ok,, See where I work we had a fire drill this morning, not exactly what I wanted to do at 9am this morning.. but i was thinking yesterday "WTF how the hell you gonna have a fire drill in an empty building for?".. this is how you get your borough to save money I guess.. Later in the day actually, there is a church parade.. So basically all the firetrucks are at my job waiting for the parade.. Its about 1/2 hour from now.. No im not going,, I already seen all the firetrucks..
I take the cameras and zoom them on the trains all the time, when Im there.. Our cameras can see over a mile with superior quality.. trains are about 1/8 mile away..
youre are kidding right, This is volunteer fire dept.. Most them guys sell crack at the strip clubs..
My grandfather worked for the Santa Fe railroad in a switching yard, a place where they assemble new trains. An engine pushes a train of cars over the "hump", (a physical incline). As the cars go over the hump they are uncoupled and shunted onto new rails according to their destination. As the cars roll down the hill they are free wheeling and have to be slowed down so that the cars don't jump track or crash into standing cars on that line. They do this with retarders, which are large calipers that squeeze the wheels of the cars as they go by. The amount of force applied by those retarders must be calculated according to the weight of the car, or in many cases, the combined weight of several cars together. The guy who operated the retarders and track switches, my grandfather, sat in a tower 45 feet above the yard. When I was twelve years old my grandfather took me into the tower and taught me how to do this job. A teletype print out of the trains with individual car weights and track destinations, and a switch board, big toggles for track and black buttons, strength one through ten, for the retarders. On weekends I would work the switch board while he made burritos on a hot plate which he sold to all the other workers in the yard. He delivered the burritos through a vacuum tube system, like at a bank drive thru. He put the burritos in the case and sent them all over the yard and the money came back via the same vacuum tube.
