Episode 13: Radical Transparency

In this week’s episode of Off the Rails with Rowdy and Bethan, they discuss the “tough stuff,” their take on radical transparency, and a recent situation regarding anonymous complaints to the FRA about Mt. Rainier Scenic Railroad’s repair work on steam engine, Polson 70. 

1.) Radial transparency. Why has MRSR taken this approach from the start? How does radical transparency fit into our organizational purview and how it affect us? What things can we share, and what things can’t we share? 
2.) A recent situation regarding a formal complaint to the FRA regarding the condition of Polson 70’s back tubesheet knuckle. How we interact with the FRA, what our response was, what the paperwork burden is, and how we’ve “gotten to the other side.”
3.) In the News! Our weekly news segment covers the President’s budget requests for railroad activities – Amtrak, Intercity/Passenger Rail, and other railroad projects. 
4.) Our Frequently Asked Questions – like, how the heck did Rowdy get his name? 

Got a question or topic you want us to cover? Send it our way- we’d love to hear from you. 

So grab your coffee, crank up the phonograph, and let’s go Off the Rails.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Off the Rails, the podcast where steam locomotives meet modern macros. Joint executive director of the Mount Rainier Sonic Railroad, Beth and Maher, and Rowdy Pearce, Superintendent, Professional Catherine, and occasional how to go tour. Together they pull back the curtain on the wild, weird, and often hilarious world of tourist steam railroads. You'll get a front row tweet to the ins and outs of this truly unique business. So grab your ticket, hold on to your sense of humor, and join us for a ride into the unpredictable world of steam. This is Off the Rail.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Welcome to Off the Rails with Rowdy and Beth, and how's your week been?

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Um, in a nutshell, it's been kind of shit. Okay. Long and the short.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Stressful week. And I we do not have any tea today. Nope.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

No, though it seems like everybody did like the episode with the tea involved.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Yeah, we are shooting this on Wednesday, April 8th. So that whenever this airs, that gives you a good idea of what the heck our delay is in the episodes. I think we got one more in the can. We have a special guest, uh, which is my dog, because she decided she was gonna run away from home. So I have a neurotic senile dog that you may or may not see or hear floating around. Um so this episode we're gonna be a little bit different. We're using a little bit more scripting than usual because we're gonna talk about some delicate situations. So the first thing uh we're gonna talk about is transparency. Um we've had a lot of questions, we've had a lot of conversations, and frankly, there's been a lot going on behind the scenes in the past week.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Um that's fair to say. Yeah, I was gonna say you're gonna have to use words instead of just making facial expressions. Yeah, it it HR, this is the the whole thing was HR told me to shut up.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

So our non-existent HR department did not tell you to shut up. It said, listen, we there's things we have to treat delicately. So Am I delicate?

unknown 2:07

No.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Um there you go.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

Right, Calvin? There you go. Uh so um one of the things that I think we try and do as an organization is be radically transparent. Um why do you feel that is?

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Um we may have different reasons, but well, I just don't believe in I just don't believe in hiding anything. You know, I I believe that the the more that a organization or a company or a person is up front with information, the the better it is. Because everybody's on basically the same terms at that point. Um and then that comes from a lot of my business background and and who I've done business with and and in that neck of the woods, because you know, I say I was gonna do something, I was gonna do it, but then on the other side of it, you know, when I had my business going and I had my YouTube and I had my Facebook page and all that, it seemed to work out better between my customers and everybody when there was transparency there that is like, hey, this is what he's doing. He's not hiding anything because he's putting it out there for the world to see.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

Yeah. I mean it it builds trust, right? And I think we live in an industry where rumors fly really quick and free. Um there's a lot of people that like trains that follow what we do that maybe don't have a technical understanding. And there are people that have technical understandings, and there's a lot of armchair sort of quarterbacking.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

And context matters, right? You said something the other day.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

It's is I don't think it's I think you hit the nail on the head with something that you said the other day, where it's just when you get the steam engines involved. It seems like there's a lot more going on there than when you're running a lot of diesels and you're kind of a real railroad. It's like when you get the steam locomotives involved, the steam locomotives come with their own kind of drama pool that follows it.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

Wally, uh, my or maintenance away guy at Adirondack, who, I mean, if you're gonna tell stories about people, Wally, uh, whew. Um Dave Van Pelt, good man. There are a lot of stories there, but he used to look at me and say, you know what, those two sticks in the ground are? Because those are idiot magnets. Yeah. Um, right, it's there's its own flavor. One of the reasons, and I've said this a million times, and I'm sorry if y'all are sick of hearing it, when we took back over, we didn't have anything to work with. Um, the railroad wasn't legal. There was a little bit of money in the bank account and not a lot, and that pretty much equaled our insurance payment. Um, and we knew that everyone was gonna come in and say, why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? And we didn't have options. Yeah. We just we didn't have options, so we shared why we were making the decisions we did. Is we had gotten to the point no one else, it was pretty clear no one else was gonna take this railroad on. Uh there was a lot of baggage associated with it, um, which that could be a whole different episode, but there was a lot of baggage associated with it. We had to assume the debt that the organization had, um, which was uh graciously forgiven.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

Boils down to, you know, C BA.

SPEAKER_02 5:42

Yeah, and it was just a this is the way that we're doing things, and this is why. You know, these are the these are the resources we have, these are the decisions that we're making. So I think that that builds trust with the public and trust in the community, um, hopefully trust from donors, from regulators, and people who show up and support the railroad. Um, I think the other factor is we are in a highly regulated industry, but we're in that gray area we talk about all the time. Where, you know, you're operating a giant bomb for a living and maintaining them. Yeah. Um, which is the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Trying to make a profit off of something that was retired because it wasn't profitable.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Um and I think safety and compliance and accountability aren't optional, but sometimes they're treated as such. Yeah. And sometimes opinions about what is safe differs. Um and I think one of the things that we've always wanted to do, one of the reasons for this podcast, is we may not be right. Right? Like there's a lot of times we're just plain wrong. But hopefully we're at least sparking conversation within the industry. Um, hopefully we're encouraging networking, we're encouraging tough conversations. And I hope that that will make the whole industry better and more sustainable. And I think that you and I um we have feelings and they get hurt, but we also have pretty thick skin. Yeah. Um, so we've sort of taken the stance of, hey, let's let it all hang out, and the two of us can do with the criticism that comes with it.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Yeah. And and there's there's a lot. I mean, because I mean, outside of the, you know, the transparency and all that other kind of stuff, there's always the fan club.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

That one I don't think we anticipated as much. Oh, I did. Okay. Well, maybe I mean I do not have the personality that you do. So I do not aspire that's called.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Because I had worked with the fan club. I do not aspire that inspired following the the other talent of the podcast does. Yeah, and let me just be clear.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

When I say fan club, I'm talking about Oh, see, I'm talking about your literal fan club. I'm not calling it. And the people that ask you for autographs of canned clubs. I'm talking about the fan club. The quote-unquote fan clubs in the most sardonic sarcastic sense.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

This entire uh uh podcast, when I say the word fan club, it's in parentheses and it's meant in a derogatory way.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

Okay, so I you usually refer to your fan club in the the negative fan club. I also happen to see you operating the engine, and people come up to you and go, Are you rowdy?

