After Christmas and a week without Internet access, service will resume shortly in the New Year.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Over on the right, in the "VIRGINIA-BASED PUBLICATIONS" category, you'll notice a new addition, Sic Semper Tyrannis. I was cued towards this site by John Behan's entry on the subject. "Sic Semper Tyrannis" (hereinafter "SST") is the motto of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and it's Latin for "Thus always to tyrants". The "thus" part of it refers to eitehr death or overthrow, not that those would be mutually exclusive things. People outside our beloved Commonwealth have probably heard it quoted as the words of John Wilkes Booth, who reportedly cried it out shortly after having assassinated Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater. Go figure, another actor sticking his nose in the political process for ill gain; I'm tempted to try and revoke his Virginia citizenship for that little stunt.

Two of the three authors at SST have chosen to use famous Virginians as their nom de cyber, with one using the name of "Lighthorse Harry". This was the nickname of Henry Lee, who earned it for his exploits in cavalry raids during the Revolutionary War. Lieutenant Colonel Lee also crafted the "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen" line about President Washington. Others may know him as the father of Virginia's most famous military man, Robert E. Lee.

The other fellow posts under the name of "Old Zach", which is short for Zachary Taylor. Mr. Taylor was born in Virginia and served as President of the United States from 1849 until 1850, dying in office.

Good luck to these new Virginia publications.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 12:49 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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1. Hallelujah! Yes, there's the birth of a certain Christ child to celebrate, but also, there's the publication of the first-ever Penn Central Railroad Historical Society calendar. I know what's going to be on my wall in the coming year. That, and the two Norfolk and Western Historical Society calendars for 2005. Hooray for calendar proliferation.

2. Living in Virginia can occasionally complicate finding Penn Central things, especially when there's a lack of local hobby shops. I had to be in the City of Richmond before I found a Penn Central boxcar, and I had to go over the border into North Carolina to find the next step in my ever-so-slight move towards having a model railroad collection: An Athearn HO-scale wide vision cabin painted and lettered for the Penn Central. The livery calls it an "N9", but the N9 series on the Penn Central (and later Conrail) were converted boxcars, so that's inaccurate. However, who cares? I'm not a rivet counter, and seven bucks for a caboose from one of my favorite fallen flags can't be passed up.

3. At the one local hobby shop I've got, I did manage to find a Norfolk Southern three-bay open hopper, complete with coal load. Now to find a Penn Central Alco C630 to pull this odd-looking train now assembled on a shelf over my computer. Er, those aren't cheap, are they?

Posted by: Country Pundit at 12:35 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Having finished Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords to my satisfaction, I can now return to the fun world of blogging.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 12:27 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I er, got Knights of the Old Republic II earlier today. That's where I've been. Dark Saaaaiiiiiiiiiide.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:58 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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As promised in an earlier post, the Democratic contenders for the Commonwealth's offices in 2005:

Governor: Tim Kaine is the ostensible front-runner. He previously served as mayor of Richmond, and now serves as Lieutenant Governor. The Virginia Public Access Project lists no other registered campaign committees.

Lieutenant Governor: As in the Republican line-up, there are four candidates. First (by virtue of alphabetical order) is Viola Baskerville. She is a sitting Delegate from the City of Richmond/Henrico County. Other than having heard the name, I can't say that I know anything about her; the site her name links to lists more information about her as a Delegate.

Then there's Senator Leslie Byrne. She has been in Virginia's Senate since 1999 and has also served in our Congressional delegation for a term, representing Virginia's Eleventh District. I don't have a map of our Congressional districts on hand, but I'm willing to bet that the Eleventh is somewhere near Falls Church, which is Northern Virginia.

Next up is Delegate J. Chapman Petersen. He represents the Thirty-seventh District in the House of Delegates, which is "the heart of Fairfax", according to him. According to the VPAP site, he led all candidates in fundraising by a substantial margin. I would, however, point out that these records apparently haven't been updated in a while, and to suggest him as the frontrunner on the basis of VPAP would be akin to calling a State for someone while single-digit percentages of precincts are reporting.

