Post Race!

Yeah, that's the one. Most of the tracks have now been removed, but they still exist through that canyon. They probably still exist on the Lawyer Canyon trestle shown in the picture.

Back when I first walked up that route, it was still active. In fact, as I was about to start out, I saw a train on it. I had driven to the top of the grade, where it emerges onto the prairie, left my car there, then biked back down to the bottom to start up. I had seen the train at the top, about to head down the grade, so by the time I got down to the bottom by bike, which was mostly downhill and fast, I wasn't sure whether the train had passed or not.

The first thing I did was go through a curved tunnel where you couldn't see either end from a point in the middle. That was a bit interesting, with the possibility that a train might be coming. From there, it was just a matter of crossing trestle after trestle. The rest of the tunnels were short, and I could see all the way through them. Most of the trestles weren't bad, either, but there is one that featured prominently in Breakheart Pass (it's the trestle where the fireman falls to his death) because it is so VERY high and fairly long. The area between the rails had been covered in sheet metal, so walking was really easy, as you couldn't fall between the ties, but on a warm summer day, the sheet metal was pinging steadily as it heated in the sun. I couldn't tell whether there was a train coming or not, and on the other side of the trestle, the tracks went through a bit of a curved cut, so I couldn't see far ahead, either.

I watched and listened, sometimes convinced the train was coming, other times thinking it was just pinging metal. Eventually, I sprinted up to the first fire platform and stood there listening for a time, before sprinting to the next platform, and so on across the trestle. As it turned out, the train had passed long before I even reached the bottom of the hill by bike, and I never saw it. Sure made for an engaging hike, though.

I told a friend about that hike, and he did the same with his family. He reported that there was a pretty nice outcropping containing chalcedony up near the top, so he and I, along with one of his sons, went back there to pick up a few pieces.

Scenic hike, a bit of rock hounding, not a bad day.

On the passenger train service to Boise, Trains magazine had an article on that. I'll try to find it and see what the info was.

Outdoor Idaho had some segments in the Camas Prairie Railroad. One segment had a group of motorcar owners traveling on it, titled Riding the Rails. There was also a Tracks of Time program and a Northwest Rail Journey program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_speeder

I've always been interested in rail-bikes, but there aren't any interesting routes around here.

There are some rail-bike sections in Oregon. I will try to find some info on them.

The bigger issue for me is that I don't tend to do day trips. There are some great old rail lines, but you tend not to be able to bike for a week, or so.

A friend and I have been talking for years about building a track cart. I have a spare 7 hp engine that currently has no job and I recently found the perfect wheels for it: Single Flanged Track Wheel 4-15/16" Diameter x 1-7/16" Face x 2-1/4" Hub length with 3/4" Roller Bearing

Problem #1: standard rail gauge is 56-1/2" inside the rails and the back doors of my van are 55" wide so it will be tricky getting it in and out.

Problem #2 is there are no tracks around here that are still intact but OOS except for the Erie line from Solon to Aurora, but it's so overgrown from 30+ years of inactivity that it's impassable. In southern Ohio NS's ex-N&W Cincinnati subdivision is OOS between Portsmouth, Ohio and the outskirts of Cincinnati - about 90 miles total so that's something to consider.

Interesting fact: From 1928 to 1934 Portsmouth, Ohio was the original home of the NFL franchise now known as the Detroit Lions and their stadium not only still stands, but is regularly used for high school games.

It's probably about the right size for a HS game, too. I hope it's a classic structure, because that's mighty old.

Planes, trains, and automobiles.

I feel more like the Del Griffith of programmers each day.

The arguments on the site go round and round...

Well, doesn't scan quite right.

Anyone else sick of all of these hair on fire stories about the economy? I see little in the way of helpful suggestions aside from obvious things like "pay off debt."

The inflation could be more tolerable but you add in the S & P 500 down 25% and the Nasdaq down 35% YTD, it's no fun. Especial for people that know that don't have 10 or 20yrs to wait for a recovery.

My hairs not on fire but I'm worried.

The markets dropped around that much in 2008 (or thereabouts, I forget when the bottom was). Two years after that, I had made back all my losses. We might be looking at a longer window, this time, as the underlying issues are different, but I'm not convinced that we're looking at a 10-20 year recovery window.

As for paying down debt, it depends on whether or not your income keeps up with inflation. If often doesn't, or at least lags, but your debts don't increase. If you owe 10,000 now, and your income goes up by 8%, and everything costs 8% more, you still owe 10,000, it's just not as much money as it was before.

Inflation erodes debt. For lots of people, that doesn't really matter, since their income doesn't increase at a pace with inflation, so inflation also erodes earnings, as well. For those who do keep up, then inflation erodes debt.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

The markets dropped around that much in 2008 (or thereabouts, I forget when the bottom was). Two years after that, I had made back all my losses. We might be looking at a longer window, this time, as the underlying issues are different, but I'm not convinced that we're looking at a 10-20 year recovery window.

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Yeah, the market decline started in 2007 and didn't reach that same level till 2013 so your lucky to have recovered your losses in two years. The last couple of big drops have had a sharp V recovery but that not always the case. The DOW had a major down turn starting in 1966 and never fully recovered till 1995. So it's just a crap shoot was to when it will recover.

The frustrating thing to me is that your forced to take these risk if you want to grow your savings. At least I don't know of any fixed income that out preforms inflation.

I don't think there is one.

In the latest edition of The Economist (or perhaps it was last week, I forget), there is a report on a study that shows that bond performance has declined steadily since 1311. Yeah, that's a LONG time ago, and there have been several, brief reversals over that time, but the trend has been steadily downwards. It's an interesting thing.

My investments have shifted since that time, but I did get unusually lucky over some quarters, and had average returns for most of them. One thing about it is that there's a certain amount of luck involved. I was in a couple mutual funds for reasons that can best be described as laziness. One of them gained 40-60% in a single quarter. I happened to be there for that, but not because of any skill. I had researched all my options thoroughly back around 98, but since that time, some funds I had been in had been removed from the table, and my money automatically moved into a different fund. That happened twice, so the fund that did so well...wasn't of my choosing. I was in it because I hadn't bothered to do the same research on the new fund.

I have a buddy at work who is seriously hooked on gold. He talks about how great it would be if he had put a thousand into gold back in the '80s. He overlooks the fact that he'd have made FAR more had he put that thousand into Apple stocks at the same time, or held onto that thousand and put it into bitcoin when it was worth pennies. Of course, it helps if you also sell at the right time, but the key point is that if you are in the right place at the right time, it can go really well. If not...well, then not so much.

Yeah, I think we tend to buy into things and invest a lot of hope in them. Financial strategies as much as anything else.

Some can be pretty high-maintenance if "done properly" requiring time and expertise or paid advice which can be... of uneven quality. That's pretty much why pensions and Social Security had been structured to finance halfway-trustworthy management into the package rather than leave workers quite as exposed to predation and circumstance.

The poor performance of 457 plan experiments showed the flaws of individually managed funds-based investment, but the lobbyists got their way anyhow. That's how we got 401(k) plans, which allowed employers to escape the competitive pressure to offer pension plans and opened Wall Street into a fully fledged Las Vegas experience.