Spending another weekend with Mookie!

Trains Magazine General Discussion
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Well, let’s see - I write on little scraps of paper and then shove them all in my purse and when I get to work on Monday - well, you can just about picture the mess!

But hopefully there will be something in here someone will want to comment on or enlighten me on or just plain crab about!

Saw Edible Beef Tallow stenciled on a car - that’s enough to make the Mookie spit up. Why would you want to?

Tanker with no boiling water, no sharp objects and only soft-soled shoes inside - I didn’t realize you can get inside the tank cars? Can you - not me, but maybe you?

Carl - I saw 5 CATX cars with the kitty paw print on them. Since they haul kitty litter ingredients - well, I had a fleeting urge…

They are a pretty light blue and white! Impressive and followed by FURX and GATX (Gato?) Wonder if coincidence or…naw - no one could plan that!

Ok - onwards - saw a duo hooked together pulling freight - #328 BNSF marked GP 60B - no cab - just power unit with #120 SF GP60M.

Then - saw BNSF 3114 - a GP50 with remote painted on it, 1701 - a GP9B - no cab - power only and 1408 GP10 - and these were all marked - read it right off the engines themselves. We never see any of these, so what they were doing loose, I don’t know - except they were hauling freight south out of town!

Must have been one of those “we are short on power…”

Saw a BN 9296 on a freight. Not repainted yet! Just BN.

Saw CSX 741 on head end of coal train.

Saw one CSX (couldn’t see #) running around on the wye.

Saw BNSF 6199 SD9 doing hump work.

That’s enough sightings for one day.

Reporterette Mookie off on assignment!

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Some tank cars are glass lined, and the openings up top can be big enough for even the more husky of us to get through.

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That’s really scary for a claustrophobic like me!

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…“5 CATX cars with the kitty paw print on them”…This is surprising since the “paws print” is also the icon on Jim Davis’s equipment such as airplanes. As you may know he is the “daddy” of GARFIELD in the comic strip…and his headquarters are just a few miles from here. There really is a cats paw print on the tail of his airplane.

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that is so interesting! Brother Carl sent me photos and told me to be on the lookout for them!

If I had a cat that made me that much $, I would have a paw print on everything I owned! I didn’t realize he was in that area! Figured LA or NY!

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…No their headquarters is right outside of Muncie…a large spread in the country. Jim started locally here with a comic strip some years ago and as you can see the rest is history.
A few years ago he could be found sitting in a corner booth of a restaurant here in Muncie…sketching on a pad, etc…

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…i get paw prints on my car windshield every morning.

I don’t know why the cats have to play in the dirt THEN on my car.

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…Seems they just like to show they can.

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Methinks Driver needs to swing by local dollar store enroute to next trainwatching session and let La Mook acquire some spiral notebooks for taking notes (a case should do for now).

As for the edible beef tallow - be sure to read the ingredients on your fast food…

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Mook:

BNSF 1701 spends most workdays at the Havelock carshop as the shop goat there east of Lincoln. Surprised you don’t see it more often. Most likely en route to Alliance for its monthly inspection.

Knee Deep in Mud
South Platte River (no agua)/ Sterling to Julesburg, CO

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Don’t be surprised if your fries are done in beef tallow, at least by some fast-food chains. I couldn’t tell you the ratio of edible-tallow cars to inedible tallow cars, but if you look closely at the commodity stencils, you’ll find that tank cars often go from one to the other–both ways! I would hate to be the guy with the ruber-soled shoes who has to clean out an “inedible” car so it can be used for “edible”.

My question: anybody know what’s so special about Canadian tallow, eh? I’ve seen that marking show up on a few cars.

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Hi Mookie,
Yeah, like Larry and Carl said, check the ingredients in your fast food,
and just about every pre prepared meat food product you buy at your local grocery store.
Its in a lot of things, from potatoe chips to frozen dinners.
Your grandmother, and maybe your mom too, knew it as lard, rendered animal fat.

Inedible tallow ends up in a huge number of products also, from the wax candles are made with to hair care products like shampoo and conditioners, just about every kind of bar soap you buy.

Shoe polish, commerical floor waxes, car wax, and quite a “beauty” products use it as a base.

The ones that tickle me are the “technial animal fat” cars, like what, did the cows know DOS, or windows 98?

Most of the tankers you see in food service, like the ones hauling this product, and corn sweatners, molasses, cooking oils and such, have a manway hatch in the top.
If you look closely, you will notice that these cars usually have bottom discharge center valves.
The cars often have steam line hook ups, to heat the content with steam, so it flows easier.
And they have, short, big around flat tops on them, instead of the domes you normally see.
These tops or manways, have the loading valves in them, and the hatch into the car, so someone can enter and wash/rinse them out after use.

Most food service cars are lined with a product very much like teflon, to keep the product from sticking to the inside.
And just like your teflon skillet, you dont want the lining scratched, so you use wooden cooking untensils or plastic ones, and the tank car cleaners use plastic scrapers, and hot water, (not boiling, just hot) to clean them.

And, if you didnt already know, when you are looking at a tank car, your not looking at the outside of the tank proper, you are looking at the car body, or crush sheets.
Just like a thermos bottle, with a heavy steel outside shell, tank cars have a inner tank, and d

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Well, this posting ruined my breakfast! Ugh!

Cats walk on cars for two reasons - it’s pretty and they can! (well, it is pretty to them!)

Sir Chicken - I never get to see the Havelock shops, let alone the cabless 1701. But if it was going to Alliance - it was headed south and then west - out east end of yard. (*Alliance is west of Lincoln) Maybe going to go thru Colo and see what you were standing in? So now you really are a Muddy Chicken??? Now I have ruined my lunch!

Tree - would you believe I have lots of paper and pens in the car - in the back seat, in a little box all ready to go. But we park and I have my nose pressed against the window and forget to get all my equipment lined up - until the trains are right in front of me. Then had to write on a facing page in a paperback novel I was going to read!

Brother Carl - I know you sent those cars my way - thank you! But you didn’t really need to put them along with FURX and GATX - that was so nice of you!

Modelcar - we have 3 actual counties here in Nebraska named after animals:

Antelope, Buffalo and …drum roll…Garfield! [:D]

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You forgot to read the fine print, Sis!

There was also a plain gray ACFX covered hopper in there, stenciled as leased to the Golden Cat Corporation!

I also tried for a Chessie System car, but those are getting harder and harder to come by.

[;)]

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In my limited watching - I have seen one old Chessie boxcar. Long time ago and it was here and gone! But I smiled!

Will watch for the Golden Cat - !

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It’s a big deal because they wanna know where the animals originated from. Everything (when it comes to animal products) has to be traceable back to the originating country.

So, if they car is labeled “canadian tallow” it will only hold tallow from Canada, not to be mixed with tallow originating in the US.

If there is another Mad Cow crisis or something originating in Canada, everyone will know that the tallow in that car is not to be used unless the Food and Drug Administration gives it the go ahead.