Last in this lineup is Senator Phillip Puckett. Senator Puckett represents what VPAP calls "far southwest Virginia". This is slang for "West of Charlottesville", so a bit more explanation is in order: Senator Puckett's district is in Russell County, which is, more or less, on the way to Scott County, from where Jerry Kilgore is from. His site mentions transportation issues as an important thing, but he's not a railroad man; "transportation issues" in the Commonwealth usually mean either more money for Northern Virginia's roads or something to do with U.S. Route 58. No such luck for Norfolk Southern.

Attorney General: Senator Creigh Deeds of Bath County is the first candidate from the Democrats. ("Creigh" is pronounced either 'Cray' like the computers or 'Cree', depending upon who you ask. Sources in the Senator's district indicate that the former pronunciation is accurate.) He leads rather well in fundraising over the next guy, Senator John Edwards of Roanoke. Edwards was the better man for the Democrat nomination for AG in 2001, but lost to the inept campaign of Donald McEachin. What that says, I don't know.

There you have it. Once again, the race for Lieutenant Governor is dominated by people from Northern and Central Virginia. However, the real race that matters, i.e. Attorney General, has two people from more or less the western end of Virginia. Although I hope both Senators Deeds and Edwards lose in the end, it is good to see somewhere west of Charlottesville producing candidates.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 04:35 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Jonah Goldberg is ticked, in a professional way, about a deafening silence that seems to erupt whenever The Corner wins something in blog categories. See here, here.

One of his many correspondents sends the following missive, reprinted below in its entirety:

Why don't hardcore bloggers consider The Corner a
blog? Well, ya'll are missing a couple of key
elements that separate you from the rest of the
blogosphere: a blogroll and links within posts to
other blogs.

Beyond occasional links to Glenn Reynolds, The Corner
writers rarely connect with the rest of the
blogosphere. You have no one to blame but yourselves
for this reputation.

The Great Rooster of Africa (i.e. Goldberg) responds in a manner that I can't quite read. I get the sense that, while he receives (in the manner of actually reading them) correspondent's conclusions, he does not concur. He also notes that the writer's second point is incorrect, and I wholeheartedly concur. Yours truly was the receipt of a Corner-based link, over the "Yankee Kathy" thing. Ms. Lopez reached from the top of the highest mountain down into the lowest valley, and boosted my traffic considerably; for this I am eternally grateful.¹ (Promised subscription to come once the current one runs out and my finances stabilize after the Christmas holidays. Let's go Red Sox!)

At this point, I must say that I respectfully depart from Mr. Goldberg's position, and say that I essentially believe the critique offered by his anonymous correspondent. I do not say that the critique offers objective reasons for "hating" The Corner, but rather that it offers a glimpse at the probable mindset of the so-called "hardcore" bloggers. I generally eschew any sort of "hardcore" label, whether it be for fandom of railroading, combat flight simulation, or blogging. The latter is, of course, concurrent with my general disdain for the notion that blogging represents some sort of "New Journalism" that will change the world.

Why am I so apathetic about it? Primarily because I've heard it all before. Having read Hunter S. Thompson's correspondence from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, I pick up on a lot of riffs from then that I hear now in fevered discussions of "the power of the blogosphere". HST (and by extension, Tom Wolfe) figured Freak Power/New Journalism would sweep things away and we'd have a new alignment of media. Thirty-five to forty years later, the hated Washington Post still survives and Thompson writes columns for ESPN.

National Review (and by extension its internet presence) doesn't need the approval of bloggers. Indeed, the bloggers should hope for a favorable mention from NR/NRO every so often, a little like something from the Pope thrown to the masses in a far-away diocese. After all, without National Review, these ardent back-bench tyes in the blog field would be discussing whether we should bankrupt America in 2005 to ensure that the Great Society stayed enshrined and the New Deal ensconced as the greatest ideal of American political action, or if we should wait until 2006 to do it. Similarly, I got this sense of the near-worship of President Ronald Reagan amongst big-name blog "conservatives", and apparently this must qualify them as authentic conservatives. It bemuses me to remember that without NR and its influence in the 1960s, there would have been no Goldwater '64 ticket, and without Goldwater '64 there could have been no Reagan '76 or Reagan '80.

