Hello, group! I have published the latest post on the A&S this morning, a piece about the temporary block station Fire, in western Lancaster Country near Safe Harbor.
As always feedback is welcome. Thanks for reading!


http://michaelfroio.com/blog/2016/8/23/managing-the-line-a-follow-up

Nice article Michael!

That's definitely something that I never heard about before. Having the ground under the ROW on fire would be a bad situation.

Thanks Jim, this was one that was too good to overlook, I came across shortly after I posted the original post on dispatching the A&S.

Thanks for posting that story. Always some fun to be had when the earth itself catches fire. I'm just nit-picking, but wouldn't summer 1959 to early 1961 be just short of two years?

It says "in the first quarter of 1961"....since a fiscal year is usually July - June of the coming year, not the actual year, it would mean that by July of 1960 the fire was out, which would have been the start of the 1961 fiscal year's first quarter, so just under a year would be correct.

Junior - Why would a M/W department fixing a track problem on a double track piece of RR important enough to install temporary crossovers, signals and a block operator or an operating department issuing bulletins care anything about fiscal quarters? If it was that important, the money aspect wouldn't have been enough of a concern to those forces to break repairs/operations down into fiscal quarters. I think you're reading too much into 'quarters'. First quarter of any calendar year is January - March, plain and simple, so the TBS would have been in service for between 17 and 20 months.

Mr. Froio, can you clarify?

I would agree, calendar year wise it was just shy of two years, 18-19 months to be precise, depending on when it was actually taken o/s. I updated the post to reflect that it was "just shy of two years" but I would have to agree with TD, the fiscal quarters likely had nothing to do with emergency repairs like this, other than the bean counters were moving money around to pay for it. Nonetheless, thanks for catching the error, sometimes you look at these things so long you can spot a simple error in math!

Interesting. I do stupid stuff all the time with math, so no worries there. As an aside, the first thing that hit me when I read the title was 'what's the PRR got to do with the A&S?', since in these parts A&S would be Albany & Susq., so I'm glad you stated Atglen or I'd still be beating my head against the wall.

Was the '1st quarter' an actual term that turned up in research or just a blanket statement from whomever relayed the story?

Blanket statement, injected by yours truly. I was thinking strictly calendar year, not thinking it could be confused with fiscal. I had posted this a few places and some had restrictions, on the length of the title so I cut it down to A&S, normally I try to clarify in the title the Atglen & Susquehanna right off the bat.

Interestingly, the corrugation driven into place as a fire break is still in place for those who have eyes to see ...