Report from Bingen

Silent RR Crossing

Iowa Man came to town today so we had lunch at Longbottoms. We were talking about the advantages of living in Bingen (which is across the Columbia River from Hood River) versus living in the big city. Rent, as you might expect, is cheaper. Grocery stores are few, scattered and cost a bit more. 

The thing that caught my attention is the trains - 50 trains a day. There are three crossings where the train has to blow its horn, and if you are nearby those horns are loud. I've been out to Bingen a couple of times, but I don't remember the trains being a big deal. But then I was only there for a few hours. Iowa Man survives by stuffing silicon earplugs in his ears.

Anyway, Bingen is supposed to be getting a Quiet Zone. Iowa Man was telling me a silent crossing involves concrete barriers to keep cars from evading the crossing gates and probably some other requirements. Looking around for a picture, this is the only one I could find. It is the splash panel that shows up when YoiTube displays a list of videos. Play the associated video and this image is nowhere to be found. This is a screenshot that I uploaded to Google Photos to crop because my Windows image viewer won't crop images anymore. All I get is a black image. Probably need more memory. I wonder if older memory would be cheaper that the latest stuff that is costing 10x more than it was a year ago.

Hood River Bridge

The 100 year old bridge over the Columiba River is going to be replaced, or at least they are talking about replacing it. That's kind of the way it goes with people. Before anyone does anything, everyone has to discuss it and discuss it at length.

Hood River Bridge

Looking at that first picture of the bridge reminds me of just how wide the Columbia River is at that point. The bridge is almost a mile long, and remember, this isn't one of your long, lazy flatland rivers, at this point the Columbia is rolling along at two miles per hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It don't stop for nobody or nuttin'.

Insitu FLARES and INTEGRATOR drones

Insitu is building drones in Bingen. It was bought out by Boeing and now it is being absorbed by ACHR, one of the air-taxi guys. Since our skies will soon be filled with flying air-taxis, does this mean that Bingen will become the Detroit of the 21st Century?

Cunningham-Hall PT-6 biplane with Mount Hood

There is a big antique car and airplane museum in Hood River - WAAAM - the Western Antique Aeroplane and Automobile Museum. The museum was founded in 2007 which might explain why I have never heard of it. I don't know how many vehicles they have on display but the list on Wikipedia takes 17 screens. The museum itself covers five acres. Iowa Man recommends riding in the cart.

Custom map of the Hood River area made for this post.

The Midwest is Booming?

Americans Are About to Get a Lot Richer
Maxinomics

I live on the left coast so I don't really have a feel for what's going on in the Midwest, but the story Phil tells in this video is encouraging. Could it be that Trump's policies are actually having a beneficial effect? Huh, who'd a thunk it?

Unless all this productivity is being is being accomplished with robots, and there aren't any more people going to work.

Pioneer Zephyr

1,015 Miles On $16 Of Fuel — The Train That Executed The Steam Locomotive
Cab Forward

I really enjoy listening to this guy. I presume it's a guy, not a computer, but these days there is no telling. He makes the story a little more dramatic than he needs to, but drama seems to be very popular, so I can understand him doing that. For me, the simple mathematical facts are plenty, but half of the country is innumerate, so, drama. The narrator does a good job with the facts and I appreciate it. This train really really forged a new path. That's what happens when someone with money is willing to bet on some whiz kids to design a new, improved, machine. It was ahead of its time, but it wasn't just a prototype test machine, it ran for 26 years and that, to me, is the more impressive part of the story.

Altoona

The Rise and Fall of America’s Forgotten Railroad Empire: Altoona, Pennsylvania
Paul McAllister

I recognize the name Altoona, but I don't know why. It feels like it was the name of a town in a story I read a long time ago, and then I watched the video about Baldwin Locomotives and I got a clue. Now this video pops up and it becomes clear that Altoona was big deal for a long time and maybe the name just kind of seeped into our culture without anyone noticing.

Video paints a pretty good picture of the rise and fall of Altoona. Gets kind of long winded and repetitive towards the end, but pretty good overall.