Put bluntly, NR and its organs are probably above criticism from a bunch of blogger-come-latelies whose idea of a Kirk as a leadership figure is James Tiberius, not Russell. I'm struck by the role reversal here: For a bunch of bloggers to slate NR over the lack of a blogroll or enough link reciprocity (which was wrong, anyways) appears to be an anonymous industrial shortline serving a steel plant telling the Pennsylvania Railroad that, "You don't count; you're not up to our standards." Once you stop laughing, it's absolutely ridiculous.

What is a blog? It is, to paraphrase the Clinton '92 message, "The content, stupid!" It's not a blogroll or whether a particular blog satisfies some arcane standard of link reciprocity, but whether there's good content or not. The Corner is an adjunct to a conservative opinion leader, and yet still manages to steal the thunder of the so-called pajamahadeen. I bet it's outright jealousy, cloaked in opprobrium over the lack of a blogroll. How dare National Review trespass upon the turf of these amateurs, and take awards that should be had because I have a blogroll and Sitemeter and I'm a member of some blogging alliances and I have blogads and I'm on a first-name basis with Glenn, Virginia, Hugh, and all the others!

I'll steal from an old endorsement I read in a George Will column: "National Review, with all thy faults!"² These "hardcore" bloggers would do well to remember that, "If they can see so far, it is because they stand upon the shoulders of a giant." That giant is National Review.

UPDATE: Various others have responded to this, but it's not a big deal yet, according to Technorati. TacJammer has a dissenting opinion (from mine, that is), as does Dust in the Light. Alas. more...

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:19 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Superintendent of the Cold Spring Shops has mentioned (in a pleasant sort of laid-back way) additional funding, ostensibly to expand his motive power and railcar inventories.

If you've got any money that's not on its way to Virginians for Jerry Kilgore, then send it to him. Alternatively, figure out what gauge he models and then donate plenty of black-and-white locomotives, jade green boxcars, or perhaps TopGons. (Tuscan red or dark green locomotive enamel would probably be a good back-up choice if you're looking to send electric locomotives.)

Tee hee. And here he thought he'd get funding for another section of the Olympian Hiawatha.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 01:07 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Earlier tonight was the Jerry Kilgore campaign kickoff for Southwest Virginia. A source of mine has filed the following report:

"The General's speech was a solid event, attended by staunch Republicans who're usually present at the AG's events. The big money for Southwest Virginia was well represented, and the food was good as well.

"Kilgore went over some basic themes of his campaign, talking about Southwest Virginia values, including individual responsibility, faith and hard work. He made several references to his support for the culture of life, and he also cited Ronald Reagan as being one of the first politicians who inspired him into politics, way back about 1980.

"He equated the former mayor of Richmond to John Kerry, and he suggested that the Governor of Virginia should be like the CEO of the Commonwealth, a line probably inspired by George W. Bush. The standard message of less regulation was delivered, with an interesting twist: Kilgore stated that government should try to provide the landscape for the small business operators to succeed. I like that line; it's a good theme that ought to be a winner, whether various fanatics like that or not.

"All in all, the AG seemed poised, confident, and at ease in his folksy manner. It was a good appearance in front of the home crowd, and I think he'll be off to a good start."

There you have it, folks. As either I or various friends of the publication get things like this, I'll post 'em here. Go Jerry!

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Actually, I stole that line from John Ward, the long-time voice of the Tennessee Volunteer football broadcast team (he used to say, "It's football time in Tennessee!") so it's not original.