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

And yeah, I I don't get those.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Those I usually call my adoring fans. I don't call them my fan club.

SPEAKER_02 8:46

Okay. All right. Fan club is brand new. Definitions matter. We've laid out the definitions for the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

So moving forward, if you hear me say adoring fans, those are the people that I like. If I you hear me say the word fan club, they are the people that I not so much so if they were on fire, I probably wouldn't.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

With that said, I think that transparency has changed the way that we work as an organization because it changes the way we document our work. It changes the way we interact with regulators, um, it changes the way that we share progress updates, setbacks, um, and the decisions. Because if a piece of equipment isn't working, we're not saying, oh, it's out of service for maintenance. We say, hey, this is what happened. This is what we're doing to fix it, this is when we hope it's gonna be back. And yeah, we'll get egg art on our face when we miss a deadline. But we're gonna explain why.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

For one, you don't ever do the voodoo, the voodoo doll of say you're gonna have something done by a certain date because you never it never happens. But then on the other side of that, it's I mean, look at how many times being transparent has saved our ass in the last two years. Yeah. Literally saved our ass. I mean, there there's there's things that, I mean, when it comes down to the transparency, we vet too what goes out and how it's said. I mean, we're not transparent about everything. No, because we can't be. Um Are there reasons why we didn't get the five done by when we wanted to get it done? Yeah. Do those reasons need to be aired to the public? Probably not.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

Yeah, I think when it um we want to be transparent about what we can be. Um, we want to build credibility, we want to invite feedback from the community, but we have boundaries because we have to, and there are things that we can't share. So we can be transparent about policies and procedures or interactions with regulators, work we're doing, challenges we're having, lessons learned, um, all of those things. We can do things that encourage other people to have conversations, and hopefully we'll get good feedback where we can learn. Um, what we can't talk about are individual personnel matters, anything HR-related, anything that's security sensitive sensitive, because we have someone that literally sends us death threats that wants to effing kill us. Yeah. Like, that's not a joke, and that's not exaggeration. That's not like I get regular emails threatening my life and my kids' life, and you have literally held someone at gunpoint.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

That's what I was just gonna say. We never we never got on the internet in 2024 and said, Oh, by the way, Rowdy just had a 30-minute standoff with a guy in the yard holding him at gunpoint because he showed up to blow up the Alco. Yeah. At the as we parked the Polar Express. And then, you know, four months later a bridge burns down.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Yeah. So there's conversations we have about security, um, probably about ourselves, unfortunately, because we have policies in place.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

I mean, you know, the folks that have not seen the show Yellowstone, there is a quote.

SPEAKER_02 12:01

I still haven't, you still know, but I feel like I have because there's a quote in there, and I think it's very, very right.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Is you know, he one of the characters said something they probably shouldn't have, and Kevin Costner's character says, it doesn't matter what you did, you gave her a thread, and she can re-weave it into any tapestry that she wants. Yeah. So you have to be very careful about what you say and what you share. And that's not just the organization, that's down to the employees and the volunteers as well. Because anybody gets some of that, they can they can weave it any way they want. And sometimes it can be in a good way. But and more often than not, especially where the steam locomotives are concerned, it's weaved negatively.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

Yeah, I mean, I think the goal of our transparency is to build trust and it's to create context, it's not to cause harm. So I think for the rest of this episode, let it be known we share what we can, and there are things that we're probably going to talk about cryptically because at the end of the day, boundaries matter and they're important and they're protective and healthy. So this past week sucked. Yeah. Um a lot. We've had some really, really good wins this past week, but uh last week in particular was pretty brutal. So we're gonna talk about a tough situation um from the the past week, which was interaction with the FRA um regarding the rear tube sheet and its knuckle on the 70. So on Wednesday of last week, I think it was.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Well, that's let's just, you know, let's let's let's just go back a little bit because Oh god, where are we going back? We're we're gonna go back all the way to the very beginning because I think that it is important to tell the whole story at this point. Okay about the condition.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

Um just hold on. I'm just gonna I'm gonna give the the people context.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Okay, you can give the people context the narrative.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

I think it was April, maybe the day March, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

It was April 1st, because I the first thing I asked Don when he picked up the phone was is this a joke?

SPEAKER_02 14:12

It was this is March 31st. I announced that we were putting tubes back in the 70 on our social media. Yep. April 1st, uh I announced our new color scheme. Um, and you got a call from the FRA literally the next day, and it was Wednesday because we're gonna start putting tubes back in that sucker.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Yeah, it was April 1st because the first thing I asked him when he picked up the phone was I said, This is not a funny joke, dude. What's going on? Because, you know, April fools. And so um to go back, when we took the place over, we popped the lid of the 70 open and went down inside to do an internal inspection. And we noticed that there was some grooving going on on the rear tube sheet knuckle. And to be completely open about it, when I first saw it, I was scared shitless. I was like, oh oh fuck. She's done. We gotta put a knuckle on this thing. Oh god, oh god, oh god. And and I mean with the way I go about this, I'm just gonna say for all the young people listening, I'm not telling you how to live your life, but this is how I manage through the situation. And if you don't have people that you have that you can lean on in these types of situations, you need to find them, especially if you're gonna be around this industry. And we'll circle back to close that off here in a minute. So we said, oh God, what is this? What do we do? And I, like I said, I was scared. I was like, oh god, that's that's a bad thing. That's a really bad thing. You this this can't happen. Oh we reached out to industry experts. Brian had his little group that consisted of people like George Sap, um and a few others. I add mine, which is Charlie Cross, and it kind of seems to be growing as as we go along, saying, Hey, here's pictures of what we got going on. What what what is this? Oh, well, that's just normal boilerware for the most part. I mean, George Sapp was at the point of this, like, well, just hammer the hell out of it with a freaking needle gun and and and runner. You know, it's just monitor it, keep an eye on it. And so when I brought the FRA in, that was the first thing I did is I crawled out of the boiler, I went and called Brandon with the FRA. I said, dude, I think I found something, and I don't I don't know what to do about it. And so he said, Okay, well, send me pictures. I can't get over there to look up, send me pictures. So I sent him a picture, he goes, Oh, yeah, I've seen this before. You know. So we worked with the FRA and we worked with people that know a hell of a lot more about boilers than I do to come up with a let's explore it, see how bad it is. If it's not bad, we monitor it.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

And I just for for context, it's on the rear tube sheet on the inside. On the knuckle. So you gotta go down through the dome. You gotta go down through the dome lid to look at it, and then you're laying on the tubes, trying to do a good inspection of it. Yeah. I mean, the tubes are out now, so we have a view of the whole tube sheet.