Not all of the images shown are accurate. For example, towards the end, just after the 34 minute mark, there is shot of a big steel mill. There was never a big steel mill like this in Altoona. The image is of Bethlehem Steel located along the Lehigh River in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Power

Why The Baldwin Centipede Broke Every Railroad That Bought It — 91 Feet Of Failure
Cab Forward

I'm watching this video about the Baldwin Centipede locomotive, and he mentions the La Vergne 608SC diesel engine and I get distracted. He don't show a picture, or at least not a good one, so I go looking and found some passable images on The Baldwin Diesel Zone. 

La Vergne 608SC
Click to embiggenate

The 608SC shows up in 1945, but the company was around for another 20 years. So what were they building? In 1964:

The last 600 series engine was built at Eddystone. Stationary 608A #7113

Eddystone, where's that? Ask Google and the first interesting thing that pops up is the Eddystone Generating Station - Constellation Energy. Okay, a power plant is not a locomotive, but they are like brothers from different mothers, brothers under the skin, so to speak. They are both industrial power machines, which is close enough. Besides, I have a soft spot for power generating stations, so I go take a look. On Google Maps, Eddystone is a suburb of Philadelphia and the power plant looks like this:

Eddystone Generating Station
The image is about one-half mile across

The power plant is surrounded by a double set of railroad tracks and most of the land inside the tracks appears to be flat, bare ground, or maybe concrete. If this power plant was burning coal, both of those features would be useful, but there doesn't appear to be any coal. However, there are two big oil tanks.

The company website gives a synopsis:

Ensuring Grid Stability Through Fuel Diversity

Eddystone Generating Station plays a critical role in delivering reliable power through fuel diversity. Owned and operated by Constellation, this six-unit, 820-megawatt (MW) power plant is located on the Delaware River in Eddystone, Pennsylvania, just south of Philadelphia.

Eddystone Units 3 and 4, each with a capacity of 380 MW, were installed between 1967 and 1970. These subcritical steam boiler-turbine generator units can operate on either natural gas or oil, providing flexibility based on market conditions.

Units 10, 20, 30 and 40 are oil-fueled peaking units with a combined capacity of 60 MW. They are designed to run during periods of high demand and were installed in 1967 and 1970.

Construction of Eddystone began in the mid-1950s, with the now-retired Units 1 and 2 coming online in 1960. Both were supercritical steam boiler-turbine generator units that operated on coal. Unit 1 was retired in 2011, and Unit 2 followed in 2012.

Eddystone has been in business for 70 years, and for most of that time they were burning coal. It's only been in the last 15 years that they've fully changed over to gas and oil. I wonder how much it would cost to replicate that railroad track today. Google says one to five million a mile, for straight lines on level ground. I'm gonna say 10 to 20 million for this industrial location. Is there any other commodity that could use such a setup? A grain terminal maybe? Probably not while the power plant is operating.

There seems to be some disagreement over whether Eddystone should be operating or not. There's too many competing interests and it's too far away, I'm not gonna stick my nose in there, though maybe I should. Data Centers are one of the competing interests, and there are a bunch of them being built around here. I suspect they are piggy-backing on the electrical power distribution system that was installed to support Intel's Giant Ronler Acres Microchip Foundry. They might be piggy-backing as well on the tax deal Intel got when they set up shop in Hillsboro.

---

An aside: While I was writing this post I tried to copy the phrase

Eddystone Generating Station - Constellation Energy

from Google's search page, but when I pasted it I got:

Eddystone Generating Station - Constellation Energy

Curious as how this was being done, I used Blogger's html mode and found that pasting that line came with 3KB of html fluff. A little poking around reveals that including this little bit of text:

style="display: inline-block; transform: scaleY(-1);"

inside a <p> tag will do the trick. 

P. S. When I looked at this post on Feedly, the inverted text was not inverted.

---

Horseshoe Curve Pennsylvania - on the way from Altoona to Gallitzin

The narrator in this video repeats some of his stuff a little excessively. I don't know whether he is just filling time, hoping to pound these phrases into the listener's brain, or whether he just likes the sound of his own voice. Is that even a real thing? Liking the sound of your own voice? I don't even know what I sound like, I guess my voice is acceptable. Anyway, I suspect the phrase 'liking the sound of your own voice' is just something some wag made up to describe someone who talked a lot.

The point I was trying to make is that I have seen several videos like this, and I guess I got to give these guys credit for putting together a polished video. Not everybody can do that, but I suspect some of these, especially the ones where the narrator never appears, are just having an AI read a script.

