The "little bit sexy" Paula Zahn has a CNN special tonight asking, "Hip-Hop: Art or Poison?

They're running a poll on her program's website; "poison" was winning around 2:1 when I cast my vote. I said "poison", natch.

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1531 - I loathe Darrell Waltrip's commentary style.

1539 - Hah, a funny Budweiser commercial. Too bad it's followed by the Chevrolet hi-railer ad, mixed with that annoying Mellencamp song.

1548 - There goes Boris Said. I generally have nothing against the road racers, so his incident is regrettable.

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Augh, kill me now. Kelly Clarkson is ugly, tubby, and annoying. She is also devoid of musical talent in my opinion and contrary to the opinion of the voting public for Fox's talent search.

I'm reasonably certain that Formula 1 doesn't waste time with such worthless displays of "entertainment". I'd be interested in finding out how Speed manages to avoid this problem; perhaps because the F1 broadcasts are an FIA world feed.

I wonder what the cost of a ticket would be if I just wanted a seat to watch the racing, and not any of the other garbage that keeps getting added on to a NASCAR Nextel Cup race. It is a race; the attraction of a race is enough in and of itself---men and machines pitting themselves and their strategies against each other. If you need more than that to enjoy the race, then go home and watch the NBA.

Oh, and I absolutely hate the Chevrolet Presidents' Day ads. Hip-hop renditions of "Ruffles & Flourishes" should be banned.

EDIT: The only way that the command to start engines should be given is as if you were Michael Ironside in Top Gun. Mr. Cage, you fail miserably.

EDIT: The Chevrolet railroad commercial fails. That being said, I'm glad that someone's giving a nod to our railroad industry. Too bad GM sold off its Electro-Motive Division, so they don't actually make diesel-electric locomotives anymore.

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Aficionados of Northeastern railroading are probably familiar with the Lehigh & New England Railroad. It was the second big Northeastern railroad to go out of business, thus serving as a canary in the mineshaft for the problems that would come to a head in the early 1970s with the Penn Central and almost every other railroad up there.

The L&NE Railroad went into the history books on 31 October 1961, but was resurrected, sort of, the following day by the Central Railroad of New Jersey, which continued operations on parts of the line it deemed profitable as the Lehigh & New England Railway. This isn't to say that the L&NERR died as a bankrupt ruin in the manner of the New Haven or the Penn Central. No, it was sent into history by its corporate parent, the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company. The LC&N was an anthracite mining concern dealing in the particular type of coal found in Pennsylvania that burned cleaner than other types, such as bituminous.¹

The LC&N took a look at the declining anthracite market---replaced in its home-heating use by oil---in the late 1950s and decided to cut its losses before they happened. The L&NE's other major customer, the cement industry, was switching over to trucks because of modal efficiencies that the railroads were incapable of matching at the time. I had read somewhere that the parent, known as the "Old Company", went into oblivion not too long after its railroad. The end, right? Wrong.

While researching the L&NE recently, I decided to look up its parent, and lo, I found the website of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company. Surprised, I went there expecting a historical thing. Boy, was I wrong! The LC&N, reformed in 1989 after a period of 24 years, still operates its anthracite mines in Pennsylvania.

No word on whether they'll be re-establishing in-house rail service . I think I'd like them better if they put the L&NE herald on their trucks and other equipment.

---
¹ Clean enough that the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western sent its mascot, Phoebe Snow, forth to proclaim that she could wear white upon the Road of Anthracite and not get filthy. I'm told that it was the fuel of choice for vessels seeking to evade the United States Navy's blockade of the Confederate States of America's ports during the Late Unpleasantness, because when you mixed anthracite's low-visibility smoke with a low-slung hull and a low-visibility paint scheme, the USN might not see your vessel until you were out of position for them to effect an intercept.

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Having now viewed Senator John S. McCain, III's exploratory committee website, I am impressed with its visual appearance. It ain't quite Raymond Loewy, Henry Dreyfuss, or even Raymond Patten, but it is sleek and stylish, in an understated way. I like that.