SPEAKER_03 17:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

But when in 2023, when you were looking at it, um, you're laying on top of it.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

I almost didn't fit through the hole because, well, excavators and lazy boys had got to me at that point. And that's the reason why Brian was down in there.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

But it's it's a oh man, if you haven't done it, it's just it's not a whole lot of fun to be laying on tubes trying to conduct an inspection.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

We came up with a hey, does this work for the FRA? And the FRA said, yeah, let's let's figure out what the depths of those are. And they don't go down very far. Your safety factor is still there. You know. So according to NBIC. So we did we did the we did the re the welding of it we did per MBIC at H.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Which is the national boiler.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

How come we never know what the it's actually MBBI is what the technical thing for it is, but it's the national boiler people. Yeah, it's I never know what the acronym is. National boiler code inspection or something like that. Anyway, um, so we we wrote a Form 19 request because it's in a knuckle.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

What's a Form 19?

SPEAKER_01 18:17

A Form 19 is a piece of documentation that goes along with your boiler from the time you do a repair till the boiler is either scrapped or completely rebuilt. Yeah, it it's a it's a way of tracking repairs being done to the boiler. So that and it's not so that anybody just sits back and goes, oh well, this boiler needs to be taken out of service because of all these Form 19s, it's so that it's a documented repair and you know where the repairs are and things are going on. So you don't have anything pop out of the woodwork like the barrel patch on the five. Technically, that had a Forum 19 with it. Technically. Um, so wrote the Forum 19 based off of standard practice, had the the tube sheet tested for NBIC outlines what standard practice is. NBIC is considered a standard practice for part two theory. FRA came back with we like what we see, what you guys are doing with this, continue on. You are given permission to do your to do your welding. Now, mind you, the welding wasn't very deep, it was surface because these these crevasses is what we're calling. And they're not cracks, you know, they're not cracks, they're just little crevasses in the sheet. It's basically where the sheet is just let go in in certain places. I mean, there's a lot going on inside of a boiler when when you're running it, especially the way we do. So they said, yep, do what you're gonna do. Um, I'll probably go over it a little bit more detail in the YouTube video. We'll do a YouTube video. When you can do pictures of stuff like that. Yeah. So we did it, it came back great. Nothing, nothing bad. And we were given a monitor it. Let's monitor it. So instead of going in the boiler every annual, we decided we're going in the boiler every 92 days. Check it, UT the knuckle, make sure nothing's changing, take pictures, dye pin, document, document, document, document, document. There's 300 pictures of this condition in existence. Um, and while we were in there, we noticed other things, you know. So we were documenting not just it, we've documented everything that we could see with the tube sheet at that point. Measurements. You know, how long are these? You know, there was a tube, there was a crack in a tube leg that we're looking at, but it hadn't made its way through. It's only like maybe not even a six at 30 seconds of an inch long. Like that's not gonna that that's gonna be harder to fix than it's gonna be to just sit back and monitor. So we've been monitoring this condition now for three years. Take the tubes out, and the first thing we did is tubes get out, we've cleaned the boiler up for a decent inspection. I call the FRA and I say, Hey, I want you to come up here and look at this. Because we have a new inspector. I want you to come and look at this. So he comes up.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

And we were, I think we we had gotten some flack for asking the FRA to look at it because that wasn't that wasn't required by regulation.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

It wasn't required by regulation.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Because I think in the comments on social media, people had said, why the hell are you having them are you asking them to come?

SPEAKER_01 21:13

I think that there is some opinion in that because, you know, and I talk to my people, they sit back and say, No, usually you do want to get the FRA in there to let them look at stuff. And I mean, it it's how do you how you run your ship is different than how I run my ship. But I called the FRA and I said, Date, on this date, I would enjoy it if you could come up and look inside this boiler. You can put your eyes on it with the tubes out of it. And particularly, I want to talk about this knuckle condition. I want to talk about the back tube sheet. Because when our FRA inspector became our FRA inspector, and he came up for the other thing that happened on the five when we got told to stop on that. Um, you know, I had was very honest with him because the 70 was going through a 31 day the day that he was here. Again, he goes, I've never. Seeing a railroad actually doing a 31 day. This is so cool. You guys invited me here the day you're doing an inspection on your operating locomotive.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

Which I think he waited to do the 31 day or day.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

No, I told him I strategically asked him to asked him to show up on the date that I knew the 31 day was happening so that he could be here while we were doing the 31 day. And again, people are going, why are you inviting the FRA when you're doing this kind of stuff? And what did he do? He walked around the 70, he looked at that thing for over an hour and walked up and goes, I literally cannot find anything wrong with it. Usually I come find a carter pin. I can't find anything.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

Yeah, then what'd you do?

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Like, great, thank you, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

No, that's not what you did. You and oh, you want me to point out?

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Well, no, that was a different FRA inspector that I did. Oh, sorry. And that was on the passenger cars.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

And this is the problem with being cryptic, is when we're not actually naming people an inspector. We've had enough visits from the FRA.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Yeah, that's that's the whole point is we've had very regular visits from the FRA.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

It's not that I'm wrong, it's that we're talking about different visits.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Uh so he came up, and the first thing I said to him, I pointed at the 70 and said, hey, when she goes down for her 1472, we got something going on with the knuckle. The FRA did know about it. It's got a Forum 19 that goes along with it. It's a monitor situation. Now, what we had originally said to the FRA was when we get to the 1472, we'll replace it. The conversation then changed to, well, you get to your 1472. If it hasn't gotten any worse and it hasn't changed, why do you need do you need to? And so fast forward to he shows back up invited and we crawl down inside of it, and he's like, he first off, he's just like, I've never really seen one like this. This is so cool. This is so awesome. You're you're you're letting, you know, and he's training another FRA steam inspector. So now that FRA Steam Inspector is actually getting to look at things as the prog as the project progresses, right? So they look the tube sheet over. I've show, I mean, before we even went in the boiler, I held them hostage in the break room for 30 minutes, showing them the document trail with the FRA, the Form 19, everything that we did. Showed them that whole kit and caboodle and said, This is this is the paperwork trail. Now let's go and look at the actual thing. What are they moving with the Elko? Uh they're pulling the tet the 70s tender off so that they can start putting tubes in it.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Okay. Um the joy of filming in a sorry, the joys of filming in a rail yard.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Anyway, um, so he he crawls down in it, he looks at it, he goes, Man, you know, I'm looking over everything you got going, I'm looking over all the pictures, I'm looking over all the UT readings, I'm looking over all the dye pen that you've done, looking over the radiography, I'm looking at all this, and this will there's a lot worse in service right now. Yeah. I don't see why you guys, because that was that was gonna determine if we were gonna put tubes back in it or not, depending on what the UT said. Is if Dawn said, no, can't let this roll. Okay, 70 is getting parked for a while while we focus and finish the five. That was the original intention on what we were doing. Dawn comes back and says, see no problems, continue. We're slamming the tubes back in the damn thing, right? So Don gave us an official report that says Go for it. Go for it. We have an email that says we have an email that says, I see no problems. I don't I see no problems, continue on. And then in the official report, he goes over what he saw.

