Episode 197: The Illinois Central Electric Wreck

Incidentally, I'm on the IC electric wreck dietsorry for crunchy audio, aoife couldn't use her normal recording setup follow aoife on bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/aoife.bsky.socialcheck out the FOIA Bakery: https://thefoiabakery.org/ Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod/ Send us stuff! our address:Well There's Your Podcasting CompanyPO Box 26929 Philadelphia, PA 19134DO NOT SEND US LETTER BOMBS thanks in advance in the commercial: Local Forecast - Elevator Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, hello and welcome to Well, there's your problem. It's a podcast about engineering disasters with slides. I'm Justin Roczniak. I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him. Okay, go.

• 0:20Liam McAnderson?

  Hi, I'm November Kelly. My pronouns are she and her. Yay, Liam. Hi, I'm Liam McAnderson.

• 0:29Liam McAnderson?

  I'm the person who's talking right now. I love that. I love that for me. My pronouns are he, him. I probably already said it. Victoria, go.

• 0:38Speaker 02

  Hello, my name is Victoria Scott. My pronouns are she and her. I am also talking right now. And we have a guest.

• 0:44Liam McAnderson?

  We do.

• 0:45Justin Roczniak?

  We have a guest.

• 0:46Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm the guest. My name is Itha Fahy. My pronouns are she, her. And I am just about to finish talking.

• 0:54Justin Roczniak?

  All right. All right. We've successfully introduced the podcast.

• 1:01Liam McAnderson?

  Well, job well done, everybody. Go home.

• 1:03Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly. What you see on the screen here is a train, which is partially inside of another train.

• 1:13Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, is it supposed to look like that?

• 1:15Justin Roczniak?

  No, it is not supposed to look like that.

• 1:17Liam McAnderson?

  Son of a bitch.

• 1:23Justin Roczniak?

  Um, what we, what we're going to talk about today is the 1972 Illinois Central Electric System Rec. And this is, yeah, and November is unfortunately not here today because she is all podcasted out.

• 1:42Liam McAnderson?

  Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.

• 1:45Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, RIP.

• 1:46Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, the good news is we don't have to split the money with her anymore. So, you know, RIP or whatever, but.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  I really enjoy how in this image, this appears to be an actual clash of eras and that we have kind of like the old school, what appeared to be New York Central passenger cars on the left and then like the modern bi computer bi levels on the right.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Those are not modern. They've just still exist.

• 2:18Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, this is, this is definitely a clash of the eras and one of them won out.

• 2:26Liam McAnderson?

  And that's why we have safety specifications.

• 2:28Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. So, but before we can do that, we have to do the goddamn news.

• 2:36Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, fuck. We don't have the drops. Oh, shit.

• 2:43Justin Roczniak?

  This is, this is what we've been reduced to.

• 2:48Justin Roczniak?

  So.

• 2:50Liam McAnderson?

  Fucking stupid.

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Can you imagine somebody trying out this show for the first time on this episode?

• 2:57Liam McAnderson?

  Fuck them.

• 3:02Justin Roczniak?

  So, uh, the Finnish DJ Darud made a surprise visit to Kourtney Kardashian's Camp Pooch at Coachella this year, and it was subsequently destroyed in a sandstorm.

• 3:15Liam McAnderson?

  What the goddamn shit is a Camp Pooch?

• 3:17Justin Roczniak?

  I guess it's a wellness retreat for VIPs.

• 3:21Liam McAnderson?

  Nope. These people.

• 3:22Justin Roczniak?

  Well, they were by the sandstorm.

• 3:24Liam McAnderson?

  Good. Fucking good. I don't, listen, I went to Warped Tour a lot as a kid. I was talking to my wife about this yesterday. I went to Warped Tour a lot as a kid, if you could tell by everything about me. And, uh, you know, just like, and then people pay like $8,000 or $1 million to go to Coachella. I do not understand this. I don't understand sorting my nuts off in the Coachella Valley to see Justin Bieber play Baby. I don't fucking get it. Apparently he played Beauty and the Beast, which don't get me wrong, is a bop, but it's not worth $8,000, $1 million.

• 3:56Speaker 03

  That just means you don't have enough money. You probably would think it was worth that much money if you had whatever amount of money makes allows you to go to the vaginal rejuvenation spa or whatever.

• 4:08Liam McAnderson?

  Oh dude, my vagina, first of all, how dare you. It's $7,000 for premium.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Jesus Christ, is it actually $7,000?

• 4:20Liam McAnderson?

  That's what it appears to be, but that might be StubHub pricing. Resale prices, oh, 1300 for VIP. But resale was like 700.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  That's still too much money.

• 4:31Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, it's too much money. Who played Coachella? I don't know who played Coachella.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  I think the most I ever paid for tickets to a show was like $130 to get decent tickets to see Rush.

• 4:41Liam McAnderson?

  I paid good money to see Taylor Swift. Not gonna reveal how much money I have paid to see Taylor Swift, but relax, folks. It's a lot. I'm using your Patreon money unwisely.

• 4:55Justin Roczniak?

  I thought you saw Taylor Swift for free at the Walmart in Wynwood.

• 4:59Liam McAnderson?

  First of all, it was the Walmart in, oh, not with the naming. Why a missing Pennsylvania?

• 5:06Justin Roczniak?

  Why a missing?

• 5:07Liam McAnderson?

  And also, there was a band called Roz at Coachella, R O Z.

• 5:12Justin Roczniak?

  What?

• 5:13Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 5:16Justin Roczniak?

  All right, I'm gonna speak to the lawyer about this one.

• 5:19Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta. Sabrina Carpenter was there. I have never heard of any of these fucking people. Turnstile I like. Fat Boy Slim and Devo and David Byrne. Okay, I could fuck with

• 5:34Liam McAnderson?

  three of these people.

• 5:35Justin Roczniak?

  I got to see David Byrne live recently. That guy's still got it.

• 5:39Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, no, I paid a lot of money to see Taylor Swift. I got floor tickets for the Red Tour and that absolutely fucked.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  By all accounts, she does know how to put on a good show.

• 5:50Liam McAnderson?

  She absolutely does. I love my climate destroying princess.

• 5:59Justin Roczniak?

  Well.

• 6:01Liam McAnderson?

  Fuck you, rich people.

• 6:03Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, fuck you, rich people. You were you were destroyed by a sandstorm anyway. In other news.

• 6:18Justin Roczniak?

  All right, we got to talk about the Chop parking garage collapse.

• 6:22Liam McAnderson?

  This is a terrible fucking idea and.

• 6:24Justin Roczniak?

  But this is a confusing. It's a terrible project and it's confusing disaster. I guess the background here. Okay, so we have the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia or is it Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania? I forget.

• 6:39Liam McAnderson?

  It's Chop.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  When I saw this come up in the news, I immediately thought Capitol Hill.

• 6:46Liam McAnderson?

  It's Philadelphia, not Pennsylvania.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Occupied Autonomous Zone because that was the Chop. I don't remember what the actual thing was, but I was just like, why does this?

• 6:55Justin Roczniak?

  The CHAZ.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  Be a place a parking garage would collapse, to be fair.

• 7:01Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 7:04Justin Roczniak?

  So the Children's Hospital wanted to build a new parking garage and they decided the best place for this parking garage was one mile from the hospital campus.

• 7:19Justin Roczniak?

  The idea here being.

• 7:20Liam McAnderson?

  God forbid you should have to take public transit.

• 7:22Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, rather than taking regional rail to the train station, which is inside the hospital complex.

• 7:29Liam McAnderson?

  Penn can pay for it. They just don't want to.

• 7:31Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, you would drive to this parking garage one mile away from the hospital down I-76, the worst highway in America. And you would then park in the garage and then you would take a shuttle bus to the hospital.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  That's that okay.

• 7:55Liam McAnderson?

  Mm hmm.

• 7:57Justin Roczniak?

  Um, I, I, I'm not exaggerating too much when I say that pretty much everyone was against this idea. Um, it, it is, it, it, it was a very bad idea. The neighborhood was against it. Um, a lot of the hospital staff were against it. Um, the urbanists all hated it because it was just like, well, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna put this garage in a underprivileged neighborhood and let them deal with, I don't know, six or 7,000 extra cars a day, which is also a lot of cars to put on I-76, which was the main access for this garage, right? Um, but it did let you avoid taking regional rail because instead you could go drive on the highway

• 8:42Justin Roczniak?

  that backs up at 3 a.m. on a Sunday.

• 8:45Liam McAnderson?

  Uh, yup.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I will say having stepped foot into Philly for the first time in my life, uh, like three weeks ago, um, shockingly car brained. I really thought it would be more transit.

• 8:56Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, sister. No, stupid.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  Uh, like, uh, Roz picked me up from our hotel out by the airport, uh, after I got stranded there when TSA decided not to show up to work. Uh, which is their right, as they should. Uh, but I got stuck there to layover and as we were driving, there's just, there's cars like parked in the median everywhere. It's like, it's pure, the streets are chaos and there are so many cars.

• 9:21Liam McAnderson?

  Yup, yup. It's, it's Philly shrug because we don't, we can't do anything. We can't do anything.

• 9:26Justin Roczniak?

  Well, you know.

• 9:27Liam McAnderson?

  Throw our hands or poop our pants.

• 9:29Justin Roczniak?

  Every row house is 15 feet wide and a good third of those row houses, uh, the occupants have 15 cars, all with Jersey plates.

• 9:37Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, a bunch of motherfuckers. Look, South Philly could be burned down to the ground tomorrow and nothing of value would be lost, except a couple of Italian restaurants I kinda like.

• 9:50Justin Roczniak?

  I, we also have, I mean, the whole Italian market, I mean, I, I, there's nice things down there. Come on.

• 9:56Liam McAnderson?

  Name five.

• 9:59Justin Roczniak?

  Um.

• 10:00Liam McAnderson?

  No.

• 10:00Speaker 03

  Oh, you really are a warfier kind of person, huh?

• 10:07Justin Roczniak?

  There's um, shit, I mean, the Italian market, you have.

• 10:12Liam McAnderson?

  That's one.

• 10:13Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, you have, uh, what's the big library down there?

• 10:17Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:18Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, that became the, uh, the high school for performing arts, though.

• 10:21Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yes, it did. Uh, where Corinne's sorority little graduated from, I want to say. I don't know.

• 10:27Justin Roczniak?

  All the beautiful.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  Three bowling alleys in Philadelphia is also down there.

• 10:31Justin Roczniak?

  Oh.

• 10:32Liam McAnderson?

  South Bowl, yeah.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So why, why do you guys only have three bowling alleys?

• 10:37Liam McAnderson?

  Cause they're all in the suburbs. We have North Bowl and Lucky Strike, if that's even still open, and South Bowl.

• 10:45Justin Roczniak?

  You got a, oh, you got Ray's Happy Birthday Bar.

• 10:48Liam McAnderson?

  Okay, I will concede you Ray's Happy Birthday Bar.

• 10:50Justin Roczniak?

  You got all of, uh, Paschunk Avenue.

• 10:54Liam McAnderson?

  Not, surely not all of it.

• 10:57Justin Roczniak?

  Well, then, not all of it. No, I mean, well, well, you know, I guess the Simeone Foundation is in, uh, Southwest.

• 11:03Liam McAnderson?

  Well, you can't have this. That's on a technicality at best. It's on your side of the river, motherfucker.

• 11:10Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, how many are we at now?

• 11:12Speaker 03

  I think that's five. You've got the bowling alley.

• 11:15Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, you can have the ball. All right, fine. I concede defeat.

• 11:17Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 11:18Liam McAnderson?

  Nuke it. Nuke South Philly.

• 11:21Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, but what if we find one virtuous man in South Philly?

• 11:25Liam McAnderson?

  Not dual bowl.

• 11:29Justin Roczniak?

  Um, so there's a lot of things here that confuse me. There's a reputable firm that designed this and built it. This is all built with union labor, of course. What we sort of saw happen, there was a video, is this, uh, top slab here in the under construction garage, uh, failed and fell, and then it fell down several stories, just in a sort of pancake fashion. Down here behind the Chiron, this segment over here buckled outwards.

• 11:59Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 12:01Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, it's a it. It's a little unclear what caused this failure. I I I can't even speculate because I have no idea. I will say these sorts of precast parking garages generally are pretty bad in terms of like, construction quality. That's not even like on the design firm or like, you know, the labor. It's just like.

• 12:24Liam McAnderson?

  Is this just a freak accident? I don't know what else to say. Like, is that it?

• 12:28Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, because usually the stuff people cheap out on is like grout and like drainage and waterproofing. Usually the problems those things cause don't show up until like 20 years of road salt and water intrusion and heavy cyclical moving loads take a toll on the structure, the freeze thaw, so on and so forth. And this is a pancake style collapse on a brand new structure. I don't know. I have no idea what happened here. And yeah, this this killed three people. One man was dead, confirmed dead immediately. And then they had to actually demolish this whole thing because it was too unstable to recover the other two bodies.

• 13:11Liam McAnderson?

  Jesus Christ.

• 13:14Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, so that's that's pretty bad. You know, and again, I we don't know what happened yet. You know, the only thing you can really say about it is this was a bad project. And a lot of people are saying, you know, okay, this is an opportunity for chop to cancel this. But we also got to remember, you know, three union ironworkers are dead here. This is not a great way to get a project canceled. This is very, very unpleasant.

• 13:42Speaker 03

  They're gonna build the ironworker memorial parking garage now? Is that what you're suggesting?

• 13:49Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, God. That would be that that would. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. So this is, I don't know, it's depressing and also confusing.

• 14:00Liam McAnderson?

  Nasty work, yeah.

• 14:01Justin Roczniak?

  Nasty work, yeah. So I I don't know. The whole situation was crazy the whole time. There was so much, you know, opposition to this project, and now here we are.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  I haven't seen many new precast, if any, new precast parking garages in northeastern Illinois. I kind of figured that was like an eighties thing.

• 14:27Justin Roczniak?

  I It's still, it's still one of the more popular ways to do it. I just think there's just less precast garages in general, you know, because there has been a lot of progress in like reducing parking minimums in a lot of places.

• 14:42Liam McAnderson?

  Right.

• 14:44Justin Roczniak?

  But yeah, I mean, you know, big institutional people like, you know, hospitals, like M track still builds a lot of them like commuter railroads, so on and so forth. You know, you know, that's for like parking rides, but yeah, these, these precast garages are all kind of, I, I, I have done structural work on these and they are, you know,

• 15:09Justin Roczniak?

  they're all shit, but they're only shit in ways that shows up 20 years later, not during construction. I don't understand what happened here.

• 15:18Liam McAnderson?

  Right.

• 15:21Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 15:22Speaker 03

  Are they just normally held together by gravity or is there like some sort of like tying that needs to happen to make them structurally stable?

• 15:28Justin Roczniak?

  Um, oh God. I mean, it's mostly, it's mostly like, uh,

• 15:35Justin Roczniak?

  how do you say it? Um, stuff like, you know, there, there's,

• 15:41Justin Roczniak?

  you know, I can't think of the connections offhand. I,

• 15:44Speaker 03

  I just wonder how like a pancake is if I'm trying to imagine.

• 15:48Liam McAnderson?

  That's same. I'm trying to figure out how this happens.

• 15:51Justin Roczniak?

  That's, that's where I'm like really confused.

• 15:57Justin Roczniak?

  I don't know.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  I guess none of us are going into parking garage design in the future.

• 16:01Justin Roczniak?

  No, I'm, I'm past that. I'm past that phase in my life.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  I don't think it's gonna be a growth industry anymore either.

• 16:08Liam McAnderson?

  And it's either Lockheed Martin or parking garage design.

• 16:11Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 16:15Justin Roczniak?

  So yeah, speaking of confusing and depressing.

• 16:25Justin Roczniak?

  All right, here's our Iran war update.

• 16:31Justin Roczniak?

  What, what, what the fuck is going on?

• 16:34Liam McAnderson?

  What are we doing, man?

• 16:35Justin Roczniak?

  What are we doing?

• 16:37Speaker 03

  We're winning.

• 16:38Liam McAnderson?

  We had this, what I don't understand is like, we had the JCPO, JCPOA, and then they were just like, nope, we're not gonna do that. We're just gonna shit in our hands instead. Absolutely fucking baffling. I mean, I, I'm not surprised given this administration, but it's just a, it's a totally baffling, like, what are we doing here?

• 16:57Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, cuz like last week, and that's why we missed an episode. I just straight up lost a day when Trump was threatening to basically nuke Iran.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Oh, same. Yeah, you know, he was, he was, he posted on Truth Social at like, five in the morning Eastern time, like, oh, I'm gonna wipe out a great civilization if they don't make a deal, and they're not gonna, so I guess I'll just destroy him. Uh, yeah, that was a long fucking day.

• 17:23Liam McAnderson?

  Devin, you ought to believe this. Well, somebody just kill, please. Thank you, Devin.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  I barely know what's been, what's going on cuz I've been only, I'm getting all of my news from Red Note. Mostly because I'm obsessed with Chinese lesbians, but.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  I'm saluting so hard I pass out.

• 17:44Speaker 03

  I, I, it's interesting, like, see, there's like, like, Chinese, like, Chinese people can travel to Iran. Easy peasy, love and squeezy, and it's interesting to hear them talk about like, their perception of what's going on there. They're like, yeah, there's more boats in the, in the Gulf than they say there are. They just all have like their transmitters turned off. Actually, the Iranian forces are leading boats through. There's like, boats getting through, but they're, like, the United States doesn't have any control of what ships make it through and aren't stopping ships that are making it through. So it sounds like.

• 18:19Liam McAnderson?

  My dad was telling me about this, yeah.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  It sounds like the United States. I mean, it's incredible because the United States is like, you know what? We still have the straight clothes. It doesn't sound like, it's like, it's like listening to like the local lunatics say that they're gonna close down the Target or the 7-Eleven or something. And everyone's just like, yeah, okay, sure, buddy. Please step away from the front door. We have customers.

• 18:45Speaker 03

  Like, it's, it's, it's, I, I can't imagine how, no offense to, uh, anyone. Uh, I mean, I, you have to take someone with nukes seriously. But how do you take these people seriously? It's like, it's legitimately like negotiating with someone who's just, um, like on a different plane of existence from you. There was like no point.

• 19:07Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, yeah. I was, I was, I was watching the, the ABC nightly news with David Muir. Shout out, uh, Daddy David. And, uh, there was an ad, an ad came on for like 83% of Americans support, uh, voter ID. And the fact that we don't have one, it leaves us alone in the civilized world. Their words, not mine. Don't get mad at me. Uh, and I was just like, I don't want to debate these people. I want to throw, I want to throw hands at them. Like, I don't, it's, it's like what we're gonna get to in the next news segment. It's like, just shut the fuck up. Nobody cares.

• 19:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah. And, and the, the current strategy for anyone who's been completely living under Iraq since, uh, Iraq is, Iraq is over here. Um, but, you know, the, uh,

• 19:52Justin Roczniak?

  since Iran has blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, that's where all the oil goes through, except for certain ships. The idea is the United States is now gonna blockade the Strait of Hormuz to make sure none of those boats go through. I guess we haven't gotten the boats over there. They're pretty slow. Um, cause we, we got rid of all our fast boats and replaced them with fast boats that, um, rust if they're exposed to sea water.

