When I paid a visit to my favorite hobby shop today, Charlie (my favorite “host”) expressed some displeasure with something I recently posted on the Forum.
A railroader, he says, would never call the BNSF’s line from Chicago to Aurora “The Racetrack.” It’s the East End. West of Aurora (toward Galesburg) is the Main Line, and to the other west (through Rochelle to Savanna and beyond) is the C&I.
“Racetrack” came about as a corruption of some magazine’s (was it Trains?) mention of BN’s triple-track raceway. So, says Charlie, calling it the Racetrack almost immediately identifies the speaker as…well, as a Foamer. (At this point Charlie paid me a compliment–says I’m definitely not a foamer!)
So, in the interest of maintaining my dignity as a non-foaming railroader (albeit a railfan), I’ll now refer to this line (when I refer to it at all) as the BN East End. Anyone else who wants to call it the Racetrack, feel free–but I have discovered The Truth.
(Unless, of course, a non-foaming railroader is a railroader who’s lost his head!)
I didn’t know that a “Racetrack” existed until I saw this thread and now it doesn’t exist again! I’ll continue on in blissful ignorance…at least until the next brick wall finds me!
Duff, there was a thread about Foamers here just a couple of days ago–I suspect that Charlie had been reading that one, and was being kind to me when he said I wasn’t one of those. I guess I’ll have to settle for being a FRN (I feel another question coming on!).
Forgive me, please. For some reason, discussion of “foamers” is one of those topics that seems to turn into a hissing match.(Check out some of those posts, and you’ll see). If you felt I was being mean to you, I’m sorry. That was not my intent. I could have worded my response better:
“Foamer” is generally a degrading term used to imply that another has too much interest in trains.(To put it nicely.) Here’ hoping this thread doesn’t turn into one of those posts.
I didn’t think you were being mean to me, I thought I asked a simple question, and didn’t want to waste my time searching through endless threads just to find an answer. Next time I will pull someone aside and PM a question.
Anyone else old enough to remember this campaign from Western Electric’s Hawthorne Plant? It was addressed to a certain Mr. McCarthy.
As a small kid I remember seeing the decals on WE employees’ cars where I grew up in Cicero. Because in those days it seemed like EVERYONE worked at Western Electric. It was big enough to own its own yard goats to shuffle cars. I think it was served by the B&O.