SPEAKER_03 25:37

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

You know, that we showed him the condition. He said, hey, if you gotta do more welding, do a Form 19, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

SPEAKER_02 25:44

Last Wednesday, April 1st, the plan was put tubes in. So I'm gonna talk about the next part for HR reasons. Yeah. Or I don't know if it's even HR, just for reasons of maintaining.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

Is what it is.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

Yeah. Okay. So what I can say is that at some point, information related to our operation and the work on the 70 was shared externally and was ultimately submitted to the FRA as a formal complaint. So the FRA, again, is doing their job. We can't be mad at them. Um, but they receive a complaint, they have a duty to investigate, so they review the information. Um, the pictures that were sent freaked me the F out. Because a number of pictures were taken, a few were sent, um, and they did not look good.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

They were not taken at the most flattering angles. When you're taking pictures of defects and stuff like that, or potential defects in a tube sheet, or in a boiler, period, you gotta make sure you got the light on them just right to where there's no shadows.

SPEAKER_02 27:07

Because shadows can make things look like there's there's a divot in the tube sheet that from one of the photos looks like someone took an ice cream scoop and just carved it right out. Carved it right out. And there's one that you're like, there's no way that's not a crack.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

Yeah. So And then when you clean it up and you take a picture of it with good light, it just vanished.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

Yeah. It wasn't a crack. So anyway, um Wednesday, Rowdy got a call from our inspector. Um Tuesday, I don't know which whatever day it was.

SPEAKER_03 27:40

It was it was Tuesday. Uh I got it.

SPEAKER_02 27:41

That said at this point, hey, these were submitted. Um and then I'm gonna not say a whole bunch of things. So we elected to stop work on the engine. Did we have to? No. There was no, what's a it's a form 8? It's formate. There was no form 8. Um, but we chose to engage openly and professionally with the FRA, and we said, hey, we have a lot of pictures of the condition over the past three years. Um we haven't totally finished prepping and surveying it, so we're gonna finish that. Um we are gonna get back to you. We're working on it, we've stopped work, this is our plan. So you sent that communication back. I talked to people in the industry, you talk to people in the industry. Um I think that I mean, one person I talked to said, no, you gotta replace it. But again, context matters.

SPEAKER_03 28:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

Um the photos did look pretty effing, terrible. You talk to people, and I think the conversation was more nuanced.

SPEAKER_04 29:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:02

And we're not, we um for c all of the people we are talking to are highly skilled, have more experience than you.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

Most of them are on the most of them are on the local. And are on the NBIC. They're on the Locomotive Task Force Committee for NBA.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

This is a we're not talking to Joe Schmo.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

No, we're not talking to people that, you know, do this as a hobby. We're talking to people that do this for a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 29:23

But we also want to retain the option of continuing to talk to people without them fearing that what they say to us is gonna end up on a podcast. So we're and then that is the reason we're being cryptic. So the conversation you had was hey, yeah, it's ugly, um, but you really can't you can't make a call yet until you've actually finished surveying the dang thing. Yep. So you said, okay, even though three FRA inspectors have already looked at this and say, Yeah, bless you, my child, go forth and chug.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Yeah. I mean, and and the regulation says a competent person must inspect. I would like to think that the three FRA inspectors that are signed off on Steam that have looked over that condition are competent. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:17

But so three FRA inspectors had looked at it. It's not that we were going to put before the pictures even were. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not that we were gonna put tubes back in the engine without so, but you said, and we said, hey, we're going to do more work serving this thing. So what did you well you descended into fits of paperwork, Nate and Chris.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

Nate and Chris, um they well, first off, because we were able to ascertain the pictures and acquire the pictures, not by way of the FRA. Um, we said we're gonna target the areas where these pictures were taken. And we are going to exhaust every means of NDE that we can outside of hiring somebody to come in and radiograph. Now, I mean the thing I you and I talked about yesterday, we might we might still radiograph the knuckle again, just to ascertain change. Is it changed or something? You know, 1500 bucks, they come in, they radiograph the knuckle, they can compare the compare. Compare, hey, nothing has changed per radiograph. Yeah, so the first thing that they did is they actually finished cleaning it. Both the tube sheets, they finished cleaning them. They went through and they um UT the whole tube sheet again. They tightened up the grid to a few inches versus what it was.

SPEAKER_02 31:50

A four inch or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 31:51

Yeah, they they they UT'd every single um any anything. And Chris actually went out and was able to acquire a UT machine that's got this itty bitty tiny little lead on it that you can actually get into the bottoms of pits and crevasses. I mean, this thing is tiny and it can get in there and it can get a reading. And so they they exhausted that, they polished the thing to where it was like a mirror almost with a wire wheel. You don't ever go after it with a flapper wheel, and you don't ever go after it with a grinder because the grinder or a flapper wheel, a lot of people don't realize that steel is malleable. And if you go after it with a grinder, you can cover stuff up. If you go after it with a flapper wheel, you can cover stuff up, no matter how small the the uh the the grit is.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

I'm curious what people are gonna say about that because I know a lot of folks use a grinder. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

And that was one of the first things Brandon told me when we said he had told me, don't use a grinder. You'll cover it up and you'll smear it. And then I have then I can't say anything to you about it. So we use uh what's called a pipeliner wheel. That's a big ass knot wheel, it's about this big, and we put it on the great big grinder, and you just run it over, and that's what they're made for on pipeline is polishing and cleaning stuff for testing. So we they went through and they did both tube sheets. And then Chris went and got the locomotives form four, which was done very well the last go-around. And he started comparing the deepest parts of the pits. And what we found was the worst pit also correlated with the smallest reading taken off of the locomotive's rear tube sheet at its last form four. So we ascertained no change in depth and thickness of the sheet. Then, going off of all the pictures, documentation, all the crap we got on that knuckle condition, we were able to ascertain no change. With that, I mean it took them about 12 hours to do this. They would they would got it done in a day. And then with that, I created a database within our OneDrive system that is basically everything we have on the locomotive, and we've done with the locomotive since we've taken it over.

