TAIL TRACK.

Barring signal troubles, links to any posts of substance ought to work.

BELATED RAILROAD READING.

Eight years ago, the Independent Institute editorial staff invited me to review Randal O'Toole's Romance of the Rails: Why the Passenger Trains We Love Are Not the Transportation We Need, which I subsequenty did, as well as offer a compare-and-contrast with what the ferroequinologist press, who are more favorably disposed toward Amtrak and the local Commuter Rail or Rapid Transit operations than policy wonks with libertarian leanings.

I recently discovered David Henderson's review of Romance for Econlib from seven years ago.  "O’Toole, a long-time fan of railroads, puts his fandom aside and shows what a disaster government subsidies to, and regulations of, rail transportation have been."

Mr Henderson's summation:

On his last page, O’Toole nicely sums up his message: “[N]ew transportation technologies have replaced trains and streetcars. Planes are faster and less expensive for long distances; cars and buses are more convenient for short distances; and there is no midrange distance at which passenger rail has an advantage over both cars and planes.”

I submit that we cannot impound "cars and buses are more convenient" in ceteris paribus, not when the Republican candidate to be governor of Wisconsin is slagging on the Democrat candidate for advocating toll roads.  Recall, dear reader, that the Cold Spring Shops position on "crumbling infrastructure" is "Why should road socialism be any different from any other form of socialism?"

Our position on transportation policy remains conducting conversation about transportation policy on the merits of the modes, rather than on the ideology of the advocates.

LEAVING UNFREE ILLINOIS?

An Independent article reports, "More Illinois counties ready to vote on leaving the state."  That's going to bring up the usual arguments about whether the economic activity in Chicagoland supports whatever state services are available downstate.

Momentum is building in Illinois to form a new state, with more counties ready to vote on leaving because of Chicago’s influence.

Eleven counties are set to vote on non-binding referenda this year to secede from Cook County. If all 11 vote to leave they would join 33 counties that have already approved similar measures.

Cook County is home to Chicago, but people in the state and nation have criticized it for its crime rate, cost of living, Democratic leadership and oversized influence on state politics.

It's not helping matters that a transportation aid bill from last year diverted funds from rural road repairs to shoring up Metra and the Chicago Transit Authority.

The problem advocates of an intrastate separation face is that the Combine's policies, which led the Cato Institute to rank the state as 39th freest, with the no-longer-as-portly governor, J. B. "Ribs" Pritzker earning a D grade at the same rank, have already driven many of the people who would be likely to support that separation out of the state, and the Combine is likely to accumulate enough votes from the residual coalition of hipsters and welfare recipients to continue in service in Springfield and the Illinois delegation to the Federal Capital.

According to Cato, Illinois ranks dead last in occupational freedom and 47th in firearm freedom.

IF YOU CAN TRADE IT, YOU CAN ALLOCATE IT EFFICIENTLY.

The University of Chicago has this reputation as the place fun goes to die.  That might be harsh.

On Monday, a group of students from the University of Chicago stood outside the Chicago Mercantile Exchange—one of the world's largest and most diverse derivatives marketplaces—and called for the repeal of an obscure 1958 law that bans onions as futures products traded on U.S. exchanges.

Attracting an audience with a humorous jingle and amusing signs that included "Onions Deserve a Future," "Honk If You Want Free Onions," "Hot Girls Hedge Onions," and "Free Markets Feed Families," the student group, named For Our Futures, has a simple platform: a repeal of the 1958 Onion Futures Act, which prohibits anyone from trading in onion futures on commodity exchanges. (The law was amended in 2010 to ban motion picture box office receipts from being traded on commodity exchanges.) The viral campaign drew enough attention that Mike Selig—chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and a proponent of expanding the list of commodities traded on futures markets—was asked about the law in a media appearance.