The Commonwealth of Virginia has the races for the top three Constitutional officers in the Commonwealth in off years, like 2005. Since most of the other States have declined to follow our lead, they are locked into a crowded media market, competing with a Presidential campaign for news attention. Too bad. A quick preview of the race(s):

Governor: The leading---and perhaps only---candidate for the Republican nomination (and subsequent election as) for Governor is current Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore. Mr. Kilgore is a good man, and I support him enthusiastically and without reservation. He has managed to be the only candidate who I've given financial contributions to in the last while, and I think he will make an excellent governor.

Lieutenant Governor: According to the Virginia Public Access Project, the lineup consists of Senator Bill Bolling of Hanover, Mr. Gil Davis (late of the Paula Jones litigation effort), Delegate Joe May of Loudon, and Mr. Sean Connaughton of Prince William County. I know nothing of these men (other than Mr. Davis, who I saw back during his abortive run for the Attorney General's nomination in the mid-1990s) so I will have to learn more about them in order to communicate clearly to you, the readership, about this race. Obviously, I have no endorsement as of yet.

Attorney General: There are two known candidates, a Mr. Steve Baril of Richmond, and Delegate Robert F. McDonnell of Virginia Beach. I don't know either of these men, but brief research indicates that I would probably be happy with either of them as the candidate. Mr. Baril has never held public office, and Delegate McDonnell (obviously) has.

That's your basic Republican electoral primer. If and when I understand more about the Democrats, I will pass along that information as well.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:37 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I'm watching Wheel of Fortune since I'm too lazy to change the channel after Brokaw's sign-off, and it appears that the Wheel producers consider Will Smith's The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as "Classic Television".

I'd been alive for quite some time when it debuted. and remember when Will Smith when he got his "Parents Just Don't Understand" hit. This aging thing, it is occasionally traumatic.

NB: "Classic" television is that which was either in black and white or very early on in color. By my standards, the later episodes of Bewitched don't yet qualify; not even Happy Days fits yet. The Patty Duke Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show are the kinds of things I think of for "classic" TV. Peh.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 06:58 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Tom Brokaw is gone from the NBC Nightly News, and I shall miss him. So far as I know, he's been the voice and face of the evening news in my household since the 1970s, and I can't think of any time that my parents, or me, went elsewhere.

Somehow, Brian Williams doesn't carry the well-worn gravitas of Brokaw, but I will probably stick with NBC anyways.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 06:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Usually, the major birthday this time of year is that of Jesus Christ. However, we'll get a head-start on that and celebrate the 26th birthday of an American soldier. Why is this utterly significant? The man has, through the grace of God and modern medicine, managed to survive against that bestial disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob, which goes after the brain like the Red Army after helpless civilians. His death was essentially predicted to be some time before Christmas 2003, but he has held on, thanks in part (perhaps) to a new drug therapy.

Jen Martinez is covering the story of Staff Sergeant James Alford, United States Army. Keep him and his family in your prayers, people. Nobody deserves to die this kind of death.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 05:47 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Washington, D.C. city council has voted 6-4 to approve public funding for a stadium to house the Washington Nationals once they transfer from Montreal and finish with their time in RFK Memorial Stadium.

Sayeth the Washington Post: "At the end of a seven-hour meeting, with [Mayor Anthony] Williams (D) watching in the packed hearing room, the council voted 6 to 4 to build the stadium along the Anacostia River near the Navy Yard and South Capitol Street. Three members, including Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D), abstained."

I'm told by a friend of mine who lives up that way that the area where this stadium would be built is essentially a slum, and that it'll be dangerous to go to games there. That would be unfortunate; one would think that if the Anacostia Yard is still open---apparently it is---the Navy presence would help keep the area from being too dangerous, but of course it's up to the individual ticket buyers.

If Mayor Williams wants people to come to the Nationals' new park---sure to be named something stupid like Prilosec Field---then perhaps he ought to make sure that the D.C. police have a strong presence in the area before, during, and after construction. This would of course entail arresting malingerers and other near-criminal types, so maybe that's asking too much.