SPEAKER_03 34:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:10

And Monday morning I went to the FRA and went, share file. Here you go. Go deep or go home.

SPEAKER_02 34:17

Yep. And then so how I don't know how many hours did we spend on the phone last week?

SPEAKER_01 34:24

Too many.

SPEAKER_02 34:26

Uh um, a lot. And then yeah, Monday morning uh he called to let me know that he said, Well, I just shared the file with FRA. He said, Go go deep or go home. Uh and I went, did you is are those the words you use? And we said, Yeah, why? So professional communication. I mean, and then what you see is what you get. Radical transparency.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

Well, radical transparency. I mean, I'm not gonna put a fucking filter on it to be able to, you know. I think that's part of the problem that some other people have with the FRA.

SPEAKER_02 34:56

So there are a few there are a few takeaways here. If if folks are still listening and you haven't gotten lost in the sauce of uh the technicalities, there's a few few things I want to say. Is whistleblower policies are in place for a reason, but you have to go through proper channels.

SPEAKER_03 35:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

Right? And that this wasn't the situation. But right, if if my staff have an issue with Rowdy, they go to me. Or they go to the board. Um, if they have an issue with me, they can go to Rowdy, they can go the production who serves as our informal company shrink, they can go to the board. That's all outlined in our employee handbook. Um and in the instances, and there have been instances, where, like Chris, for example, comes to you and is like, hey, are you really sure about that? And you say, Yeah, and uh I'm still feeling uneasy about it, and you say, Okay, who do you want to talk to? You know, we have enough friends in the industry and enough people willing to pick up the phone, which is the importance of networking and being open and sharing and looking at this as a collaborative effort, not someone that's out to We dig out the book. Right, out to get you dig out the book, you call someone, right? With with AI, whether you like it or not, you can go into Chat GBT and say, hey, comb through this CFR and pull out every single thing pertaining to whatever it is access to information in this modern day and age, is there's no excuse for I didn't know.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

And there's no excuse for I didn't understand or anything like that because of how quick and easy it is to get a hold of it. All the paper CFRs on this property are in the trash and gone because the easy CFR is so easy to get into.

SPEAKER_02 36:44

You know, you always have the latest update. Yep, you know. So um, all of this is to say that, you know, G Core, NORAC, they all have a process for lodging complaints, and I think so does, I would hope, every single railroad.

SPEAKER_03 37:02

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

If you are concerned about something, follow those channels, and then you don't use the FRA as um a weapon. Yeah. Right. So there's a few other things I want to say. Um the FRA, I feel, is primarily concerned about safety. I think a lot of people look at the FRA as concerned about regulation. The regulation is there to ensure safety.

SPEAKER_01 37:29

So it is our job to ensure and and a good majority of that regulation is one step above death.

SPEAKER_02 37:38

Yeah. So, you know, I think what what the philosophy we take in our communication with the FRA is that we want to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that what we're doing is safe. Yeah. Right? That it's safe and that it's defensible. And that's how we treat it. So sometimes we give the FRA more information than they ask for. Um, but again, radical transparency, I don't think we have anything to hide. Um, the FRA will still have access to the Pulsin 70s file because we've granted them access in OneDrive. Um so what goes in there they can see. Um that's all the photos, that's all the FRA documentation, it's the inspections, it's it's all of it.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

Yeah. And there's no reason to keep it from them. No. That's the that's the thing. There's no reason to keep anything from them. And when we were talking about the other day, and and you're you're you talked about posturing. Why are you posturing? Why would somebody want to posture in a situation? You know, that an FRA guy comes up and says, prove to me that this locomotive is safe. Well, son, you're gonna be here for a while.

SPEAKER_03 38:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

You know, look at what happened the first time Don showed up.

SPEAKER_03 38:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:54

And I held I held that poor guy hostage inside the boiler of the fire.

SPEAKER_02 38:58

Does he have water?

SPEAKER_01 38:59

Yeah, and just going over everything. And and and you know, I won't share how the conversation started, but he was frustrated with the situation because he was frustrated for us because of how often this happens.

SPEAKER_02 39:15

So, and that is, I think, maybe one of the negatives about our transparency. Is I even had it the other day. Yeah, I use AI, the proofread stuff, mostly grammarly. Um, but I had someone say, hey, you use a lot of m-dashes and blah, blah, blah. You must be using AI. And it was like, no, I, you know, we had made a statement about not using generative AI and using it as a tool for certain situations. And then um we wouldn't have had a comment if I didn't say something. Is, you know, and then you know, we had a comment saying, no, looking at all the M-dashes, blah, blah, blah. You use what I do use ChatGBT for is putting emojis in because I hate searching through and finding the dang emojis. Yeah. But um, there is a double-edged sword to transparency in the way we handle it. However, we know that the FRA um watches our YouTube. We know that they follow all of our Facebook posts. Um, my guess is they probably listen to the podcast. And I would argue that that has saved our butt because there are times that they have gone back on our social media and said, No, on this day they reported that they did this and there's a photo of it. Yep. Um, which has probably saved us some phone calls.

SPEAKER_01 40:28

Probably. So then then just, you know, doing doing the stuff. I mean, what would have happened in this situation if I hadn't had our inspector show up and look at that thing while there was no tubes in it?

SPEAKER_02 40:38

We'd be waiting, we'd be still a month behind schedule.

SPEAKER_01 40:41

We'd still be waiting.

SPEAKER_02 40:43

Um there's also one more thing I want to say.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 40:46

Um we are operating this engine. So, yes, we are restoring it, but we are also the operator. Um if we, for example, with the new shop, which we'll talk about, were doing contract work for other people and it was being sent out somewhere where we knew they didn't necessarily have the capabilities or the technical knowledge to continue monitoring something like this, we would probably advise it be replaced. Oh, yeah, 100%. Um you're doing your own work, so and you you are the one operating the dang locomotive, yeah, um, you know how it's being treated, right? So you have a greater degree of control.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

And that's the the the regulation also says that it is the operator's responsibility. It doesn't even say owner, this is owner slash operator, but operator's responsibility to ensure that the locomotive is safe and suitable for service.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

So that's to say, if in some future world, Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad was doing contract work, we would probably approach the situation differently. Way differently. Than we are now. Yeah. If if it was control of the situation.

SPEAKER_01 42:00

If this was a contract job, there'd be a bunch of the I mean the whole the whole rear team sheet would probably be replaced. Yeah. Is if it was a contract job. Um does that say that the thing is not safe? No, that's not saying the thing is not safe.

