Mild Winter Weather? Ever go over the summit to Tahoe on US 50 in January?
Been there, seen that, left…[tdn]
Cali has Prop 65, but Estes Kefauver stuck us with the Kefauver Amendment about carcinogens in food additives - “Anything that may cause cancer in laboratory animals…” Even if the animal has no physiological similarity to a human and the quantity of additive is preposterously huge. When some lab dork proved that feeding the saccarine equivalent to a 55 gallon drum of diet soda a day to rats bred to be cancer prone caused them to develop cancer the weight-conscious public finally rebelled.
As for the Prop 65 sticker, I saw one on the driver’s side window of a car with Cali plates parked at my local Post Office. Next thing, I guess, will be a 24-sheet billboard on I-15 just south of Primm:
Warning. The State of California has determined that just passing through may cause irrational behaviour in laboratory technicians…
We won’t put any such sign on OUR side of the border. We want all those Angelinos to come here and leave their money in our casinos…
Chuck (Nevada resident modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Well those Prop 65 Warnings are a bit over the top since, as someone said before, all manner of manufacturers put them on everything of little consequence to prevent unlikely but unwanted legal problems. I live here and don’t even really see them anymore they’re so ubiquitous.
Even so, I’d rather have the concern than the lack of it. The latter is what made the US such a polluted mess in the late middle of the last century when the air in California was hard to breath. Not so anymore due to concerned citizenry.
The scenery is great in both California and Colorado, but different. I lived in CO for a while and watched many a D&RGW consist threading through the valleys and on the side of ridges and piercing rocky tunnels. Matter of fact that’s what I model, D&RGW. But more for the bitchen Black&Orange than the scenery.
I model the D&RGW but my layout is set in the Sierras! It caused me some concern, this seeming contradiction, until I recently came across a picture in the 70’s of a D&RGW SD-40T-2 coming out of the Donner Summit tunnel and learning that the sharing with SP, who owned that trackage then, was quite common. Last night I learned that D&RGW funded the start-up of Western Pacific, the other road I model, and all of a sudden my layout is prototypical when I thought it was just a couple of western railroads that I threw into the same place!
I model the Sierras because of the granite. Can’t match it in Colorado and I’ve been all over CO as a geologist and an outdoorsman. The Sierras are recognized the world over for their unmatched beauty and I really like the fact that a large section of the most beautiful part of the Sierras, 150 miles or so, is un-crossed by road or train. It sure peeved the Coloradans I knew that Mt. Whitney eclipses the elevation of Mt. Elbert, Co’s highest. I’ve been to the top of Elbert - sadly more a high roc
Look on the NIOSH hand book for many if not most of the solvents used in paint products. Toluol, which was in Floquil’s solvent is basically Toluene - yep carcinogenic. Benzene, same. Its why environmental consulting firms used to test for it in ground water and soil to try to clean it up. California just decided to high light things like this on labels is all.
I keep waiting for one of these environmental scare groups to determine that they have discovered what causes death 100% of the time and it must be eliminated. It is called life.
Anybody think it’ll ever be figured out that the real pollution is “us”! It’s just a matter of too many people and it’s that simple. Our planet is much like the elevator that says “maximum occupancy 10 people”, well we’ve already stuffed 15 people on it so it’s overloaded right now.
When I started school in 1954 our population was around 150 million, now what is it? 350 million? It would have happened much earlier if it hadn’t been for WWI and WWII but since then we’ve been multiplying like cockroaches.
Mother nature has tried to put the brakes on with various diseases but we have thwarted her efforts so the population has continued to grow at an alarming rate. It’s not the pollutents that are the problem, it’s the amount of people polluting that’s the real problem, but we won’t address that issue, after all, we’re “special”. Or so we think…
Oh well, this will probably get deleted by one of our “PC” moderators anyhow.
And as usual, it’s just an opinion, and we all know what those are like…
That’s because they used to think the answer to all their traffic problems was to build more freeways. They have learned their lesson, and are passing ever more restrictive emission laws and mass transit, but these things take time. The rest of the country goes blissfully on, thinking more roads is the answer and watching their air quality decline.
Don’t forget that most dangerous of all substances - Dihydrogen monoxide. That stuff’s so dangerous, maybe they should ban it… yet it’s in EVERYTHING and it’s all around us.
