I remember Comets from my younger days, too: whole strings of them were pulled by U34CHs.
The Earth was so close to Halley’s Comet in 1910 that, I believe, it passed through the gas tail (leading to the pathetic cyanogen business). In 1986 as I recall we were on the far side of the orbit from the track of the Comet both in and out.
The even more miserable disappointment that this silly diversion has reminded me of was Comet Kouhoutek. What a dud that was. (That statement doesn’t even deserve a semantic exclamation point!)
I do remember an otherwise unnotable comet, in the 1980s, because it was quite clear and visible as such in peripheral vision, but dim enough that foveal vision at night made it ‘disappear’ when you tried to look directly at it.
None of this astrophysical diversion has anything to do with the topic at all.
My oldest sister was six blocks away from where the 727 (PSA flight 182) hit the ground, when it hit the ground (she heard the boom). I’ve also known a number of former PSA pilots.
The reporting of the accident was a hot mess, with almost nobody paying attention to the number of little details that led to the accident, such as Lindbergh Field having the only civil ILS in the area, the lack of an ATC radar display at the control tower and the fact that the Cessna was in contact with ATC (flying IFR) while the PSA was in contact with Lindbergh tower (flying VFR).
[more comments] My biggest beef with the reporting on the accident was the pile-on blaming the Cessna pilot when he was flying where ATC told him to fly along with he was practicing iLS approaches at Lindbergh Field, because that was the only civil ILS in San Diego at that time. What didn’t get reported was that the Aviation trust fund had been running a surplus for a number of years and there was more than enough money to fund installation of an ILS at a general aviation field. Also rarely reported was that the establishment of a Terminal Control Area prohibited the short VFR approach used by PSA Flight 182 as well as all the other airlines flying into Lindbergh.
You could provide commuter passenger service and be thoroughly prototype for a fictional indudstrisl railroad. The Chicago and Western Indiana bought Erie 60-foot Stillwells for their Chicago commuter service, and these lasted well into the diesel era. They would look fine behind light steam, Pacifics, Atlantics, ten-wheelers, or behind passenger-equipped dual-purpose RS-2s or RS-3s or GP-7s. No reason why your fictional railroad could not have bought some. As far as looks go, these passenger cars are among my favorites, especially those that escaped letter-board modernization and kept their opennable paired-with-arch windows. Someone should be making these in HO…
Pacific Southwest Airlines. It avoided Civil Aeronautics Board jurisdiction by operating intrastate within California only. It did have to comply with FAA safety regs.
The cause of the crash specifically above was pitch up of the nose of the specific aircraft model when on landing approach. The crew of the PSA plane only could see the Cessna for less than 3 or 5 seconds via visual flight rules at the time in controlled airspace before they rear ended it in mid-air. That was the primary cause determined by the Feds. The other ancillary issues mentioned I think most were addressed by now.
Anyhoo, wasn’t my intent to start a whole new tangent on airliners not sure how we got diverted on comets.
Not sure how we got off on comets and plane crashes but interesting nonetheless. I wonder how someone might go about modeling a comet? I’d stay away from modeling an airplane crash - bad juju. I do recall in the mid-60s, there was a hobby shop in Bayshore shopping center in Milwaukee. Some creative mind took some plastic dinosaur models and some military models and put them together in some really cool and fun dioramas with the dinosaurs crushing the tanks and the tanks shooting the dinosaurs. No trains involved. Anyway, thanks all. Fun exchange.