• 20:18Liam McAnderson?

  Combat ships. Yeah.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  There happen a lot of the chiral for shitters still out, so.

• 20:24Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 20:24Liam McAnderson?

  Shitters fall.

• 20:29Justin Roczniak?

  Look, I gotta use the ship's head. You know, if it had a ship's head, this would not be a problem.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  Uh, the thing I heard about that is everyone's like, oh, well, you know, it's a new toilet technology, yada, yada, yada. And then

• 20:41Liam McAnderson?

  How do you invent it? So we've had flush toilets for like 200 years, more than that.

• 20:46Justin Roczniak?

  They've got fancy Japanese toilets.

• 20:48Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:50Speaker 03

  They have vacuum toilets now, low flow vacuum toilets. But the theory is

• 20:55Liam McAnderson?

  It sucks the shit out of your ass.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, basically. Uh, they're on like the longest deployment anyone's ever been on outside of like World War II or something. And so the theory is, is that all of the sailors are pissed off and just are like flushing like shoes and pillows down the toilet.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Um, I also don't know. I mean, like this is in the grand scheme of things, things is obviously not like the most relevant part of this since, you know, thousands of people are dead. Uh, but it was kind of funny that they, uh, Iran is just firing $30,000, uh, what are they? Head drones and managed to take out one of the, uh, the Boeing, uh, what is it? 707? The big radar plane? The big dome. Yeah, the radar dome plane, of which we have like 15 and Boeing doesn't make spare parts for them anymore. Uh, cause they just left it sitting on a runway somewhere in Saudi Arabia. Here's, it was a $300 million airplane that got got by like a, a off the shelf Chinese drone, which I just thought was funny.

• 21:59Speaker 03

  Did you guys see the, um, the big news about all of these things getting shot, uh, shot up? Um, is that like all of the like radar and sensor technologies and systems and stuff like that use rare earth minerals? And so like,

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:16Speaker 03

  There's like this whole thing, which is like Russia controls most of the tungsten supply in the world. And China can, uh, controls almost the entire, like, controls like certain rare earth minerals. They control 100% of it. Other rare earth minerals, they control like 60 to 80% of. And so like the, the cost of all of these things are getting blown up is based on the cost that took to manufacture them based on our constrained rare earth mineral supply over like, you know, Three decades or whatever. And so, uh, you know, the Republicans are like, oh yeah, we're gonna, you know, we just need to authorize, you know, thirty billion dollars to replace all

• 23:00Speaker 03

  this stuff. Except like, there's like, the money, like Russia and China will not sell us these things for love nor money. Uh, so there's like, actually, not just like, there's like, no dollar amount that can replace these things, which is actually pretty base. But if you do, depending on how you feel about the United States of America.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  The entire problem with this crisis is just that, like, we, our administration fundamentally, it is so blinded by the capitalist model of the world, but they do not think that, like, materials come from somewhere. They're like, well, this is the problem with the oil. It's the problem with rare earth minerals. It's the problem with like, the way that wars are fought, and like, how getting the ships over there. I'm convinced they just forgot that, like, physical reality dictates what you can and cannot have. You cannot just throw more money at a problem.

• 23:53Justin Roczniak?

  I think, I think Marx had a word for this. It was commodity fetishism.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  That is, yes, exactly.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  Well, the craziest thing about all of this is that they're like, the most anti-free trade people on the planet. And then they're like, wait, no, that was about everyone else, not about us. You have to give us what we want to buy.

• 24:11Liam McAnderson?

  I am, I am merely a small bean. Right.

• 24:13Justin Roczniak?

  You could develop these rare earth mineral mines and other stuff in the United States, but you would have to, you know, you'd have to start building industries that are less profitable than financial products. And that's a bad ROI. So, you know, you should

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Literally, yeah.

• 24:28Justin Roczniak?

  Probably invest all that into hedge funds instead.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  This is, this is the problem that like, EV manufacturers have, right? Is like, you know, there's a, there have been issues where it's like, I mean, both China does this as well, where it's like, you know, a lot of the like lithium in the world comes from extremely unethical mining practices in extremely impoverished countries.

• 24:45Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, does it?

• 24:46Speaker 02

  And there are other places you could get this stuff from, or you could just, you know, mine it more ethically instead of using like, child slaves. But, uh, nobody wants to spend the money on that, because then the economic argument for it evaporates.

• 24:57Justin Roczniak?

  Yep.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Um, I don't know. It's just, it's insane. Because it's like, I, I You know, on the other show I do, we talk about like auto industry bullshit and seeing people be like, well, we just should just ban Chinese cars from the American market and we'll just keep making gas cars because that's what consumers want. And it's like, what, where do you people think oil like comes from? Like, like, what do you think Venezuela is gonna like overnight subsidize American consumption of all oil products?

• 25:26Speaker 03

  Well, their whole thing is that the United States is the world's largest oil producer in the world, except the oil we produce.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  It's shit. It's garbage.

• 25:37Speaker 03

  We don't have refineries that can process it. So they're like, keep American oil in America. And it's like, we don't have refineries. They have to ship it somewhere else to make it into gas.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  My F 250 off heavy crude.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  That'll show those cyclists.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  My pickup truck with chapstick. So I, because that's what the Canadians want.

• 26:00Justin Roczniak?

  I was originally gonna throw in a slide about that and explain how well if you, you can to some extent put American crude through our refineries, it just means you don't get any diesel out.

• 26:12Liam McAnderson?

  Well, that's good news for our nation trucking industry that doesn't exist.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, diesel fuel in Seattle is already like eight dollars a gallon. So.

• 26:21Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. So.

• 26:24Justin Roczniak?

  But yeah, yeah, the situation's fucked.

• 26:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. Another thing that Chinese are lapping us on, by the way, I've been getting so much Chinese propaganda on red note. It's amazing. I could also want to rant about, do you guys know about the, uh, the ban on cotton from China, uh, that the United States has? Cause it's from, uh, like one of like the regions with like human rights violations, which it isn't. I read, watched an entire 16 part series from China about why the economic reasons why the United States is claiming there are huge rights violations. Fascinating. Discussion for another time.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  The podcast just got in a lot of trouble. Continue.

• 27:05Speaker 03

  China built the world's largest cracking tower for oil in the world. So they can like process and they did this before this all happened, of course, because it's something that takes like a decade to plan. But it's like twice or it's like four times as big as like any cracking tower in the United States. And so it allows you to like refine stuff like get like more of these like fractional like products of the oil out from like marginal oil sources, which is especially important for China because they want to produce like polyester and stuff like that. But it is amazing. Like when you look at it like, oh, how big is the biggest cracking tower in the United States? It's like it was built in 1975 and hasn't been upgraded since like.

• 27:46Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, we we that's the problem is we we don't need cracking towers. We need the backwards of that, which is an alcalation unit. Um, and our biggest one, yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 03

  The Germans were doing the World War II with coal gasification and stuff like that.

• 27:59Justin Roczniak?

  And the biggest one, I think it was the biggest one, certainly one of the biggest ones, uh, blew up in 2019 in Philadelphia.

• 28:06Liam McAnderson?

  Yes, they.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:09Liam McAnderson?

  You're welcome, America.

• 28:12Speaker 03

  Revolutionary, revolutionary Pennsylvania has our backs.

• 28:18Liam McAnderson?

  It's us, Vanguard of the revolution.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  How old was that thing that blew up? If I had to guess, just knowing anything about the United States, it was like 45 years old and had its design life expanded twice over.

• 28:31Justin Roczniak?

  Well, yeah, because that was, I think, the biggest refinery that was designed mostly for domestic crude. Um, so everything in there was old.

• 28:42Justin Roczniak?

  But yeah, you have to go back to our episode on that. That has better information than I can come up with offhand right here. I'm not an oil industry expert. I'm probably at the, you know, the worst part of the Dunning Kruger curve here. I'm going to be honest, but.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  All right. Well, I'll go check out that episode.

• 29:01Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I literally the only the only refinery I know about is the one in Houston and I think that was for overseas supply, but I couldn't tell you because that was outside of the scope of that episode.

• 29:11Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Well, anyway, I guess we're now at a stalemate rather than total Iran victory.

• 29:19Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 29:20Justin Roczniak?

  You know, because we have our own blockade in theory, maybe in a few weeks when the ships arrive. There's no preparation for this at all.

• 29:31Speaker 03

  You're radical stalemate.

• 29:34Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  That doesn't sound great for us.

• 29:38Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. News. Biddy, biddy, biddy, boop, boop.

• 29:49Justin Roczniak?

  So our Vice President JD Jizz Dick Vance questioned the Pope's authority on spiritual matters.

• 29:59Liam McAnderson?

  Can't do that asshole.

• 30:01Justin Roczniak?

  He is notably a Catholic convert, a likely thing for a Catholic convert to do. I actually don't like this piece of theology.

• 30:13Justin Roczniak?

  Too bad.

• 30:14Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  I have a question. Okay. Cause I'm, I am not Catholic.

• 30:20Liam McAnderson?

  Are you not?

• 30:21Speaker 02

  I, I was raised Orthodox. All of these guys hate the Pope. Why don't they just become Orthodox? Orthodoxy's whole thing is that like, no, the Pope is woke. They've been doing that for like 700 years.

• 30:35Justin Roczniak?

  Well, they got up, you know, they're trying to, I don't know. They're trying to invade the Catholic church so they can like, I don't know. They're trying to do entryism, but you know, I, I don't know if you're going to be able to outweigh the opinions of like all of South America.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  Like if this is like a, some sort of like Civ 5 game where if you overtake the headquarters, you get all their followers.

• 30:57Justin Roczniak?

  Well, I think they threatened the ambassador from the Vatican.

• 31:02Liam McAnderson?

  They they did some Avignon papacy weird shit.

• 31:05Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  They did mention that.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  And then the the ambassador from the Vatican immediately got on the phone to the Pope and was like, yeah, bro, maybe don't come here for the Fourth of July. And so then the Pope sends out a message to like, being like, ah, I'm so sorry, I'd love to make it for your 250th birthday. Only we've been a country. Yeah, it sounds like right. But I have to be on a small island in the Mediterranean for the anniversary of something that actually happens the week afterwards. So it was like deliberately designed for you, which is great because

• 31:41Speaker 03

  for, you know, all of the normal reasons is great, but.

• 31:46Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I I I mean, I I feel bad for the Pope. He's never going to be able to see a White Sox game again.

• 31:52Liam McAnderson?

  No, they're gonna block that.

• 31:54Speaker 03

  As a Sox fan, you should, that's a blessing.

• 32:02Speaker 03

  Going to a Sox game is less enjoyable than going to like a minor league game because the Sox are run like a minor league club. Like their entire idea of how to get people into the ballpark is like, we have cheap parking and weird food, except you care about the players, which makes it so much worse because it is owned by Jerry Reinsdorf, who fundamentally hates the fans. So if anything.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's something doing Pope Hat Day. So like.

• 32:34Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, that did seem kind of fun.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, like.

• 32:38Speaker 03

  My favorite part about this whole thing is, did you guys see Trump's rant about the Pope's brother?

• 32:43Liam McAnderson?

  Yes.

• 32:44Justin Roczniak?

  Your brother is cooler than you.

• 32:46Liam McAnderson?

  Yes.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  Oh, I thought it's like, his brother wasn't in line to be the Pope. He's not a fucking priest. He's got by the Catholic Church. Like, my favorite part about this is that, like, his brother is like the most guy from Joliet possibly have. Like, if you're like, oh, he's like, if you're trying to imagine what a white guy from Joliet, Illinois would be like, it's exactly the Pope's brother. So it's extremely funny to have the president being like, I like this white guy from Joliet more than the Pope, which is, you know, one of, depending on your view, one of the most powerful people on the planet. So.

• 33:24Justin Roczniak?

  Some guy, some guy from Joliet. Not even, not even the, not even the greatest Catholic from Joliet. Who was of course Joliet Jake Blues, but.

• 33:39Justin Roczniak?

  But I, I think, I think JD Vance subtweeted the Pope, the Pope today about the Augustine principle of just war. And this was just after Pope Leo, who was a distinguished Augustine scholar and former prior general of the order of St. Augustine was returning from mass at the Basilica of St. Augustine at Anaba, Algeria. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, where he visited the site where Augustine of Hippo died during a siege by the Vandals.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  We really need Nova here for this because I feel like she'd have some insane Catholic lore.

• 34:19Justin Roczniak?

  I, I, I think Nova, but yeah, I wish Nova was here.

• 34:25Justin Roczniak?

  But yeah, the, the, it's the, the ongoing feud between the United States government and the Vatican. Well, it's really dumb. It's not really a feud. It's just the United States government saying stupid things while the Pope says Pope things.

• 34:38Liam McAnderson?

  Right, exactly. He's, he's the Pope. This is kind of the whole, the whole, the whole bit, actually.

• 34:44Justin Roczniak?

  Are, are they surprised the Pope is a peacenik?

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Was, I forget, was St. Augustine the one who like got really mad that other people were having fun? Like being trans women, then turned that into his whole thing?

• 34:57Justin Roczniak?

  Ah, no, I don't, I, I don't know very much about St. Augustine.

• 35:04Liam McAnderson?

  He was hedonistic as a kid and then by.

• 35:08Justin Roczniak?

  Became very pious, yes.

• 35:09Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He never mastered Greek, which I always laugh at.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  I, I always remember there's some guy who's very important to Catholicism, who was like really mad about the fact that there were trans men around him having fun.

• 35:24Liam McAnderson?

  I think Augustine was much more, uh, he did fucking, uh, a lot of, uh, oh my God, original sin crap.

• 35:32Justin Roczniak?

  I want to say it was a very ascetic order.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  I might be thinking of the wrong saint. I don't know. I was an altar boy for long enough that I'm allowed to no longer know anything about Christianity as a religion.

• 35:47Justin Roczniak?

  That's, I'm not a Catholic convert, so I don't remember any of this stuff.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  I, I mean, the other thing too is like in Orthodoxy, like the, the Catholic approach to saints borders on idolatrous. Like going to a Catholic church for the first time and seeing like the big statue of the Virgin Mary was, I was like, hey, wait a second. I think we had, I think we split over this.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  Unironically.

• 36:12Liam McAnderson?

  You get back here. You get back here.

• 36:15Speaker 03

  The earliest schism in the, in the church was over Marian worship. And my take is that anyone who's anti Marian, which includes all Protestants, uh, isn't like, for something to be a real religion.

• 36:29Justin Roczniak?

  It's not very feminist.

• 36:31Speaker 03

  They have to worship either the sun or a fertility goddess. And, uh, sects of Christianity that don't worship the, uh, the Virgin Mary are not real religions because the Virgin Mary is the fertility goddess of Christianity.

• 36:46Liam McAnderson?

  Good enough. We'll take it.

• 36:47Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I'll take it. Sure.

• 36:52Justin Roczniak?

  So, um, at, at any rate, I, I support the Pope. I also think stupid wars are dumb and bad. I don't know what to say anything more that Pope Leo hasn't already said. Uh, he's got to excommunicate J D Vance already.

• 37:07Liam McAnderson?

  Now, now.

• 37:08Speaker 03

  I'm so excited for that to happen.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  American anti Pope. Is it gonna be, do you think they're just gonna make Vance the anti Pope or are they gonna pick some like anti?

• 37:17Speaker 03

  They can't pick Vance.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  They're gonna pick Vance. We live in the dumbest timeline. It'd be really funny to have, it'd be really funny to have Chicago and Pope and Ohio and anti Pope. That feels spiritually correct.

• 37:31Justin Roczniak?

  Cincinnati suburbs Pope.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  I was gonna say like the, the most like anti Chicago place you could be is like Phoenix or like Houston, Houston anti Pope. Oh, what's that?

• 37:42Justin Roczniak?

  But there's a Catholic cult compound down in Florida, I want to say.

• 37:46Liam McAnderson?

  Yes, yes.

• 37:47Speaker 03

  Florida anti Pope. That is so.

• 37:49Liam McAnderson?

  Florida anti Pope spiritually makes the most sense.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  I was gonna say the most, the most anti.

• 37:53Speaker 03

  Anti Pope.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  The most anti Chicago place I can think of is like. Pick a, pick a, uh, pick a, pick a place about 40 miles outside of Chicago with an average income of over $200,000 per household. And there's your most anti-Chicago place I can think of in the US.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  Plainfield. Uh, honestly, I think the beautiful part about Florida is it might be the only place in the country that's flatter than Chicago. So it's kind of like, you know, uh, like, you know, a mirror image situation. Like if you're gonna, like, it's like mega Chicago or something like that. So I think.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Bizarro Chicago.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, bizarre Chicago. Well, to be fair, bizarre Chicago probably has mountains.

• 38:36Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. Yeah, it's like.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  Seattleite anti-pope. Interesting.

• 38:40Speaker 03

  Oh, I can't stand Seattle. That place, I mean, listen, no offense to people.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Excuse me. I'm holding down the, I'm holding down the Seattle office.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know. But the thing is, the entire city smells like mold. It's so damp there. And there are hills.

• 38:55Justin Roczniak?

  And there are hills.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  Uh, I mean, it is, it was like hailing as you joined the call. So I can't really say much about the dampness thing. It smells like a fresh, you know, forest, like a rainy winter day. It's lovely.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  Uh, rainy and winter don't go together in my book, but you know, to.

• 39:15Justin Roczniak?

  Oh.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  Well, you better get used to it because I think that's going to be the future for a lot of Americans.

• 39:21Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, that's true.

• 39:24Speaker 03

  Climate change is going to give Chicago a Pacific Northwest climate, and I've never been more upset in my life.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Oh, God. Isn't it like, isn't it like negative 20 for, I mean, I grew up in the Midwest. It's like, those winters were not fun. Um, it's kind of nice to never shovel snow again.

• 39:42Speaker 03

  That's why I live in an apartment. Problem solved.

• 39:45Justin Roczniak?

  Fair enough.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  I suppose that's fair.

• 39:48Justin Roczniak?

  Well.

• 39:50Justin Roczniak?

  Speaking of Chicago, that was the goddamn news.

• 39:59Liam McAnderson?

  Okay.

• 40:01Justin Roczniak?

  First, we must ask, what is Chicago?

• 40:04Liam McAnderson?

  My spiritual homeland, non-Boston division, unfortunately.

• 40:10Justin Roczniak?

  Really?

• 40:11Liam McAnderson?

  Yes, yes, yes. My, my mother's mother, my mother's parents were both born in Chicago, Illinois.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  Do you know whereabouts?

• 40:20Liam McAnderson?

  No, I have no, I have no fucking idea.

• 40:23Speaker 03

  I looked up my great, great, great grandfather where he moved, when he moved to the city, moved to the United States from the Netherlands, another very flat place. Turns out that he lived exactly one and a half miles east of me at the exact same address north, which means that I live at the exact same latitude as my ancestor did in 1880 somehow. I checked and it's like less than five feet off.