Count Binface

HS2 is a travesty for the people of Makerfield and Greater Manchester. Vote Binface and #Makerfield Great Again! pic.twitter.com/d9Dh2SvO2U

— Count Binface (@CountBinface) June 18, 2026

HS2 is the UK's version of California's high speed rail project, i.e. it's a giant money pit. 

Gotta love the UK. Remember Boaty McBoatface? Via Finding life hard?

East Side Snarl

Railed: It’s the most annoying traffic jam in Portland. (Whitney McPhie and Sophia Mick)

I thought getting to South Waterfront was the most fouled up road mess in Portland. Seems I was wrong (unbelievable, I know). Willamette Week tells us that the eastside has a real problem that makes my complaints about South Waterfront sound like entitled white boy whining:

It’s the Most Annoying Traffic Jam in Portland. Here’s How to Fix It by Garrett Andrews

Long trains moving extremely slowly equal maddening waits for drivers on the Central Eastside.

Problem is the railroad cuts the eastside in two and there are only a few place to cross it that are not grade level crossings, which means at rush hour those few crossings are going to be jammed as well.

Here's some more pics from the story:

The railroad crossings at Southeast 11th and 12th avenues. (Brian Burk)

A Union Pacific train passes through the Central Eastside. (Brian Burk)

Portland Railroads

The portion of eastside of Portland near the Willamette River is full of railroad tracks. It's hard to get a clear view of the situation. If you zoom out you see orange lines running from top to bottom. 

Union Pacific Albina Yard Portland
(black blotch on previous map)

Zoom in to see how many tracks and you can only see five percent of the line.

Tandem Steam Locomotives

Modified Hall No. 6990 'Witherslack Hall' behind Saint No. 2999 'Lady of Legend'

GWR 6959 Class 6990 Witherslack Hall was built in 1948.

GWR 2900 Class 2999 Lady of Legend was built in 2019 using a design from 1902.

Identified by Danny Bailey.

Bali Sea Ferry Rail by Ferrosur

MV Bali Sea

Naval Nostalgia:

The MV Bali Sea was a rare rail ferry that operated between Coatzacoalcos, Mexico and Mobile, Alabama, carrying up to 115 fully loaded railcars across the Gulf of Mexico. Instead of crossing land borders, trains from Mexico’s Ferrosur line were rolled directly onto the ship using a linkspan ramp system supported by two vertical towers. These towers allowed for precise height adjustments to match the ferry deck with the shore tracks, ensuring smooth loading regardless of sea level changes.

Originally launched in 1981 as a heavy-lift ship, she was converted into a rail ferry in 2000 to serve the CG Railway route. The Bali Sea offered a 900-mile maritime shortcut for rail cargo, cutting transit time and avoiding congestion at U.S.–Mexico border crossings. After two decades of service, she was retired in 2021 and replaced by larger, faster ferries, but her role in connecting two nations with seamless train-to-sea transport remains a landmark in intermodal logistics.

Ferry Dock in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico

Ferry Route from Coatzacoalcos, Mexico to Mobile, Alabama

Ferry Dock Mobile Alabama

 

Train to Toledo

We were talking about the train wreck in Toledo, Oregon, at lunch today and Jack related this little tale.

One fine spring day, about a zillion years ago, when he was a student at Oregon State University in Corvallis, he and about a hundred other kids hopped the train to Toledo. It rolled through town going only a couple of miles per hour, so it was easy to grab hold and climb aboard.

The train consisted of open top hopper cars filled with wood chips. Jack had brought a quart of beer. Sitting on top of the world, riding on a cloud of wood chips through the forest primeval, he drank it. Now nature calls, so he climbs down the ladder at the end of the car and hanging on with one arm, relieves himself. Unfortunately, at just this moment the train went by somebody's home where there was a big family picnic going on. Oops.

Eventually the train got to Toledo and the kids got off and roamed around town for a while. Later on it's time to catch the train back to Corvallis. Now it's dark and the hoppers are empty so they are sitting on cold steel, freezing their asses off. Far as we know, nobody died.

