Hey, there! Log in / Register
Has anybody come up with the ingredients for a Slippery Rail yet?
By adamg on Mon, 10/24/2016 - 8:48am
Aside from the general suckitude on the Fairmount Line, Keolis this morning is blaming delays on the dreaded slippery rail, from all those slippery leaves that fell in the weekend monsoon.
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
One suggestion
J. Patience proposes:
Needs more tree
Also rum, in the New England tradition. Lots of great local molasses only options.
Maybe add some local maple liqueur, like Flag Hill?
There are local birch and sassafras soda options to build around, and apple jack, too.
Why does not Keolis take
some of the Charlie Baker refund money and hire some folks, at a livable wage, to clean off the rails?! Keolis always blames something, someone rather than themselves for the sucky service. It is called good customer service, Keolis.
That being said, can they also address why this is now an apparent problem? I've been riding the rails since the 1980s and back then I never heard of anything being delayed (and the trains pretty much ran on time then) due to a "slippery rail".
And, furthermore, are there rails that are covered with so many leaves that this is a problem? The rails I ride look pretty clear to me.
What lines do you ride?
I rode the Haverill line and Lowell lines in the late eighties and there were delays for this back then. I think that they just gave it a standard name and started an awareness campaign.
Reforestation of the region may also be an issue.
Well, perhaps on your lines.
I rode the Franklin/Forge Park line which was pretty consistent in getting me into the city on time in any type of weather. Those days you could regularly ride in vestibules and the conductors would allow you to board the train from the other side, if you were late crossing over.
Again, though, I would say even your delays were not as bad as today. No?
I don't know about reforestation along that line. The trees in that area may be bigger but there really has been no additions. What is there has been there for a long time.
Pay some damn overtime
The monsoon was Saturday. Sunday was nice, albeit a bit windy. Sunday was the day to prepare the rails for Monday's commute.
How hard would it be?
To add some device on either end of the train that pushes leaves off the track? You could even put it on one of those hi-rail trucks and take care of tjis with one pass.
As grandpa used to say, "For the love of god we can land a man on the moon, but we can't get a few leaves off the tracks? Jeeeeeezus."
Everything is easy
When you don't actually do that kind of work.
How hard would it be to understand that you have no clue here?
Then please splain me
How hard is it to get leaves off of a track?
Brush attached to train.hi-rail, scraper air blower?
There has to be a simple solution to this.
This is the big problem with people like you
The world is not simple. Science is not simple. Technology is not simple. Teaching is not simple. Economics is not simple.
You want to pretend that these things are simple, so that you can also pretend that you are smart.
Plenty of information available on the internet about how this is NOT simple and NOT cheap to fix. Stop demanding that other people do your home work for you or that everything should be simple.
I read the stuff online
Before you even posted your lovely comment.
That wasn't my question.
The solutiions seem to deal with the problem after it arises.
Why can't you equip a train or hi-rail with something ahead of the lead truck that prevents the train from running over these leaves (or most of them) in the first place? There was nothing I read online about that. I get it might not solve 100% due to blowing leaves, but probably solves a good chunk of the problem if you do this after a rain in areas where this problem frequently occurs.
Maybe that's the problem. People are so worried about fixing it, they overlooked the easier solution of preventing it from happening in the first place?
Slippery Rail is a real thing
It has its own Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_rail
And NYC has an info page about it too: http://web.mta.info/lirr/Video/SlipperyRail/
Ice
Ice
1 part gin
3 parts hard apple cider
1 dash orange bitters per serving
Pays homage to the geographic distribution of slippery rail -- UK and the greater northeast parts of North America. There might be room to swap the bitters with something else -- just wanted to add something to round out the gin.
Sassafras Bitters
Sassafras is native to New England and accounts for some of those colorful leaves: http://nymag.com/listings/recipe/sassafras-bitters/
Moxie and rum
Moxie and rum.
Easy!
The Slippery Rail
Another proposal
From Off the Dot, who builds on J. Patience's suggestion:
We can't win
The government can't run the trains right, and the private company can't run the trains right. We're running out of entity types here.
As for the task at hand, our Commonwealth doesn't have the money to hire workers to clear leaves from railroad tracks...but we can pay three staties to stand around and talk to each other at a traffic barricade on Memorial Drive during the Head of the Charles?
Keolis
Google Keolis and fid out who owns it.
Maybe it isn't our government that is to blame.
Google obnoxious
So that lots of people's time isn't wasted Googling individually:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keolis
I know they're French
But I didn't play the "why don't they hire an American company?" card because that's not the point.
Didn't we already fire 2 American companies
Before hiring a French one?
Only 188 some odd countries to go!
Maybe St. Vincent's rail company could do better.
EDIT: Or not, since they have anti-homosexuality laws. (Expletive) them.
Nobody was fired. Rather, different companies were
chosen when the contract came due for renewal - because lowest cost is all that people seem to care about. And not renewing the contract with the first company (Amtrak) was one of the most short-sighted things MBTA management could do.
Riff
My suggestion is a riff on the Dark n Stormy (TM).
Float old tom gin on iced ginger beer in a highball glass, top with kaffir lime leaves.
Aw crap. Now I have to go shopping.
Could be worse
Instead of leaves, the slippery rail could be due to Portuguese millipede invasions.
Never thought I would say this!
Can we please give the commuter rail back to the MBTA it's too screwed up Charlie Baker in legislature are the only ones that can fix this I've had it and now the red orange green and blue money is going to the commuter rail this state is screwed up