• 40:56Liam McAnderson?

  That's crazy. That's crazy.

• 40:58Speaker 03

  I was just wondering if we had a similar connection. Maybe your family's like, we could like create like a triangle situation or something, but you know, you'll have to do some research and get back to me.

• 41:12Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. Chicago, my kind of town, Chicago is, look, it's the Sears Tower. Look, it's the L. Oh, so I just realized Efa's in this picture.

• 41:25Liam McAnderson?

  Doxing.

• 41:26Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 41:28Justin Roczniak?

  All right. I don't know if you want, yeah, I don't know if you want that blurred out or something. So is Jim.

• 41:35Speaker 03

  I'm like 25 pixels tall there. I think I'll be fine.

• 41:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that's true. So it's got the Chicago River that flows backwards. It's got a big hole. I just, I just like happen to excuse to put my vacation fixtures on.

• 41:51Liam McAnderson?

  I know you do. I, I mean, we did an entire bonus episode on, I had a good time on vacation.

• 41:56Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, that's true.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Can we do that actually? That would be fun.

• 41:59Justin Roczniak?

  That was the dining car episode.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  I shot, I shot slides on my most recent vacation so I could make all my friends sit through.

• 42:06Liam McAnderson?

  You've done two of these.

• 42:06Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah, that's true.

• 42:10Justin Roczniak?

  Here's the creepy underground station, Millennium Station, that Aoife took me to on the underground tour of Chicago.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  I made you walk for like three miles underground. And at the end of it, you were like, you were acting like you're on a death march. I had, I was like, oh, we've been walking for probably two hours straight. That was kind of, that's a fair warning. If you ever come to Chicago and I'm like, hey, let me show you something cool. I will take you to a place that barely has cell service and no way of seeing the sky and wander you around in circles for two hours.

• 42:43Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, and we, we discovered an engine block.

• 42:47Speaker 03

  That's true. I have a photo of June with that.

• 42:51Speaker 03

  For a Mercedes truck, I believe.

• 42:53Liam McAnderson?

  Oh.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Do not threaten me with a good time. This sounds fantastic.

• 42:59Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, I, Chicago fucks. I love Chicago. I don't love my aunt. I've said that very clear, but. Go Bears.

• 43:08Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, this was, this was after a hard day of food service on the Swift stream.

• 43:15Justin Roczniak?

  So I was very tired and hungover.

• 43:18Liam McAnderson?

  And shout out to Dono if they're listening.

• 43:23Liam McAnderson?

  Dono was at my wedding. You met them. I placed you two at the podcaster's table.

• 43:27Justin Roczniak?

  Ah.

• 43:30Speaker 03

  A podcaster containment zone.

• 43:32Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, pretty much.

• 43:33Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. I like the Staley, if that's still open.

• 43:39Justin Roczniak?

  Ooh.

• 43:39Liam McAnderson?

  The bar.

• 43:42Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, I liked, I liked the burger place that you took me to Aoife. That was good.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  Oh, uh, we went to, um, the Billy Goat, I think. Oh, no, you're talking about, um, we went to a red hot ranch, I think, which, uh, that place is the best burger in Chicago. Inflation's out of control, so it's kind of expensive now. It's eight fifty for a double cheeseburger with fries.

• 44:05Justin Roczniak?

  You motherfuckers.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Okay, now that's a valid reason to hate Seattle right there, actually.

• 44:12Liam McAnderson?

  Also Philadelphia, dude. It's just like, oh, yeah. I mean, you can get a $5 burger at a, oh, what's it called?

• 44:21Liam McAnderson?

  Unfortunately, it's down in South Philly and I can't remember the name of it, but it is a $5 burger.

• 44:25Speaker 03

  There's a sixth thing, a sixth reason to keep South Philly.

• 44:27Liam McAnderson?

  I'm mad that I had to, uh.

• 44:32Speaker 03

  Also, really important thing about Red Hot Ranch, there is a gay man that works the register there. This place is unbelievably popular, but somehow, if you are a queer that goes there, well, if you mention you know me, A, you'll be delighted. I was joking about telling my nurse that I should fill out a HIPAA release form so she could tell this guy they knew me. But I talk to this guy so much, and he gives me relationship advice most, like, last year, he was like, "Have you noticed that your ex only contacts you when Mercury's in retrograde?" And I was like, "There's no way this is true." And I looked it up, and it was like, this person for like, over a year had only been messaging me when Mercury was in retrograde.

• 45:16Speaker 03

  And I was like, "How does the cashier at this local counter service burger place know this about me?" So not only are the burgers inexpensive and delicious, but the personal service there is unbelievable, because you are not getting that from anyone that isn't maybe your hairdresser.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, admittedly, admittedly, I've never been to Dick's, and nobody's ever given me relationship advice from behind the counter.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  I want a cheap hamburger.

• 45:43Liam McAnderson?

  I want a hamburger.

• 45:44Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, hamburger sounds good right now, yeah. And then we must ask, okay, what is the Illinois Central Gulf Railroad?

• 45:55Liam McAnderson?

  Uh, the, the, the Illinois Central, uh, the Illinois Central, uh, that song.

• 46:03Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, City of New Orleans.

• 46:05Liam McAnderson?

  Picture here. That song I like, yeah.

• 46:07Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 46:08Liam McAnderson?

  Do you remember when we were on the ferry to Newfoundland, and that guy was doing that horrible cover of, uh, of City of New Orleans? And we were both shitfaced drunk, trying to get to sleep.

• 46:19Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  Roz, as you know, I've been like a, a FOMER since I was a child, right? Uh, and so I've studied many like, MTH catalogs and the like, growing up. Yes. I just was struck with the realization, like a bolt of lightning, that the Illinois Central Gulf Railroad logo is a cross-section of a rail.

• 46:40Speaker 03

  Just now?

• 46:41Justin Roczniak?

  Oh shit, it is.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 46:42Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, boy.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  I never realized. I just thought it was a weird eye my whole life.

• 46:48Speaker 03

  But they, they call them eye sections for nothing.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  I, I, I'm losing my mind. I just, I never, this is, I just, it just hit me. I'm sorry.

• 46:59Speaker 03

  This is why we need to bring back the Illinois Central. First of all, the Death Stars, what a, what a, what a train. I'm sure they painted those trains all black entirely because they don't show soot on them. But with a big orange eye, like of the railroad of like a rail cross section. What a look.

• 47:21Justin Roczniak?

  It looks good. Yeah.

• 47:24Justin Roczniak?

  The Illinois Central Gulf Railroad was a merger of the Illinois Central, which is a railroad from Chicago to New Orleans and the Gulf Mobile and Ohio Railroad, which is a railroad from New Orleans to Chicago.

• 47:47Liam McAnderson?

  I kind of came back in and I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?

• 47:52Speaker 03

  It admittedly takes much longer. It's a much less direct route than the Illinois Central route to Chicago. If anything, it might make more sense to call it the Illinois Central and Atlantic with how far the other railroad goes out of the way.

• 48:06Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. This happened in 1972 in the beginning of the mega merger era, which

• 48:13Liam McAnderson?

  Mega merger, mega merger, mega merger, chanting mega merger.

• 48:22Justin Roczniak?

  So they got this sort of flat, very straight route. It's very fast. The city of New Orleans did the whole run from Chicago to New Orleans in daylight hours, which M-Track still can't match.

• 48:33Liam McAnderson?

  Can you fucking imagine? Yeah.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  That'd be so cool.

• 48:37Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, return with a V, but only for this fucking train. I just want to go to New Orleans. I just, I just, I just want to go to New Orleans. I just want to go to New Orleans. And, and they make it fucking impossible. I'm not flying Spirit. I just want to go to New Orleans.

• 48:53Justin Roczniak?

  They handled merchandise that needed to go faster than a Mississippi barge could do. The Illinois Central also operated many commuter trains out of Chicago. I'm going to say Illinois Central a lot in this podcast when what I mean is Illinois Central Gulf. Cause the trains all still said Illinois Central on them.

• 49:16Speaker 03

  And now even though the names changed back, now all the trains say Illinois Central Gulf on them. We deliberately, when we were in our underground tour of Chicago, took you past a bar, a wall that said Illinois Central Gulf building this way, but not sure you remember because you're kind of haggard at that point.

• 49:34Justin Roczniak?

  Oh yeah, I was, I was a little bit haggard on that.

• 49:37Liam McAnderson?

  He's a haggard man.

• 49:38Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah. Just like Merle.

• 49:41Liam McAnderson?

  Oh yeah. Oh, my dad loves Merle Haggard, man.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  Bert just made his appearance.

• 49:52Justin Roczniak?

  So, um, this is some, some pictures I got from a website called hickscarworks.blogspot.com.

• 50:03Justin Roczniak?

  To make a very long story short here, commuter trains used to be big business for the Illinois Central. And there was a hell of a lot of demand for them, right? They were, especially in the 1800s, um, faster than streetcar or the L.

• 50:22Justin Roczniak?

  The Illinois Central operated lots of commuter trains out of their great central station in what is now Millennium Park.

• 50:30Justin Roczniak?

  And I mean, this is like, this is like a billion trains a day. There were so many goddamn trains. Uh, they were on very tight headways. Uh, they all operated with these, uh, cute little, uh, 442 forney locomotives. Right? With these very light wooden passenger cars.

• 50:47Liam McAnderson?

  I'm horny for 40s.

• 50:49Justin Roczniak?

  Yep.

• 50:51Liam McAnderson?

  Put it on a shirt. Put it on a shirt.

• 50:54Justin Roczniak?

  There's, there's still one at IRM you can ride if you're that horny for them.

• 50:58Liam McAnderson?

  I am horny for it, dude.

• 51:00Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. The track was all at grade with, you know, railroad crossings. Still had high level platforms though, because they weren't that backwards. And all this cut off the city from its waterfront, covered everything along Michigan Avenue, where all the big buildings facing the park are now, with soot and ashes, because they were running so goddamn many of these trains, right? And eventually, the city of Chicago tries to do something about this, which was, namely, okay, we are going to collaborate with the railroad to grade-separate these tracks, remove the railroad crossings, right?

• 51:42Justin Roczniak?

  But also, we're going to ban steam locomotives from the waterfront entirely.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  It's too bad that, like, nobody from Florida ever took any notes on how other states do things. They have to reinvent it all from first principles.

• 51:55Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 51:57Justin Roczniak?

  So. Uh. This results in, this, this compels the railroad to electrify, right? By 1926.

• 52:07Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 52:09Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah, I stole this from the Discord and I, I, um, I forget where it's from. Apparently, this is from the, this is from the South Chicago branch, which never got properly grade-separated to this day.

• 52:23Liam McAnderson?

  Good.

• 52:24Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. By 1926, we get the IC Electric, right? Along with some limited local Illinois Central Electric Freight Service. Very limited, they tried to avoid electrifying that for a long time. But this was combined with the Chicago South Shore and South Bend, which did a lot of electric freight service. We'll talk about that in the next slide.

• 52:50Justin Roczniak?

  The long-distance trains in and out of Chicago were moved to the new Central Station at the south end of Grant Park, so they could still remain steam-powered, right? They didn't want to commit to the bit too much.

• 53:08Justin Roczniak?

  And so this is very, very, very high density commuter rail, right? The ridership on these things I would describe as stupid, right? A hundred, 120,000 riders a day in 1946.

• 53:25Liam McAnderson?

  Jesus, okay.

• 53:26Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that's a, that's a quarter of a Washington metro or about one and a half Martas or half a metropolitan line in London.

• 53:38Justin Roczniak?

  And these are electric trains running on 1500 volt DC overhead line. They ran every 10 minutes all day, even more at rush hour. And that's on every branch you can see here. Hold on, let me switch the pen color.

• 53:54Liam McAnderson?

  You get in there, John Madden.

• 53:55Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, here, here's Chicago. Here's, here's the loop. Well, the loop's a little bit smaller, but you know, the central station's about here. And then all this over here, that's the South Chicago branch. This is the, the main line. I don't know what this branch is called, probably the Blue Island branch.

• 54:16Speaker 03

  You got it, baby.

• 54:17Justin Roczniak?

  Damn, I, all I had to do was read the label. But yeah, that, this is the whole, this is the whole Illinois central electric system. I believe there was also briefly a branch here at Homewood that went to a horse racetrack. But, uh, that closed down and they closed down the branch line.

• 54:37Justin Roczniak?

  This is a four track main line. It's got local and express service. It has fair gated stations. It has unified fares, so you can get through easily. The ticketing's easy. You can have rapid boarding of train.

• 54:52Justin Roczniak?

  And, and, and it was a really great system, but then in the 1940s, the city started to build freeways, right?

• 55:01Liam McAnderson?

  Oh.

• 55:02Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  And you made Burt leave by mentioning that, thank you.

• 55:08Justin Roczniak?

  Damn. Aw, Burt. Not a fan of freeways.

• 55:13Liam McAnderson?

  Burt, friend of the urbanist.

• 55:14Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 55:17Speaker 02

  Call him an urbanist.

• 55:18Liam McAnderson?

  Urbanist, yeah, you beat me to it.

• 55:22Justin Roczniak?

  Now, like in many cities, these freeways contain provisions for rapid transit. But unlike many cities in Chicago, they actually built said rapid transit.

• 55:36Justin Roczniak?

  So what's now the red line? Hold on. The red line here in the middle of 94.

• 55:47Speaker 03

  AKA the Dan Ryan, for those of you.

• 55:49Justin Roczniak?

  The Dan Brian, yeah.

• 55:50Liam McAnderson?

  Dan Brian, yep.

• 55:53Justin Roczniak?

  They opened that up parallel to the IC Electric. And one of the big markets that this served was intra-city ridership, right? People who were going from a station in the city to another station in the city. Well, now they could take the L in the middle of the freeway and that was faster and cheaper, right?

• 56:14Liam McAnderson?

  That's the same design principles that got us the L in at, uh, for Seppa running in the middle of 95 or is this different?

• 56:21Speaker 03

  Uh, so what actually ended up happening here is, um, originally, so they built, I think the Dan Ryan and the Stevenson. Stevenson is 57, I think, this one that goes southwest. At the same time, they originally planned to build the L down the Stevenson, which doesn't have any trains whatsoever. Except at the time, Mayor Daley, the old Mayor Daley, not the new Mayor Daley, um, was like, uh, basically called. Oh God, the call was, I want to say like Nixon or someone like that. It wasn't Nixon, I forget who it was, whatever president called Mayor Daley and was like, congratulations, you got the funding to build your,

• 57:04Speaker 03

  your train line down, you know, the highway. And it was like, no, no, you're the highest one, it should go down 94 instead. And the thing about 94 or the Dan Ryan is that it is both in the catchment of the Rock Island, the Illinois Central and what is, was the South Side Main Line, which is the current green line for the CTA. So, uh, The this this uh this uh expansion and the thing about it is is that instead of having like the Green Line, the uh and the Illinois Central had stops like, you know, every quarter mile to half mile.

• 57:45Speaker 03

  And the Red Line, or which ended up being called the Dan Ryan Line at the time, uh, has a stop like every mile and a half or something. And so you could get, you can't even do this anymore because of course the state of good repair is not quite there yet. But you could get from like 95th Street to the loop in like 15 minutes, which is first of all, probably about 13 minutes faster than you could get there from any of these other uh modes of transit. And so it just killed all of them. Uh, and it wasn't even supposed to be built there in the first place. It was supposed to go down to Stevenson. So, um, I don't know. I'll let uh

• 58:22Speaker 03

  Roz answer the question about how it compares to Philly, but that's some background on how the Red Line even got built in the first place because it's actually totally unnecessary based on where transit was in the city to begin with.

• 58:34Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, the the the L, the L here in Philly only got relocated a little bit. They never had like the idea, we're going to completely relocate it into the median of 95. There's just one station like that when they rebuilt Spring Garden.

• 58:48Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you.

• 58:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:51Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, this was like fully new construction.

• 58:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's just, it's like two blocks to four blocks from, so like a quarter mile to half a mile from the existing Green Line, um, or the South Side Main Line. And so it's, but like, that's where all of the actual like retail and housing and stuff was. Um, and so the Red Line was designed to just be like for bus transfers. Uh, and what it meant was that it was like the worst possible scenario because the uh North Side trains were routed onto the South Side Main Line, but the South Side Main Line also lost all its ridership overnight. But it had just enough ridership and just enough ties to the community that they couldn't outright close it. So basically for like

• 59:39Speaker 03

  50 years after this happened, the CTA was running mostly empty trains over uh like these branches, uh, the Green Line branches and just like, you know, hemorrhaging money. Another, in addition to the highway, you know, taking away riders in the first place, just the way that the highway designers designed the, you know, subways actually killed them even worse, so.

• 1:00:08Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, and but the main thing here is that, you know, when the red line opens up, all of a sudden, people who are taking the IC electric within the city, they all switch to the red line. It's cheaper, the train comes more frequently. So the Illinois Central is like, okay, we're going to close a bunch of stations and we're going to focus on suburban commuters, right?

• 1:00:34Justin Roczniak?

  Especially during rush hour. And to further concentrate on the suburban market, they increase their fares while obviously the L is still cheap. Ridership craters even further and the railroad starts to lose money on this operation. So it goes.

• 1:01:01Justin Roczniak?

  Another thing I was just going to briefly mention. Yeah, no, I know you like these locomotives, Victoria.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  God, this is my return with the V.

• 1:01:09Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  I would rip up the bicycle trail. I have apologized to all the cyclists who listen to the show, but rip up the Palooza Cascades rail trail, replace it with rails yet again, and let me run these things, please.

• 1:01:25Justin Roczniak?

  There's still one that runs at the Illinois Railway Museum.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  Of Little Joe?

• 1:01:31Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:01:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it even uses the same electrification because the Illinois Railway Museum is electrified at 1500 volts, but they use charlie wire instead of catenary.

• 1:01:45Justin Roczniak?

  I think it's actually 600 volts, so it's a little deep.

• 1:01:48Speaker 03

  How do they under they underpower everything?

• 1:01:50Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, well.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  Also, these things ran at like crazy voltage because the Milwaukee Road ran had their own power network for them.

• 1:01:58Speaker 03

  Well, this is a South Shore Little Joe, so that did run at 1500 volts.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  Okay, gotcha. Yeah, I didn't even I wasn't sure if there was. I know there were two in the US. I didn't remember that South the South Shore Line still had theirs. That's awesome. Well, or the museum still had it.

• 1:02:15Justin Roczniak?

  The museum has one, yeah.

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  The one extent Milwaukee Road copy is sitting in a fucking parking lot uncovered outside the I kid you not, Montana Prison Museum.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  It's the grimace shit. It's in like Anaconda, Montana, or close to it. You can like see the like smoke stack from the smelter that turned into the entire town into a super fun site. It's anyway.

