Cracked Ass

labrodent photo

photo by ArtistikFunk

It looks good to me. There's always going to be some grousing about who else should have been in instead of so-and-so, but an honest effort was made to include every important player, and I think they succeeded in particular with the early generations of aerosol, including some obscure folks who deserved it. Some omissions were also at the request (or disdain) of potential includees, despite being invited. Roger's rep on the $$ tip will no doubt prejudice some folks against this right away. But from what I've seen this is a serious effort to be comprehensive, not some fast-buck bullshit.

I didn't know Paul Klee did freights.

Corporate fines are mind-boggling. DuPont made how much selling Teflon products? Billions? And the fine comes to $16 million or so? The best one, I forgot the details, but basically a phone company "crammed" a fake charge onto everyone's bill. Those who noticed and complained got it refunded. Most customers just paid the bill with the fake charge. The phone company scammed a lot off of that one, and was caught. But the fine came to less than they scammed. "Hey, you stole millions from your customers...your punishment is, you have to pay SOME of it back." How is that a deterrent?

The police are real. I know, because they took my paint. Never seen a God though. Getting off topic generates thousands of irrelevant words. My fundamental dismissal of Islam stems from simple mistrust in Mohammed the prophet. I distrust prophets because none of them have ever been proven right by the tenets of scientific inquiry. Mohammed, Joseph Smith, Jim Jones, David Koresh, Jesus, crazy guy on the corner with a sandwich board, lots of words, lots of faith, couple of books, no proof. We don't agree on the definition of "proof". Neither the Qu'ran nor Mohammed's words are proof by the standards of science. Should scientific proof of Islam crop up, I will take notice. Same goes for scientific proof of the afterlife, proof that justice is something more than a naive human desire, etc. Until then, I'm done butting heads with the headstrong. I have nothing against the positive effects of religious adherence on those who would otherwise be lost. Unless your quest is to interfere with me in some way, then I wish you well on your road.

Low buff rate = long run times. Just saw a 6 year old e2e by me & some friends pop up. Don't sleep on the lowly gondola.

I'm always down for this kind of debate, but I'm not on the net much, so pardon the slow responses.

I have not suggested science is the absolute authority on everything. I am suggesting that there is no such authority whatsoever: not science, not Allah, not Yahweh, not God by any name. Science is the only way to find out about objective reality. It is not a religion. The only things it teaches are things you can recheck and confirm for yourself. Science seeks and welcomes the truth at all times. If individual scientists err (and they do, all the time), the rest of the scientific community is there to check them. Science is very careful about declaring anything to be an accurate finding about objective reality. They begin with a hypothesis: "I bet this thing works like this." They test the hypothesis; if it holds up to a lot of tests and scrutiny, they upgrade it to a theory: "There's a lot of evidence that this thing works like this." Then they grill the theory with more and more observations and tests; if it doesn't have any holes whatsoever over a long period of time, they'll upgrade it to a law. They don't call their findings laws lightly. The superiority of science as a means for expanding our knowledge of objective reality lies in its humility. What scientists don't know dwarfs what they know, and they freely admit this. They are not interested in "absolute" certainty or authority. They just want to know how stuff really works, and they refuse to draw conclusions about things they can't observe or study. By the scientific method, to posit the existence of Allah is a hypothesis. Since Allah cannot be observed or detected, and has only been spoken about by a number of fallible humans, Islam cannot be upgraded even to a theory. Nor can any other similar religion. To the contrary, there is a mountain of evidence that humans disturbed by the vast unknown will turn to structured religion in order to feel better about being alive. That idea is well beyond the hypothesis stage.

When thinking, never substitute a book for your brain. Books were written by humans. Humans are fallible. They might be lying or hallucinating when they write their books. As with Mormonism, the validity of Islam hinges on one human who claims to have had truths revealed to him by a higher power. The disciples of Joseph Smith are as ardent about his little episode as Muslims are about Muhammad's. I don't buy either story. Until this extremely weak link is proven to exist by science, I have no interest in these factional squabbles. Mormonism, Islam, Christianity, all of them substitute books for brains, and cause me to view this planet as populated largely by ignorant, grunting cavemen, clubbing one another over the perceived superiority of their book.

Yeah, sometimes I forget that some cats find the flick to be more important than the ups themselves. I was never like that, I like my shit to run as long as I can arrange for, and I probably have only half of my shit flicked. To each his own I guess. Although if you're going over numbers at my spot, we're going to have a talk sooner or later.

Neither sticky, nor dog...let it ride. :snowman:

This forum isn't super busy so any thread about metal things with wheels that people might want to paint is fair game - trucks, buses, trains, etc.

Although some "themed" burners might be funny, like a BE COOL, STAY IN SCHOOL e2e.

I was gonna make a joke about "corn maze" but I guess it's pretty obvious.

Just saw a big new Pose2 freight, stamped to shit. It's odd, there's a handful of really dope writers who don't give a shit about the numbers, do nice work, and get stamped with the quickness. The ones who don't really care about freights and are just doing them because they were in the way I can understand, but some of these cats are longtime freight junkies. I don't get it. I guess it's their prerogative if they want to sabotage their own efforts.

The unfinished Kwest takes it.

That Ich has no fill and no outline. Just highlights and a forcefield. strange man

FCCM is Ferrocarriles Chiapas-Mayab. The RR itself has territory running from Veracruz, Mexico south to the Atlantic coast, east to the Yucatan, and their southeastern terminus is in Hidalgo at the border with Guatemala. (Guatemala's rail is a basket case and last I heard was still not operational, so shit will NOT run from Mexico into Guatemala. They had a lot of trouble with banditry and poor people building shantytowns right on the tracks.) I think FCCM is owned by Genessee & Wyoming, or the reporting mark is, or something, don't know the full story. Bottom line, painting FCCMs is cool. I think I have 3: two as FCCMs and another car that was a different shortline altogether but was restamped FCCM a year after I hit it.

Painting em loaded risks heating the spot. I don't do it unless I'm visiting somebody who takes me to their spot and tells me they do it all the time without any apparent trouble. Cars do not have "protective film" over them inside an autorack. Cars are built for, you guessed it, outdoors. And there are no corrosive gases or dusts in a train yard unless a tank car splits open, which is pretty rare and raises bigger issues than the finish on some new cars.

Ehh...do what you want. Tape is better than straight going over the numbers. Peeling it right away is better than leaving it on because the harsh weather conditions could make it messy for others to remove later. In fact, it might take as long to scrape that shit off as it does for a workbum to just restencil the numbers. I never bother with tape. If the spot is that chill where I'd have time to do that, then I have time to use an easier technique, which is called can control, to paint around numbers.

Swiped from another thread

Stolen from the Kem5 thread

Somebody, probably you, asked this question two years ago, when the wholecar pictured above was his only wholecar. So if that's not it, then your dirt mounds were somebody else. His other two wholecars don't have dirt mounds either.

ODS - I stay in the habit of not stepping in track switches no matter what - great place to trip or fuck up your ankle - but what your friend said is mostly true. You can get your foot severed (or stuck, and then the train finishes the job) in AUTOMATED switches, which are usually only on busy lines or in or just outside of yards. They are remotely operated by a dispatcher or other play-caller. Switches out in the boonies are not automated, they have to be thrown by hand. Smaller railroad yards can even be all manual. You'd have to be real slow, dumb, and unlucky to get your foot squashed in a manual switch, what with the worker right there and all. He might even just tell you to move instead of crushing your foot.