First and foremost, let me wish everyone a safe and happy 4th of July. I am so lucky to be invited a neighborhood party with great food, alcohol, and fireworks. To be honest, the fireworks display rivals Boston. I wish you all could be there.
Some of the comments directed at me recently made me a bit apprehensive sharing my post with the BMG community, but I found this too newsworthy, to keep to myself.
I have fond memories of playing with my Lionel train as a kid, the enjoyment getting lost in your own world, creating your little own American landscape while controlling the speed of a locomotive and its passenger cars by an electric transformer. Today, I see kids with their faces stuck in their iPhones (topic for my next post)
I was up in Maine last month and stopped at a railroad crossing. Whenever I see the red lights flashing, I never try to beat the train, I enjoy watching it pass by, brings back memories I guess. So, I saw this beast of a locomotive pulling several cars, but not passengers, instead, some sort of tank cars. I did a little research, and what I saw was oil from North Dakota on its way to a refinery in Canada. Isn’t that amazing?
Come to find out, due to lack of pipeline, trains carried 5.3 million barrels of crude across the state of Maine, and the volume is growing. This has resulted in more jobs and investment in the state of Maine (WHOO-HOO). I just may come out against Keystone if we haul the oil over our RR tracks instead.
Don’t be fooled by some who claim no jobs are created here from oil exploration a thousand or so miles away. Below is similar to what I saw up in Maine. The only thing missing is a logo across those tanker cars with the words “Made in the U.S.A.”. That should make everyone happy.
“Pan Am has been improving its tracks and adding locomotives and crews, making it a player in the growing crude-oil competition, according to Hall.” Of course, there are people who will protest anything.
http://www.kjonline.com/news/oil-crossing-maineby-way-of-railroad_2012-05-29.html?pagenum=full
http://www.pressherald.com/news/Protesters-in-Fairfield-block-train-carrying-oil-to-New-Brunswick.html