American farmers produce about 6.75 billion pounds of onions a year, according to the National Onion Association, an industry trade group. While peers who grow cotton, wheat, corn, and soybeans can hedge against price swings by trading futures contracts, onion farmers have no such recourse under federal law. But, as the Agriculture Department's daily National Potato and Onion Report shows, onion prices are highly volatile and subject to wild swings, making them an ideal market for futures trading.

Futures markets are not well understood by people who haven't studied economics, and the prohibition of onion futures contracts has not protected cooks and diners from the sort of price volatility the economically ignorant often associate with futures contracts.

Maybe there's a business opportunity for Sophie Cunningham?

Prices fluctuate to allocate demand.  That's something Our Intellectual Betters often lose sight of.

A protest over onions sounds absurd, but it's a viral reminder to others in that age cohort of how far governments can go when given the slightest leeway to regulate an industry.

Instead of relying on outdated price points when planning future harvests, American onion producers could use resources like futures contracts that offer real-time market signals. All that would require—as the college kids state—is for federal lawmakers to "let the free market reign supreme."

Indeed.  Arbitrage opportunities exist, whether organized futures markets exist or not.

CLEARING THE CUCKOOS OUT OF THE ACADEMIC NEST.

The so-called area studies departments, or critical studies centers, if you will, have long treated interesting working hypotheses as Articles of Faith.  "The fundamental problem confronting the 'studies' departments is that a lot of what passes as critical theory rests either on untestable priors, or is normative per se.  Don't say I didn't warn you."

It has long been my position that much of the work done in ethnic studies or critical theory can be handled, perhaps more properly, in existing academic departments, whether sociology or anthropology or English, and perhaps the presence of more conventional scholars might get the True Believers to offer better arguments.

MAKING A JOYFUL NOISE.

The World Series is not yet decided.  We know who the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra roots for.

This rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra at the Bradley Symphony Center 👏 📹: milwsymphorch / IG https://t.co/Ts3doIig2y

— MLB (@MLB) October 25, 2026

Go Brewers.

YOU'RE AN INTERIM COACH WHETHER THE JOB TITLE SAYS "INTERIM" OR NOT.

Fourteen years ago, North Carolina State recruited Northern Illinois head football coach Dave Doeren right in the middle of Northern Illinois earning an invitation to play in the Orange Bowl.  "North Carolina State created the vacancy late last week, under circumstances that prompted Jane Shaw at Phi Beta Cons [the link is long dead — Ed.] to make invidious comparisons between the sacking of coaches and the sacking, or not, of professors."

North Carolina State University just fired its football coach. Tom O’Brien had a winning record over six seasons (but not in the school’s conference, the ACC). He had taken the team to four bowl games, and his team had beaten its chief rival, UNC–Chapel Hill, five times. But the athletic director, Debbie Yow, wants more “aggressive” recruiting. As one fan said, O’Brien was “pretty good,” just not good enough.

Nothing changes in Raleigh.  "NC State's McMurray Family Director of Athletics Boo Corrigan has announced that Wolfpack head football coach Dave Doeren has been relieved of his duties effective immediately."

REPLAY REVIEW MAKES THE REFEREEING WORSE.

Red State's Kyle Becker calls attention.  "Something Feels Very 'Wrong' About the NFL. Fans Are Noticing."

At one point, if you looked up at the myriad of big screen television sets one could see what can only be described as a herd of zebras.

On every set, a referee, calling a holding penalty on this play, but not on the fifty plays before where the exact same thing happened.

Whether or not you subscribe to the theory that sports gambling is "ruining" the sport, it has become undeniable that NFL games are being decided as much by the referees as the players.

If football is a game of inches, then you could say that is now 13.5". That is the length of an official NFL penalty flag.

The impossible has happened: NFL officiating is getting worse. A recent analysis by Warren Sharp drives home that this is not your typical season for bad officiating.

During the corona shutdowns, Dave Barry anticipated the phenomenon.  “We’re thinking of just showing 60 minutes of referees throwing penalty flags and peering at replay monitors.”  That was supposed to be a humor columnist calling attention to a bad situation in a humorous way.