SPEAKER_02 42:15

That is saying that we're looking at it going, hey, you know, we have a we have an ongoing ability that even though the situation is unchanged in three years, we have an ongoing ability to monitor it. Right? We know that we will. We know we're gonna keep the paper trail.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

Yeah. Um what was the what was the thing that I said yesterday? I told you, hey, I'm just gonna have mom start creating these databases in the OneDrive for every locomotive sitting on the property.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

Digitizing all the paper we have. Yeah. And I mean, we're we're talking about doing that in other compliance matters is digitizing everything so that you pull it up if the next one is moving into the 21st century.

SPEAKER_01 42:51

And and you know, the the the thing of it is is that if if we would have done that from the very beginning, most of the time waiting for the FRA at this point wasn't waiting for the FRA, it was waiting for me to compile all of it. Yeah, the FRA received it Monday morning at 7 o'clock. Yeah, we had answers in our favor, not direct answers. There's still some more digging that we have to do and things to provide. But we had answers with for within our favor within 24 hours.

SPEAKER_02 43:21

Yeah. Yeah, which has given us enough again, it's April 8th. That's given us enough confidence to go ahead and say, yeah, we're gonna start putting tubes in. Yeah, so it all in all, it probably cost us a week.

SPEAKER_01 43:33

Yeah, but a week and God knows how much in diesel fuel.

SPEAKER_02 43:37

Yeah, and some stress and gray hair.

SPEAKER_01 43:40

Yeah, lots of gray hair. All right, so speaking of the countdown, I just want to bring it up that there are people on a sightseeing mission to the moon right now, and no one's focusing on that.

SPEAKER_02 43:50

Um, I got caught up on most of the news on it this morning. It was pretty cool. I would say it's cooler than what we.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Do by a lot. Except I did find one picture I know was AI. There was a big blue hole right in the middle of the earth.

SPEAKER_02 44:10

Oh well.

SPEAKER_01 44:11

We digressed. Anyway.

SPEAKER_02 44:12

Anyway. Um, so the new shop, I think we've by the time this episode airs, an episode with a tour of the shop will have uh debuted. And it's we had a staff meeting in our new boardroom this morning.

SPEAKER_01 44:28

It was actually kind of weird to have me somewhere other than the break room.

SPEAKER_02 44:32

Like without sitting on each other's laps.

SPEAKER_01 44:35

That was the big thing, and not being on top of each other and everybody having space at the table and like we we had we were able to put papers on a table.

SPEAKER_02 44:43

Yeah. It was crazy. So we are not gonna be moving into the shop immediately. No. Because we have to turn around two steam engines and a passenger car this year.

SPEAKER_01 44:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

And then the move into that shop has to be done. It's so huge, it's has to be well organized and done in an orderly fashion.

SPEAKER_01 45:04

Which is in I mean, there's probably once a week right now, Chris and I are over there with measuring tapes and measuring wheels, kind of trying to figure out how best to lay it out for maximum production and maximum capacity and maximum Maximum Tism is going into this. A lot. Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's we're we're really.

SPEAKER_02 45:27

I mean, because I we still gotta lay track in the ding thing.

SPEAKER_01 45:30

We gotta lay track in the thing, which means we gotta break the floor up, which means we gotta, you know, XYZ, blah blah blah blah blah. And then there's just the Herculeum task of moving the shop into the new shop.

unknown 45:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:43

Yeah. Hey, that's a that's a task all on its own.

unknown 45:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:48

Which is gonna take a long time. But the good thing about the new shop is that, you know, our electrician friend was over there the other day. It's got three times the power going to it that our current shop has.

SPEAKER_02 46:01

Which means that we can support way more than we can make enough hot chocolate during Christmas. Yeah. Never mind machine machinery.

SPEAKER_01 46:09

Yeah, it's it's it's heated. It's a heated freaking shop. Yeah. It's got heat in it. Um, you know, it's got a massive parts room. It's got a room that we can turn into a clean room for doing brake valves and and the like. It's got a bathroom inside the shop.

SPEAKER_02 46:28

Bathroom is a generous term for it's a head. It is definitely retro 1970s. I have thought about men. I think that um I may do work to the restroom. It's not like I haven't.

SPEAKER_01 46:44

Um just and then there's multiple offices in there. You know, there's an office that you can have for a CMO, there's an office you can have all your compliance stuff in, so it's not in a dank little building that has no climate control. Yeah. Um, it's got its own room that you can have as a carpentry shop. It's got a lift in it that can pick a whole freaking truck up in the air so you can do your oil changes quicker. And just all that storage room upstairs that Eric is just, you know, in love with. It really is gonna change the game outside of the room it's got around it and the 11,000 gallon fuel tank that comes with it, the thousand gallons of gasoline that can go with it, and the 2,000 gallons of freaking on-road diesel that can go with it. I mean, it's it's a big for us, it's a big change.

SPEAKER_02 47:33

Yeah, and I mean it's a it's a big chunk of change for us too, is we we we don't have a benefactor.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

Uh so and the the the the the the decision on it was not taken lightly. No, no, no. It was there was a lot of really talk of hey, if that comes available as this is a lot of bootstrapping. Yeah, and fortunately for us, the folks we bought it from came down into our price range to make it mesh. You know, yeah. They came down a lot to make sure that it was where we could afford to get it. So there needs to be some shout out there that they they helped us out a lot. Yeah, like multiple six figures a lot to make sure that that we could have it as a home for our organization.

SPEAKER_02 48:24

Yep. We are, I think it's fair to say we are really excited. Uh the budget makes me a little queasy, uh, and I think the workload probably makes you a little queasy. Oh, yeah. Um it's sort of it's a celebration, and then you it's Mountaineer Scenic Railroad. This iteration is the dog that keeps chasing its tail. And then when we catch it, we bite ourselves and it hurts.

SPEAKER_01 48:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:48

We go, We got what we wanted, but man.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

Yeah. I mean, I've been looking at that shop for a long time going.

SPEAKER_02 48:54

Well, we have. I mean, it's the the initial conversation started as like, hey, can I rent storage space from you?

SPEAKER_01 49:00

It was like they were looking at repainting it, and you said, I will pay for the paint if you paint it red. Yeah. So it matches our stuff so that it's not an eyesore behind our stuff for Christmas. Yeah. Um, you know, that's where that conversation really started.

SPEAKER_02 49:14

So it sort of started it not as an aspiration of us owning it or not thinking it was in the cards.

SPEAKER_01 49:22

Because at that point it was occupied.

SPEAKER_02 49:23

Yeah. Um, just so much as a like, hey, maybe we can work together. Um, it's gonna be a game changer.

SPEAKER_01 49:34

The ex-owners of it saw that there was some symmetry there for us to have it, and you know, that as the con as the dialogue went, it just kind of became more and more of a hey, it's better off if you guys we get this into your guys' hands than us just try to find some, you know, it sit empty for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 49:51

And then the flip side of that is um when I get through this round of grant funding, the museum is gonna become my baby for a while. Um and doing work to actually get this museum to a point that it can be open for the public.