Toledo Locomotive Derailment

Back on the Rail [Toledo Derailment Update]
7idea Productions

This happened this week not too very far from here- 80 miles as the crow flies. Here's a couple more videos about this incident:

• Derailed on a Trestle! 12 minutes. Mostly background information.
• Trestle Derailment Update 2 minutes
• Timelapse: Crews work to free 3 locomotives stranded on Oregon trestle 4 minutes Building the temporary bridge

Railroad Line from Toledo, Oregon, to Corvallis
This line runs over the coast range. Toledo is at the left end of the yellow-green line, just east of Newport. The word Corvallis is partially covered by that same line. You can read the last part of the name: -allis. I-5 is near the right hand side of the image.

I don't think I've ever encountered slugs before, at least not the railroad kind. Seems they have been around for awhile. Trains tells us that they got their start in the early 20th century at a copper mine in Montana.

Google Map

Reefers

They Tried to Kill Swift’s Fridge Car — and Created a Monster Instead
Ewan Hargreaves

Swift and Armour, boy, those names are a blast from the past. I haven't come across them in a coon's age, but evidently they are still in business. Swift was purchased by Brazilian company JBS in 2007 and continues to operate. Armour has become Smithfield Foods.

Reefer Rail Car

I vaguely remember having a book about trains when I was a kid. It had pictures of various kinds of railroad cars, like boxcars and reefers, and they were loading ice into the reefer. I'm old, but I don't think I'm that old. Turns out the last ice cooled reefers were built in 1957, and the first mechanical refrigerated railcars were built in 1958.

Icing Reefers

Google gave me some numbers about railroads in North America. 

There are:

• 28,000 locomotives
• 1.6 million freight railroad cars, including:
• 570,000 covered hoppers
• 439,000 tank cars
• 208,000 flat cars
• 195,000 gondolas
• 104,000 box cars.

However, there are only 8,000 to 10,000 reefers.

Mechanical refrigeration (Thermo King) was adapted to long haul trucks in the late 1930's, just in time for WW2.

1965 DIVCO Milk Truck

Remember these old milk trucks? I got a look at one once. They had a weird refrigeration system. They had big blocks (tanks?) lining the freight compartment. These blocks were hooked up at night, chilled all night long, and then kept the truck cool all the following day. DIVCO stands for Detroit Industrial Vehicle COmpany.

Battery Operated Trains

Why does London have a "ghost bus"?
Chris Spargo

The video is mostly about absurd English rules for trains, but he does mention battery operated commuter trains that are recharged when they stop.

Loads of ways to get from here to there

More about the battery powered train:

GWR's New Battery Powered Train
Jago Hazzard

Blondihacks

Let's Build a Locomotive! Pennsylvania A3 Switcher, Part 1
Blondihacks

Jack recommended Blondihacks to my attention a couple of months ago and I finally got around to looking her up. I picked this video because I posted about a live steam model train not too long ago. In this one she spends a lot of time laying out the ground work, including sourcing materials, which turns out to be a bigger problem than I imagined. Very entertaining, if you like obscure technical info.

Industrial Complexity

Rail tracks at the Saint Jean train station in Bordeaux on April 3, 2018. (Photo by GEORGES GOBET / AFP)

The photo shows just a tiny portion of enormous complex.

Saint Jean Train Station Bordeaux

There is even a roundhouse.

Roundhouse at Saint Jean Train Station

I can't imagine how much freight must have gone through here in order to pay for the enormous investment that someone had to make to build this place.

House of Guinness - Netflix Series

House of Guinness | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

It's 1868 in Dublin Ireland and Guinness is a thriving operation brewing zillions of gallons of beer, putting it in barrels and shipping it all over Ireland and England. The old man dies and his kids have to pick up the slack. Only one of them has the will and ability to do so, the others are variations of flaky rich kids. Most of the show is about the contortions they go through to maintain their façade of 'respectability' in Victorian high society. Thinking about this for a bit, I realized they were just playing the Victorian version of political correctness. Now, thanks to the internet, everyone can play. Live by celebrity, die by celebrity.

The show has all the regular drama you might expect from a Netflix show about rich Victorians along with some fabulous sets. Talk about the divide between the rich and the poor, the Victorians had it in spades. It also has some bits of history and if you look a little deeper, trains.

Ireland has just endured a famine, and there are hard feelings about that.