• 1:02:42Speaker 03

  Victoria, have you ever are you familiar with the story of like Burlington Northern going over the books of the Milwaukee Road when they acquired the Pacific Extension? And then learning that actually they had been like triple counting the expenses for the Pacific Extension. It was by far the most profitable line that the Milwaukee Road had.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  I didn't know this. I'm gonna go bash my head against a concrete wall for an hour. Thank you. I appreciate this.

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  It's it's so maddening. And you know, here's the other thing about your thing about bike trails. It's called rail banking. It's not they're only bike trails until the people take power and we replace we kick all the dentists off these things and replace them with good, clean, electrified freight.

• 1:03:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yep, yep, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna bring back the Washington Old Dominion. We're gonna bring back, uh, electric rail to Quaker Town and Redding. We're gonna.

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  This is the next project for my freelance, uh, Hoakway and Rainier in Tacoma, uh, model railroads. I have to do a, an HRT livery, Little Joe, so I can, uh, re-industrialize America with electric railroads.

• 1:04:00Justin Roczniak?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:04:01Speaker 03

  We need to bring back the interurbans. I think, uh, bring back the Skokie Valley route. That's

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 1:04:06Speaker 03

  My take is that high speed, we, Amtrak should build a high speed, high speed line to Madison, and they should do it by getting rid of the North Shore Channel Trail and just, you know.

• 1:04:18Speaker 02

  I will say.

• 1:04:19Speaker 03

  North Shore Dentists, man.

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  Uh, Seattle feels like it's independently rediscovering the concept of interurbans with the one line, which is now basically an interurban despite being a light rail system. Um, since it now runs connected from Federal Way to Linwood, uh, all the way over to a fork in like, Renton, uh, no, not Renton, uh, uh, Redmond, that's the town I'm thinking of. Um, which means that the one line is actually like the second longest light rail line in America.

• 1:04:50Justin Roczniak?

  Wow.

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  Only it's like the, what is, I think it's the yellow line in LA that's like 57 miles long or something. We're like a second place.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  It's almost an interurban.

• 1:04:59Speaker 03

  America is such a beautiful country. I, it takes, it takes a mind unparalleled in the rest of the world to come up with ideas like this.

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  Like a light rail train that functions as the, an interurban. Yeah.

• 1:05:12Justin Roczniak?

  Here, here's what you gotta do is you have to, as a gag, rebuild the entire Chicago Aurora and Elgin in half a day and open it in the middle of rush hour just to continue service, uh, on one July 3rd.

• 1:05:28Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:05:31Justin Roczniak?

  That'll be another episode. Um, but.

• 1:05:34Speaker 03

  Oh, please have me on for that one.

• 1:05:36Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. That, that's a fun one.

• 1:05:38Speaker 03

  My grandma was one of the people that got stranded too.

• 1:05:43Speaker 03

  Anyways, that's another story for another day.

• 1:05:44Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah. So the, uh, the South Shore Line also ran on some of these lines and still does to this day. Um, there was a bizarre and complex non-compete agreement with the Illinois Central that let them run into Central Station is like, okay, you can't pick up passengers going this way at these times and this way at these other times to make sure you're not competing with our local commuter trains. Um, and funnily enough, despite the fact that both lines are owned by the government today, that non-compete agreement is still in place.

• 1:06:18Liam McAnderson?

  Outstanding work, Lance.

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  Oh my God. I was about to say, it would make so much more sense if we just centrally owned these things and then didn't make these weird rules. But no, it would make even more sense. It would be to centrally own these things and keep all the weird rules.

• 1:06:33Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  The scariest part about all of this is that Indiana is the same state in this partnership.

• 1:06:44Speaker 03

  Knowing anything else about Indiana will make you go, that's not, surely that's not possible. And it is.

• 1:06:50Justin Roczniak?

  They just opened a new branch.

• 1:06:53Speaker 03

  I know. I feel the past five years don't feel real to me. I, I don't know what to say.

• 1:07:01Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  That's true. Yeah. I was gonna say, the only time I've ever been to Chicago, I was actually in Gary, Indiana. So I don't know. They seem like the same place to me. I bought a $3,000 Honda Prelude there.

• 1:07:15Speaker 03

  Gary, Indiana is one of the like four real cities in this country, and I firmly believe that.

• 1:07:21Justin Roczniak?

  Named for Albert Gary of judiciary fame.

• 1:07:25Speaker 03

  Uh huh. Actually, it is crazy that every single person named Gary is actually named after Gary, Indiana.

• 1:07:32Liam McAnderson?

  It is wild how they all do that.

• 1:07:34Justin Roczniak?

  Like, uh, like SpongeBob's snail.

• 1:07:36Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Speaker 03

  It's true. That means that Gary, Indiana exists in the SpongeBob universe and also the Pokemon universe because, you know, Gary Ash's rival.

• 1:07:46Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:47Speaker 03

  Gary is maybe the one real city in all universes.

• 1:07:51Speaker 02

  Is, is Gary, Indiana in the Canto region?

• 1:07:55Liam McAnderson?

  What up?

• 1:07:57Justin Roczniak?

  Didn't they have a region that represents America?

• 1:08:01Liam McAnderson?

  I don't know.

• 1:08:02Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't. You wouldn't have my wife to guess for that. I don't know anything about Pokemon. My mom didn't let me play that. That was satanic.

• 1:08:09Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  That's what you get. That's what you get when you do Orthodox.

• 1:08:13Speaker 03

  On this episode, getting Pokemon lore wrong is going to be the one thing that makes people the most mad.

• 1:08:19Speaker 02

  No, I think it's definitely going to be the China thing.

• 1:08:22Justin Roczniak?

  Pikachu, Snorlax, Charizard. Yeah.

• 1:08:27Liam McAnderson?

  That's it.

• 1:08:28Justin Roczniak?

  Bulbasaur.

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  Long ago, the four, the four nations lived in harmony.

• 1:08:36Justin Roczniak?

  Anyway, so I, I just put this, I put this in here because I know Victoria likes the, the little Joes.

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  Thank you. I do. It's true.

• 1:08:47Justin Roczniak?

  Now we have to talk about railway signaling.

• 1:08:50Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:08:51Justin Roczniak?

  Here we go.

• 1:08:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:54Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, Jesus Christ, Roz.

• 1:08:57Justin Roczniak?

  What is?

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  A lot of my friends play this game. I really need to try it.

• 1:09:00Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, it's great. It'll ruin your life, especially when you start doing multiplayer. What is automatic block signaling?

• 1:09:11Justin Roczniak?

  So, back in the day, I'm talking like 1850s, 1840s, before telegraphs. You controlled train movements with fixed and strict timetables, right? You know, wait for this train here. Don't leave this station before this happens. Leave it this, so on and so forth, right? Because there's no way to communicate long distances except by the train, which you are, you know? So that doesn't help you, right?

• 1:09:46Justin Roczniak?

  Then they invent this thing called the telegraph. Uh, and you can control trains with paper train orders that you send ahead to a telegraph station that you, as the dispatcher, can now tell a train to do something else, wait here, proceed somewhere else, whatever you need to do to ensure the smooth move. Movement of train traffic, right? The telegraph office receives the train order. They print it, they, um, well, it's probably transcribed by hand, right? And then as the train goes through the station, there's a big hoop. And, uh, the engineer or the fireman puts their arm through the hoop. That picks up the train order, then you read it and it says, stop immediately.

• 1:10:30Justin Roczniak?

  And then you panic, right?

• 1:10:32Liam McAnderson?

  Cool.

• 1:10:33Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah. Then we get manual signals. Signals are, at this point, they're like semaphores. They got an arm that goes up or down to show what the train is supposed to do. Right? This is controlled by a man in a signal box. This is labor intensive. This is also prone to error, error. Excuse me. Era.

• 1:10:57Liam McAnderson?

  Hey dad. Hey dad.

• 1:11:00Justin Roczniak?

  Then eventually we get better electricity. We, we have, uh, these, these, these, uh, you know, various concepts. We get something called the automatic block signal, which is one of the simplest modern signaling systems, right?

• 1:11:16Justin Roczniak?

  How does this work? So. There's a low voltage in the track, in the rails, right?

• 1:11:26Justin Roczniak?

  And between, the area between each signal is a separate block, right? There's insulators at each signal. In between the two rails, somewhere in that block is a relay, right?

• 1:11:44Justin Roczniak?

  When there's no train in the block, that relay is powered, right? It's, I think relay is closed when they're powered, right? Which turns the signal green.

• 1:11:57Justin Roczniak?

  Okay. Right? So railroad wheels are solid pieces of metal. So when a train comes along. Right? Pretend this is the train right here. Look, there's the locomotive, there's a smokestack, there's some cars. Anyway, that's the train. It shorts that circuit.

• 1:12:21Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:12:22Justin Roczniak?

  Which depowers the relay, opens it back up. And the signal becomes red, indicating the block is occupied, right?

• 1:12:34Justin Roczniak?

  Now, when you have overhead electric power, this gets a little bit more complicated. That's not in the scope of this podcast. I don't even want to think about that.

• 1:12:47Justin Roczniak?

  This also lights up the signal behind it. In... Hold on. Somewhere back here, it would be yellow. That indicates to the train following, the block after the next block is occupied. You should slow down and be prepared to stop, right?

• 1:13:08Justin Roczniak?

  So, automatic block signaling is the closest thing to what you might find in various popular tycoon games, like Transport Tycoon, or Transport Fever, or like even Factorio or whatever. It works really good if trains only do the stuff you expect them to do.

• 1:13:32Justin Roczniak?

  But if the trains do something-

• 1:13:33Speaker 02

  Trains have never done anything unexpected, so I don't think it should be a problem.

• 1:13:36Liam McAnderson?

  Thank God for that.

• 1:13:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  End the episode. Alright, well that was nice and informative.

• 1:13:41Justin Roczniak?

  It's a great system. If the trains do something weird, problems can occur. And trains frequently do weird things, either intentionally or unintentionally, right? Maybe you're switching cars on some industrial sightings. Maybe you're switching cars at the station. Maybe the dispatcher gives you permission to do something weird. Maybe you overrun a station, you know, you go beyond where you're supposed to. Now you have to back up. Hold that thought.

• 1:14:11Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, no.

• 1:14:12Justin Roczniak?

  Maybe the train breaks down, maybe the signals break down. Maybe you crashed into a car at a grade crossing and it fucked everything up. You know, all this sort of stuff can happen, right? That's why we have technologies like centralized traffic control where there's a human in the loop. We have radio communication, so dispatch and the engineer and the conductor can be in contact at all times.

• 1:14:34Speaker 02

  And like precision scale scheduled railroading solves this by just putting all of the cars on one train. So you don't have to worry about.

• 1:14:42Liam McAnderson?

  It's just like a game of snake. Yeah.

• 1:14:45Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 1:14:48Speaker 03

  Just don't park your train anywhere overnight unattended.

• 1:14:51Justin Roczniak?

  We run one 300 car commuter train each day, each way.

• 1:14:57Liam McAnderson?

  Hop in, hop off. What's the problem?

• 1:15:02Justin Roczniak?

  So anyway.

• 1:15:03Speaker 03

  Now you're thinking with Metra.

• 1:15:05Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:07Justin Roczniak?

  So automatic block signaling is thus largely relegated to those few areas where train traffic is very predictable and flows in one direction. Like, for instance, a high density subway style commuter railroad like the Illinois Central Electric District.

• 1:15:28Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:15:29Speaker 02

  It's not foreshadowing at all.

• 1:15:31Liam McAnderson?

  No.

• 1:15:32Justin Roczniak?

  The other thing is.

• 1:15:34Liam McAnderson?

  You're crazy.

• 1:15:34Justin Roczniak?

  Automatic signals are what we call permissive, right?

• 1:15:41Justin Roczniak?

  Their most restrictive aspect, and when I say aspect, I mean, that's one of the several lights or combinations of lights a signal can display to convey information. Right? So like red is stop, yellow is slowed down, green is go. Right? But an automatic block signal.

• 1:16:02Justin Roczniak?

  Can only display as its most restrictive aspect restricting, right? Which means you proceed at 10 miles an hour from this spot.

• 1:16:13Justin Roczniak?

  Because as long as you can stop within sight distance of the next train, hey, you may as well creep up on them, you know?

• 1:16:24Justin Roczniak?

  This is distinct from what's called an absolute or a home signal, right? Those are before interlockings or like single track sections where trains can go both ways. If you pass the signal when it said it read at danger, right? You might crash and die.

• 1:16:42Liam McAnderson?

  I certainly don't want to do that.

• 1:16:44Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, those are still usually controlled by a man in an interlocking tower or centralized traffic control.

• 1:16:53Justin Roczniak?

  But the the automatic block signal, even if it's red, yeah, you could just creep by that. It's fine. Don't worry.

• 1:17:03Justin Roczniak?

  And so automatics-

• 1:17:04Liam McAnderson?

  Roz, Roz, is this like what we have to do at Zoo Interlocking in Philly?

• 1:17:09Justin Roczniak?

  Zoo Interlocking would be controlled by home signals. And I at the Northeast Corridor, I I think with, so they have a much more complex-

• 1:17:18Liam McAnderson?

  Of course they do. Why did I even ask?

• 1:17:20Justin Roczniak?

  Computer controlled system. Yeah, yeah. What is automatic civil speed enforcement system, something like that? I don't know.

• 1:17:28Liam McAnderson?

  Got it. Okay.

• 1:17:29Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, no, like that, that's it gets mad at you for going too fast and all kinds of crap. Anyway, well, I will get to that in a second. Automatic signals are differentiated from home signals because they have a big number board on them, right? And this is, this is all United States practice, of course. We still have these. We still have red signals that you can pass. I don't know what they do overseas. I'm sure if Gareth was here, he'd be having a conniption right now.

• 1:18:01Liam McAnderson?

  But he's not, so fuck him.

• 1:18:03Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:04Liam McAnderson?

  Hi Gareth. Hope you're well.

• 1:18:07Speaker 02

  All right, I've returned.

• 1:18:08Liam McAnderson?

  Hi, Victoria.

• 1:18:10Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 1:18:11Justin Roczniak?

  Hello. So, let's talk about another thing.

• 1:18:19Justin Roczniak?

  This is the heavyweight coach.

• 1:18:23Justin Roczniak?

  Wow, this is still in yellow. Hold on. The heavyweight coach.

• 1:18:29Liam McAnderson?

  Ooh, ketchup and mustard, delicious.

• 1:18:31Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Mmm, good. Well, it is. Well, no, it's Chicago. I gotta get rid of the ketchup.

• 1:18:36Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, you gotta get rid of that. Yeah, yeah, it's blasphemy.

• 1:18:39Justin Roczniak?

  Hold on, hold on.

• 1:18:40Speaker 03

  Extremely inappropriate to do in front of me.

• 1:18:43Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, hold on, let me. There's the relish.

• 1:18:48Speaker 03

  I couldn't tell the difference. You could have just told me it was relish the entire time.

• 1:18:51Justin Roczniak?

  Ah, shit.

• 1:19:01Justin Roczniak?

  All right, this is. This is. I'm gonna switch to yellow, just because I forgot it's your Chicago themed podcast. So, the heavyweight coach is a sort of broad tax monic, tax, tax and the monic. It's a big category of railroad cars. They all share most of the same characteristics, right?

• 1:19:24Justin Roczniak?

  The heavyweight is the first kind of all steel railroad coach. A feat previously thought impossible until George Gibbs just went and did it, right? See our GG1 episode for more details. Subscribe to our Patreon.

• 1:19:40Justin Roczniak?

  The heavyweight is built on a simple frame of two I-beams underneath the car, right? Above which, there's a sort of frame where there is a cast in place concrete floor.

• 1:19:55Liam McAnderson?

  What?

• 1:19:56Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:19:58Liam McAnderson?

  Hell, yeah, there is.

• 1:19:59Speaker 02

  This is the, this is the kind of train you need Big Liz for.

• 1:20:02Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Justin Roczniak?

  This is obviously, it's pretty solid and pretty heavy, right? The wall's pretty thick gauge steel. They got riveted reinforcements.

• 1:20:14Justin Roczniak?

  At these square windows, they're operable, of course.

• 1:20:18Liam McAnderson?

  Single hung?

• 1:20:20Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. The roof has something called a clear story, right? In a lot of railroad enthusiast circles, they have corrupted this to clarestery. Which is not what it is. It's from the word clear story that comes from cathedrals. The clear story is the second row of windows. Above the nave. It's a clear story because it's an extra story of the cathedral. There's no floor. It's clear. It lets the light in. Anyway, same concept here. It lets light and air in. All these windows are operable.

• 1:20:59Justin Roczniak?

  That way you still get ventilation, even if you don't want to open your window and be blasted in the face with smoke and steam and high speed air.

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  We don't. That's the, that's the best part of vintage train rides is just getting all the smells.

• 1:21:14Justin Roczniak?

  Hmm.

• 1:21:17Justin Roczniak?

  The roof is made of steel. It's covered in a material called car cement, which is just sort of this very thick tar. Right? I, I think even thicker than like normal building roofing.

• 1:21:33Justin Roczniak?

  Now this, this car we're looking at here, let me remove some of this mustard.

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

  In Seattle, the cars are covered with cream cheese.

• 1:21:47Justin Roczniak?

  This is a simple car that only has heating. Some cars would have enormous bunkers underneath that you would stock full of giant ice cubes.

• 1:21:58Liam McAnderson?

  What?

• 1:21:58Justin Roczniak?

  Like two ton ice cubes.

• 1:22:00Liam McAnderson?

  Bucket what?

• 1:22:00Justin Roczniak?

  And you would have a fan and the fan would blow cooled air around the car.

• 1:22:06Liam McAnderson?

  That slaps.

• 1:22:08Justin Roczniak?

  Later cars were even fitted with air conditioning, but they didn't use the word air conditioning. They called the machine an ice engine.

• 1:22:17Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm stealing that. That's awesome.

• 1:22:21Speaker 03

  Called my landlord like the ice engine's acting up again.

• 1:22:24Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, the ice engines, bro.

• 1:22:25Liam McAnderson?

  Just like, what the goddamn shit are you talking about?

• 1:22:28Justin Roczniak?

  The ice engine.

• 1:22:29Liam McAnderson?

  You know, the ice engine. No, you're crazy.

• 1:22:35Justin Roczniak?

  A lot of times, these modifications, these cars were retrofitted with the ice engine. So the ventilation didn't fit in the car. So they would cover up the clear story and they would add just an arched roof there. Right in one go and put the ventilation ducts there. Cause you don't need the clear story now that you have air conditioning, right?

• 1:22:59Liam McAnderson?

  Sure.

• 1:23:01Speaker 03

  And this explains evangelical churches.

• 1:23:03Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. Well, yeah, exactly. You don't need, you don't need the clear story in the church.

• 1:23:08Speaker 02

  The car converts to Mormonism.

• 1:23:10Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. You have to, uh, that's why you can put a church in a storefront now.

• 1:23:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:15Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:19Justin Roczniak?

  So this was also done on some un-air-conditioned cars because the clear stories tended to leak like a sieve. You know, these cars might've had a coal stove, but usually the heating was just a direct steam pipe from the locomotive. And of course, the toilet empties directly onto the tracks.

