Do you mean like CANADA??? even though we are a major producer someone has decided that we keep our prices in line with the U.S. and not Saudi-Arabia or Argentina or anywhere else.
It would have meant a 300 mile round trip for me to catch UP844 this weekend - so I declined. Thanks RJ for the pictures.
dd
No, Uk, well Canada too, I guess. Your getting taxed more than us to pay for free health care, squatter’s rites, ect. that we don’t get here. If anyone wants all the social services the Dem. want so the unemployed will vote for them, just look at European taxation and see just how much it all really cost.
True, there are aspects of our society - healthcare, benefit system, higher education which are subsidised by the state.
High gas prices affect going out to watch trains? H*** I don’t know. I no longer own a car. I have to depend on public transportation for everything. Them there buses don’t go anywhere near where I could train watch. And I ain’t got no digital camera, neither. My “dino” film cameras are almost antiques!
Enjoy while you can, cause when you get old, all you will have are your memories and the photos.
CMStP & P forever![(-D]
We burned a bit of gas today–and no trains (once we left the UP at Elburn)! Not even on the BNSF mainb line through Sandwich, where we hung around for well over an hour. (Yes, we had a sandwich while we were there.)
If this keeps up I may have to rethink this part of my strategy (see above). Everything I saw on this trip would have gone past our town–within walking distance–in another hour or so.
I had a wonderful weekend watching trains in Northeastern Minnesota ( Iron Range ). Plenty of action.BNSF in Superior Wisconsin and CN on the range. I drove St Louis county highway 7 which parallells the old DM&IR main line much of the way. The signals all always lit so you know if a train is coming. I stayed at the Americinn Motel in Mountain Iron Minnesota which is on the CN main (DW&P). There were a lot of trains passing the motel. I used less than two tanks of gas. I drove a 2005 Toyota Corolla. The motel cost 90 bucks a night. I live in the Twin Cities which is a 4 hour drive. The weekend was worth every penny. I love the railfan hobby and I don’t mind spending the money. Look what it costs to see a play or a ballgame, the price of gas is part of enjoying the hobby[:)]
Ehhh, gotta spend it somewhere, might as well have fun doin’ it.
Adrianspeeder
Is that all?
I recall a custom years ago capable of pulling the gas gauge one way and the speedo the other. It would sometimes be a race to see which one maxed (Or emptied) first.
I favor cars that get about 300-400 miles range to the tank. Reading the latest on the chicken-little’s sky news these days indicate 4.00 a gallon soon.
Up here in Massachusetts it hit 4.01 for about a day…I’m glad I have 4 cylinders…for now…
Dave
I’m glad I work from home - travel othertimes - and my usual railfan spot is only 15 miles by highway north of me. My problem is work and kids are keeping me away from the tracks more than any spike in gas prices. [|(]
More the workload than family responsibilities, really. There is a park close to the tracks, maybe I can convince the kids it’ll be fun to play there. [swg] The wife is another issue. [B)]
D.M. Mitzel - Oxford, Mich. - Div. 8-NCR-NMRA
Heheh, I get that, but it’s a 35gallon tank 
Adrianspeeder
In my part of Australia we are between the Stateside and European pricing at about $4 a gallon on the low days and $4.33 later in the week. When you are some distance from the coastal refineries you expect to pay a bit more. The price of petrol (gasoline) doesn’t have the same effect on us as we experienced the big increases years ago and have learnt to live with it and adjust our total spending. When suitable I ride the bus. We switched to a four cylinder medium auto five years ago and decided one would do instead of the two we had. Marvellous how handy the other half of the garage is.
