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Texas Railroading Heritage Museum


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12 hours ago, hindesky said:

One of the guys said his ultimate goal would be to get it running and taking to Commerce St tracks into downtown, I'm pretty sure he was joking. He said he grew up in the Heights but now lives in Goliad.

He was totally joking. They’ve paved over portions of the Commerce St. tracks in multiple places, so it wouldn’t even be possible at this point.

On the new East End Bike Plan, the Commerce stretch seems to be a target for development. I’m holding out hope that they pull out the railroad tracks and repave the entire street, adding high-comfort bike lanes.

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8 hours ago, thedistrict84 said:

He was totally joking. They’ve paved over portions of the Commerce St. tracks in multiple places, so it wouldn’t even be possible at this point.

On the new East End Bike Plan, the Commerce stretch seems to be a target for development. I’m holding out hope that they pull out the railroad tracks and repave the entire street, adding high-comfort bike lanes.

 I hope they keep the tracks and incorporate them in the new bike-friendly design. I love keeping that old history and character. Like the brick streets that you can still see in the Fourth Ward.

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12 hours ago, 77011transplant said:

 I hope they keep the tracks and incorporate them in the new bike-friendly design. I love keeping that old history and character. Like the brick streets that you can still see in the Fourth Ward.

In-street rails aren't particularly bike-friendly.  You can have both, but I wouldn't mix them in the same space.

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15 hours ago, hindesky said:

I talked to a couple that were walking their dog and live on Commerce St. They want the tracks removed because every time a truck rides over the tracks it rattles the truck and creates a very aggravating noise.

The Potholes probably do the same. Commerce & Canal are warzones.

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20 hours ago, hindesky said:

I talked to a couple that were walking their dog and live on Commerce St. They want the tracks removed because every time a truck rides over the tracks it rattles the truck and creates a very aggravating noise.

Commerce is just a bad street all around. The tracks running down the middle have created a lot of potholes through washout, and the City has only patched some of it. Oddly enough, the street is so wide that you also have a lot of people speeding at 45+ MPH down it, especially between Palmer and St. Charles. It's a bad combination. 

I drive down it every day and definitely get some Mad Max vibes. They cannot redo Commerce fast enough.

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  • 2 weeks later...

They had 2 cranes about to remove the engine off the tracks that it came with and were going to lower it onto the existing tracks. Was told it weighed 309,000lbs and would be winched back to the other trains down the track. I was also told the the train with the tarp was built in 1915.

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"Simply put it means that the car shouldn't be humped. There are two ways that freight RR's build their trains. The first is called "Flat Switching", where you have a switch engine that moves the cars around from track to track as necessary to put the cars in the proper order.

The second way is through a hump yard. Cars are pushed over a small hill and are allowed to roll down the hill one at a time. Meanwhile a worker sitting in a tower throws the necessary switches to allow the cars to roll onto the proper tracks for classification.

So if a car says do not hump, then it should always be flat switched and not humped."

https://www.amtraktrains.com/threads/do-not-hump.725/

 

Dear Cecil: Whilst driving around recently a friend and I got stuck at a railroad crossing waiting for a freight train to go by. To pass the time, we began speculating on the meaning of a sign we saw on some of the cars saying DO NOT HUMP. We conjectured that this might be some sort of safe-sex campaign organized by the railroads in the wake of the AIDS crisis, but eventually rejected the idea. So we put it to you, Cecil — what is the meaning of this odd instruction? Gene W., Dallas

 

860704.gif

Illustration by Slug Signorino

Cecil replies:

Dear Gene:

I am saddened to report that DO NOT HUMP does not have any of the off-color significance that seems to give many of the Teeming Millions their principal reason to go on living. It refers to a common method used to sort freight cars known as “humping,” which involves the use of a man-made hill, or hump. A track heads up the hill and branches into numerous parallel tracks on its way down the other side. To make up new trains, a switch engine pushes a string of cars to the top of the hump, where the cars are uncoupled one at a time. Having determined the car’s destination, a worker in a nearby tower pushes buttons or throws levers or whatever to get the track switches (you know, those things where one track divides into two) lined up properly. The car is then given a nudge, causing it to roll down the hump and onto the right track.

The advantage of humping is that it’s a lot faster than having switch engines shuttle back and forth all day making up trains. The disadvantage is that it’s sometimes a little rough on the freight cars and their contents. Occasionally a car derails going down the hill, meaning the crew has to stop working and try to get the wheels back on the rails, which is not much fun, particularly in the middle of winter. What’s worse is the possibility that the car may roll down the hill too fast and crash into the car in front of it, jostling or damaging both the cars and what’s inside them. Special gimmicks on the rails called “retarders” are supposed to slow things down and prevent this, but they have been known to fail. Accordingly, cars with especially delicate contents are marked DO NOT HUMP, which tells the yard crew to set the car aside for special handling. This applies particularly to the tank cars used to haul hazardous chemicals, many of which have DO NOT HUMP stenciled permanently on their sides.

The railroad business, I might note, is one of the few fields where a guy without advanced training can still hope to wreak major environmental havoc. An old high school teacher of mine once told me about the time he worked in the steel mills helping switch coal cars. During his first week on the job, he was asked to participate in a risky maneuver known as a “flying switch.” The idea was that the locomotive would head toward a switch pulling a single coal car behind it. At the right moment, somebody would uncouple the car and the locomotive would scoot ahead through the switch onto the main line. Once the locomotive was clear, my high school teacher was supposed to throw the switch so the coal car would roll onto the side track.