• 1:23:39Liam McAnderson?

  Good.

• 1:23:40Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:41Liam McAnderson?

  Saves weight.

• 1:23:43Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. Every time I take a shit, the train can go a little faster.

• 1:23:49Justin Roczniak?

  And the thing about heavyweight cars.

• 1:23:51Liam McAnderson?

  Trying to do a top speed run and just making everyone drink a shit ton of Miralax.

• 1:23:56Speaker 03

  That's why we, like, Amtrak's so slow now. Even though they got rid of the cement floors for their cars, they have to carry everyone's shit around.

• 1:24:04Justin Roczniak?

  Exactly.

• 1:24:04Speaker 03

  That limits them to 79 miles an hour.

• 1:24:08Justin Roczniak?

  The thing about heavyweight cars is of course, they're heavy, right? And this is intentional. A heavier car has more inertia and therefore gives a smoother ride.

• 1:24:23Justin Roczniak?

  Or so the thinking went.

• 1:24:25Liam McAnderson?

  That makes, that does make sense. I mean, I've been in old Bentley's.

• 1:24:29Justin Roczniak?

  Cushy suspension is for cowards. Just make it heavier, right? As a result, nearly all but the lightest heavyweight cars had, as this car does, six-wheel trucks.

• 1:24:44Justin Roczniak?

  And so these, these cars were mostly built about between 1900 and 1940 ish. Some of them lasted a very long time, including a very small number that made it onto M track. Uh, on the, uh, the Valpo dummy, which was the Chicago.

• 1:25:00Speaker 02

  That's insane to imagine.

• 1:25:02Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah. It was the Chicago to Valparaiso commuter train. Um, they also predate all modern crash safety regulations.

• 1:25:11Liam McAnderson?

  Well, yeah, it doesn't matter. It's the floors made of fucking concrete. Who gives a shit?

• 1:25:18Speaker 02

  It's like crash testing a building.

• 1:25:19Speaker 03

  Office building. Yeah.

• 1:25:24Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. The, the sheer half of the car is what's going to protect you, right?

• 1:25:28Speaker 02

  We've learned earlier in this episode, concrete structures never fail.

• 1:25:32Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:25:32Speaker 02

  So there's no reason to test them.

• 1:25:34Liam McAnderson?

  This podcast might as well be concrete structures never fail.

• 1:25:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:38Speaker 02

  See Nova's not here because I feel like this is the perfect chance to bring back, make it more rigid.

• 1:25:44Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, they, and they did.

• 1:25:47Speaker 03

  Well, the, the secret is they didn't use pre cast concrete to build these cars. Otherwise that would have been a problem.

• 1:25:53Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, no, this is cast in place. They built the frame and then they poured the concrete in.

• 1:25:57Liam McAnderson?

  Jesus fucking Christ.

• 1:26:02Justin Roczniak?

  So, um, we'll talk about the Illinois Central Electric Multiple Units.

• 1:26:09Justin Roczniak?

  These were built from 1924 to 1926. I couldn't find too much info about the, well, actually I did find a lot of info about them, but it was about half an hour before recording. So.

• 1:26:24Liam McAnderson?

  What are they gonna do?

• 1:26:26Speaker 02

  These pictures are gorgeous.

• 1:26:27Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, I love these. I'm a sucker for any like heavyweight electric multiple unit. Yeah.

• 1:26:32Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:33Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. You know, it's, I, these are great. Um, these are commuter trains. They're on the lighter side of heavyweight. Right? They don't have air conditioning. They barely have heating. Well, no, they have heating in Chicago. What am I saying? Um, they're about 72 feet long. That's on the shorter side. Um, so they're able to get away with, uh, uh, four wheel trucks as opposed to six wheel, right?

• 1:27:00Justin Roczniak?

  They were built as pairs. One car had powered axles. The following car did not have powered axles. They run on 1500 volt DC electricity from overhead wires. They have a small operator's cab in the front, which also doubled as the vestibule. So if the car wasn't the leading car, that would just be open for anyone to walk into and the the controls were folded away.

• 1:27:31Justin Roczniak?

  Similar to like the Septa Silverliner fours are. That that sort of that sort of concept lasted a long time.

• 1:27:43Justin Roczniak?

  They were, of course, not fitted with speedometers.

• 1:27:48Speaker 03

  Why would you need a speedometer?

• 1:27:50Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, no, you're supposed to use your judgment, you know, we die like men here.

• 1:27:56Justin Roczniak?

  Likewise, they because they operated almost entirely in automatic block signal territory, and they were very old, they were not equipped with radios.

• 1:28:07Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, dear. Okay.

• 1:28:08Justin Roczniak?

  Any special orders had to be relayed at a station with a paper train order that was then telegraphed.

• 1:28:16Liam McAnderson?

  Come on, man.

• 1:28:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, that's seriously like it was this this accident happened like what 1972?

• 1:28:24Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:28:25Speaker 02

  I mean, at some point, the radios got pretty cheap.

• 1:28:27Liam McAnderson?

  We put a man on the mood at this point.

• 1:28:32Speaker 02

  Like radios were not that expensive. Certainly, we could have thrown one in at like some point like it just like the Fisher Price, you know, child's first radio.

• 1:28:40Speaker 03

  Are you saying a railroad should have made a capital investment?

• 1:28:45Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

• 1:28:48Speaker 02

  I was advocating for here.

• 1:28:51Speaker 03

  Just checking.

• 1:29:02Justin Roczniak?

  Hi, it's Justin. So this is a commercial for the podcast that you're already listening to. People are annoyed by these, so let me get to the point. We have this thing called Patreon, right? The deal is you give us two bucks a month and we give you an extra episode once a month. Sometimes it's a little inconsistent, but you know, it's two bucks. You get what you pay for. It also gets you our full back catalog of bonus episodes so you can learn about exciting topics like guns, pickup trucks, or pickup trucks with guns on them. The money we raise through Patreon goes to making sure that the only ad you hear on this podcast is this one.

• 1:29:45Justin Roczniak?

  Anyway, that's something to consider if you have two bucks to spare each month. Join at patreon.com/ W T Y P pod. Do it if you want, or don't. It's your decision and we respect that. Back to the show.

• 1:30:09Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I just wrote in, I'm a sucker for these sorts of heavyweight electrical multiple units. I think these guys look great. You know, like most of the sort of equipment, it ran, they ran well after they were functionally obsolete. Cause they have those straight geared electric DC motors. They just keep ticking forever.

• 1:30:32Justin Roczniak?

  There's still one that operates at the Illinois Railway Museum.

• 1:30:35Speaker 02

  Ooh, damn, I need to go to Illinois.

• 1:30:38Speaker 03

  You should look at photos of the South Shore, which when, until they got their current EMU design, they ran these cars, which means like up through the eighties, they were, or nineties, they were running cars, not the nineties. It was pretty late though. They were running cars like this and apparently they were in extremely bad condition.

• 1:31:00Liam McAnderson?

  Can't sound shocked.

• 1:31:02Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Well, I think Septa kept running the Pennsylvania Railroad MP54s until like the mid 80s.

• 1:31:10Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:10Justin Roczniak?

  Then they donated one to Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania and it immediately fell apart like the Blues Brothers car.

• 1:31:19Speaker 03

  That's what the Horizons are doing for Amtrak right now.

• 1:31:22Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm not allowed to talk about that. Um, anyway.

• 1:31:28Justin Roczniak?

  But yeah, these things got really tired after a while. So.

• 1:31:37Justin Roczniak?

  The IC Electric was gonna be modernized.

• 1:31:42Speaker 02

  It's a killer magazine design.

• 1:31:44Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:46Speaker 02

  God, that's, there's another return, return two with a V. Uh, that, that style of graphic design.

• 1:31:52Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I mean railway age doesn't even have a print edition anymore.

• 1:31:57Justin Roczniak?

  I don't think.

• 1:32:00Justin Roczniak?

  So anyway. There's this thing developed in, I want to say the late 60s, the Chicago South Suburban Mass Transit District.

• 1:32:14Justin Roczniak?

  Which is sort of the, the, the, the, the city is like.

• 1:32:19Justin Roczniak?

  You know, these commuter trains are pretty tired. We should probably do some modernization because we think the commuter train that arrives every three minutes might be essential to the city functioning.

• 1:32:35Liam McAnderson?

  Don't worry about that. Don't worry about that.

• 1:32:38Justin Roczniak?

  So the Illinois Central Electric is still in private hands, but this is one of the few that sees some actual modernization. Right? On the public dime though, right? You learn some of the limits of municipalism because a lot of cities tried to sort of regulate the railroads into modernizing and the railroads just pulled out.

• 1:33:02Liam McAnderson?

  Shit their pants in protest.

• 1:33:03Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, absolutely. Exactly, exactly. It seemed wise to attempt to throw the railroads some cash for modernization.

• 1:33:12Justin Roczniak?

  So the Chicago South suburban mass transit district was formed so they could maybe get rid of these tired old icy electric cars and replace them with something new, something better, higher capacity, faster, more comfortable, but of course, still oriented towards those suburban commuters rather than the old, you know, intra-city ridership, the people who were going from one part of the city to another, right? Which, uh, enter the horrible Frankenstein monster that is the Highliner.

• 1:33:44Liam McAnderson?

  Yes.

• 1:33:45Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:33:47Liam McAnderson?

  Die, die, my pretties.

• 1:33:50Justin Roczniak?

  It looks fucking great and everything about it is wrong and designed to facilitate worse service.

• 1:34:00Justin Roczniak?

  Um, now, how so? Um, we have to talk about the gallery car.

• 1:34:07Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, we sure do. Oh, yes.

• 1:34:10Justin Roczniak?

  What is the gallery car? And I think we've, we've discussed this before.

• 1:34:17Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:34:18Speaker 02

  Upskitters paradise.

• 1:34:19Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:22Justin Roczniak?

  So the gallery car is an ingenious way to have a double deck railroad car, which the conductor only needs to make one pass through to collect tickets. And by ingenious, I mean stupid.

• 1:34:43Justin Roczniak?

  There is a normal two by two seat configuration downstairs. Upstairs, there are the two galleries, right, which have one seat, an aisle, a big hole, an aisle, and one seat.

• 1:35:01Liam McAnderson?

  Yep. Fuck you.

• 1:35:05Justin Roczniak?

  This means that when

• 1:35:07Speaker 03

  If you've ever ridden these in the winter, this is the thing that you like, they seem bad enough, but imagine being, there's a staircase on one side and in the winter you are covered in salt and or someone else's covered in salt. And if they get off in an intermediate station, they have to step over probably 30 people's knees because they're sitting perpendicular to the aisle. And so if you've ever wanted to get the bottom of someone's shoes on your like knees as they try to like squeeze past, this is the perfect opportunity to do so.

• 1:35:41Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, that's right. You got the ones with the longitudinal seating up there. I rode, I rode VRE. It was all perpendicular.

• 1:35:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, that's because they respect the human there. Except you have to imagine when these were built, they were built with longitudinal seating, which gives them like a like a stated capacity of like 172 seats, which is, you're not fitting 172 people sitting in one of these things. Uh, but it's

• 1:36:09Justin Roczniak?

  I remember riding VRE on the 25,000 Passenger Ridership Day. And I think I was on the 444, which was the most crowded train. And, uh, yeah, it was all standees downstairs and people were standing on the wider staircases. It was awful. It was so bad.

• 1:36:29Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, you could still get that experience. Just go to like, you know, in the winter or whenever Amtrak decides to send someone into the switch room and have them fall on an irreplaceable piece of electronics, uh, cause they're doing upgrades in the middle of rush hour. Uh, you can get that experience by going to, uh, Union Station, just trying to get on one of the first like three trains out of the station after everything's been backed up for two hours. It's incredible. Um, highly recommended. Uh, you should plan a trip here in January or February so you can experience it.

• 1:37:04Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. Yeah, no, that's, that's a good idea. Visit, visit Chicago in January or February, folks.

• 1:37:10Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yes.

• 1:37:10Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:11Liam McAnderson?

  Die like men.

• 1:37:14Justin Roczniak?

  So.

• 1:37:17Justin Roczniak?

  Access to the car is from doors in the middle of the car. Right? The galleries don't expend the full, extend the full way down. Here is a vestibule over here, above which is the air conditioning unit. So there are four, count them, four horrible winder staircases. That you use to access the upstairs.

• 1:37:42Justin Roczniak?

  They're a lot of fun if you're 16, right? Then you get older.

• 1:37:49Justin Roczniak?

  And you get wider.

• 1:37:51Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:52Justin Roczniak?

  And they're terrible and scary, especially on bad track or even just going over switches.

• 1:38:00Speaker 02

  You have a crazy food fight in one of these, though.

• 1:38:03Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's true.

• 1:38:05Speaker 02

  Strategic position and all.

• 1:38:10Justin Roczniak?

  The main purpose of these cars is to increase the number of passengers you can carry on a single train while saving on labor costs, right? Because again, a true double deck train would require the conductor to make two passes on each car, which means you need more conductors and that eats into the profits.

• 1:38:30Justin Roczniak?

  It also means you can use fewer cars per train. And I can't remember how I learned this or if it's true or not, but I believe Chicago Union Station, for a long time, they charged railroads by the coach. So this was advantageous for a cash strapped railroad, like say, the Rock Island Line to switch to gallery cars because like, look, there's less coaches.

• 1:38:54Speaker 02

  Can you stand on the second level?

• 1:38:57Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:38:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, if you're like five, six.

• 1:39:00Speaker 02

  Okay, so I would be, I would be crouching the entire way.

• 1:39:03Speaker 03

  I cannot stand on the second.

• 1:39:05Speaker 02

  Awful.

• 1:39:05Speaker 03

  Which makes, which makes the stepping over knees thing harder because you're like, crouched and trying to like high step over other people's knees. And there's no, and since it's longitudinal, there's nowhere for people's like knees to go when they turn. Because there's someone next to them. And on top of that, the space for your feet, when it's longitudinal seating, it's like maybe.

• 1:39:30Speaker 03

  13 inches deep. So it's like most of someone's foot is going to take up that space. It's one of the most designs that's ever been.

• 1:39:39Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, I would agree. I would agree. One of the things I used to take these back from high school. And one of the things there were about four or five of us who would take the commuter train back from high school. Out of Alexandria Union Station, we like to sit in the last four seats at the end of the car.

• 1:39:59Speaker 03

  Oh, perfect teenager seating. Yeah.

• 1:40:01Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. And, and the fun thing was, you know, each time the conductor came by, you just climb over the hole and switch seats.

• 1:40:10Liam McAnderson?

  I'm sure he loved that.

• 1:40:11Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 1:40:15Speaker 03

  Over or under the luggage rack?

• 1:40:16Justin Roczniak?

  It's over the luggage rack.

• 1:40:18Speaker 03

  Okay, that makes more sense. But, yeah.

• 1:40:21Justin Roczniak?

  Under would be pretty funny. I don't think I could have, even back then I couldn't have fit. And I was like, I, I, I was like, you know, swole back then.

• 1:40:32Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:34Speaker 03

  I don't believe that.

• 1:40:36Speaker 02

  I do. He was swole. Beefy Roz.

• 1:40:39Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:40:40Speaker 02

  That's new show lore.

• 1:40:41Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I was rowing. Yeah.

• 1:40:44Justin Roczniak?

  So, yeah, um, where was I?

• 1:40:48Liam McAnderson?

  You were being swole.

• 1:40:50Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:40:53Justin Roczniak?

  So the first gallery cars were built for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, also known as the Cheap and Nothing Wasted.

• 1:41:03Speaker 03

  Cardboard and no wheels, baby.

• 1:41:05Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:07Justin Roczniak?

  Other railroads in the Chicago area soon adopted them. Some were even built for long distance trains. They had like restaurant, well, not, they had like cafe cars. They had parlor cars built to this design. You know, you could go to exotic locations such as Minneapolis or Green Bay or Valparaiso or Davenport or Clinton, Iowa, right?

• 1:41:30Speaker 03

  Ashland was famously the 400s, which are the Chicago Northwestern trains that ran these as long distance cars. Uh, the first one that they ran it on was the one that went to Ashland, Wisconsin, which is, you don't know where Ashland, Wisconsin is is because it's in the middle of nowhere on Lake Superior. And like the, the advertising for us amazing, but the real reason it existed is because the railroads really did not want to be running long distance trains at this point. And the Chicago Northwestern being cheap was like, pretty soon we're going to get rid of all of our long distance trains. And then we could just shove as many seats in these things as we want.

• 1:42:11Speaker 03

  But they had like the long distance configuration had like pedestal seats that could like swivel. And I want Amtrak to bring that back so bad.

• 1:42:22Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:42:28Justin Roczniak?

  These also made it out west on the Southern Pacific on the peninsula commute. That's now Caltrain, right? Uh, I, I love how these things look with the big Fairbanks Morse Train Master.

• 1:42:39Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:42:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:40Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah. That's like the last really designed diesel locomotive. You know, it looks so good. They all got cut up for submarine parts.

• 1:42:49Speaker 02

  God damn it.

• 1:42:50Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, except for one in Montreal.

• 1:42:52Speaker 02

  When you tell me these things, I'm like, ooh. Maybe somewhere, maybe they, they like got rehomed to like Brazil or something, you know?

• 1:43:00Justin Roczniak?

  They got rehomed as submarine parts.

• 1:43:05Liam McAnderson?

  You'll have nothing like Victoria.

• 1:43:07Justin Roczniak?

  There is one at Expo Rail in Montreal. It's the last one.

• 1:43:14Justin Roczniak?

  So the Highliner was based on the gallery card designed for reasons, right?

• 1:43:26Justin Roczniak?

  Keep in mind, the Illinois Central Electric was still a fare gated system, right? You paid for the fare like you pay for the fare on the subway. You go through a turnstile, right? Yeah. So there was not really this need for strict ticket collection.

• 1:43:44Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, okay. Yeah, sure.

• 1:43:46Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, but I guess they thought maybe we'll go cheaper in the future and planned for service to be crappier.

• 1:43:54Liam McAnderson?

  You fuckers.

• 1:43:55Justin Roczniak?

  This eventually proved to be correct.

• 1:43:59Justin Roczniak?

  Double deck cars also increased dwell times at stations, right? You're sitting there for longer. It may be only 10 or 20 seconds, but when you're making so many stops, that adds up. Right? Cause people need to climb and descend the horrible stairs.

• 1:44:16Speaker 03

  There's also only one door as well as you pointed out, whereas the previous cars had two or three doors.

• 1:44:22Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. Yeah, they had doors at each end. And this is bad on a system that even while it's on its decline is running on two or three minute headways at the peak. Right?

• 1:44:36Justin Roczniak?

  Now, despite all this, they are more modern, they are more comfortable. They don't have wicker seats or any of that crap and they are faster.

• 1:44:47Liam McAnderson?

  Right?

• 1:44:50Justin Roczniak?

  So these high line, look at how good they look.

• 1:44:53Speaker 02

  So cool looking.

• 1:44:57Speaker 02

  Sure. This episode may be leading to the death of, I don't know, dozens of people, but my God for that style. Was it worth it?

