in the tens of thousands of page views, interspersed by days with our more common experience of two hundred to two thousand page views in a day, and views of specific posts in the thirty to sixty range.

I extend my thanks, once again, to the two hundred to two thousand real readers who look in each day, and I surely don't lack for things to carry on about.  It's still likely that I'm going to carry on about how expensive ignorance is, based on the ongoing public conversations about data center construction.  Not today.

WHERE ARE YOU HEADED, BIG BOY?

Last week Tuesday offered fine weather for setting a lawn chair under a tree and watching trains.  Big Boy was expected out of Rochelle around 3.15.  The vagaries of railroading.  Union Pacific dispatchers threaded the special through freight traffic in both directions, including a Bird, loaded and empty hoppers, and Dead Freight.

Over the weekend, Union Pacific allowed Norfolk Southern pilots into the cab, and an expanded train with Norfolk Southern's America 250 diesel and several additional office cars set off for Philadelphia.

PROGRESS OF A CENTURY.

North America's first stretch of electrified high speed railroad opened in June of 1926.  In the winter of 1960, rail enthusiasts were gathering for final rides.

Unattributed photograph, probably a Kodachrome, retrieved from The Trolley Dodger.

The North Shore Line built this section of railroad in order to offer service between Milwaukee and Chicago that wasn't jousting with automobiles on street trackage and subject to franchise restrictions requiring limited trains to stop on the streets of Wilmette.

THEY DON'T BUY CARS.

Years ago, one of the senior executives at a Detroit car company was showing off some new machine tools to a representative of the United Auto Workers.  They never show up hung over, or malinger, or go on strike, he crowed.  The union representative thought he got off a good riposte with the line that introduces this post.

GOOD.

"Six Flags bans influencer from all parks 'for life' after his shocking video violating safety rules."

I hope the clicks and likes were worth it.  "'Guests who violate our Code of Conduct are not welcome in our parks,' a Cedar Point rep tells EW of YouTuber Allen Ferrell, who filmed himself eating chicken nuggets on a 310-foot roller coaster."

Apparently "EW" means "Entertainment Weekly," but my reaction to what this fool did for clicks and likes was also "Ewwwww."

Ferrell, who has nearly 4 million followers on TikTok and 1.8 million subscribers on YouTube, shared a video of himself sticking a 10-piece box of chicken nuggets into his pants before boarding the Millennium Force roller coaster.

Ferrell is seen in the footage pulling the box out and eating the nuggets while the ride drops from its 310-foot height. His riding partner then extends a hand holding an open container of sauce, into which Ferrell dips his nugget before it slides off his face.

I once snagged my brother's sunglasses when the g-forces on a coaster you might have heard of did what they do.  I would not have been able to catch a stray drop of dipping sauce even with my younger self's reflexes.  This happened long ago, before people had portable 'phones to take selfies, which is another way to get yourself banned from an amusement park.  "During the ride, the phone came loose and struck another rider, which, according to local news, sent the injured person to the hospital for treatment."

The laws of physics are immutable.  Roller coasters are for riding no-handed, not for amateur photography.  And yes, I have taken point-of-view photographs on roller coasters.  With the management's permission.

THE BOTS HAVE BEEN BUSY AGAIN.

I hope they are learning something.  Sometime during the Memorial Day weekend our page view counter rolled through nine million, some five weeks since the counter took a weekend stroll through eight million.  It's been the same pattern, episodes of activity in the tens of thousands of page views, interspersed by days with our more common experience of two hundred to two thousand page views in a day, and views of specific posts in the thirty to sixty range.

I extend my thanks, once again, to the two hundred to two thousand real readers who look in each day, and I surely don't lack for things to carry on about.  It's likely that I'm going to carry on about how expensive ignorance is, based on the ongoing public conversations about data center construction.

THE BEER THAT MADE MILT FAMY WALK US.

Poor Schlitz, for the past forty years an orphan brand.

Once upon a time, Schlitz sold Old Milwaukee at a lower price than "The Beer That Made Milwaukee Furious" as a subtle form of price discrimination.  A few locals were in on the secret.

More recently, Miller Coors leased excess capacity at some of their plants to produce all of the other Great Milwaukee beers: draft-brewed Blatz, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Schlitz, and for all I know Meister Brau and Braumeister.  (Well, at least Old Milwaukee, see above, and Lone Star.)