K.J. Lopez at NRO asks, "I understand he's going for the Ansel Adams look a bit. And the black is sleek (isn't it always in?). But a black American flag?"

My response is, "Sure. Why not?" You can always adapt critical design elements to a new theme. The Pennsylvania Railroad had a fair variety of logos, all incorporating an interlocking 'PRR' and a keystone somewhere nearby; I don't think it diluted the effectiveness of the logo and you certainly knew who you were dealing with. I daresay that, for a corporation as gigantic as the Pennsylvania Railroad, its logo was as important to it as the Stars and Stripes should be to us. I don't think any negative message is sent by the darkened flag; after all, we use a low-visibility version of it on patches for our troops in battle.

Methinks that she's looking for anything to stick on Senator McCain, since Governor Romney is her candidate crush.

The "Watch the Latest Video" still has McCain looking like an ornery old man, which is essentially what he is. That's good; I prefer my President to be a tough SOB with years of age, guile and experience. I'm particularly fond of that silver star with the extensions on either side. It strikes me as a stylized version of the American national insignia that's affixed to our military aircraft.

The sleekly quasi-military look may be what McCain's going for, it may not be. Either way, it's effective.

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Doctor Krauthammer has a new column on Vladimir Putin up at the National Review Online

My favorite part of the piece:

There is something amusing about criticism of the use of force by the man who turned Chechnya into a smoldering ruin; about the invocation of international law by the man who will not allow Scotland Yard to interrogate the polonium-soaked thugs it suspects of murdering Alexander Litvinenko, yet another Putin opponent to meet an untimely and unprosecuted death; about the bullying of other countries decried by a man who cuts off energy supplies to Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus in brazen acts of political and economic extortion.

I can't say that I'm the greatest fan of Dr. Krauthammer, but I do think that this column is funny. I am, however, of at least two minds about Mr. Putin: On the one hand, yay, a Russian leader who doesn't bang his shoe and threaten the atomic annihilation of the West. On the other hand, the man is clearly a repressive and totalitarian thug. The question in my mind is, as usual, "How do we make use of him to serve the interests of the several States (and the Commonwealth)?"

The answer to that, I don't know.

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Microsoft is developing a new Train Simulator. From that site, several of the development personnel have weblogs:

Yard Limits

SimElations

TSEngineer

Mavryk

Tdragger

I have high hopes for a new Train Simulator, including some attempt at an AI dispatching system similar to the Flight Simulator ATC.

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Via Rachel at Tinkerty Tonk, I've found something that was somewhat distressing:

A Scotsman's diary

The file is named 'anorak', which apparently is Brit-speak for those who watch and photograph trains or planes. It gives you an idea of the subject matter, some poor chap in Edinburgh, Scotland. Upon reading it myself, I promptly went to check and see what kind of data I kept and the like. The results?

-No train tapes, as it were. I've been wanting to get one on the ALCO/MLW units of the Cape Breton & Central Nova Scotia Railway and the Green Frog Penn Central ones, but other than that, nada. Luckily, my railroad enthusiast's budget goes to books and stuff for Train Simulator. Whee.

-No records on VHS/DVD viewing; I don't want to know. It's been nearly zero this year, and was similarly low last year. I could bug my Sony DVD player (when it isn't giving me its famous error) to tell me how much it's been used, but I'd rather not.

-Only a handful of visits to railway preservation sites. I did get to ride a nice excursion in Tennessee last year; if I ever dig up my notes, perhaps I'll post 'em. Photos, too. Lucky for me that my sort of record keeping is notes scribbled hastily on a napkin or something that gets tucked in a drawer and found years later, hopefully with a time and date stamp.

-No unrequited or unacted-upon love at work, so that's good.

Useful to read, but not the most pleasant experience. The Scottish Co-Operative Wholesale Republic also has some thoughts on this.