• 1:45:03Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 1:45:04Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, it might be.

• 1:45:07Justin Roczniak?

  So the Highliners, they were built by the St. Louis Car Company in 1971. I think this was their last mainline passenger car they ever built. They built some subway trains after that. They use the construction method, which we've seen before,

• 1:45:23Justin Roczniak?

  which is multiple competing methods of corrosion resistance, which all cancel out.

• 1:45:32Justin Roczniak?

  The Highliner's body is made of Corten steel, right? That's weathering steel, the kind of steel that when it rusts, that rust forms a protective outer coating.

• 1:45:45Justin Roczniak?

  You know, it looks really rusty, but that rust is preventing more rust from happening. Right?

• 1:45:53Justin Roczniak?

  It looks, it looks really, I think it looks very good architecturally sometimes on a train that doesn't, it doesn't look very good.

• 1:46:00Speaker 02

  Apartments like that in Seattle now.

• 1:46:02Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:03Speaker 02

  I disagree about them looking good, but you know.

• 1:46:06Justin Roczniak?

  Well, I'm, I'm sure they've been used in like some kind of like horrible five over one type.

• 1:46:12Speaker 02

  That is exactly the one I'm envisioning. Yes. The quarter, the quarter of 23rd and Union. No. Eh, whatever. Yes. There, there's an apartment building there that is a five over one that is like wavy sheet metal that is rusted to a, an even brown and it does not look good.

• 1:46:28Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:29Speaker 03

  That has to be galvanized steel or something. They're not using Corten steel on a five over one. It costs way too much money.

• 1:46:35Justin Roczniak?

  Right. Yeah. Okay.

• 1:46:37Speaker 03

  The, the platonic ideal of Corten steel being used for something is like a pedestrian bridge in the middle of nowhere or something.

• 1:46:45Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Or like, uh, some kind of really heavily architect tonic, like almost brutalist, but made in metal, just like aggressive, huge cube of rust that you live in.

• 1:47:01Liam McAnderson?

  Live in cube. We love you cube. We love you.

• 1:47:04Speaker 02

  You'll eat the bug. You'll live in the cube.

• 1:47:06Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Live in the cube. Yeah. But it's a big cube of rust.

• 1:47:11Justin Roczniak?

  Anyway, so

• 1:47:15Justin Roczniak?

  this looks terrible on a railroad car, right? So of course the Illinois Central, by this time they're the Illinois Central Gulf.

• 1:47:23Justin Roczniak?

  They took this weathering steel and put a rather fetching paint scheme on the car, right?

• 1:47:32Justin Roczniak?

  This is not a factor in the disaster, but it did mean if any of the paint flaked off, it immediately caused turbo rust in that location.

• 1:47:41Speaker 02

  Oh, good.

• 1:47:42Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. It does come into, this does come into effect.

• 1:47:48Speaker 03

  Thirty years after, uh, I think it's like two thousand, in two thousand and four, they inspected the cars and realized that every single one of them was structurally deficient. So.

• 1:47:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:00Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:01Speaker 03

  That's a story for, that's a story for a different day, except.

• 1:48:03Speaker 02

  God, I hate when my sick paint job totals my car.

• 1:48:08Speaker 03

  I can't wait till we start finding out what vinyl wraps are doing to the paint they're protecting underneath them.

• 1:48:14Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:48:15Speaker 02

  No, no, like putting a vinyl wrap on your Cybertruck, you pull it off, like six months later, it's Swiss cheese underneath.

• 1:48:23Justin Roczniak?

  Putting a carbon fiber vinyl wrap on your Cybertruck?

• 1:48:26Speaker 03

  You know, if you think about it, the Highliner is the Cybertruck of the seventies.

• 1:48:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, but this actually looks good.

• 1:48:34Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. It looks so good.

• 1:48:39Speaker 03

  If they had painted the Cybertruck like this, it would look good too.

• 1:48:42Speaker 02

  Well, that's not true. I have seen every single flavor wrap, paint job, uh, like, uh, like theme done to a Cybertruck. I have never seen one that didn't look like ass.

• 1:48:54Liam McAnderson?

  No, they all look like asses. There's a, there's a gray camo one that drives around my neighborhood sometimes. And I just want to get an RPG and just blast my little heart out. I should be clear, I want to blast the guy driving it, not myself.

• 1:49:09Speaker 02

  So they're, they're everywhere in Seattle and they look as pathetic as the day they came out. Uh, they, to compare this train to a Cybertruck is really besmirching the train's honor.

• 1:49:20Speaker 03

  You know what? I was wrong for that. Uh, I'm learning every day and trying to do better.

• 1:49:26Speaker 02

  That's okay. I will say though, you have two strikes, at which point we will detonate the call. You've shit talked Seattle and you've said the Cybertruck looks cool.

• 1:49:34Liam McAnderson?

  Is the bomb collar getting tighter, you guys?

• 1:49:40Justin Roczniak?

  Look, look, this, this is, this is why, um, I invited Eva on, who I believe in a previous life, uh,

• 1:49:49Justin Roczniak?

  blocked me, but also DM'd me to threaten to fight me.

• 1:49:54Speaker 03

  Uh, you threatened to fight me and I DM'd you my address and was like, show the fuck up if you're real about it.

• 1:50:00Liam McAnderson?

  Very good.

• 1:50:03Speaker 03

  I had no idea who you were. You could have been a serial killer for all I know. I was.

• 1:50:06Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:08Speaker 03

  I literally, it took me, I, it took me probably till two thousand twenty-four, like.

• 1:50:18Speaker 03

  I mean, I had been following your YouTube account for a while. It took me till you also like changed, got like banned several times on Twitter. So it also took me a while to figure out that you and this other Twitter account were the same thing. And then I was like, oh, you're also the podcast person. So I was just literally just sending my address to random people and being like, show up if you're real about it. I'm more sane now.

• 1:50:41Speaker 02

  Average, average pre-transition behavior.

• 1:50:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you know, what can you do?

• 1:50:47Liam McAnderson?

  Well, you get it now.

• 1:50:48Speaker 02

  No, that is not a statement of judgment. That's just like, I recognize the self in that story.

• 1:50:56Justin Roczniak?

  So another thing to note about these cars is they are, the front is painted black.

• 1:51:05Liam McAnderson?

  Nice.

• 1:51:06Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:07Speaker 03

  Very snappy. Can't, couldn't possibly cause any problems.

• 1:51:11Justin Roczniak?

  Not gonna cause any problems, obviously.

• 1:51:13Speaker 03

  There's no cars to hit on the Illinois Central. It's great separated. So like,

• 1:51:16Justin Roczniak?

  Exactly, yeah. Well, except the South Chicago branch, but you know.

• 1:51:24Justin Roczniak?

  So for a good amount of time, these cars ran in parallel with the old Illinois Central multiple units, but they were faster. They had better acceleration, which ironically meant they often were assigned to local trains where that acceleration made more of a difference. You know, because you got to start and stop so often.

• 1:51:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. Also, like you give express commuters the crappy trains because like those are the ones you need for like extra service and someone that needs to get from like University Park to downtown in like 35 minutes isn't going to suddenly decide to drive if they're not getting one of the new trains. Like they're on that train.

• 1:52:07Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. Yeah. Also, speaking of starting and stopping, I have to use the restroom.

• 1:52:12Liam McAnderson?

  You motherfucker.

• 1:52:14Speaker 02

  All right. Well, I'm still here, but my, my wife is trying to use a sous vide that a friend of mine gave me.

• 1:52:19Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:52:20Speaker 02

  And it turns out it makes a ton of beeping noises. So

• 1:52:23Liam McAnderson?

  Less good.

• 1:52:23Speaker 02

  Uh, if you hear that in the background, it's, it's not a bomb. It's just,

• 1:52:27Liam McAnderson?

  No, it's the bomb. It's the bomb collar getting tighter.

• 1:52:32Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I was trying to cover, babe, it's okay. I'll just mute myself while you make dinner.

• 1:52:37Liam McAnderson?

  It doesn't matter. It does not matter. I promise it does not matter. We don't care.

• 1:52:42Speaker 02

  Liam says it doesn't matter.

• 1:52:43Speaker 03

  This is gonna be the first episode you guys have ever recorded where sound quality absolutely matters.

• 1:52:51Liam McAnderson?

  Well, it hasn't mattered yet, so.

• 1:52:53Speaker 02

  I will just, I could just turn down the gain on my mic and that would probably solve it.

• 1:52:56Liam McAnderson?

  Probably.

• 1:52:57Speaker 02

  What are you gonna do? Let me. Uh, Devin, just as a note, at 15348, I am turning down the gain on my mic, so the sous vide isn't as audible.

• 1:53:05Speaker 03

  Oh, that has to be a bigger pain to us than editing out the fucking.

• 1:53:09Liam McAnderson?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 1:53:11Speaker 02

  Is it?

• 1:53:11Liam McAnderson?

  Probably. I don't know, man.

• 1:53:13Speaker 02

  Oh, well, then Devin, at 15401, I've given up on that and I'm turning the game back up.

• 1:53:23Speaker 03

  Hey, quick, let's all just change the gain on our mic right now.

• 1:53:27Liam McAnderson?

  Just break into Roz's house, get really loud for no fucking reason.

• 1:53:34Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, I was trying to, I was trying to make it easier. I, I didn't, I don't know.

• 1:53:38Justin Roczniak?

  I'm back. What did I miss?

• 1:53:40Speaker 03

  We're all changing the gain on our microphones to fuck with your editor.

• 1:53:44Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, god.

• 1:53:46Speaker 02

  No, I, I was trying to make, I was trying to make the sous vide quieter in the background, because it's making a lot of noise.

• 1:53:52Justin Roczniak?

  You know, the worst part is I also changed my gain earlier in the episode.

• 1:53:56Speaker 03

  Oh, my god.

• 1:53:58Liam McAnderson?

  I hate you people.

• 1:53:59Speaker 02

  Devin, I'm so sorry.

• 1:54:00Justin Roczniak?

  Sorry, Devin.

• 1:54:02Speaker 02

  I was just trying to get the sous vide sound out of it.

• 1:54:06Speaker 03

  Oh, my god.

• 1:54:07Speaker 02

  It should be back at the exact same point it was at before.

• 1:54:10Speaker 03

  I understand the sound quality in your episodes now.

• 1:54:14Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, and people get mad at us, and I'm just like, well, we, we are, we are aggressively DIY podcast.

• 1:54:20Speaker 02

  Normally, my wife, normally, like, uh, we record a little earlier, and so my wife isn't making dinner. Um, with what sounds to be like the popcorn popper of sous vide machines.

• 1:54:31Liam McAnderson?

  Ooh, I, I mean, I, I could eat.

• 1:54:33Speaker 03

  I have a question. Is your sous vide plugged into a GF CI outlet? Because you might want to try that based on the descriptions of the noise you're giving.

• 1:54:44Speaker 02

  Um, is it plugged into a GF CI outlet, babe?

• 1:54:49Speaker 02

  In the bedroom. Okay, sure.

• 1:54:50Liam McAnderson?

  All right, damn, take that. Take that. No, yeah. Take that tone, goddamn.

• 1:55:00Speaker 02

  Did that answer that for you?

• 1:55:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, the answer is no.

• 1:55:05Speaker 03

  All right.

• 1:55:06Speaker 02

  I think the only GFCI outlet in my house is in the bathroom.

• 1:55:10Speaker 03

  Do you live in a room?

• 1:55:11Justin Roczniak?

  The kitchen's supposed to have.

• 1:55:12Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, you should have one of them.

• 1:55:14Speaker 03

  Put it in the garage.

• 1:55:15Speaker 02

  I, I live in an apartment.

• 1:55:16Liam McAnderson?

  She doesn't have a garage.

• 1:55:18Justin Roczniak?

  Hmm.

• 1:55:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've got a parking spot.

• 1:55:21Liam McAnderson?

  Bathroom?

• 1:55:21Speaker 02

  I don't wanna, I don't wanna have dinner from the bathroom.

• 1:55:24Liam McAnderson?

  Yes, you do.

• 1:55:25Justin Roczniak?

  Have you seen those like airplane cooking videos? It's delicious.

• 1:55:28Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:31Speaker 02

  Oh, god, those things make me sick every time.

• 1:55:35Speaker 03

  I'm saying my outlet, my apartment doesn't have any GFCI outlets, so.

• 1:55:39Liam McAnderson?

  That should be illegal.

• 1:55:41Justin Roczniak?

  Those, those in glass houses.

• 1:55:44Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, I cannot relate, motherfuckers.

• 1:55:47Speaker 03

  Glass, glass would be far too expensive for my landlord to repair this building with.

• 1:55:54Justin Roczniak?

  So, so anyway. Now, we're gonna have a brief aside about couplers.

• 1:56:01Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, hell, yeah.

• 1:56:02Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, and how force is transferred through the underframe of a railroad car. So. Most common in the United States is this, the knuckle coupler or the janny coupler, right?

• 1:56:21Justin Roczniak?

  You know, you whack two trains into each other, they couple together, right? The coupler pocket here, there has, there's a big, who'd you call it? Big steel construction back there, transfer, transfers all the force through the underside of the railroad car to the next railroad car, so on and so forth down the line, right? That's the most common one. Other couplers are only used in specialized applications like high-density commuter train service.

• 1:56:54Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:56:54Justin Roczniak?

  Right? Yeah. So here is a Tomlinson coupler.

• 1:57:01Liam McAnderson?

  Ah.

• 1:57:02Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah. This is a very early type of automatic coupler, right?

• 1:57:11Justin Roczniak?

  A Janney coupler just hooks the two cars together and then a guy has to come and connect up the air hoses and if applicable, the multiple unit hoses that are the, that's the ones that, you know, let you control other locomotives from one locomotive, you know, all kinds of crap, steam lines, if it's a passenger train, stuff like that.

• 1:57:32Justin Roczniak?

  The Tomlinson coupler does all that crap automatically, right? Which is great if you're the Illinois Central and you want to do bizarre things with trains all day long, right? It saves a lot of labor when you brought a rush hour 10 car train in and you want to turn it into a four car train and a six car train, or I have five two car trains, I want to turn into a 10 car train really quickly, right?

• 1:58:07Justin Roczniak?

  Now, these are early enough, they were installed on the old heavyweight cars. They were also installed on the new Highliners, right? They had different mounting hardware though, that's going to become relevant later.

• 1:58:26Justin Roczniak?

  Another thing couplers are supposed to do, today, there's a lot more structural systems to prevent this, but in 1926, it was just the couplers and the collision posts, which are the two big beams that rise sort of vertically up right here.

• 1:58:45Justin Roczniak?

  The idea is these couplers are supposed to prevent climbing, right?

• 1:58:49Liam McAnderson?

  Right, where one goes over the other.

• 1:58:51Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, climbing is when two cars hit each other with some amount of force, one car starts to try and ride up on top of the other one.

• 1:59:01Liam McAnderson?

  Sexy.

• 1:59:03Justin Roczniak?

  That can lead.

• 1:59:06Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, we're ready for that one, weren't we?

• 1:59:11Liam McAnderson?

  So tired.

• 1:59:17Justin Roczniak?

  This can lead to something called telescoping, where the one car simply slides into and through the other car, and murders everyone inside.

• 1:59:30Liam McAnderson?

  No, no.

• 1:59:32Speaker 03

  It sounded cool right up until that last day.

• 1:59:34Speaker 02

  Is it funny now?

• 1:59:36Liam McAnderson?

  It is still funny. I'm gonna laugh, I'll cry. I don't give a fuck about these people. They're already dead. I'm not.

• 1:59:43Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, they just, they, they, they did the 50th anniversary ceremony a couple of years ago. A lot of these people who were involved in this accident are still alive.

• 1:59:52Liam McAnderson?

  Whoops.

• 1:59:53Speaker 03

  My mom, my mom went to high school down there and was like, oh, that was the year I graduated high school. And I was like, damn. All right. Uh, that means that's older, but how about that?

• 2:00:04Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, yeah.

• 2:00:06Speaker 03

  But yeah, it's a recent past.

• 2:00:09Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah. So today we have things like, uh, well, you can see just barely in this photo, something called an anti-climber. This is essentially just a hardened piece of steel, which has these ridges on it. And the idea is if one car tries to start to climb on the other one, the other car also has an anti-climber. They lock into place. Famously did not work on the Washington Metro several times.

• 2:00:34Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:00:37Justin Roczniak?

  You know, and then you have now, lots of more durable crash structures and stuff like that, right?

• 2:00:47Justin Roczniak?

  In 1926, it was based on the coupler being really, really heavy and durable. And it was mounted to a really heavy and durable frame, with really heavy and durable collision posts, right? This is, this is just make it more rigid.

• 2:01:03Liam McAnderson?

  Nova, we saved a spot for you.

• 2:01:06Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:11Justin Roczniak?

  All right, so it's October 30th, 1972 in the morning rush hour.

• 2:01:17Speaker 02

  Ah shit.

• 2:01:17Liam McAnderson?

  Oh no.

• 2:01:20Justin Roczniak?

  Train 416 was a local train made of new Highliners on the South Chicago branch, or it originated from the South Chicago branch. At this point, it's on the main line, right? And in Illinois central parlance, um, the local trains were called Expresses and the Expresses were called Specials.

• 2:01:43Liam McAnderson?

  Sure.

• 2:01:44Justin Roczniak?

  But the Expresses were

• 2:01:45Liam McAnderson?

  Why the hell not?

• 2:01:46Justin Roczniak?

  Sometimes very local and some Specials were less special than others. None of the trains had the same stopping pattern. It was chaos. It's great. It's amazing.

• 2:01:59Justin Roczniak?

  Unlike many local express commuter rail operations, which separate those two classes of train on the separate tracks, the IC Electric simply ran any train where it would fit.

• 2:02:16Justin Roczniak?

  So just before 7:30 a.m., train 416 approaches the 27th Street Station, which is here, right? And uh, blows right past it.

• 2:02:31Liam McAnderson?

  Oh no.

• 2:02:31Justin Roczniak?

  Totally bins it.

• 2:02:34Justin Roczniak?

  Completely overshoots the platform. It's a very small platform, to be fair.

• 2:02:40Justin Roczniak?

  You know, goes all the way past, um, where the hell did the mouse go? Can't see it because it's yellow. I'm gonna, I'm gonna switch to relish.

• 2:02:52Justin Roczniak?

  Right here, this is signal 3-3.10.

• 2:02:59Justin Roczniak?

  So yeah, these new Highliners, they had some oomph to them, right? Apparently the engineer was also new to the schedule, didn't quite break in time. Plus, the 27th Street Station was a flag stop, right? If you were a passenger who wanted to get off there, you had to notify the conductor, who then had to notify the engineer, "Hey, some asshole wants to stop here."

• 2:03:26Justin Roczniak?

  So it's quite possible the engineer forgot and applied the brakes too late. At any way, at any rate, they were now well past the station into, fully into the next signal block.

• 2:03:41Justin Roczniak?

  Now, you should also note the position of signal 3-3.10 here, which is notably right behind an overhead pedestrian bridge.