The problem is the replay technology.  "Expect the officials to do their job, and they'll likely do a better job than they do now, when they can make mistakes and have them corrected by Mission Control."  There's less reason for a professional to do a professional job when there's a second-guesser ready to guess.  "What incentive, other than pride, does an official have to get a close call right as the half or the game ends, when there's always the eye in the sky to issue the corrections?"

PASSING THE BATON.

The current standard for collegiate or professional championships won in the Great State of Wisconsin is the nine national titles garnered by Wisconsin's women's hockey team.  More than a few of those players also won Olympic gold (Team U.S.A.) or silver (Team Canada) in the days before pitchers and catchers reported.

Thus, it is fitting and proper for representatives of the Wisconsin skaters to participate in the festivities opening the World Series in Milwaukee.

Wisconsin's social media team posted that picture without a caption.

John Hinderaker liked Mickey Guyton's rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner.

He was also impressed with players actually lining up for the Anthem, but less impressed with replay review.  Perhaps we'll take those things up another day.

Milwaukee Brewers from the 1982 World Series, when the Brewers were an American League team, were on hand to throw out the first pitch.  Robin Yount, who Christian Yelich acknowledged as the team's de facto initial captain, honored longtime play-by-play announcer Bob Uecker in his choice of attire.

The Brewers held serve at home.  Keep in mind, dear reader, that the batters listed toward the bottom of the lineup card are major league baseball players, and they can hit for power accordingly.

Game Three starts in about ninety minutes in St. Petersburg.

GIVE EMERGENCE A CHANCE.

As pro baseball's regular season wound down, Matt "Dean Dad" Reed has a schadenfreudelicious moment.

I don’t quote Hegel often, but lately I’ve been thinking about his idea of the “cunning of history.” It’s his term for the times when circumstances conspire to get the outcome they want, against the intentions of actual actors. History seems particularly cunning lately.

There’s no way to note this without seeming insensitive, but the war on Iran has done quite a bit to encourage the shift to electric vehicles and hybrids. The longer that the price of gas is 50 percent or more higher than it was before the war, the more appealing it becomes to find ways to reduce or eliminate the use of gas. And that’s to say nothing of diesel, where the increases have been even worse, apparently to the benefit of railroads.

Hegel would have diagnosed the moment. The current administration has made no secret of its fealty to fossil fuels, but its foreign policy is creating market incentives to move away from them. And it’s easier to repeal a tax credit than it is to end a war. History has conspired to turn the administration’s moves against itself.

Of course, for anyone not blinded by ideology or tribal loyalty, that consequence of the war was utterly foreseeable.

Let's leave aside for the moment that North American railroads burn a lot of diesel: perhaps what he was getting at is they can roll more ton miles with a gallon of diesel than a big rig on the road, and we'll not call attention to the way he overlooked the corrupt bargain that kept Hormuz open (How do we add to that accounting the expense of letting the mullahs' tyranny over Iranians and their funding of proxies so that they look the other way while infidel oil transits the strait?) nor shall we make an issue of the curious overlap between people who want to keep fighting to the last Ukrainian for regime change in Russia while complaining about removing the mullahs after fifty years of their nonsense nor shall we call attention to the difficulty refining crude into diesel fuel when such refineries are thin on the ground in the United States, particularly on the Pacific coast.

THE FINAL SUMMIT.

Steve Lee, who managed the Union Pacific steam program until 2010, has departed this life.

A Kentucky native, Lee began his railroading career with the Illinois Central in 1972 and later served as a trainmaster and road foreman for the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific. As the Rock Island faced bankruptcy, Lee became the division road foreman for UP out of Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1980. He took charge of UP’s Heritage Fleet in 1989, overseeing 4-8-4 “FEF-3” 844 and 4-6-6-4 “Challenger” 3985 along with the railroad’s vintage diesels and passenger cars. He led the program until his retirement in 2010.