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Our intrepid Pan Am correspondent from Florida, Carlos W, has some thoughts on the current Iranian mess, backdated about a week or so. See here for full details.

The rub of it is that I can't make heads or tails of what to believe. While yes, I believe that the Islamic Republic's leaders have been compounding interest on a whippin' since 1979, I'm also not eager to jump into another war in that worthless region of the planet. I also don't believe in the value of sanctions or "the international community expressing its concern".

Therefore, I share what Carlos views as our policymakers' potential mindset:

[N]ervous because they really don't have any good options with Iran, and don't know what to do about the situation.

This means that I am happy to hear the occasional report that the nominal political head of the Islamic Republic may have talked himself into a hole. One can only hope.

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Monday was Truck Day. News takes a while to travel from one Commonwealth to another.

If you didn't catch it on TV, witness this re-enactment, brought to you by The Red Seat:

Anyone remember what that Red Sox wiki was? I have managed to misplace the bookmark.

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Meh, I'm not for Romney. Loyalty to the Sox doesn't mean that I'm somehow obligated to like this guy. Thus, the following observation:

His announcement is playing on C-SPAN at the moment, and he's talking about the transformation of Washington, et cetera. I thnk the last time we heard that word from a Republican pol, it was coming out of the former Secretary of Defense's lips. I'm not too sure that Romney's handlers would want him to be verbally linkable to Mr. Rumsfeld.

Meanwhile, I have yet to find a viable candidate for the Presidency in our party. I do, however, appear to have plenty of time. Readers out there are invited to pitch their candidates to me.

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The latest news that I have:

CANADIAN NATIONAL

-The CN management claims that the strike by the United Transportation Union of Canada is illegal. According to the company, the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) will convene on 19 February to determine whether the strike by the 2,800 members of the UTU of Canada was legal.

CN's claim was filed on 10 February and argues the strike's illegality due to CN's belief that the UTU's strike notice was deficient and that the UTU of Canada did not have proper authority from the UTU International to declare a strike.

Reports from unofficial and/or enthusiast circles suggest that legal action may yet be pending against striking workers.

-Paul Thompson, President of the UTU International, has seen fit to issue a statement in which he declares the strike action to be unauthorized in accordance with Article 85 of the UTU Constitution. Mr. Thompson also quotes UTU Canada General Chairperson Rex Beatty as saying that, "[T]he union's constitution can't supersede the Canadian labor code."

UNITED TRANSPORTATION UNION OF CANADA

-Despite the claim of the UTU of Canada, there is not ongoing strike information provided to UTU members at utucnnegotiations.ca. Their last posting is of 09 February. Heck, I'm ahead of that.

-Another Canadian union has declared solidarity with the UTU of Canada. The United Steelworkers' National Director Ken Neumann declared this past Saturday that the union supported the UTU's strike against CN. According to Neumann, the USW and the UTU signed a "strategic alliance" in summer 2006, and the support expressed for the UTU is a part of that. Among the USW's members are 4,000 MOW personnel at the Canadian National and 1,200 clerks and similar positions at the Canadian Pacific Railway.

-The Federal Agriculture Minister, a fellow named Chuck Strahl, has indicated that the Goverment have no intention to intervene in the strike at this point in time. The Canadian Wheat Board---the "largest single rail shipper in Western Canada"---had apparently asked Ottawa to intervene. Ottawa declined, citing the current case before the CIRB and the fact that CN management was apparently capable of maintaining service at this point in time. The CWB is, in the words of mapleleafweb, "the sole marketer of western Canadian wheat (and barley) that is sold for human consumption, both domestically and abroad."

COMMENTARY

Mr. Thompson's message makes me wonder just what kind of strike fund or other resources the UTU of Canada can call on to stick it out. In his words, "[O]ur brothers and sisters in Canada have been put in a position of having to fend for themselves."

I have not heard of any strike-related violence or any strike-related accidents. I can only hope and pray that none of these sort of things occur.