• 2:03:52Liam McAnderson?

  Oh dear.

• 2:03:53Justin Roczniak?

  This is a gantry signal, so it's suspended over the tracks, right behind the overhead pedestrian bridge.

• 2:04:02Justin Roczniak?

  There is also a very slight curve behind the platform.

• 2:04:09Justin Roczniak?

  This is all going to become relevant in a moment. Now, in a situation where a train overran the platform so bad, it was in the next signal block. The rulebook for the Illinois Central said, continue to the next station. This, this railroad runs two to three minute headways. There's no time to back up. This one guy would have had to hoof it from the next station, a whopping four blocks away at 23rd Street.

• 2:04:40Liam McAnderson?

  Oh my God.

• 2:04:41Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:42Speaker 03

  It's a 10 minute walk.

• 2:04:45Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that's, that's 10 minutes right there.

• 2:04:47Liam McAnderson?

  Get me on this train or off this train. I don't actually care which anymore.

• 2:04:52Justin Roczniak?

  For failing that, to re-enter a signal block required a flagman to walk down the track and display a red flag indicating for other trains to stop short of the next signal.

• 2:05:08Justin Roczniak?

  Ideally, you'd also get permission from the dispatcher, but half the trains on this railroad didn't have radios. Sad, it doesn't matter.

• 2:05:19Justin Roczniak?

  So what they do is not that.

• 2:05:22Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:23Justin Roczniak?

  They're gonna give this one passenger a break.

• 2:05:26Liam McAnderson?

  Foolish.

• 2:05:27Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, they're also gonna stay on schedule. It's time to back up and they're gonna do it fast.

• 2:05:34Justin Roczniak?

  The conductor heads to the center vestibule of the last car. He opens the door so he can look out behind the train. He can't go in the rear operator's cab because there's no functioning intercom there, but uh.

• 2:05:48Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 2:05:49Justin Roczniak?

  He can access the intercom from the middle of the train. The way he communicates with the engineer is not actually like a separate intercom. It is the full like train intercom. The passengers hear all of this.

• 2:06:05Speaker 03

  And that's still how it works to this day in Chicago. It's incredible.

• 2:06:12Justin Roczniak?

  And so he, he's gonna guide the train back to the platform.

• 2:06:16Speaker 02

  I do really love the idea of doing the SpongeBob. You're good.

• 2:06:20Justin Roczniak?

  You're good.

• 2:06:21Speaker 02

  You're good. You're good. With like an entire ass commuter train.

• 2:06:25Speaker 03

  That is what they have to do, not on the high level platforms. Well, actually sometimes so because they have certain platforms on this line today. It's supposed to be all high level, but they have like a few platforms that are literally just long enough for the door. And they have like a little staircase up this platform that's maybe 10 feet long. And so they have the conductor hang out and do that for the drivers to this day. For the summer flag stops. It's absolutely unhinged.

• 2:06:57Justin Roczniak?

  Wow.

• 2:07:00Justin Roczniak?

  Now there's an additional crew member on this train called the collector, right? He's not a full conductor, but he still collects fares, right? He could have walked back and flagged the track.

• 2:07:14Justin Roczniak?

  He was not instructed to do so. Furthermore, the Illinois Central at this point had gotten so loosey goosey with the rules that many train crews were not provided with flags.

• 2:07:28Liam McAnderson?

  So why? What? Why? Oh, loosey goosey. You explain this.

• 2:07:32Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, no, no one gives a shit. You want to flag the track?

• 2:07:35Liam McAnderson?

  Welcome to Chaos Rail!

• 2:07:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yep, yeah, no, find a passenger with a red shirt and ask if you can borrow it.

• 2:07:41Liam McAnderson?

  Oh god.

• 2:07:46Justin Roczniak?

  This is for railroad business.

• 2:07:47Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, I'm sorry, ma'am. The railroad demands you go tits out currently.

• 2:07:51Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I was about to say.

• 2:07:55Justin Roczniak?

  I'm commandeering this.

• 2:07:58Speaker 03

  Tits out for railroad safety, baby.

• 2:08:04Justin Roczniak?

  In the meantime,

• 2:08:07Justin Roczniak?

  Train 720, made of those old heavyweight Pullman, uh, MUs, right? The multiple units, they're approaching 27th Street. The engineer sees a green signal and proceeds at maximum track speed. The engineer sees a yellow signal and proceeds at maximum track speed. The engineer sees a yellow signal, which suddenly turns into a green signal.

• 2:08:34Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, boy.

• 2:08:35Justin Roczniak?

  And proceeds at maximum track speed.

• 2:08:37Liam McAnderson?

  Hell, yes.

• 2:08:39Justin Roczniak?

  Now he sees another yellow signal. At this point, he was expecting another train ahead of him. Uh, 416 probably made that flag stop, so he set the air brakes to slow the train to what he estimated was 40 miles an hour. Again, there's no speedometer.

• 2:08:59Justin Roczniak?

  This was considered normal on the IC electric. Speed restrictions were kind of just suggestions. Just be prepared to stop within eyesight of another train, which, in fairness, under normal conditions, these cars could do pretty easily.

• 2:09:18Justin Roczniak?

  Now, at the same time, Train 718, also made of the heavyweight cars, was on a parallel track heading the same direction. You know, they're going about the same speed right next to each other, slowly passing. So our engineer in Train 720 is approaching the 27th Street Station on Track 3 at about 40 miles an hour. He doesn't see a train at the platform. There is some kind of small, dark shape ahead, though. Hard to tell what it is, really. It might be a trick of the light.

• 2:09:53Liam McAnderson?

  It's gonna be like 80 people, man.

• 2:09:55Justin Roczniak?

  Four to six car lengths from the platform.

• 2:09:58Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, no.

• 2:09:59Justin Roczniak?

  As was estimated by the engineer. He realized, oh, fuck, that's a train. He shuts off power, he hits the emergency brakes. He runs back into the passenger compartment to tell everyone to brace for impact. Um, this is a quote from, uh, Roseland, Chicago, 1972.substack.com.

• 2:10:22Justin Roczniak?

  Mrs. Mary Brooks, 19, of 8412 South Exchange Street, was riding on the single-decked old train. "I was, I was riding in the front of the first car when we approached McCormick Place." She tells Lou Palmer or Edmund J. Rooney, I think those are both reporters, but it's unclear which. "The engineer came out, he's a real nice man, and told us to get down, that the train was going to crash. Then he hit the floor, and then the train crashed."

• 2:10:55Liam McAnderson?

  You alright?

• 2:10:56Speaker 02

  That's what it says on the tip.

• 2:10:59Speaker 03

  Hard to argue with, uh, her account there.

• 2:11:02Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:03Speaker 03

  I like how she took some time to be like, you know, he's such a nice man.

• 2:11:07Justin Roczniak?

  He's such a man.

• 2:11:09Speaker 02

  That was the most midwestern shit. You could tell this happened in Chicago.

• 2:11:14Speaker 03

  I have to say that, you know, him telling us the train was gonna crash was totally out of character, but normally he just drove the train like a normal man. Very few crashes.

• 2:11:26Justin Roczniak?

  Just seconds before impact, the conductor of 416 spotted 720 incoming. He warned the engineer over the intercom and in front of all the passengers that the, that the crash was imminent. And then he jumped out of the open door off the train.

• 2:11:44Liam McAnderson?

  Fucking Jesus Christ.

• 2:11:49Speaker 02

  Aren't conductors supposed to go down with the train?

• 2:11:51Justin Roczniak?

  No.

• 2:11:52Liam McAnderson?

  No, that's ships.

• 2:11:53Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:54Speaker 03

  I don't think conductors are supposed to go down with the ship either.

• 2:11:58Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that's true. That's true.

• 2:12:00Liam McAnderson?

  Mind your business.

• 2:12:01Justin Roczniak?

  Except the conductor of the orchestra on the Titanic, obviously.

• 2:12:05Speaker 03

  I don't think he was obligated to do that.

• 2:12:07Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, and he wasn't obligated to do that, yeah.

• 2:12:10Speaker 03

  Whatever, personal decision.

• 2:12:12Justin Roczniak?

  So, uh, wham.

• 2:12:16Liam McAnderson?

  Bam, thank you, ma'am.

• 2:12:18Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 2:12:20Justin Roczniak?

  The first car of Train 720, that's the old heavyweights. The first thing that happens, these old heavyweight cars are not firmly attached to the trucks. That's the assemblies that carry the wheels, right? They're attached by gravity. So it immediately detaches from the forward power truck, right?

• 2:12:41Justin Roczniak?

  The ancient coupler mounting was bent downwards by the impact. So there was nothing to stop the car climbing, right? It overran the underframe of the last car of Train 416.

• 2:12:55Justin Roczniak?

  Now, there's no forward power truck. There's not really very much underframe electrical equipment to absorb any of the energy of this impact. The only thing that absorbs the energy of this car is the frame, the superstructure, the furnishings, and the people inside the last car of Train 416.

• 2:13:15Speaker 03

  Oh, I don't have a lot of faith in my-

• 2:13:16Speaker 02

  Which of course is just a cement slab.

• 2:13:19Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. Yeah, just big, big concrete block coming at you at 40 miles an hour.

• 2:13:24Liam McAnderson?

  No, thanks.

• 2:13:25Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 2:13:26Justin Roczniak?

  Estimated 40 miles an hour, no speedometer.

• 2:13:30Speaker 03

  It's like someone launching a Jersey barrier at you.

• 2:13:37Speaker 03

  I do not have much faith in my ability to catch a Jersey barrier.

• 2:13:41Justin Roczniak?

  No. I'm just imagining that being like a new form of paintball or something.

• 2:13:47Speaker 03

  Oh, my god.

• 2:13:50Justin Roczniak?

  So this heavyweight car proceeds on down through the new lightweight car in the process veering to the right and side swiping train 718 on the next track. Which absorbed the impact and didn't even derail.

• 2:14:12Justin Roczniak?

  No, no one actually noticed until it got to like the next station. Well, the people in the car noticed, but

• 2:14:17Liam McAnderson?

  Right.

• 2:14:19Liam McAnderson?

  God damn.

• 2:14:21Justin Roczniak?

  So roughly half of the last car of 416 was completely destroyed. It was telescoped. You know, the car slid into the other car.

• 2:14:37Justin Roczniak?

  And the first car, train 720 remained remarkably intact. There were not very many injuries or fatalities in there.

• 2:14:46Justin Roczniak?

  So, uh, but on the other car. Yeah, this looks pretty ugly.

• 2:14:51Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, not so good.

• 2:14:53Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. See, even if you're on like the upper deck, you got screwed. This, this was a very bad accident.

• 2:15:01Speaker 03

  This is why Caltrain ropes off the front of all of their cab cars when running in reverse.

• 2:15:10Justin Roczniak?

  They do that?

• 2:15:12Speaker 03

  Don't, don't they still do that? They did it after like that 2004 crash where that guy was texting and ran into a freight train.

• 2:15:19Justin Roczniak?

  Oh.

• 2:15:22Justin Roczniak?

  Interesting. I didn't know that. I don't know. I, I used to like riding in the front of the VRE train in the gallery car.

• 2:15:30Speaker 03

  Riding in the front of, uh, of, uh, of a Highlander two, um, on the Metro Electric is so cool because it's basically a dead straight shot. So you like look down it and you're looking like literally as far as the eye can see. It's like, you can see like 25 miles straight.

• 2:15:49Justin Roczniak?

  Wow.

• 2:15:51Speaker 03

  It's pretty cool. Uh, and it's also very quiet. I'm like, you know, riding on one of those trains that's getting pushed around by an F40PH, which sounds like uh, you're riding on a cement leveler or something like that.

• 2:16:09Speaker 02

  Um, not, not to like, put too much levity in this, but I will say that like, the, the passenger who flagged for this stop, that's like my ultimate social anxiety nightmare.

• 2:16:20Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:21Speaker 02

  It's like, uh, I, I need to get off here and the train's like, oh, I guess we can back up for you. We don't want to make you walk the extra four blocks and then you kill dozens of people. Because you asked for one thing.

• 2:16:34Liam McAnderson?

  You dick.

• 2:16:35Speaker 02

  This is how my mind works. I'm not gonna lie.

• 2:16:38Speaker 03

  See, I would just be like, I asked them to do that, but I'm just, I'm just, you can ask for anything. If the professionals choose to do it and it gets everyone killed, that's kind of.

• 2:16:49Liam McAnderson?

  That's on them. That's on them.

• 2:16:50Speaker 02

  So I'm like, I'm just like, no, this is my fault now.

• 2:16:55Speaker 03

  It's like being a passenger of an airplane and being like, hey, I bet you can't do a barrel roll. And then like, they do like a controlled descent into terrain. Like the pilot shouldn't listen.

• 2:17:04Speaker 02

  But that happens all the time.

• 2:17:08Speaker 02

  Pilots love doing that. I've dated a pilot. The main thing I learned is you should never say, bet you can't do this. Cause they will 100% take you up on that.

• 2:17:16Liam McAnderson?

  Barrel roll.

• 2:17:17Justin Roczniak?

  Barrel roll. Do a loop.

• 2:17:20Speaker 03

  That's why Rise doesn't fly.

• 2:17:21Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, I, I don't, yeah.

• 2:17:23Liam McAnderson?

  Absolutely has to.

• 2:17:25Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 2:17:28Justin Roczniak?

  So, um, the rescue and recovery operations were ugly, but more successful than they might've otherwise been since the trains wrecked at a station built to serve the Michael Reese Hospital.

• 2:17:42Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, well.

• 2:17:44Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:44Liam McAnderson?

  What a happy accident, I guess.

• 2:17:47Justin Roczniak?

  And there was also the Mercy Hospital only a few blocks away. So there were just fuck tons of doctors and nurses on the scene immediately.

• 2:17:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:17:58Justin Roczniak?

  They were there before the firefighters. Yeah.

• 2:18:02Liam McAnderson?

  Uh, I bet they're wetting their pants at this. Just like, oh yeah, I get to be a fucking doctor. Oh.

• 2:18:11Justin Roczniak?

  The accident also happens in full sight of the Lake Shore Expressway. Motorists stopped their cars to run all the way across a railroad yard to help.

• 2:18:22Liam McAnderson?

  That fucks that rules.

• 2:18:25Justin Roczniak?

  This quickly becomes a scene with too many first responders.

• 2:18:28Liam McAnderson?

  Nevermind.

• 2:18:29Justin Roczniak?

  Police show up and they have to, they have to set up a cord in line, right?

• 2:18:36Justin Roczniak?

  So there's a lot of people in these cars that are like horrifically mangled in all kinds of nasty ways. You know, screaming, sobbing, horrific injuries, whole nine yards. It's not good in there. It takes about, I said five hours in the notes, six hours to get all the survivors out from the twisted metal and wreckage. Those folks who were unfortunate enough to be injured in the old Illinois Central Heavyweight Coach had to wait for the car that their car was inside of to be emptied of remains before rescuers could get to them.

• 2:19:18Liam McAnderson?

  Oh my God, no thanks.

• 2:19:20Justin Roczniak?

  You can see, actually in the first image in the slideshow, let me go back here.

• 2:19:25Liam McAnderson?

  I don't know if I want to go back.

• 2:19:28Justin Roczniak?

  You can see here, they had to prop up the car with railroad ties to keep it from falling further.

• 2:19:40Liam McAnderson?

  Jesus Christ.

• 2:19:45Justin Roczniak?

  So in this accident, 45 people died and 320 people were injured.

• 2:19:56Liam McAnderson?

  Ouch. Wow. That's, that's, that's fucked up looking.

• 2:20:00Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah. This was one of the worst railroad accidents in American history. Not the worst by a long shot, but it's up there.

• 2:20:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think La Grange is, which is like 15 miles away from here was like, not even 15 miles, might be like 10. It was like this one was like the only other accident in the Chicago area that was worse. And that's why trains have to go 79 miles an hour now.

• 2:20:33Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah. Well, that was Naperville, not not La Grange. Or was that?

• 2:20:37Speaker 03

  Same difference.

• 2:20:38Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, it is some Chicago suburb. So I'm, this leads to the question, okay, why did this happen? I was not able to find too much information about the lawsuits and so on that happened afterwards. But the NTSB does go into a lot of detail as to why this happened. So we have to go back to the rulebook, right? Here's a brief quiz that you might be given as an Illinois Central Gulf engineer, like a locomotive engineer. What does a green signal mean?

• 2:21:16Liam McAnderson?

  Proceed at maximum speed, full throttle.

• 2:21:18Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, proceed at maximum track speed. What does a yellow signal mean?

• 2:21:23Liam McAnderson?

  You don't do the same thing.

• 2:21:25Justin Roczniak?

  Proceed at maximum track.

• 2:21:27Liam McAnderson?

  I'm not looking at the notes, by the way. I'm just.

• 2:21:30Justin Roczniak?

  What does a red signal mean?

• 2:21:32Liam McAnderson?

  If you say proceed at maximum, please be.

• 2:21:34Justin Roczniak?

  No, that one is obviously stop. We all know that one. Yeah, that's stop.

• 2:21:39Speaker 03

  And then proceed at maximum track speed or?

• 2:21:41Justin Roczniak?

  What is, what is a red signal with the number board mean?

• 2:21:46Liam McAnderson?

  Go at that speed, maybe?

• 2:21:48Justin Roczniak?

  Proceed at maximum track speed.

• 2:21:53Justin Roczniak?

  These are real answers given to, these are real answers to real questions given by real Illinois Central engineers and conductors.

• 2:22:04Justin Roczniak?

  The IC Electric was operated in extremely sort of loosey goosey way. They got away with it for decades because the trains could stop so quickly. The line was so flat and straight. The signals were generally reliable, so on and so forth, right? The rulebook explicitly stated a flagman had to be used for this kind of backing maneuver and also that this sort of backing maneuver was not recommended. The railroad had not provided flags for said flagmen. The rule said train 720 should have been operating at restricted speed following a yellow signal. This was routinely ignored and the train was not equipped with a speedometer.

• 2:22:44Justin Roczniak?

  The rule said a lot of things and how the railroad operated in practice was an entirely separate situation. Who is to blame here?

• 2:22:55Liam McAnderson?

  Everybody.

• 2:22:57Justin Roczniak?

  No, it's the fucking management.

• 2:22:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was gonna say the guy who asked for the flag stop, obviously.

• 2:23:07Justin Roczniak?

  So it's the prerogative of the management to ensure the employees follow safety rules by instituting programs like training and retraining, examination, so on and so forth. The NTSB found that Illinois central management often just shuffled employees through exams. You know, if they failed an exam, they just gave them a stern talking to and then passed them, right?

• 2:23:35Speaker 03

  It's like working for UPS.

• 2:23:38Liam McAnderson?

  Hey, you be nice.

• 2:23:40Justin Roczniak?

  There was not, there was little knowledge on the railroad of the formal operating rules and even people who knew the rules frequently skirted them. To a large extent, running an operation like the IC Electric with trains with two to three minute headways required skirting the rules to keep the schedule. This is how yellow and red signals became more like guidelines.