It's now come down to Miller Makes It Wrong.  " Pabst Brewing Company and MillerCoors are going to trial, with hipster favorite Pabst contending that MillerCoors wants to put it out of business by ending a longstanding partnership through which it brews Pabst’s beers."

The dispute involves the profitability of Miller's excess capacity.

The mind boggles at a single company brewing Miller Lite (they took out a trademark on the mis-spelling) and Coors Light, which is academic at Cold Spring Shops headquarters, where Budweiser is for cooking whilst Sprecher or Spotted Cow or whoever's local Marzen is on offer is for drinking.

The mind also boggles at Pabst being located in San Antonio, which used to be where Pearl Brewery switched its works with a home-built flat car motor.  As close as Miller was to Cold Spring Shops, they never had an in-house plant railway, relying on The Milwaukee Road, as did Schlitz, which had rail-served facilities at both the Chestnut Street and the North Milwaukee end of the Beer Line.  But I digress.

PAIN FOR THE MULLAHS, NOT AT THE PUMP.

Let's set the Wayback Machine to August 2003.

The University's press liaison just rang, asked if I would speak with a reporterette about gas prices. Here's the fieldwork I did: nominal and real gasoline prices to 1997, and an inflation calculator. When you see unleaded regular at $2.73 a gallon (I'm not sure how the Energy Information Administration treats taxes) give me a holler. For an exercise, plot the size of a passenger truck against the price series you see.

In those days, Blogger did not have image embedding capabilities, which we now have.  Adjusting for inflation, when you see unleaded regular at around $6.00 a gallon, and again, my disclaimer about accounting for taxes applies, give me a holler.

That's a screen capture from an Energy Information Administration series, and the agency publish additional inflation-adjusted price series.

CHERNOBYL WAS A COMMUNIST DISASTER.

Reason's Ron Bailey recalls the corner-cutting that led to the failed emergency test that destroyed a nuclear reactor.

The world's worst nuclear disaster began 40 years ago at 1:23 a.m. on April 26, 1986, when Unit 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power generation facility experienced an explosion and meltdown. Ironically, the explosion was caused by a botched safety test.

The point of the test had been to see what would happen if the power plant lost its main electrical supply: Could spinning turbines generate enough power to run the coolant pumps until emergency backup diesel generators could kick in? The experiment had failed three times previously, but never as catastrophically as it did that night.

Before the meltdown, Soviet officials had bragged regularly about the safety of their nuclear power plants and disparaged those in the West.

Oops.  It transpires, dear reader, that the only thing more destructive than capitalist cost-cutting, which presented a few years earlier in the form of exploding Pintos, was communist cost-cutting.

The Soviet system put economic decisions in the hands of planners far removed from both the data people need to make decisions and the immediate consequences of their actions. Gosplan, the economic planning bureau, initially determined that nuclear power was unnecessary because the country had more than enough fossil fuels to produce electricity. When it became clear in the late 1960s that they had miscalculated, the energy planners rushed the development of nuclear power. In the process, they neglected to include the containment buildings used in the West, which are designed to prevent the escape of radioactive materials even during severe accidents.

Containment, you see, would have increased the costs of the plants by 25 percent to 30 percent. The "leaders of the Soviet energy sector faced a choice between disrupting the Party's five-year development plan if they built expensive nuclear facilities or abandoning the project altogether," a group of Russian researchers noted in 2025 (originally in Russian). "Priority was given to the solution that was safe for the officials, but which subsequently created a threat to people's lives." After the disaster, an IAEA engineer told the Los Angeles Times that if the Chernobyl reactor had been housed within a standard Western-style containment structure, "it probably would have made a huge difference." Even if an explosion breached a containment structure, most of the radioactive particles would nevertheless have been trapped.

The Soviet nuclear power industry was plagued by shoddy workmanship, bureaucratic infighting, and a shortage of trained personnel.

"Close enough for government work."  Unfortunately, clean nuclear power was collateral damage to the demonstration of the follies of communism.

IS ANOTHER ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ALGORITHM AT WORK?

Over the weekend  our page view counter rolled past eight million, and this week the counter has registered some three hundred thousand views and counting.  Most of the recent posts continue to register between fifty and seventy views, which has been our experience for several years.  I hope live readers are getting value for their money, and that the algorithms are better for having looked in.