I hope that this publication serves some value to those who are interested in the situation. My apologies for not updating this sooner.

UPDATE: A Canadian chap who's done work for organized labor up there has an opinion, posted here. He is, of course, not fond of the UTU International's position.

---

DISCLAIMER: I have no pecuniary interest in the Canadian National Railway or any other railroad. I have no interest or association with any element of railroad labor organization. My interest in this is purely from the perspective of an amateur industry enthusiast.

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I have the Busch Clash Budweiser Shootout, and I just heard something annoying: Toyota are running commercials announcing "thanks for having us" as part of their introduction into the NASCAR Nextel Cup competition.

Funny, I don't remember Toyota asking me if I wanted them in the Nextel Cup championship.

My answer would have been an emphatic 'no'.

EDIT: The highlight of the evening was the return of Krista Voda to covering NASCAR. I haven't watched NASCAR Nation (is it even still on?) since her departure for whatever reason, but I've ranted on that before.

If we are going to have women covering traditionally male sports, then they might as well be competent. Competency, thy name is Voda.¹

NB: SO SORRY, TOYOTA!

---

¹ For the only known image gallery of Miss Voda, click here. She always was and always will be superior to Leeann Tweeden et al in motorsports journalism skill and other areas as well.

A January entry at Open Wheeler discusses Miss Voda's return to NASCAR Nextel Cup coverage, and is illustrated to boot. The lucky devil got to talk to her!

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Since SENATOR OBAMA is now in the (now essentially over) race for the presidency, let me make a snide observation, stolen from here:

Obama has done nothing but talk about himself and his family since his election. NO bills, legislature, or anything. my little parody of one of his speechs "My dad's from Kenya." Crowd claps wildly, screaming at the top of their lungs. "AIDS is a terrible disease and it must be dealt with." More screaming and clapping 'I am a Christian." More wild screaming and clapping "I have a wife and kids." even more wild screaming and clapping

I have no idea about the veracity of these remarks, but they're funny and they take a shot at Obama, so there you have it. They in essence sum up my opinion of him as a candidate; the man could stand up and declare that his administration would be dedicated to exterminating left-handed peoples, and he'd get wild applause.

He's like Paris Hilton or any other celebrity, applauded because of who he is, not because of what he does.

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Courtesy of a poster earlier in the day, I now have the text of contract offers made by the respective parties in this dispute:

UTU of Canada's offer

Canadian National Railway's offer

These come from a site ostensibly established by the UTU of Canada. As a result, I believe that these documents are legitimate and authentic. If they are not, I hope that someone will inform of this as soon as possible. The UTU document is 19 pages of inside baseball that I can occasionally interpret, but I'd need more than is contained within. There may be more reference material at the negotiations site. The CN document looks like a brief memorandum to confirm an oral communication.

My commenter pointed out that the CN position amounted to 12 hours on, 8 hours off, 12 hours on, for six days with the seventh day being one of rest. I have no opinion on the merits of this offer. I will, however, state that the eight hours generally seems to start the minute you're off the clock, which can mean that you're stepping off a locomotive or boarding a crew van in the middle of nowhere. Therefore, you may not get eight hours of sleep before the phone rings again and you're called to duty. It's this sort of thing that makes me respectful of those who are employed in rail transportation and who manage to safely conduct transportation on a daily basis.

My hope is that the strike is resolved shortly, with an agreement that protects the CN's financial position, the interests of agreement employees, and the interests of the customers of the CN. We shall see, and coverage shall continue as best I can.

UPDATE: Additional information that I neglected to include in earlier updates notes that the UTU International has apparently weighed in on the strike earlier in the week, saying that the UTU of Canada was not authorized to strike the CN without the approval and/or involvement of the International in the negotiation process. It would appear that the Canadians promptly ignored that.

Runningtrades.com suggests that the International has done this sort of thing before, which it regards as having weakened the hand of the Canadian group in negotiations with the CN.

