Linn Moedinger addresses a TrainOrders convention......

superheater · **Joined:** Sun Aug 22, 2004 11:54 pm **Posts:** 2606

Chris Webster wrote:

While searching for something else, I came across ADM4's 20-year-old shit post that started this thread. An excerpt:

Alexander D. Mitchell IV wrote:

[June 2009--Linn Moedinger, caught in a moment of weakness, agrees to address the first gathering of TrainOrders users.....]

Quote:

"But Chessie 614 IS up for sale. You have a responsibility to preserve that majestic locomotive."

"First, it's far too big for the Strasburg's needs; second, it would beat our track to shreds; and third, when is someone else's property my responsibility unless he owes me lots of money? Sheesh. Next?"

This still is the undisputed POAT. Post Of All Time.

How ironic 614 IS at Strasburg and any question about the right-of-way's ability to handle a large 4-8-4 was answered by 611.

This place was a lot more fun before the PSIK's (ponderously self-important Karens, flying their Republic Thunderjets) decided humor was not only of no value, but verboten.

Mark Jordan · **Joined:** Fri Nov 07, 2008 11:21 am **Posts:** 490

One season at Queen Anne's Railroad, I found a 6' tall stuffed Bugs Bunny in a dumpster. I rescued him and cleaned him up. That season, or at least most of the summer, Bugs was propped up and wired into the fireman's seat of our little steam loco. Head out, with pinstriped engineer's cap pinned on. We got lots and lots of very nasty looks and comments from diehard railfans........
Here is a photo of retubing the boiler, yours truly posing (about 1995?). Notice the Delaware surf fisherman license plate adjacent to the coupler. Ocean (surf) fishermen had this on the front of their pickup trucks which allowed them to take their trucks across the dune line onto the beach. We felt we needed to keep up with the Kardashians......

superheater · **Joined:** Sun Aug 22, 2004 11:54 pm **Posts:** 2606

"We got lots and lots of very nasty looks and comments from diehard railfans........"

Another Jordan (first name, not surname) had a few thoughts on this sort of thing.

https://www.rug.nl/filosofie/organizati ... ie?lang=en

Crescent-Zephyr · **Joined:** Wed Jan 20, 2016 1:15 pm **Posts:** 1799

Do you think bugs bunny hurt or helped the mission of the railroad? Or it was completely neutral?

wesp · **Posted:** Tue Aug 05, 2025 3:02 pm

Quote:

We got lots and lots of very nasty looks and comments from diehard railfans........

“If you can’t take a joke, take a taxi.”

PMC · **Joined:** Sat Oct 17, 2015 5:55 pm **Posts:** 2876

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... l-00146119
Trump is not Hitler or Stalin or Mussolini. But they share a rhetorical style, experts say. That’s because the humor is not a bug. “It’s a feature of demagoguery,” Vinokour explained. “Laughter is going to be a weapon, because you laugh at something to diminish it and as preparation for casting it down or destroying it,” she said. “So I don’t think that Trump could get away with just fearmongering. I think he has to punctuate it with moments of levity.”

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/0 ... an-otoole/
Racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, xenophobic, antidisabled, and antiqueer jokes have always been used to dehumanize those who are being victimized.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/ge ... 66793.html
[h]orseplay is necessary. Joseph Goebbels

When I was growing up in a small town in the Midwest, one in which there were no minorities at all (including me), I was constantly exposed to racism, but it rarely took the form of a statement like Black people are x, it usually took the form of a joke. And so I am very dubious of anyone who claims that a "joke" is always just a joke.

superheater · **Joined:** Sun Aug 22, 2004 11:54 pm **Posts:** 2606

Objects to quotes from economists, offers a rather persuasive proof of Godwin's Law by inserting self-indulgent and inane non-sequitur from POLITICO in response to leporine hypersensitivity.

Sometimes the damn post is just about Bugs Bunny and doesn't need or benefit from the gratuitous insertion of political tropes.

And Lybrand called the prominent decedent an "ass".

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · **Posted:** Tue Aug 05, 2025 9:15 pm

Mark Jordan wrote:

One season at Queen Anne's Railroad, I found a 6' tall stuffed Bugs Bunny in a dumpster. I rescued him and cleaned him up. That season, or at least most of the summer, Bugs was propped up and wired into the fireman's seat of our little steam loco. Head out, with pinstriped engineer's cap pinned on. We got lots and lots of very nasty looks and comments from diehard railfans........
Here is a photo of retubing the boiler, yours truly posing (about 1995?). Notice the Delaware surf fisherman license plate adjacent to the coupler. Ocean (surf) fishermen had this on the front of their pickup trucks which allowed them to take their trucks across the dune line onto the beach. We felt we needed to keep up with the Kardashians......

There are two ways to look at this.

1) If I had come from, say, across the ocean or half a continent to see and ride behind, say, the likes of the Flying Scotsman, Rio Grande Southern 20, Reading 2102, SP 4449, Grand Canyon 4960, etc., and the whole visit I had to shoot around a Bugs Bunny costume or a Thomas face, I'd probably be royally ticked off.

2) Queen Anne's 3 was and remains about as far from that historic/notable status as you can possibly get. Maybe a Crown Locomotive might be lower.....

(Now, having said that, the runaway chicken that wandered off the farm in the GEICO commercial a couple years ago caught up with UP 4014 and was granted a brief cab visit by Ed Dickens......)

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · **Posted:** Tue Aug 05, 2025 9:30 pm

"Ross WHO wants to ride in the cab?!? Tell him to cluck off!!"

Emmo213 · **Posted:** Thu Aug 07, 2025 1:33 pm

superheater wrote:

How ironic 614 IS at Strasburg and any question about the right-of-way's ability to handle a large 4-8-4 was answered by 611.

Didn't they refer to 611 as a rolling rolling mill or something like that?

Mark Jordan · **Joined:** Fri Nov 07, 2008 11:21 am **Posts:** 490

Quote:

Sometimes the damn post is just about Bugs Bunny and doesn't need or benefit from the gratuitous insertion of political tropes.

Quote:

There are two ways to look at this.

1) If I had come from, say, across the ocean or half a continent to see and ride behind, say, the likes of the Flying Scotsman, Rio Grande Southern 20, Reading 2102, SP 4449, Grand Canyon 4960, etc., and the whole visit I had to shoot around a Bugs Bunny costume or a Thomas face, I'd probably be royally ticked off.

2) Queen Anne's 3 was and remains about as far from that historic/notable status as you can possibly get. Maybe a Crown Locomotive might be lower.....

QARR had the most mixed mess of a trainset any railroad could have. A tiny tank engine, ex-Army baggage car, three mixed heavyweights, four ex-NH Osgood Bradley rust buckets for a dinner train, and a PRR caboose painted blue (DCLR). We made smoke and train sounds, and did the best we could with what we had. Our patrons were families coming to the beach for vacation, and a "train ride" was just another thing to do while there. Lots of smiles all around. Anyone that was too "serious" was directed to Wilmington or Strasburg, just a short drive away.

Our scenic route took us through fields and a trailer park, and we ran around our train at a chicken rendering plant. Has anyone smelled a rendering plant in July? Bueller? Bueller?

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · **Posted:** Fri Aug 08, 2025 12:42 am

Mark Jordan wrote:

QARR had the most mixed mess of a trainset any railroad could have.

scratchyX1 · **Joined:** Tue Jul 14, 2020 12:17 pm **Posts:** 159

Alexander D. Mitchell IV wrote:

"Ross WHO wants to ride in the cab?!? Tell him to cluck off!!"

Why don't you made 10 louder? This goes up to 11.