SPEAKER_01 50:07

Um without digging into the railroad's profit margin. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:13

And that's that's the when it comes down to it, that's the amount of grant funding that I've got going on right now and application.

SPEAKER_01 50:21

We can answer the question when's the museum opening? When's the museum opening? When's the museum opening? When the museum was put together, I don't think that there was there was a whole lot of this is great, let's do it. That's a great idea. But I don't think there was much, let's look down the road and see where is the money coming from that's funding the museum being opened. You look at all the financial records that we have for Wiffham and Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad, you see that there was the potential of having decent profit margins until the day the museum opened. And then from then on, it was a big loss. Yeah. Because it costs a quarter million dollars a year to have the museum open and facility staff, building maintenance and repairs. Yeah. I mean, you just start you you just start going down the room.

SPEAKER_02 51:07

Is like the the railroad in a lot of ways, and that there's a lot of deferred maintenance. So I am working on grant applications. Well, these buildings need to be painted to be able to open it to the public. Um but and you were joking about it the other day, as someone said, Well, just tell Beth and to find you more money.

SPEAKER_04 51:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:26

Um, because you were in a you were in a pretty dark spot with the FRA, and you're like, I don't know how many more miracles I can pull out of my ass.

SPEAKER_01 51:34

How how many more times can I go through this? And I mean, that was the conversation going into the whole FRA situation with the 70. Is I was in a spot where I was telling you, I don't know how many more of these I can hit out of the park. And there was a lot. I don't know when I don't know, you know, did the decision to go after the 70, which I pushed for really freaking hard because I knew I know the engine like the back of my hand, did that just cost us? Because I'm the guy going down every day and getting 100 gallons of diesel for the locomotive and spending $700 a day at this point just to keep the diesel going. Which if the microphones are good, you can hear it burgling outside, costing us upwards of a buck 75 a minute.

SPEAKER_02 52:16

Yeah. And I think, and I I am a little bit in a similar place with how much more money can I find?

SPEAKER_03 52:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:25

It's I I'm we have been able to find a lot of money that this place hasn't found in the past without without a Tom Murray. But how many more miracles can we pull off? So having said that, I'm working on a $1.3 million sort of project package that will turn into the Washington State Heritage Capital grant program through the historical uh Washington State Historical.

SPEAKER_01 52:54

People that paid for the five.

SPEAKER_02 52:56

Yep. Uh the $144,000 of the fives work um is through HCP. So fingers crossed there. Yeah. Okay. In the news, um, this is from a trains magazine headline on April 4th. President's budget request calls to for cuts to Amtrak and transit grants. Um 13.5% decrease um for Amtrak's national network. Uh good chunk of that in the Northeast Corridor. Um domestic cuts are widespread throughout the budget, which calls for a $1.5 trillion in defense spending, a 42% increase from 2026, while cutting 73 billion or 10% elsewhere.

SPEAKER_01 53:46

God, I wonder why.

SPEAKER_02 53:48

Um I am trying to be apolitical about this.

SPEAKER_01 53:51

I don't, and I'm trying to trigger you.

SPEAKER_02 53:53

Um Yep.

SPEAKER_01 53:56

Uh Calvin's back there going, oh God, please don't.

SPEAKER_02 54:00

Uh including those. So the law that pumped an additional 3.3.13 billion into the national network and $1.19 billion into the Northeast Quarter in 2026. So including those figures, Amtrak funding is going to drop by 69%. Um though that investment was through the Jobs Act in 2021. Um the capital investment grants program through the Federal Transit Administration is going from $2.45 billion to $1.24 billion. Um and the intercity passenger rail will be cut from $65 million to zero. Um, but discretionary funds for Chrissy uh will increase from $137 to $300 million. So unfortunately, that is fairly terrible news for the rest of the industry and decent news maybe for us. I don't know what to say about that.

SPEAKER_01 55:01

Yeah, neat.

SPEAKER_02 55:04

Um and the big boy's out. And the big boy's out. I think we did that in the last. I know, but we just gotta keep.

SPEAKER_01 55:11

I mean, you gotta in the news, we're going to the moon again. The big boy is out. Out and oh, the big boy is gonna go on the reading and northern. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:19

Uh yeah, yeah, yeah. You're trying to single-handedly save this podcast from the end and like bring up the moon.

SPEAKER_01 55:26

I'm giving you a wedgie with how hard I'm pulling up on you. Oh god.

SPEAKER_02 55:32

Um, so we have any questions? Yes, there are several questions.

SPEAKER_01 55:36

Because you didn't give me questions on the piece of it.

SPEAKER_02 55:38

That's that's because I wrote this yesterday and the last episode hadn't gone out, so I hadn't had comments yet. The first comment is WTF is up with your names. Well, your name is Rowdy because your dad wanted to name you Rowdy. There was an argument between your mom and dad about giving you the middle name Danger, and they did not give you a middle name, so you have no middle name.

SPEAKER_01 56:00

Yeah, that's because my grandma, because my grandma didn't like my name, and she was gonna call me by my middle name. And my dad said, Well, he doesn't have a middle name.

SPEAKER_02 56:06

And people meet you and they think that rowdy is a nickname. And nope, that is the name on your birth certificate, your license, everything. Um, and it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

SPEAKER_01 56:18

Yeah. Well, my dad looked at my mom when she said she was pregnant and goes, Well, it's gonna be one rowdy son of a bitch. Yeah. There we go.

SPEAKER_02 56:27

Yeah. Uh my name is Bethan. It's like Bethany without the Y, Beth in, not Beth Ann, not Bethany, not whatever else.

SPEAKER_01 56:36

So if you do call her Beth Ann, Bethany, Beth, or any of that, and I'm in your presence, and you just see me back up, it'd probably be good that you sit back and go Bethany.

SPEAKER_02 56:50

I don't correct people a whole lot.

SPEAKER_01 56:52

Actually, I think I correct you more.

SPEAKER_02 56:54

You correct people more because I just get so tired of it being right. No one knows my last name, which is Mar. Um, no one knows how to say that because there's only one Beth in. It is Welsh. I am regularly reminded that it's I am lucky that I have consonants or vowels, sorry, vowels in my name.

SPEAKER_01 57:11

That's the reason why you guys named your daughter Morgan. So they Morgan.

SPEAKER_02 57:14

So that was when we were naming my daughter. I said, I want my kids to have Welsh names, and my husband said they need to have vowels, which sort of cut out most of the family names. Mlaudwin, Gwyn, Dwyn. Anyway.

SPEAKER_01 57:30

Um And I was sitting there trying to go, I'm trying to find you one that wasn't Morgan because of my experiences with people named Morgan.

