Due to High gas prices…railfan Jim Tiroch…or as on the forums…bnsfkline…has decided to temporarly suspend his railfan activites. His vehical…“The Fury” gulps gas like nothing and has been “Put into storage” until gas prices fall again. Fuel in St. Louis is currently $2.49 a gallon for regualr and is to jump over $3.00 later this week… Once a new car has been purchased…he will again resume his activites. Jim has this comment
“I hate to due this…but I need to prioritize on work and sara right now. I have gotten alot of neet stuff this year…but now its time to focus. I am staying in the hobby and will continue to post on the Trains Magazine forums…but that will stop when Trains decides to charge $2.49 a word! I will also continue to watch and continue purchasing PENTREX videos and going to work on my friends layouts.”
We purchased a Ford Escape last year. Very happy with the unit. We got a V6 and the milage isn’t the best, about 22-23 mpg on the highway, the 94 merc cougar that we replaced with a V8 got about 4 mpg more than the Escape. Its a good railfan chase car!
Hey, enjoy your $2.49/gallon, we are paying $2.85/gallon for regular here in DuPage county Illinois and anticipating it to be $3.00 pretty darned soon.
Thanks for the empathy. I also have a 94 Ford Ranger PU, 4cyl. It gets about 27 MPG, thats my go to work truck. I get 3 weeks of back and forth to work per tank, the tank at runs about $30.00. But the chase car is the Escape, better amenities like AC and stuff.
(just figured out your pain was for Jim T, sorry)
BNSFKLine; How about car pooling on railfan outings, that way you have the fun of other railfans and get to splits costs? Sunday, two of my buddies and I will be going up on Donner Summit to fan, I figure it’ll cost only about $10.00 bucks a head for gas. Anyway, just a thought.
Jim, too bad to hear that, I was hoping for a follow up to your multi-hour video you sent out. I’m still working through it, but I must be at least 4 hours through(I haven’t had much time this summer). I’ve liked what I’ve seen so far a lot. Hopefully you’ll still come out with something down the road.
It’s about 95p/ltr here at the moment, which equates to around $9 a (UK) gallon. 75% of this is tax, very cunning in that everyone has to pay for fuel no matter how much they earn, so they can squeeze us all more or less equally. Funnily enough I can’t recall the last time I saw the people who set the tax have to buy their own fuel - those big ministerial Jaguars must get far worse than the 30mpg my car returns…
I need to make a correction here. I recentily said that I pay 2.69 per gal for 94 Octane I have to correct that. Now I will be paying 2.93 per gal for 94 octane. Today I got about 6.78 gals out of 20 bucks today at the pumps.
SP9033 I feel your pain also. Gas and fuel dosen’t come cheap anymore. Oh ya know I like your idea about car pooling but, unfortunitly I don’t have anyone to car pool with. The closest person I know who is a railfan lives all the way in Illinois, isn’t that sad.
It just jumped forward to $2.49(most expensive) and $2.35(cheapest) here in Rock Springs, I guess we are pretty lucky here and I should really stop cringing every time I pass the station and see it has risen a couple more cents.
Yes, I have had to temporarily limit my railfanning activities due to the high fuel prices, although most of my railfanning is:
On the way to, from, or between job sites – my daytime job is at several sites around the Milwaukee area!
Near my house, at Waterford Avenue, about 1/2 mile away
And I have a 1987/96 Ford F150, fortunately it gets good mileage for a full-size pickup, but it’s still only 16 MPG[:(]! But I “splurged” yesterday and went to the northwest side to get pictures of “Miss Katy”, and a few pictures up further in Germantown to catch the return trip of the HM. (Photos on my website later…) It was worth it! Even though I paid 2.739 a gallon to refill the ol’ truck…
Hope you are able to get out railfanning again soon!
-Mark
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