Now, now, now, let’s not bash the Califorinians. Most are wonderfully fantastic people. Some are a little whacked, but all states have them. They roster up, well some do, everytime the House and/or Senate meets. They are just trying to clean things up and in some opinions may go a bit oveboard, but, what is overboard today, may turn out not to be tomorrow. Say, does anybody remember playing with Mercury in Science class? Rolling it around in your palm, squishing it between our fingers. Gee it was like the coolest thing.
Anyway, we should worry about the things that really matter. Sure it’s a fact that every one who has ever played with trains has died, but do we stop? Heck no. Someday there will be a survivor and he will be able to keep the trains safe for all future generations.
What we really need to do is address the thing that is ignored by science but in reality really causes EVERY SINGLE death…
The rest of the country, by way of manufacturers of all products having to conform to CA environmental laws, has to bear some of the expense for problems that are unique to CA. CA’s smog problem is not caused by cars, its caused by geography, particularly southern CA. The air patterns that prevail about 90% of the time are inconsistent with supporting a high concentration of people in an industrialized society.
Take the same amount of traffic and place it in just about any other city in the US and you won’t get the concentration of smog that you do in LA. The CA smog issue of the 60’s is what drove most of the CA environmental movement and laws. This has evolved into a hypersensitivity for anything that may be harmful.
Places like Chicago, IL, that can be cloudy (rising air due to low pressure systems), temperature changes (frequent weather fronts), frequent changes in wind direction (ditto), boring scenery (flat land), except for Lake Michigan, allow the pollution to disperse and dissipate. On hot summer days, there are smog problems. Also, I’ve never heard of New York City having much of a smog issue.
The granola’s that live in CA are actually correct. There shouldn’t be many cars or industrialization in CA. The geography doesn’t support it. But because of the huge market that is CA, manufacturers build products that have a higher cost structure in order to accomodate the environmental laws. I hope that the costs that are passed on to the consumer, in this case MRR’ers (how ever minor that is), are priced into products that are segregated for the CA market and are not spread across the rest of the country. I fear otherwise.
Ahah–I see everyone is taking those California warnings on your model train equipment seriously. Funny, WE aren’t. Most of us out here just kind of chuckle when the labels appear and go on with our lives just like everyone else in the country.
Hey, we’re USED to California Bashing. It’s been the National Pastime since about after WWII when suddenly everyone discovered The Land Of Opportunity and came out here in droves. Thankfully, most of them settled in the LA basin and left the northern part of the state pretty much alone, so we Northern California ‘natives’ (and by ‘natives’, I mean anyone who can trace their ancestry back to the 1849 Gold Rush) just kinda/sorta keep on plugging away like we always have and chuckle a lot.
Okay, some of the Gold Rush towns up in the Sierra Nevada have been kinda/sorta taken over by Upscales from the Bay Area, and become “Artsy-Craftsy” to a degree, but a lot of times one good Sierra Nevada winter (and don’t forget, the Sierra Nevada have some of the highest record snowfalls in the entire country) will send them packing back down to where they came from originally. And remember, here in California, you can drive fifty miles or so and be in an ENTIRELY different geographical and climactic area. Not many states can say that.
As to California vs. Colorado for mountain scenery–I’ll be fair. Both states have just about the most spectacular mountain ranges I’ve ever seen. Only one difference: The Colorado Rockies begin at about 5,000 feet elevation and rise up over 14,000 feet. The California Sierra Nevada begin at about 200 feet elevation and rise up over 14,000 feet. Different geography, different geology. The Colorado Rockies are about 300 miles wide, the Sierra Nevada are about 85 miles wide as the crow flies. Like I said, totally different mountains, totally different geology. When the Central P
It’s been a long time since I’ve been to California. The last time I did, I thought I could solve all their problems (and ours) by jumping up and down on the San Andreas. I only got tired, but I did learn the error of my ways. I NEED MORE PEOPLE[:D]
Get out and travel around next time. I see you are from upstate NY so I can speak to both perspectives. I lived 17 years in California (grew up there really, including my early colleg years) and have also recently lived in upstate New York 17 years. I can honestly say there is good and bad about both but I’d pick California any day. I may not have been officially diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder but I dislike the long snowy winters with a passion in central New York (Syracuse). The summers are lovely and there is a lot of nice scenery and country side. I have to say I like hot sunny weather better though! The Sierra Nevada mountains provide a nice escape to the hot valley weather and you can back pack, or hike in the summer and ski in the winter. If you want snow, you drive to it, and then leave it behind at the end of the day.
