Location

Fri May 15 08:41:13 EDT 2015

I wish I could remember that far back . . .
EdK
From: NW Mailing List 
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2015 8:41 PM
To: NW Mailing List 
Subject: Re: Location

My mathematics professors would finish a derivation of a formula by appending "QED" for Quod Erat Demonstrandum.  As I recall the English equivalent was something like, "That which was to be demonstrated."

Gordon Hamilton
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: NW Mailing List 
  To: NW Mailing List 
  Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2015 3:14 PM
  Subject: Re: Location

  Okay Frank,

  I don’t use Latin on the farm and to my knowledge it has never been used here.  Tell what the Latin phrase means since I may have an occasion to use it – if appropriate.

  Bud Jeffries

  From: NW Mailing List 
  Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2015 12:15 PM
  To: NW Mailing List 
  Subject: Re: Location

  Abram, my dear fellow curmudgeon;

  I can certainly agree with some of your points, but the language does evolve, for better or for worse.  And in most fields, even in mine--the Federal Bureaucracy--a lot of the terminology today would be incomprehensible to someone who retired 20 years ago.  But, yes, calling it the Norfolk And Southern bothers me, calling a simple articulated a "mallet" is a bit disconcerting.  And I have no idea what the correct term is for the person who is the sole crewperson on a train.

  And "Better".  Hmmm.  I've talked to more than a few engineers who thought diesels were better riding than their railroad's best steam locomotives.  And I remember reading articles about when racial segregation still existed on the railroads.  So, hmmmm.  Now if you're talking from a railfan perspective, there's a reason I'm modeling the Virginian in southern WV in the mid 1950's.  

  But it's kind of sneaky for you to throw in a phrase in Latin.  Correct, but sneaky.

  Frank Bongiovanni (who not only knows from law school what the phrase means, but learned it when Latin was not yet a dead language).  

  On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 11:20 AM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:

    Since when do we "PARK" engines?  Oh, since maybe 15 or 20 years ago.

    More "Vocabulary Slippage," gentlemen.  

    One "parks" an automobile or a bicycle, but one "ties down" (or even "ties up") an engine.  

    Guess it's just part of the overall demythologization of railroading as a whole.  Along with railroaders dressing for work in baseball caps and tee-shirts and people saying "units" (for engines) and "grown throws" (for switches) and "grabs" (for grab irons) and "heads" (for signal arms,) and trainmen who would rather quack on their radio than give a hand signal (... or who don't even understand something as basic as talking to the engineman by the use of hand signals.)

    Ah, but then our brilliant news media also calls railroads "train companies," calls enginemen "train operators," refers to individual cars (whether passenger or freight) by using the collective plural noun "trains,"  and uses the terms "Conductor" and "Engineer" interchangeably, as if there were not the lightest distinction between the two.  Oh yes, and the "train operators" (engineers)  "drive trains." And the degradation goes on and on.  Give me a break...

    Yes, I must be an old-school curmudgeon.

    A friend in Kansas, a 1955 Santa Fe man, just yesterday lamented, "I can't even talk to today's railroaders.  They don't speak the same railroad language I speak."  (Yeah, we were having a conversation over the Morse telegraph wire when he made this statement...)

    Forgive the rant.  I just no longer fit in this world.  The world of old school railroading was a lot better.

    This constitutes my blog for the day.  Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

    -- abram burnett,
    nove cumberlandhorodshchina, oblast pennsylvaniensis

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