I don’t know how many people have read Malcolm Kenton’s Feb 29 blog post, but if you haven’t, you may have quite a treat in store. Especially if you are familiar with the general Red Green School of Engineering use of duct tape…
Perhaps the best part of the story is the sentence containing the highly-interesting-in-context words “at speed”…[:O]
We don’t call it “sixty mile an hour tape” for nothin’…
Wouldn’t referencing the Red Green Show make it the “Great White North” school of engineering?
I didn’t want to bring up Bob and Doug with so many Canadians active in the forums right now. In any case… I was not aware of a Canadian analogue to the duct-tape theology represented by the Red Green franchise, nor did I think that the Canadian ‘analogue’ of ‘git-r-dun’ had the same unique combination of kludge-like expediency and unlikely found materials as that particular ‘school’ of emergineering and aleatory materials science.
I would be delighted to hear what the detailed Canadian versions of both the philosophy and the implementation are, for the various geographical regions (or regional stereotypes!) that might apply. Is it politically correct to use “Newfie” humor any more, even if one is Canadian and therefore poses no risk of PC nation-state disrespect?
EDIT: I am leaving this post intact as an example of the amazing pitfalls that happen when you ASSume. Aside from noting that yes, Red Green would be ‘Great White Northern engineering’…
Would someone please give some indication of where this blog is located?
Thats 200 MPH tape in my favorite sport!
Wouldn’t Red Green, set in northern Ontario, Canada IIRC, be the Canadian analogue to the duct tape theology?
Anyway, to keep it simple, the story involves fixing a broken (missing) air brake valve on a VIA “The Canadian” train trip by jamming a stick in the hole and duct taping it enough so the brake pressure doesn’t blow the stick out the hole.
And I think most Canadian people in the 1980s liked SCTV…
Look up at the top of the page, and click on “Blogs & Forums”
Ye Gods, I had no idea! Didn’t even bother to fact-check it. I was sure that was making gentle ‘redneck’ fun, targeted at the typical sort of redneck areas so popular on YouTube…
It sure is Canadian, isn’t it … perhaps even more so than Lake Wobegon is “Minnesot’n”
I did, which one has something to do with “Old-Time Southern Engineering”?
“Trump Hunter ‘can’t be so soft’ [Satire]”
“60 minutes in the life of EHH”
“Rare endcab switchers are still among us”
“How inventive use of a stick saved the day aboard The Canadian”
“It’s springtime for railfans … in Wisconsin”
“Requiem for the Tidewater Turn”
“10 questions for the manager of this year’s Norfolk & Western No. 611 trips”
The one with the stick. The Norfolk Southern guy used good old-fashioned ‘Southern’ ingenuity to get the train rolling again. (And the kludge was good enough for ‘safe’ high-speed running…)
To quote another sort-of-Southern source, “It’s a joke, son.”
Falls about as flat, too, come to mention it…
“bout as sharp as a bowling ball!”
Laugh all you want to, but the ‘quick and dirty’ fix kept the train running and the railroad open.
IIRC, we used a lot of that green ‘duct tape on steroids’ to cover bullet holes in A-1 Super Spads during the late, great Southeast Asian war games. Helped the aerodynamics, and also covered up the bright aluminum disc where the impact knocked the paint off.
Chuck [MSgt, USAF(Ret)]
Speaking of “Great White North” I wish we’d get some Tim Horton’s doughnut shops down here in the US. Ever have any? GOOD stuff!
I had an experience a bit like the one described on “The Canadian”.
In 1964 I went on my first railfan tour including overnight travel in a sleeping car. The sleeping car was a copy of Colonel Mann’s Boudoir Car design dating to 1897, and quite comfortable.
We travelled all night, changing steam locomotives for progressively smaller locomotives as we proceeded West into the great plains. Finally we picked up two 4-4-0s and some lighter cars to head out on the branch to Cobar, one of the most remote locations in NSW.
As we approached Cobar, an anti vacuum valve mounted on the smokebox front of 1243, the leading 4-4-0 (built 1882, looking just like NSW loco 144 illustrated in a recent post by Wizlish) fractured its mounting flange and departed into the surrounding countryside in a cloud of steam. Amazingly it was found and relocated after a fashion, but the 1887 Vulcan Foundry loco 1709 trailing did most of the work to get us to Cobar station, where 100 years of rail service was duly celebrated.
After the celebrations, a trip to a nearby silver/lead/zinc mine was scheduled.
For some reason, we were allowed to sit in an 1890 Vice Regal saloon attached at the front of the train and I found myself sitting opposite the Assistant Chief Mechanical Engineer, Cornelius Cardew, one of the few really erudite engineers with a few patents and numerous technical papers to his credi
Yes I have and, and it’s more the love of “Timmy” than has to do with any quality than can be had inside the store. (Eh?) …You Betcha!
Hey, don’t underestimate Southern engineering. During the War Between the States, the South devised the world’s first ironclad warship (CSS Virginia, formerly the sunken USS Merrimack which had been raised), then manufactured several more ironclads; designed and built the world’s first successful submarine, the CSS Hunley; and stood up a functional gunpowder production complex, all with an industrial base and a cadre of trained engineers a fraction the size of those in the North.
We have one on every third street corner here in Columbus - ours, at least, are run of the mill at best. [:|]. Perhaps the ones north of the border are better?
Fixed it for you. Sorry.
But seriously I’m Canadian and everyone I’ve ever met loves Bob & Doug and Red Green. How else would we learn to bake bread in a washing machine, or get free beer using a dead mouse? They teach essential skills for survival up here in the Great White North.
We are obsessed with Tim Horton’s too, but even more so down east. Cities in Ontario seem to have one on every city block.
Before Tim’s migrated south of the border, on our trips to Ontario, my wife would not let me back into the states without stopping for a dozen or so pecan butter tarts. They were great. Here in the states, they’re just so-so. Local bakeries make better stuff.