Union Pacific's decision to bring a Big Boy out of retirement and donate 3985 for preservation came later.  Union Pacific's steam program's success during the Steve Lee years undoubtedly contributed to headquarters opting to restore a Big Boy to service.

Lee was born Aug. 2, 1950, in the small north-central Kentucky town of Vine Grove, not far from Fort Knox. His hometown is located on the former Illinois Central line from Louisville to Paducah, now part of the Paducah & Louisville regional railroad. Lee hired on with the IC in 1972 and later went on to become a trainmaster and road foreman for the Rock Island. Around the time of the Rock’s demise in 1980 he landed a job with Union Pacific as a division road foreman at Cheyenne.

The spotlight began to shine on Lee in 1989 when UP put him in charge of its Heritage Fleet, based at the Cheyenne shops complex. The fleet included Nos. 844 and 3985, both of which were already operational, as well as the railroad’s extensive roster of other vintage steam and diesel locomotives and passenger cars.

Overseeing a Cheyenne crew that included full-time employees and volunteers, Lee took UP’s steam program and its locomotives far and wide, staging a number of high-profile events that included running 844 and 3985 to Railfair events at the California State Railroad Museum in 1991 and 1999, bringing 844 (still numbered 8444) to the 50th-anniversary celebration of Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal in May 1989, and taking 3985 to Chicago in 1993 for the National Railway Historical Society’s convention.

In the early days of double-stack intermodal trains, Union Pacific put 3985 on the head pin of an American President Lines train, without any diesel assistance.  The year of Mr Lee's retirement, Union Pacific put 3985 on the head pin of Ringling Barnum's Blue Unit.

Children of all ages still flock to trackside when 844 or 4014 are at work.  R.I.P.

NOTICE OF DISCONTINUANCE.

Chicago opinion columnist John Kass calls it a career.

It’s time for me to wind down the website. Past time. I held on too long because it had cost me too much in pain and psychic blood at the hands of the jacobin newsroom union that destroyed the once-great Chicago newspaper that I loved. And I loved it for those decades and decades.

But I’ve run my race. Now it is time for me to go. Past time. I didn’t want to consider it once. I was afraid. I wouldn’t even dare brush up against it.

Especially when clinging  rather desperately to some old man dreams of myself as Laertes in his garden, an old man still hoping  to prove his worth as the warrior he once had been, still insisting he had spears left to throw.

But I’m old now. There are no spears.  Five strokes in three years convinced me. After that wonderful Indian Summer that we just had, the sky grew cold and  I finally came face to face with it: Betty explained the math. Five strokes in three years, she said, And you can still speak, you can still read and use a search engine, you can read Victor Davis Hanson and Plato, you can still discuss the great ideas.

But another stroke? I didn’t need any further convincing. I couldn’t contemplate the alternatives.

He took what they dished out, and he did it his way.

Over the years, Mr Kass took on the Combine, the chumbolones of Chicago's Democrat machine, correctly noted the folly of using tax money for public radio, and in many ways continued the combination of sass and wit of Mike Royko.  Readers are suggesting he bestow one more Golden Moutza to close out the year.

MODEL RAILROAD SEASON GETS INTO FULL SWING.

The ancient Saginaw cast-bronze Consolidation goes on the road.

The battery in the locomotive held up pretty well classifying cars at the west yard in Marquette, Iowa.  The battery in the hand controller continues to be a constraint on operating during protracted sessions, particularly if there's a lot of switching.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Baptist Baseball Fans Torn Between Rooting For Team Named After Devil Or Team Named After Beer.

Friday is for fish fries in Wisconsin.  Just spitballin'.

Between the World Series and a communications upgrade at Cold Spring Shops (internet connected to the fiber backbone, landline phone number migrated to a mobile, old emergency mobile to be discontinued at the end of October) this compilation of Friday short takes is another emergency clearance of bookmarks.  Longer-form essays are likely to resume sometime next week.

