Mountain grades

There are no such things as Haters here.

You will find this forum a good one, one of he better ones.

What you WILL get SOMETIMES is a little bit of TEASING.

"Hi eveyrone, is there any mountains in Nebraska I should worried about?"

And watch the thread go wild as many people have fun with that. Eventually the Moderators might pack away the trouble makers or otherwise get the teasing to stop.

Mount Eagle would be the one i would concern myself with. Always have always will. But for me Mt Eagle is just a hill. (IN good weather.)

 

Steepest INTERSTATE grade I've seen is lookout pass. I90 from Idaho to MT, that's 8-10% both sides. Longest.... Probably the gorge. I40, NC into TN . It's like 1% for 45 miles. Just twisty.

Get off the interstate if you want a real challenge

 

There's a couple on 75 in Tennessee. Last time I was there they were under pretty serious construction, but nothing to be worried about

 

Even today Lookout gets into my dreams now and then. Spouse was the one that ran that one usually. (That was due to HOS back then..)

I had a ready mix cement mixer loaded and told to go down this hill to this mans beauriful lawn. Carefully manicured and everything. What he called the access road was flat shale stones that slides when you try to brake. I don't know how they don't just slide piling up at the bottom. (They do but they use a bobcat to built it back up for us...)

Coming off there loaded was lowest gear, dead idle full on brakes with a thought maybe I want to turn off the engine in gear...

I was not able to complete that thought process as Boom Im down at the bottom having fell off the common road up there on top of a 60+ foot ridge (With a similar drop on the other side. More on that in a minute)

Trying to get her to stop without tearing up that pretty lawn grass was not fun but I got stopped at the job site (A new mobile home footing... which brings up something else. I would PAY to see how they want to get a triple wide down there...)

I got empty. Time to get out. Maybe i go this waya around the house and up the common road>? Wife says NO. I don;t want no filthy trucks on that driveway of our'rn. I gave them a emvelope to give my spouse should I not make it out of there and to tear it up if I did make it out of there.

The slope was about oh... 60 to 70 degrees. And all loose shale and slate rock once the beautiful lawn grass ran out.

I took a run at it using their pretty grass at 6th in high range on that mack. Halfway up the 6th quit and I had her into 2nd before the momentum spun out and dropped me back down to their pretty lawn with a constant rolling of death for me.

She took the 2nd shift without scratching, floored it and caught about 10 feet air coming up onto the road. She came down with nothing but all service brakes on the floor before impact.

Im still here because she perched onto that little bit of compacted common road right where it needed to be without any further forward motion. I have bounced off the other side of the hill and rolled end over end until death and that one had big house size rocks at the bottom, hundreds of feet down. For what's its worth the scenery view supported the entire US 64 route from roughly the Beebe interchange 10 miles that way and 600 feet up (Beebe was at about 250 or so aloing US 67 a future interstate) and bull creek and US 64 west ward to include most of Vilonia about 30 miles to the right. The way the valley sloped past Vilonia you could theoretically see Maumelle which was on I-40 about 50 miles.

No damage to the truck with tht exception of brake work that cannot be described properly in this post. In mid air I had all the wheels locked except the tag axle which was down so the #### thing wont bounce me off the hill. All the brakes were a twist on them pads, and the service chambers and the push rods. When the mixer came down with the wheels locked it made a noise like a patient stuck with a very large needle. I managed to make it back tot he shop where they debated totaling the thing and firing me. Because I was the only driver to have locked the wheels like that with all my air prior to coming down to the pavement. Everyone else just did a little bit of sliding and slipping like good old boys were supposed to.

From that day forward I was given concrete pouring jobs that did not involved crazy terrain on the orders of Memphis HQ of the company expressly. apparently my problem solving as a driver with them and the problems that shop had to fix on my own problems were not that compatible.

But that's a different story for another time.

 

You really shouldn’t post such short posts.

 

Bit off topic.


But coming from NC to TN on 40 was ####ing beautiful.


It was snowing pretty hard too. My ISX did it's job.

 

Coming back out west maybe to Armarillo or OKC sometime next week? You fixing to run into a proper spring time supercelluar frontal passage once that dry line gets moving. It's about 4 days off counting today but we are tracking it already.

 

Oh yeah...

...it's fixing to be tornado season. Download MyRadar and turn on the wind layer. We've got warm, moist air rushing up from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to Hudson Bay. I haven't seen that before.

Batten down the hatches. All hands on deck.

Man overboard...

 

It is, that whole area from Tennessee to Pennsylvania is my absolute favorite place in the world

 

Strasburg which is not far from Lancaster PA and actually brings in rail freight to E. Strasburg Yard to transfer to trucking the things Lancaster needs but does no trains that far into downtown (Rails non existance among other problems going on last 100 years or so)

Anyway.

April moving to May planting time with the Amish isnt going to be much longer before hundreds of Kids laugh and play at Geoffs Grove among other places built for them over the years. Some of the engines like the D Class number 1223 is in the Museum across the street from depot permanently due to eroding steel over the crown sheet which is fatal to a steam engine after a certain age is reached in service. That one engine was the best they had for the work they rated it for (Something like 500 ton, each of the wooden cars were around 110K gross with the exception of the ex Armored Pullman which is really heavy which they run regularly for premium paying customers) Number 31 does that similar work now and then when 475 or 90 is not availible that day. There is another engine being built to enter service again in a few years time. I last rode behind 1223 at 7 years old more or less. To stop the train what it had to do was pull power. Wait a minute to bunch all the cars and then engine brake the thing to a stop with brakemen working the wheels manually in some of the cars. Most all steam run today have the westinghouse airbraking system that has been by law since the 1870's time period. Our trucking braking system is very close to how these run.

The big story will be out in Cheyenne WY, there is engine 4014 which is the last and largest of her kind on the planet at about 1 point 6 million pounds of old style heavy carbon steel being restored for eventual service with 12000 ton trains and the occasional excursion service on the UP system. The problem is that something that big requires top class track and support which the UP does have in many places. It may be running this year. Or next at the latest. It was designed for really heavy war time trains to 50 mph schedules on the very long Wyoming grades and bad weather. So we are looking forward to this one coming out under it's own power once cleared by FRA to do so.