Guinness Trademark

The Trinity College harp, also known as "Brian Boru's harp", is a medieval musical instrument on display in the long room at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. It is an early Irish harp or wire-strung cláirseach. It is dated to the 14th or 15th century and, along with the Queen Mary Harp and the Lamont Harp, is the oldest of three surviving medieval harps from the region. The harp was used as a model for the coat of arms of Ireland and for the trade-mark of Guinness stout. - Wikipedia

Brian Boru (c. 941 – 1014) was the High King of Ireland from 1002 to 1014. - Wikipedia

The Train within a Train & the Railway Built for Beer - Guinness Brewery Railways
Train of Thought

Somewhere around the late 19th century the brewery was expanded to 50 acres and a narrow gauge railway was laid down to serve the plant.

Guinness Brewery, Dublin. William Spence
Model Trains & Planes Channel Steam Trains too

The business about having a carriage that allowed the narrow-gauge engine to run on standard width tracks might be unique. Someone thought it was worth building a live steam model.

Train hits truck with wind mill blade

Train hits truck with wind mill blade
Dave Hughes Farm

Seems like videos like this pop up on a regular basis and I got to wondering just how often this happens, so I asked Mr. Google and he says nine per week! That's near 500 per year! You've got figure that every time there is one of these collisions it's gotta cost a million dollars, and that's if nobody gets hurt. Besides the immediate damage, there are the delays, the disrupted schedules, the investigation, the penalties, and there is a good chance there will be litigation, even if it's just the insurance companies arguing about who will pay.

On the other hand there are three million trucks in the USA. Figure they're driving 50,000 miles a year and each mile costs at least a dollar, that's $150 billion dollars. Compare to that $500 million is just noise, especially when the true cost of trucking is closer to a trillion dollars.

Still, you'd think that even a measly $500 million bucks would bestir someone in trucking or insurance to try and put a stop to these collisions, or least reduce the frequency. Actually, industry ought to get their act together cause if they don't, the federal government is liable to step in, and then nobody will be happy.

All of which reminded me of this tune:

Men Without Hats - The Safety Dance
Men Without Hats

Why do I persist in thinking this is a David Bowie tune? Does it sound like him, maybe? 

There's also a cool mashup of this tune with a bunch of different dancing people. The voice is not the same though.

Red Bull is out of Control

Red Bull e seus atletas [Red Bull and its athletes]
BMX 08

How Russia Plans to Rule Eurasia by River

How Russia Plans to Rule Eurasia by River
CaspianReportThere is an ad from 1:30 to 2:45

Video via Building Eurasia’s New Fortress by Sean Ring. Introduction:

Alfred Thayer Mahan & Halford Mackinder

For over a century, two dead advisors have shaped the way great powers view the world.

On one side, we have Alfred Thayer Mahan—the American naval officer who believed sea power determined global supremacy. According to Mahan, controlling the oceans means controlling trade. If you control trade, you control wealth. If you control wealth… well, you get the picture.

On the other side is Halford Mackinder, the British geographer who argued the exact opposite. Forget the seas, he said. Whoever controls the “World Island”—Eurasia—controls the world. Railways, rivers, pipelines, and land empires are what count. Not frigates and aircraft carriers.

Mahan and Mackinder are no longer with us, but their ideas continue to influence the world today.

And we’re watching it unfold.

Wikipedia articles:

• Alfred Thayer Mahan
• Halford Mackinder

Cock O' The North

The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) Class P2 locomotive, No. 2001, Cock o' The North, on the turntable at King's Cross Station, London, 1st June 1934. The new engine has just arrived from the LNER works in Doncaster. Image colourized by David P. Williams. (Photo by Douglas Miller/Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Just looking around the industrial parts of town, I was overwhelmed by the amount of steel that goes into these machines, structures, raillines, tanks and towers, and that's just one town. Every town in the industrialized world is built on a zillion tons of the stuff.

U. S. Steel Production vs. Imports

U. S. Steel Production peaked in the 1970s. Since then it has fallen by half. 

So why did this happen? Why did the U.S. go from a steelmaking powerhouse to an also-ran? As usual, there are a bunch of competing explanations — import competition, bad management choices by steel companies, and unions raising wages to uncompetitive levels. But while these were factors, the biggest reason the U.S. steel industry went into terminal decline was that we stopped building things that used lots of steel. - Noahpinion

Global Steel Production

U. S. and Russia steel production are about equal.

Jigsaw puzzle here.