HIGHER EDUCATION, PERSISTING IN MAKING THINGS MORE DIFFICULT THAN NECESSARY.

A week ago, the house organ for all wokeness, all the time, offered the worst deflection of all time from the professors' trade union.  "The American Association of University Professors president told the Commission on Colleges and Universities that institutions shouldn’t 'be expected to prioritize intellectual pluralism on settled scholarly questions.'"

LEADING OFF, DONALD BOUDREAUX.

There have been a few distractions at Cold Spring Shops headquarters, and in that spirit we'll put in a pinch hitter with Some Links.  A few of the linked posts over there are on the line-up of topics to be dealt with later.  For now, hop on over there, read and understand them, and Go Brewers.

IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE WEATHER, WAIT.

A week ago Monday, record high temperatures recorded at Cold Spring Shops headquarters.  By Friday, there were frost and freeze warnings posted, and frost observed on the house tops several times over the weekend.

The fall harvest of hot peppers is in, ahead of the frost.  (The plants, in grow boxes on the deck, are still alive.)

Two kinds of habaneros, ghost, Carolina reaper.  That's enough for the winter.  A few of them went into the salsa.

Yes, I repurpose commercial salsa jars and lids, and once the jars cool, they go into the refrigerator.  Should make for good snacking during football and hockey season.

HOW DARE THEY CRY WITH THEIR MOUTHS FULL?

This morning, James Joyner with Outside the Beltway characteristically quoted at length from the usual coastal establishmentarian sources covering the latest French call for a visit from the Prussians and then posed a question or two.

While immigration is a longstanding target of right-wing populists, with the exception of Italy, none of these countries experienced a significant influx of refugees from the Syrian civil war. France, of course, has long had a large population of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa, resulting from its colonial policies.

The protests continue to baffle me. All of these countries have considerably more generous social welfare programs—from health care to education subsidies to unemployment benefits to childcare support to retirement pensions—than the United States. Most of them have more representative political systems, allowing niche parties to gain representation in the legislature. The justification for rioting in the streets is hard to fathom.

The sarcasm is strong in this one.  The previous day, he summarized a roundup of quotes from the same sort of sources thus:

Politicians are loath to tell voters things they don’t want to hear. Telling them that they can have all sorts of wonderful things and someone else will pay for them is a surefire crowd-pleaser.

And that’s just when the penalty for telling them the truth is that they’ll vote for the demagogue. Add to that a political culture where they’ll riot in the streets for weeks on end, and you get, well, France.

Perhaps, in time, the proprietors of Outside the Beltway will figure out that no matter the institutional arrangements, governance, in addition to being hard, ought be attempted sparingly.

THE BETTER ORGANIZATION WILL PREVAIL IRRESPECTIVE OF OTHER INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS.

That's the title of a post from a summer ago, when the Milwaukee Brewers swept the Dodgers during regular season play, and Reason's Jason Russell, contemplating some sort of job action in organized baseball, engages the argument in "MLB's Salary Cap Fight Isn't About Competitive Balance, It's About Limiting Labor Costs."

In 2025, baseball fans wanting to avoid a lockout, a salary cap, or both, were rooting for the small market, small payroll Milwaukee Brewers to beat the goliath Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series (NLCS). The Brewers got swept. Now it's 2026, and guess what? Baseball fans wanting to avoid a lockout, a salary cap, or both, are rooting for the small market, small payroll Brewers to beat the goliath Dodgers in the NLCS. (At least the Brewers aren't getting swept this time!)

But what if none of that matters at all to the salary cap fight?

A small market World Series victory for the Brewers (19th in MLB payroll), the Tampa Bay Rays (28th), or, yuck, the Cleveland Guardians (30th) helps boost the theoretical argument that MLB doesn't need a salary cap for small market teams to succeed. But labor negotiations are not decided by debate club rules—you don't win with a better policy argument. It's all about the power dynamics and leverage of what is essentially a business negotiation between employees and employers. The policy argument might matter to public opinion, but it makes hardly any difference to leverage.