SPEAKER_02 57:37

Yeah, and you were, I think, the only person who we told, who I told.

SPEAKER_01 57:40

I was like, uh, bad idea.

SPEAKER_02 57:42

Yeah, and then you started naming bikini baristas, blow up sex dolls.

SPEAKER_01 57:47

Um make you guys feel great.

SPEAKER_02 57:51

Okay, anyway, um, what is going on with the North Carolina Transportation Museum X reading cars that y'all purchased like 10 years ago?

SPEAKER_01 58:00

They are, as uh the time of we are talking, one is sitting on a flat car and the next one is going up in the air. Yep. So at the end of the day today, unless God freaking throws a freaking dick at our head, they should all three be sitting on flat cars by the end of today. And per the conversation that I had with him on the phone, they should be secured and inspected tomorrow. Depending upon what is said in the inspection, hopefully they are on their way because North Carolina wants them out of there, and this guy wants them out of his hair and on to the next guy.

SPEAKER_02 58:38

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, what did I say in our staff meeting this morning?

SPEAKER_01 58:44

You said a lot, and I wasn't listening to most of it.

SPEAKER_02 58:47

Regarding equipment, free and cheap equipment.

SPEAKER_01 58:51

To find more?

SPEAKER_02 58:52

No.

SPEAKER_01 58:53

That's what I heard.

SPEAKER_02 58:54

No, production, is that what I said?

SPEAKER_01 58:56

Hey, getting in the middle of the rock and a hard place type of situation.

SPEAKER_02 59:02

If it is free in the railroad world, that means the price tag starts at $100,000. Yeah. Um and the amount of oh, I just stepped on my dog. Sorry, Katie. Um That's what happens when you get excited. The amount of coordination that this takes between two different organizations, admittedly, I stopped work on it for six months when we had a little fire. Um in all seriousness, what have we talked about?

SPEAKER_01 59:25

What have we talked about? Is that we are not going any farther east than the Mississippi River anymore. Unless it's for pizza. Unless it's for pizza, and that if we're looking for cars, we're looking for the relatively local or other pieces of equipment.

SPEAKER_02 59:40

We say a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 59:41

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 59:42

Yeah, we'll see. All right. Um I want to do research for you. Awesome. Email me. Uh I am deeply nerdy. And if you are anywhere in the country and would still like to do some volunteer work for us or doing research, we would love that. Uh, we just ask that you cite your sources. Um, and then not Wikipedia. Yeah, and we'll uh or AI, chat GBG gets a lot of history wrong.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:08

They do. Um but you're dealing with a couple of history nerds, and we will see it. Yeah. Uh one of the reasons why I almost got flunked out of high school is because my history teacher tried to say that Custer died at the Battle of Wounded Knee. I, okay. And I was like, excuse me, sir, that is false. Yeah. And he goes, No, it was wounded knee. I said, No, it was the little bighorn, no, it was wounded knee. I said, Look at the frickin' hit textbook you got sitting in front of you.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:31

Yeah, so in it was seventh grade, I think. Uh our my social studies teacher was like, What's the only war the US didn't win? And the correct answer was supposed to be Vietnam.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:44

However, do you know what I did?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:45

I I think that technically you could throw North Korea, the Korea War in there.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:49

Well, I did in the War of 1812. Anyway. Um are you ever going to do a deep dive into the Jack Anderson era of Mount Rainier Scenic Creole River?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:01

That's a hard one. That's a hard one because though we praise Jack on the surface for what he did and who he was, there is not a day that goes by that we also don't equally curse him and the things that were done. And people still get their feathers ruffled when we sit back and go, this was done wrong.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:24

People get their feathers right. Jack was a good man and he was a kind man, but Jack also had his vices.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:32

Yep. He had his but this so yep. I mean, you stop and how can I say this without pissing people off? They did what they could with what they had available at the time.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:47

In in the internet, what did not exist and networking was much harder. Best practices didn't exist.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:54

Yeah, part two thirty. We hadn't blown up a locomotive at Gettysburg much. I mean, and the thing of it is is that when 230 came around, Jack struggled. I would like to I got a filing cabinet. One of these boxes right here is actually full of all the documentation of Tom Murray reaching out to different people that Jack had done work for saying, hey, you might want to check this because it's come to light that Jack probably wasn't doing good repairs.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:18

It's it's a Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad would not be here without Jack Anderson, and Jack Anderson was a good man. Yes. Um not all of the things that were done on behalf of the railroad were good. And I think after Jack fell in the pit, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:36

There, they're when when when things started going downhill for Jack. It just, you know, things went downhill and the railroad started to follow, follow with them.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:44

And there was just this how do you get rid of the guy that so I think that's a tough, that's a really tough one for us because you can simultaneously really respect and appreciate someone and want to honor their legacy and be critical. And I think we go back to transparency where um we don't want to do harm. No.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:07

And you know, the thing about Jack is his kids are still alive. Well, what was the first thing Zach told us when we came brought him up for a train ride? Yeah. It was the first time he'd been on the train since he was a kid. And he was just like, it's so nice to actually see people talking positively about my dad instead of it always being negative. Because I mean, all the people that came in behind Jack here never said anything good about him.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:31

There are very there were very few people that would actually go out and say anything good about him after a certain point. The people that didn't know him.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:38

Yeah. So Dogface, what are you doing? Oh, you got yourself all tied up.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:42

Um, and then so probably that's a delicate situation, and don't hold your breath.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:48

And I think that's another one that context matters so much, and I don't want people to take a sound bite and take it terribly out of context either. The next and final question is will the five debut as Thomas? Fucking. Why not? It'd be fun. I read my statement. All right. Well, uh, it's been a great time. Uh this is off the rails with Rowdy and Bethan that probably won't be an episode. There may not be a next episode because you may kill me or I may kill you.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:23

No, we're gonna go to the ASLRA convention this weekend. We are. And then when we get to the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:28

There's no Waffle House in sight. However, there is a Rainforest Cafe, and I have invited us to tag along with the fine folks from the Naugatuck at the Rainforest Cafe, which apparently there's still one that's in existence.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:41

We'll need some video from that.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:44

Anyway, so next episode is probably gonna be about us talking about our experiences traveling with each other to the ASLRA convention.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:51

Yeah, we'll stay away from a full travel blog. Thank you for tuning in. Uh, let us know what you want us to talk about and uh give us your questions. We like them.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:59

Thanks. And that wraps up this episode of Off the Rails. A huge thank you to our totally real, definitely not made up production crew. Sound designed by Microphone, catering by Cornelius Cobb, track maintenance provided by Rusty Switches, and marketing brilliance courtesy of souvenir. I'm your host, reminding you to keep your hands inside the train at all times, because around here, things always go off the rails.