At any rate, the Post article indicates that there's a fight going on over the whole thing in the D.C. council, and that is, as usual, to be expected. At any rate, congratulations to the franchise.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 04:36 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The latest poll of sci-fi babes is up over at TexasBestGrok. I recommend a vote for Kirstie Alley's Lieutenant Saavik from The Wrath of Khan as the best-looking Vulcan babe.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 04:27 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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01 December 1959: The modern merger era begins with the absorption of the Virginian Railway into the Norfolk and Western Railway. ¹

The Virginian spanned approximately 600 route miles in West Virginia and Virginia, with its western terminus at Deepwater Bridge connecting it to the New York Central, and its eastern terminus being the coal docks at Sewalls Point. The latter was, of course, in direct competition with the previously-established (and Pennsylvania Railroad-affiliated) Norfolk and Western. The Virginian, headquartered in Victoria, also had connections with the Chesapeake & Ohio, the Atlantic Coast Line, the Southern Railway, and the Seaboard Air Line; most of these connections were made in the central and eastern parts of Virginia.

The Virginian is notable for, among other things, its motive power choices. It was one of the railways that embraced the 2-8-4 Berkshire wheel arrangement, which it designated class "BA".² More interestingly, the Virginian strung catenary over its 134 route miles from Mullens, WV, to Roanoke. This allowed for three really interesting types of electric locomotives, some of which soldiered on into the 1980s.

The first, type EL-3A, consisted of three locomotives connected by drawbars (changeable to couplers for single-unit operation) and with each locomotive riding on a 1-B-B-1 wheel arrangement. A complete EL-3A had 7125 horsepower, a continuous tractive effort of 231,000 pounds, and weighed over 1.28 million pounds.

The nifty thing about them was the fact that they were siderod equipped, and thus were imposing monsters, toting the freakish look of a boxcab combined with some of the most visible moving parts on a steam locomotive. Imagine, if you will, a shoe box with a few windows cut in it. Stick a bunch of wheels (eight pairs, to be exact) under it and put a pantograph on top of the box. There, you've your basic boxcab electric locomotive. Now, walk over to the nearest large-scale steam locomotive. See the drive rods on the thing? (They're the big long pieces of metal connecting the driving wheels. Look in the middle of the wheels.) Take them off, and attach them your electric boxcab. Do this two more times, and you've got an EL-3A.

When you're done, add to it the ominous electrical hum that would have been emitted from one of these things at speed, and you've got a recipe for a fearsome looking monster purring downgrade with a load of coal, lurching out of the West Virginia mountains as if it were Dr. Frankenstein's latest creation.

The EL-3As entered service in 1925, and the last was retired by February 1960' none survive today.

The next nifty Virginian electric was the EL-2B, road numbers 125-128. This hulking beast looked approximately like a pair of Fairbanks-Morse car body diesels matched rear to rear, with a pantograph added. Born in the Erie, Pennsylvania shops of General Electric, these started arriving on the property in early 1948. They had 6800 horsepower, and weighed just over one million pounds. Geared for maximum tractive effort, these locomotives had a top speed of 50 MPH. As with the EL-3A, none of the EL-2Bs survive today.

The last Virginian electric was the EL-C, VGN road numbers 130-141. These were, approximately, the little brothers of the Pennsylvania Railroad's E44 electrics, and looked like a brick on wheels. (Somewhere, railroad employees actually referred to either the EL-C or the E44 as a 'brick'. Go figure.) These units were geared for 65MPH operation, weighed 394,000 pounds, and often were operated rear to rear. They arrived on the Virginian in late 1956 and early 1957; all would be sold to the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad in October 1963. They served on the New Haven until its forcible inclusion in the Penn Central Railroad as of early 1969. All would thus be around for eventual inclusion into Conrail in April 1976, and finished their lives when Conrail abandoned electrified freight operations.

Two survive, one in the Northeast and one at Roanoke's Virginia Museum of Transportation.

An excellent article on the Virginian Railway can be found here. more...

Posted by: Country Pundit at 01:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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