Competitive balance may not matter to the owners at all (in fact, some studies have found that salary caps don't create more balance, but revenue sharing does). The owners are almost certainly focused on keeping down their labor costs. A salary cap would likely give an immediate boost to team values—when Formula 1 teams recently agreed to a broad cap on their expenses, valuations shot up.

Tampa Bay will play the first two games of the World Series in Milwaukee, after Milwaukee returned the favor to the Dodgers.  The scholarly findings don't surprise me: a salary cap constrains the bidding for a productive resource, the players, and ceteris paribus the residual claimant, the owner, stands to do better; on the other hand, revenue sharing changes the bidding thinking of an owner, who now bids against other owners whose budget constraints might have been loosened.

I KNEW SOMEBODY WOULD GO THERE.

Somebody did.  "Brewers Playoff Hero Jake Bauers Makes Accidental Case for Medicare for All."

There's nothing like a Common Dreams contributor to turn a feel-good story about a nearly accidental most valuable player in the league championship series into tendentious leftist propaganda.

While generating headlines throughout the pennant race due to his outstanding hitting and field play, Bauers journey to the top of Major League Baseball has Cinderella elements. Just two years ago, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Bauers was ready to retire from the sport’s highest level.

“He had been playing professional baseball since he was just 17, spending more than a decade bouncing across seven different organizations with little success,” the paper reported. “After batting .199 for the Milwaukee Brewers in 2024, he was frustrated, burned out, and ready to move on.”

Life outside baseball intervened, but in a way familiar to millions of American families, not just pro athletes who can earn millions in lucrative contracts and endorsement deals.

“Bauers’ wife, Lauren, learned she was pregnant with the couple’s second child,” the WSJ explained. “Suddenly, Jake’s plan to become a stay-at-home dad while Lauren returned to her teaching job no longer seemed viable. They needed health insurance—so Bauers begrudgingly decided to give his floundering athletic career one last chance.”

It's not as though a journeyman player who has been in the Cleveland and Tampa Bay organizations as well as with the Brewers has the lucrative contracts or endorsement deals of a Shohei Ohtani or Francisco Lindor.  And didn't the so-called Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act obligate school districts to provide health insurance coverage, and didn't the triumphantly-titled Family and Medical Leave Act ensure maternity leaves?

LET THE THING BE PRESSED.

According to Curt of Flopping Aces, "Iran Is Losing Its Missiles, Its Money, and Its Nerve … And the World Is Already Planning What Comes Next."  The opening paragraphs suggested that fixed fortifications remain monuments to the stupidity of mankind.

The Islamic Republic’s president has admitted that 1,500 personnel stationed at its missile launchers were killed, confirming devastating losses inside the regime’s most important military force.

Masoud Pezeshkian said some of those personnel had remained inside launcher shelters for months without returning home. He intended to praise their sacrifice and shame what he called “freeloaders” in society.

These were not ordinary infantry losses. Personnel stationed at ballistic-missile launchers include crews trained to transport, erect, prepare, fuel, arm and fire the weapons that form the backbone of the regime’s conventional deterrence.

They also coordinate targeting data, prepare launch sites, operate inside underground missile facilities, conceal equipment and relocate mobile launchers before they can be detected and destroyed.

Those skills take time to develop. Missiles and damaged vehicles can eventually be replaced. Experienced crews capable of operating them under attack cannot be regenerated quickly.

The admission also reveals the effectiveness of American and Israeli intelligence. Mobile launchers are designed to disperse, hide and move rapidly. Underground “missile cities” were presented as nearly untouchable. Losing 1,500 personnel around launcher operations indicates that launch sites, shelters or crews preparing to fire were repeatedly located and struck.

Pezeshkian’s description of personnel remaining underground for months exposes the operational strain. Crews were living under constant threat, with limited rotation and little confidence that leaving their shelters was safe.