WHAT'S YOUR ALTERNATIVE?

Earth Day always brings out the sort of people who would like to scold us for being prosperous.  Carbon Outfront! by Lloyd Alter identifies those things we most deserve to be spanked for.  "Our planetary boundaries are being breached by cars and cows."  The author confesses to "spitballing."  Read his conclusions though, and ask yourself whether he wants the ongoing energy crunch to continue or not.

I taught my students about planetary boundaries because I realized I was too carbon-brained and wasn’t giving them enough information about many of the other problems we face. But after a week of thinking about them, I realize how interrelated they all are, and they almost all come back to the problems caused by cars and cows, both of which are directly or indirectly products of the fossil fuel economy.

I know it is a simplistic view of things, but we may see it play out in real time if this stupid war continues and the cars have no fuel and the cows have no feed.

Then I suppose we'll all live like it's 1825.

GIANT ROLLING DUMPSTERS?

For years, railroading's gondola cars (on the railroad, pronounced gun-DOH-luh, GON-doh-la is a boat in Venice) came in forty foot varieties with or without drop bottoms, for stones or ores or coal, and a century ago the way for a consignee to empty one when dropping the bottom wasn't an issue was to hire a high school kid to shovel it out (!) and in longer varieties called "mill gondolas," which might or might not have had drop ends and sometimes hardware for handling long steel products.  Sometimes older gondolas would be relegated to hide service.  You wouldn't want to marshal them close to the caboose on a train, and pity the hobo who didn't see a pile of something geologic and thought that would be a convenient car to stow away in.

Of late, though, the gondolas sometimes look like this one, on the old Milwaukee Road at Sturtevant.  They're operated by Secure, a Canadian company, and, yes, they function as giant rolling dumpsters.

And yes, this mutation of gondolas has been under way for some time.  As power companies closed their coal-fired generating stations, a sizable fleet of bathtub gondolas, equipped with solid bottoms and rotary couplers in order to unload a train much faster than an army of high schoolers with shovels could do it, cascaded into railroad maintenance service as well as rolling bins that could carry more scrap bundles than your basic forty foot gon of days gone by.

NATURAL INTELLIGENCE PRECEDES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

Over the weekend, the Cold Spring Shops page view counter rolled over to eight million.  The seventh million rolled over in October of last year.  It's possible that the periodic spikes of views (a typical day racks up between two hundred and two thousand) into the tens of thousands are data centers combing the internet for information that artificial intelligence algorithms can masticate.

The world in which we live in which a great deal of the human anatomy, including but not limited to the circulatory, respiratory, and digestive systems, supplies resources to keep our brains functioning.  It's no surprise, dear reader, that artificial intelligence algorithms consume proportionately more resources for what might be suboptimal outcomes,  An algorithm is only as good as its programming and the inputs it receives.

I extend my thanks, once again, to the two hundred to two thousand real readers who look in each day, and I surely don't lack for things to carry on about.  There might be opportunities upcoming to carry about stuff not as directly influenced by the day's news.

REDISCOVERING AN IDEA.

In 1948, British astronomer Fred Hoyle, who might have been the Carl Sagan of that era, observed, “once a photograph of the Earth, taken from the outside, is available… a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.”  With Apollo VIII of Christmas 1968, such photographs were possible.

Yes, there are people who argue such images inspired the people who seek to protect the environment to greater activism, and yes, the first Earth Day was in 1970.

In Carrying the Fire, at page 470, Apollo XI command module pilot Michael Collins wrote,

I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of 100,000 miles their outlook could be fundamentally changed. Those all-important borders would be invisible, our noisy arguments silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified facade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or Communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied.

Artemis II pilot Victor Glover, now on his way back to the blue marble, echoed those earlier sentiments.

In all of this emptiness, this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe — you have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together. I think as we go into Easter Sunday thinking about all the cultures all around the world, whether you celebrate it or not, whether you believe in God or not, this is an opportunity for us to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing, and that we’ve got to get through this together.

The noisy arguments continue all the same, and getting through this "together" might be a forlorn hope, as neither Nature nor Nature's God has revealed that unified understanding, or even the outlines of that unified understanding.