DISCLAIMER: I have no pecuniary interest in the Canadian National Railway or any other railroad. I have no interest or association with any element of railroad labor organization. My interest in this is purely from the perspective of an amateur industry enthusiast.

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I have found an archive of images that were once associated with this publication and that I thought previously lost. Reconstruction as it happens.

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If I understand things correctly, the UTU members employed at the Canadian National Railway will be going on strike in less than an hour and a half.

CNR President E. Hunter Harrison stated earlier in the week that he believed a new contract, but also said that management and other non-UTU employees of the CNR would attempt to maintain service if the UTU walked out. This is not an unusual move; if I understand my history correctly, it was done at the Florida East Coast back in the 1960s and at the Norfolk and Western during a clerks' strike in the late 1970s; I have heard stories of Robert Claytor himself crewing a train.

The details of any contracts are unknown to me, but it is apparent that the UTU are unhappy with whatever the CNR is offering. For what it's worth, the attitude of current and former CNR employees towards Mr. Harrison has been negative. However, it is also worth noting that one of the freedoms any railroad man has is the right to complain about management. Under Mr. Harrison, late of the Illinois Central, CNR financial performance has increased dramatically.

Based upon a statement from the Canadian Auto Workers Union, the CNR may have plans to try and bus CAW members through prospective UTU picket lines, a move which the CAW opposes. The CAW, which concluded a new labor agreement with the CNR in late January of 2007, also pointed out that CAW members are legally entitled to refuse work normally performed by UTU members.

The UTU represents ~2,800 conductors and yard service employees on the CNR. My uneducated guess is that this includes all crafts other than locomotive engineers, which are presumably covered by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.

Updates as I find them.

EDIT: I suddenly realized that I wasn't using the far more common "CN" to refer to the Canadian National Railway. Yeah, I know it's not 1960 any more. By the way, any CNR employee, agreement or non-agreement who'd like to weigh in on this is more than welcome to; short of some sort of civil or criminal lawsuit by the CNR or other parties, I offer anonymity.

DISCLAIMER: I have no pecuniary interest in the Canadian National Railway or any other railroad. I have no interest or association with any element of railroad labor organization. My interest in this is purely from the perspective of an amateur industry enthusiast.

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Given the recent flap about what Nancy Pelosi gets to ride around the country in, I have a suggestion for her very own private jet:

The de Havilland DH 106 Comet, specifically the Comet 1.

"Look, Madam Speaker! Large rectangular windows for your viewing pleasure!

"Moreover, they have de Havilland's Ghost engine. The name of these engines reaches out to a community usually trampled on and ignored by the Christianist mob that has held sway in this country for far too long (since about 1607) and shows the progressive appeal of the Democratic Party."

I hear that the British Overseas Airways Corporation is willing to part with them for cheap.

---

This joke possible only because there's only one complete rectangular-windowed Comet left in the world that I know of; the rest were either modified to make them safe for use or scrapped over time. Furthermore, BOAC hasn't existed since 1974, and I haven't the foggiest where you'd get de Havilland Ghost engines in 2007. Give her the Gulfstream V and shut the woman up. A pox on you, Representative Murtha.

Image from the US Centennial of Flight Commission.

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OK, so I'm not on the Obama Limited. From where I sit, it seems his primary attributes are his melanin count and the banal remarks that he makes. Anyways, the electron-stained wretches at Galley Slaves have come up with this piece of news:

Obama expelled to Phantom Zone

Many Bothans died to bring us this information. Meanwhile, my favorite Kryptonian is the current Kara Zor-El. Someone get her a sandwich!

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Thank God I don't live in West Virginia. This isn't some insult directed at our erstwhile relatives, but rather inspired by the latest accident on the CSX system.

The CNN report indicates that evacuation of the State capital, Charleston, might be necessary if a leak of the train's payload occurred.

There was no information on whether the crew was injured or not. I hope that they survived uninjured. As with the UTU/CNR news, further updates as available.

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