That helps explain why the Islamic Republic’s launch tempo declined as the conflict continued. The regime was not merely consuming missile stocks. Its launch infrastructure and the trained personnel needed to operate it were being depleted.

The Islamic Republic has spent decades presenting its missile force as the untouchable foundation of regional deterrence. Pezeshkian has now provided an official number showing that the force was penetrated and suffered heavy specialized losses.

He intended to deliver a speech about sacrifice and unity. He instead admitted how deeply the war damaged the military capability the regime depends on most.

Good.

THANKS YET ANOTHER MILLION.

Over the weekend, the Blogger visit counter ticked past sixteen million.  The view counts for individual posts showed enhanced interest in a few musings late in the previous week.

Whatever your motivation is for looking in, and whether you are carbon-based or silicon-based or a Dodger fan frustrated with runners left on base, thank you for your continued interest.

Five business days for business, then the World Series begins.

MAKING A JOYFUL NOISE.

A carillon is a challenging instrument to play, as the performer is activating armstrong levers to ring the bells.  None-the-less, Marquette carillonneur Mark Konewko is up to the occasion,  getting into the post-season spirit with Marquette University’s carillon bells.

Let Roll Out the Barrel and Take Me Out to the Ball-Game ring out.

SOUND UP! Bells atop Marquette University tower play "Roll Out the Barre... https://t.co/3vd5nnMwfL via @YouTube

— Stephen Karlson (@StephenKarlson) October 16, 2026

Next week Friday and Saturday,  Brewer Nation is at the World Series.

YE WHO NOW WILL BLESS THE POOR, SHALL YOURSELF FIND BLESSING.

The Holiday Trains that used to run under Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern auspices continue this Festive Season, with the Canadian and United States trains covering Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern metals.  Scroll down for a list of performers.

The United States train will make half-hour long performances at Pingree Grove, 9 am and Byron, noon of the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, 24 November, on their way to Zwolle, Louisiana, covering territory Kansas City Southern's train used to serve.  The stock then returns to Chicago to wind up a little bit south of Saskatoon, with a 5.15 pm call at Gurnee and a 7 pm performance at Sturtevant on Tuesday, 8 December.

These trains run to provide entertainment and an opportunity to make cash or in-kind contributions, to the local food banks along the Holiday Train's routes, and to the Salvation Army where the Holiday Express calls.

Mark your calendars and make a note in your shopping list.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The World Series field is taking shape.  No Braves.  No Dodgers.  No Yankees.  No Red Sox.  Hey, Chicago, whaddaya say?  No White Sox.  No Cubs, no.  What the heck is a uniqlo, anyway?

The entire three-peat dream was built on the idea that this rotation was unbeatable in October. In 48 hours, Milwaukee solved it.  "They may have a bunch of Hall of Famers, but we've got a bunch of gamers.  And the gamers won this week."

The following meme is not authorized by the Milwaukee Brewers or any sports broadcasting outlet.

The compilation of pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes is a way of clearing out assorted bookmark entries.  I do not intend to resume weekly Friday short takes.  By all means follow the links.

CURMUDGEON CALL.

"Dodgers player says MLB broadcasts are airing 'soft porn ads'."  He's not referring to Garrett Mitchell home runs.

In a social media post, Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Alex Call said Major League Baseball playoffs broadcasts have featured "soft porn ads" and that "parents shouldn't have to worry about this."

Call is not on the Dodgers' active roster for the NL Championship Series – but is with the team – and posted on X about how his son wanted to watch a game with him and that the commercials left him trying to "justify ... half-naked women" on his screen.

Advertisements featuring Megan Fox and Sydney Sweeney have been in heavy rotation during this year's playoff broadcasts across multiple platforms.

I wonder if the accompanying Sydney Sweeney photograph is on a Los Angeles skyscraper.

IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE DIFFICULT.

Only yesterday, I offered a suggestion.  "All that might be necessary is for scholars who work in or teach critical studies to treat its core premises as assumptions leading to testable propositions rather than as tight priors."