Everything worked great until they got to the part where the teacher was supposed to throw the switch. For reasons that time has mercifully expunged from his memory, he waited to throw the switch until after the coal car’s front set of wheels had headed out toward the main line. The back set, however, was now headed onto the siding. You see the obvious problem this presents. My teacher had the privilege of watching a magnificent slow-motion disaster in the making as the coal car sort of rolled sidesaddle down the line until the tracks got too far apart, whereupon it toppled over and spilled 50 tons of coal all over creation. A great moment in railroading — nearly as funny as the time I almost knocked out the side of a building with an overhead crane. But we’ll get to that story some other day.

Cecil Adams

https://www.straightdope.com/21341767/what-does-do-not-hump-mean-on-the-side-of-railroad-cars

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51 minutes ago, hindesky said:

IT8KnIe.jpg

fPOEWSN.jpg

ejtnAW2.jpg

41JDEeS.jpg

JWtzsbx.jpg

qWYBvUw.jpg

yIRyKZD.jpg

10SJEDe.jpg

gWK3vwb.jpg

JXDRPVy.jpg

ogAeyNt.jpg

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"Simply put it means that the car shouldn't be humped. There are two ways that freight RR's build their trains. The first is called "Flat Switching", where you have a switch engine that moves the cars around from track to track as necessary to put the cars in the proper order.

The second way is through a hump yard. Cars are pushed over a small hill and are allowed to roll down the hill one at a time. Meanwhile a worker sitting in a tower throws the necessary switches to allow the cars to roll onto the proper tracks for classification.

So if a car says do not hump, then it should always be flat switched and not humped."

https://www.amtraktrains.com/threads/do-not-hump.725/

 

Dear Cecil: Whilst driving around recently a friend and I got stuck at a railroad crossing waiting for a freight train to go by. To pass the time, we began speculating on the meaning of a sign we saw on some of the cars saying DO NOT HUMP. We conjectured that this might be some sort of safe-sex campaign organized by the railroads in the wake of the AIDS crisis, but eventually rejected the idea. So we put it to you, Cecil — what is the meaning of this odd instruction? Gene W., Dallas

 

860704.gif

Illustration by Slug Signorino

Cecil replies:

Dear Gene:

I am saddened to report that DO NOT HUMP does not have any of the off-color significance that seems to give many of the Teeming Millions their principal reason to go on living. It refers to a common method used to sort freight cars known as “humping,” which involves the use of a man-made hill, or hump. A track heads up the hill and branches into numerous parallel tracks on its way down the other side. To make up new trains, a switch engine pushes a string of cars to the top of the hump, where the cars are uncoupled one at a time. Having determined the car’s destination, a worker in a nearby tower pushes buttons or throws levers or whatever to get the track switches (you know, those things where one track divides into two) lined up properly. The car is then given a nudge, causing it to roll down the hump and onto the right track.

The advantage of humping is that it’s a lot faster than having switch engines shuttle back and forth all day making up trains. The disadvantage is that it’s sometimes a little rough on the freight cars and their contents. Occasionally a car derails going down the hill, meaning the crew has to stop working and try to get the wheels back on the rails, which is not much fun, particularly in the middle of winter. What’s worse is the possibility that the car may roll down the hill too fast and crash into the car in front of it, jostling or damaging both the cars and what’s inside them. Special gimmicks on the rails called “retarders” are supposed to slow things down and prevent this, but they have been known to fail. Accordingly, cars with especially delicate contents are marked DO NOT HUMP, which tells the yard crew to set the car aside for special handling. This applies particularly to the tank cars used to haul hazardous chemicals, many of which have DO NOT HUMP stenciled permanently on their sides.

The railroad business, I might note, is one of the few fields where a guy without advanced training can still hope to wreak major environmental havoc. An old high school teacher of mine once told me about the time he worked in the steel mills helping switch coal cars. During his first week on the job, he was asked to participate in a risky maneuver known as a “flying switch.” The idea was that the locomotive would head toward a switch pulling a single coal car behind it. At the right moment, somebody would uncouple the car and the locomotive would scoot ahead through the switch onto the main line. Once the locomotive was clear, my high school teacher was supposed to throw the switch so the coal car would roll onto the side track.

Everything worked great until they got to the part where the teacher was supposed to throw the switch. For reasons that time has mercifully expunged from his memory, he waited to throw the switch until after the coal car’s front set of wheels had headed out toward the main line. The back set, however, was now headed onto the siding. You see the obvious problem this presents. My teacher had the privilege of watching a magnificent slow-motion disaster in the making as the coal car sort of rolled sidesaddle down the line until the tracks got too far apart, whereupon it toppled over and spilled 50 tons of coal all over creation. A great moment in railroading — nearly as funny as the time I almost knocked out the side of a building with an overhead crane. But we’ll get to that story some other day.

Cecil Adams

https://www.straightdope.com/21341767/what-does-do-not-hump-mean-on-the-side-of-railroad-cars

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Where is this?

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9 minutes ago, august948 said:

Where is this?

It's not actually a museum yet but the guys renovating the rail cars hope to make one happen. 14 rail cars.

They are on the left/western side of the Ark Trading warehouse with the white roof.

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