It definitely has. The railroad has declined so much in my county, that the nearest place I can watch trains is about 30 miles away. Not very convenient, especially when you consider much of it is big city stop-and-go traffic that really eats in to your mpg. The closest place for me to watch trains with any sort of regularity or numbers is Jacksonville and Folkston, about 4 and 5 hours away respectively.
maybe i am in the minority, but i have a gas-sucking pick-up truck that can easily suck up nearly a tankful of 3.29 gas on a trip just out from evanston to coal city or rochelle, much less the distances i used to drive to see trains. the price of fuel has affected every facet of my life. i have to try and charge more for jobs…using 20 dollars in gas for a 60 dollar job is near pointless. i also don’t go out to the country fishing anymore.
it is certainly possible that many train watchers are much more affluent than me. i am your poor cousin and gas prices are killing my train watching and my work.
I now try to combine trips. Get some railfanning in if we are going somewhere else anyway, such as model railroad shows or various rail society conventions. A combined trip was to Maryland in Oct. 2005 to visit family. We spent four days on the way in West Virginia riding the Durbin Rocket, Cheat Mt. Salamander, New Tygart Flyer, and of course, Cass Scenic.
But I have found myself going less and less often to some of my favorite places 50 miles away. And we really haven’t headed out on any 2,000 mile, 10-day, nothing-but-railfanning trips since 2000 when we went to Colorado and rode about 7 railroads.
When we go out of town, we take my wife’s Chevy Malibu Maxx if no four-wheeling will be required. It has most of the room of my 1994 S-10 Blazer, which get 22-23 mpg hwy 15-16 in town. The Maxx normally gets 31-33 mpg hwy. and has gotten as high as 38.6 (one tankful, 600 miles, from Mackinaw City, Mich. to home an hour west of the Twin Cities, Minn. with perfect driving conditions — few towns and only had to slow to 45-50 through most of the small ones, 55 mph speed limit, little traffic, 65-70 degrees so no air conditioning needed or windows open, etc.)
Hope to get back railfanning more later this summer when the Blazer gets replaced. Looking at an HHR that gets 30 mpg hwy and still hauls my gear. Found I only use the four-wheel drive a handful of times each winter, and after growing up without four-wheel drive inthe 1970s when we had real winters, I think I’ll be able to get where I’m going without it. Besides, I drove a Camaro a couple of winters in the early 1980s, and if you can do that, you can drive just about anything in the winter.
Do ride the bike more in the summer to run errands in our town of 14,000. Can get most anyway in 10 minutes — post office, groceries, church, etc. So that helps bring the fuel costs down. Need to have the car at work, though, as I often have to go out for my job. Otherwise I’d ride everyday. Only 1.5 miles.
Yes they do, no thanks to Pres. George W… Hitler who started a very stupid and illegal war. The price gouging could have been nipped in the bud… I have a spot fairly close to home and it is near the Southern Tier Line of NS. It inhibits my ability to go other places for photo shoots of old depots etc. for book projects of mine. Too bad no one has considered price controls on g asoline or government seizure of the entire oil industry. Their obscene profits ought to be invested in the needed refining capacity instead of going up a CEO’s nose. I bet some of those refinery accidents were arranged by the owning companies themselves. What better way to force up the cost of gasoline than to deliberately blow up your own refinery. In my opinion, much of Corporate America has that kind of scruples or lack there of and the price gouging at he gas pump is but one symptoms. If even higher prices lead to violence, I won’t be too surprised. The higher the price goes, the shorter people’s tempers are becoming, sooner or later there is going to be an explosion…
That is exactly what President Hitler (in Germany) and Stalin (Russia) did . Worked great didn’t it? Cheap gas, but 30 million dead.
Phooey on gas prices, if you don’t want to pay a lot at the pump then stop driving or buy your own refinery and sell gas cheaper than the competition. Otherwise it’s just going to have to be a cost of living expense. Besides, relative to the rest of the economy, gas is still very affordable in terms of price increase over the years. For example, 15 years ago a new car cost about 8K and a gallon of gas was around $1. Now a new car 4-5 times as much, but gas only 3 times. Let’s not even get into the housing increase, my property tripled in only 5 years.
Since I can’t do anything about corporate America, I focus my energy on becoming a better person and raising my family with moral values. I fix what I can and learn to live with the things I can do nothing about.