• 2:24:09Justin Roczniak?

  It was also found that if old heavyweight cars had been equipped with radios, dispatch could have intervened to stop the train sooner.

• 2:24:18Justin Roczniak?

  There were also issues with the car design.

• 2:24:23Speaker 02

  The train was too sexy.

• 2:24:25Justin Roczniak?

  It was, it was too hot.

• 2:24:27Speaker 02

  It distracted the other train engineers.

• 2:24:29Justin Roczniak?

  It looked too good.

• 2:24:33Justin Roczniak?

  All right. The front of the highliner is painted black, right? It's got two small headlights, obviously not illuminated on the back, right?

• 2:24:46Justin Roczniak?

  And there are two very, very small marker lights here, which were also quite dim. The marker lights would be lit up in red if this was the rear of the train.

• 2:24:58Justin Roczniak?

  And so this combined with an overcast sky and several visual obstructions, including the pedestrian bridge, which obscured the red signal, made it very difficult for the operator of train 720 to discern the presence of train 416 from very far away. You know, especially because he was not expecting a train to be there.

• 2:25:27Justin Roczniak?

  There was also some more complex stuff with cheap welds on the two collision posts, which I don't want to get too far into because probably wouldn't have,

• 2:25:42Justin Roczniak?

  the wreck wouldn't have gotten, would have still been about as bad if they had welded that properly.

• 2:25:48Speaker 02

  I feel like a concrete train hitting you at 40 miles an hour is not something that the collision posts could have fixed.

• 2:25:54Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah. And those future, future orders of this train, they fixed those welds.

• 2:26:04Justin Roczniak?

  But you know, that, that, that was another outcome, but the big outcome was, yeah, they painted the front of the train orange.

• 2:26:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:26:14Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. And they made the marker lights bigger.

• 2:26:21Justin Roczniak?

  And there were no more accidents.

• 2:26:26Liam McAnderson?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:26:28Liam McAnderson?

  Ever again.

• 2:26:29Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:26:32Justin Roczniak?

  Man, eventually Metro takes over and they put big chevrons on there.

• 2:26:37Liam McAnderson?

  I, I.

• 2:26:38Speaker 02

  Is this, is this the first design related fatality on a railroad?

• 2:26:44Justin Roczniak?

  Uh.

• 2:26:45Speaker 02

  Can we blame them painting the train black for the problem here just because it looked cool?

• 2:26:50Justin Roczniak?

  That's a good question. I'm gonna say there must have been earlier ones, but I can't think of any offhand.

• 2:26:56Speaker 02

  Me neither. There's gotta be one that like has happened because they just made the train too sexy.

• 2:27:01Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Train, the train was too sexy. I ran right into it.

• 2:27:06Speaker 03

  This is, this is the first, the first train death caused by modernism.

• 2:27:12Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah. As it turns out.

• 2:27:18Justin Roczniak?

  Um.

• 2:27:20Justin Roczniak?

  And yeah, the, the Highliners kept running for decades and decades until they were replaced by the Highliner 2.

• 2:27:31Justin Roczniak?

  Which I don't think looks as good.

• 2:27:35Liam McAnderson?

  No.

• 2:27:35Speaker 02

  No, it doesn't.

• 2:27:36Justin Roczniak?

  No, it does not. Um, still a gallery car. Um, because they did in fact get rid of the fair gates. Um.

• 2:27:46Speaker 02

  I gotta go to Chicago. I gotta ride a Metro.

• 2:27:48Liam McAnderson?

  Chicago Fox.

• 2:27:50Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, you can in fact ride a Highliner at Illinois Railroad Museum.

• 2:27:55Speaker 03

  There's, you have to drive to the Illinois Railroad Museum. It is in Union, Illinois, which is on the path of the future Metro served Rockford line. Um, however, they did not put a stop at Union for some reason, which I think is a huge misstep.

• 2:28:12Justin Roczniak?

  That was, that's a big mistake right there. Yeah.

• 2:28:15Speaker 03

  You can go to Belvidere if you feel like it and you can. Uh, they had built a cafe car, which is just a gallery car that they took the second level out of and then boarded up all the windows. And that is now, and so you can ride in one of the world's most first cars starting, who knows, a couple of years? Uh, great opportunity to experience, uh, the wonders of railroading.

• 2:28:44Justin Roczniak?

  You two could ride at a gallery car, something you can still just do.

• 2:28:52Speaker 03

  Uh, is the world's largest heritage railroad. You can ride. They did a study and they found that if you ride like the Burlington Northern Line, um, you got statistically significant amounts of diesel exhaust, uh, to like a level that's statistic like significant enough that it will likely cause cancer at some point. So that is the beauty of railroading that you're missing.

• 2:29:27Justin Roczniak?

  I

• 2:29:27Speaker 03

  But riding

• 2:29:28Speaker 02

  It's about the smells. That works for me.

• 2:29:30Justin Roczniak?

  It's okay. It's okay. Battery trains will fix this. I'm sure Metro will get that battery powered F40 at some point.

• 2:29:40Justin Roczniak?

  So, uh, what did we learn?

• 2:29:43Liam McAnderson?

  Management.

• 2:29:45Speaker 02

  Um,

• 2:29:46Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:46Speaker 02

  Don't, don't make the train too sexy.

• 2:29:48Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, otherwise.

• 2:29:49Justin Roczniak?

  Apparently you can't make the train too sexy. Yeah. Otherwise, otherwise someone's going to ram right into it.

• 2:29:55Speaker 03

  Uh, this is why.

• 2:29:57Liam McAnderson?

  I'm here to fuck the train.

• 2:30:00Speaker 02

  They call it telescoping, Liam.

• 2:30:03Justin Roczniak?

  I wasn't gonna make the joke. I didn't want to do that.

• 2:30:08Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, I have no respect for the dead. We all know this. I'm gonna get yelled at in the comments anyway.

• 2:30:13Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that's true. That's true.

• 2:30:16Speaker 02

  You can have non fatal telescoping. We just didn't in this episode.

• 2:30:21Liam McAnderson?

  Friends call it for Taj.

• 2:30:24Speaker 03

  I, I think the moral of the story is, train stations should be close together and you should just walk back. Don't back up the train.

• 2:30:33Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, you should, you should just walk back four blocks. I guess. Yeah, no, we're gonna put, we're gonna put this all on one guy.

• 2:30:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:30:41Justin Roczniak?

  Who was trying to get to work.

• 2:30:43Speaker 03

  That Victoria told him, you should absolutely make them back up the train.

• 2:30:53Speaker 02

  Uh, your social anxiety should rule your life because someday it might save it.

• 2:30:58Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:30:58Speaker 02

  That's what I learned.

• 2:31:00Speaker 03

  I wonder if the guy.

• 2:31:01Liam McAnderson?

  I think you're right.

• 2:31:02Speaker 03

  If the guy that was getting off, do you think he was in the last car and was one of the victims? Cause like, if so, you know, I think like being alive after like 300 people got injured and like, I don't know whatever number of kills could be brutal regardless, but like if you died, I think you'd be fine. Like, I wasn't one of his last thoughts. Like his last thought probably was not, I did this. If I last thought was probably just, holy shit.

• 2:31:30Liam McAnderson?

  Wow, that's coming up fast.

• 2:31:32Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. He was in the, he was in the, the second to last car and was like, wow, that's a rough stop. And then, you know, got off the train without even looking back.

• 2:31:40Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, well, have a good day, guys. Thanks.

• 2:31:42Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Didn't even notice.

• 2:31:46Justin Roczniak?

  Then he got to his workplace at the hospital and then had to come back.

• 2:31:51Liam McAnderson?

  Fuck, my briefcase.

• 2:31:55Liam McAnderson?

  All right.

• 2:31:57Justin Roczniak?

  We have a segment on this podcast called Safety Third. Burner, burner, burner. Shake hands with danger.

• 2:32:09Justin Roczniak?

  Hello, Roz, November, yay, Liam, Victoria, Devon, and activate windows.

• 2:32:14Liam McAnderson?

  And we had a guest fuckface.

• 2:32:16Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:16Speaker 02

  I'm just happy, I'm just happy I mentioned in the safety third email.

• 2:32:22Speaker 02

  That's a, that's a promotion for me.

• 2:32:24Justin Roczniak?

  For the ease of discussing this story, my pronouns are he and him.

• 2:32:30Justin Roczniak?

  Today I offer you a story from the world of biological science.

• 2:32:36Justin Roczniak?

  Due to the size of my specific sector of the industry, giving you much detail on what we do would make this safety thirds installment instantly identifiable. So all I can tell you is that my company handles some fairly nasty viruses and diseases in the course of our work. Alright, so you work in Wuhan?

• 2:32:58Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:59Justin Roczniak?

  No.

• 2:33:00Liam McAnderson?

  Oh.

• 2:33:00Speaker 03

  That's the China comment that's gonna get us all in trouble.

• 2:33:04Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:33:06Liam McAnderson?

  Lab leak theory, let's do it!

• 2:33:07Justin Roczniak?

  This is, yeah, no, this is, this is, so we have, we have ideological balance now.

• 2:33:13Speaker 03

  I just wanna say that I have been getting, to tie this all into Chicago too. I, like I said, I've been messaging Chinese lesbians on Red Note. And their pickup lines are incredible, and someone messaged me, she's like, older than me even, but uh, she messages me and she goes, "Hey, uh, have you ever thought about coming to Wuhan? You know, it's called the Chicago of China." Uh, which is, in fact, true. So, there is the ideological tie between this and, or the, not ideological.

• 2:33:47Speaker 03

  This and the rest of the episode.

• 2:33:49Justin Roczniak?

  Why, why do all these Chinese lesbians keep going to Chicago? Just causing a, causing a drain.

• 2:33:56Speaker 03

  I mean, I wish they would.

• 2:34:01Justin Roczniak?

  It's hard to get the visa, yeah.

• 2:34:04Justin Roczniak?

  Anyway.

• 2:34:07Justin Roczniak?

  I personally don't do any of that. I'm the receptionist, document controller, and unofficial onsite IT person, among other things. Due to the amorphous nature of my responsibilities, I'm often the first person people come to when something strange is happening in the building, or to the equipment, outside of restricted labs. I only have a marketing BA. Uh, in parentheses here, boo.

• 2:34:38Liam McAnderson?

  Boo, stupid.

• 2:34:41Justin Roczniak?

  I'm also autistic, ADHD. And have enough trans masculine audacity to figure out whatever random nonsense might be going on.

• 2:34:57Justin Roczniak?

  One day, one of my coworkers came to ask me about the low O2 sensor in our freezer room going off constantly. This O2 sensor's job is to catch if our nitrogen freezers decide to try to assassinate the whole building. The sensor had been going off regularly over the last day, and people had been checking the number, seeing that it wasn't technically at a dangerously low level of oxygen, and then turning off the alarm.

• 2:35:27Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:35:29Justin Roczniak?

  This protocol sounds risky, but we have it in place because the sensor's range is set on the high side, and sometimes the harmless amount of off-gassing from when the nitrogen system refills the freezers with fresh liquid can set off the sensor. This, this sounds like a familiar... What's, what's the word? Normal drift, or whatever it is.

• 2:35:54Speaker 03

  It's a building full of biologists. I think we can trust them to know when oxygen levels are dangerous.

• 2:36:00Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 2:36:02Liam McAnderson?

  One hopes so.

• 2:36:04Speaker 03

  When has a professional ever made a mistake?

• 2:36:09Justin Roczniak?

  Attached is a picture of the freezer style in question. These are roughly three, three feet tall. However, the off setting only works for around 15 to 20 minutes, and the alarm will start sounding again if the oxygen level doesn't rise to within the set range for the sensor. My coworker was getting concerned that the alarm kept coming back on, and since the manager, who she normally would have asked first about the issue, wasn't in the office that fateful day, she came to me instead, figuring that if I didn't know how to solve the issue, I'd at least know who to contact next. I followed her back to check on what was going on with our nitrogen freezers.

• 2:36:54Justin Roczniak?

  Found one of the freezers with the lid propped a couple inches open and fog streaming out onto the floor. Surprisingly, that isn't what off-gassing from the nitrogen refilling process looks like.

• 2:37:12Justin Roczniak?

  Now, given that the department in charge of that freezer had just moved off-site to a new building a week ago, no one else who'd know what to do would be around for at least an hour, and this was a problem now. So I decided to handle it myself. By having my coworker stand outside of the room and supervise, as I went in with a ruler and started smacking the ice buildup on the lid, so I could close the lid, or at the very least, reduce the flow of nitrogen gas into the building, so we'd be safe until it could get properly fixed.

• 2:37:54Justin Roczniak?

  I took regular breaks from chipping at the ice and only breathed with my face pointed upwards away from the freezer.

• 2:38:02Speaker 03

  Well, they're writing this email, so we know they didn't die.

• 2:38:10Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Now, yes, this was stupid. I shouldn't have done that, probably. But in my defense, nobody else had a plan, and I'm not going to ask another person to do my stupid idea for me.

• 2:38:26Liam McAnderson?

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:38:29Justin Roczniak?

  Eventually, this semi worked and left me only mildly dizzy. The freezer was significantly more closed, and now there were some people in the building who were actually paid enough to actually look at the problem. Our regulations manager, who was back from a meeting, stood guard over the freezer until maintenance could come in and look at the damn thing. He didn't know what to do either, but he at least didn't want it un-monitor or one of his subordinates standing over it in his stead. It turns out the problem was a few vials falling to the bottom of the freezer underneath

• 2:39:08Justin Roczniak?

  the pullout racks, which propped the lid open. This was not a big deal. You just use a pool dip net to fish them out. Picture is such a pool dip net.

• 2:39:27Justin Roczniak?

  One problem though was, where's the net? It's not in its normal spot, right next to the nitrogen freezers. Well, I remember how I said the department in charge of the freezer moved buildings recently. In the midst of moving, one of them erroneously grabbed the pool net. Realizing their mistake, they left it in their car to take back to us later. Then proceeded to bring it home and leave it at their home instead. Oopsie.

• 2:40:01Liam McAnderson?

  Oopsie doodle.

• 2:40:03Justin Roczniak?

  Luckily, they lived nearby and it was quicker to just retrieve the net from their house instead of buying a new one. Maintenance fished out all the vials. Only I and the regulation manager ended up exposed at all and both of us only ended up mildly dizzy afterwards. And we haven't had a repeat incident since. The moral of the story, don't dismiss a safety alarm, even if a safety system is overactive and sets off when there's no real danger. Especially if there's fog pouring out onto the floor from the dangerous gas machine.

• 2:40:40Speaker 02

  That's a pretty good moral.

• 2:40:41Liam McAnderson?

  That's a pretty good moral.

• 2:40:42Justin Roczniak?

  That is a pretty good moral.

• 2:40:44Speaker 03

  I bet they didn't have much of a rat problem after that, though.

• 2:40:46Liam McAnderson?

  No.

• 2:40:47Justin Roczniak?

  Oh. Accidentally fumigating my own building.

• 2:40:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:40:56Justin Roczniak?

  Anyway, love the podcast, November, your voice sounds fantastic and hope you have a good day.

• 2:41:01Liam McAnderson?

  I was gonna fuck myself.

• 2:41:02Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, with November not being here.

• 2:41:07Liam McAnderson?

  I'm November Kelly, my pronouns are she/her and uh.

• 2:41:11Justin Roczniak?

  I don't know what that accent is, Liam.

• 2:41:12Liam McAnderson?

  It's real bad, man.

• 2:41:15Speaker 03

  This is like two different hate crimes at once.

• 2:41:18Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, no. Oh, well, what are you gonna do? I'll be shot for this, I assume.

• 2:41:23Speaker 03

  I mean, you're from Philadelphia, what can we expect?

• 2:41:25Justin Roczniak?

  This is, this is our.

• 2:41:27Liam McAnderson?

  Okay. I'm the cradle of democracy, dickhead.

• 2:41:30Speaker 03

  And your dad's from Boston. I mean, what, what, really? It's just an inevitability at that point.

• 2:41:37Justin Roczniak?

  This is our most, our most cancelable episode, yeah.

• 2:41:41Liam McAnderson?

  No, it is not.

• 2:41:44Justin Roczniak?

  Look, we had to leave, uh, Israel is good, actually, on the cutting room floor.

• 2:41:51Speaker 03

  It would be incredible if your most cancelable episodes somehow didn't have Nova on it.

• 2:41:57Speaker 03

  Seems implausible to me.

• 2:41:59Liam McAnderson?

  It sure does. All right, let's add this. I gotta go to bed.

• 2:42:03Justin Roczniak?

  That was Safety Third.

• 2:42:08Justin Roczniak?

  Shake hands with danger.

• 2:42:13Justin Roczniak?

  Our next episode, if we aren't canceled, will be on Chernobyl. Does anyone have any commercials before we go?

• 2:42:20Speaker 03

  Uh, I have a commercial, which is if you like Chicago stuff, I run a nonprofit named The Foye Bakery, where we use FOIA to bully politicians mostly so that they do the right thing, uh, instead of the wrong thing.

• 2:42:36Speaker 03

  You can find it at thefoiabakery.com. FOIA spelled F-O-I-A. Oh, I said dot com, didn't I? It's thefoiabakery.org.

• 2:42:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:42:46Justin Roczniak?

  Gives us some gravitas.

• 2:42:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, we are, uh, we have filed, uh, I don't know the number off the top of my head. It's like over fourteen hundred FOIA's in the past four years, I think, and like one, like thirty lawsuits against the city. Uh, so.

• 2:43:04Justin Roczniak?

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:43:04Speaker 03

  Uh, it's a lot of fun. And, uh, if you want to get involved, or if you want to check out any of the work we're doing, please drop by the website or find us other places. I don't know. Google it. You'll probably find us.

• 2:43:20Speaker 02

  I have, I have two quick things.

• 2:43:23Speaker 02

  One, the Washington, uh, State Rail Plan is open for public comment. And, uh, they dropped a bunch of their initiatives to give the Sounder, which is again the name of our local commuter rail, dedicated trackage here, um, which is the only hope we really have of having any kind of like. Sustainable intercity connection for the area because BNSF runs 90% of the trackage. It's totally attainable. I think that we should ask them for it. There is an urbanist story that I will also provide a link to that kind of goes into the full throat of defense of this plan, but like it's very easy to ask for it's open till April 24th. If you live in Washington and would like, you know, regional rail to be more than just

• 2:44:07Speaker 02

  kind of like a twice daily commuter thing, you should definitely consider leaving a comment. The other thing is listen to Tran Girlismo. If you are into cars.

• 2:44:16Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, it's good podcast. I've been listening.

• 2:44:19Liam McAnderson?

  Listen to it.

• 2:44:19Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:44:20Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:22Liam McAnderson?

  All right.

• 2:44:22Justin Roczniak?

  You gotta listen to the very, the various podcasts. Nova's got a new podcast. It's a

• 2:44:28Liam McAnderson?

  Be Gay Self.

• 2:44:29Speaker 02

  I was, I was on that before I was on this one.

• 2:44:32Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:32Speaker 02

  It's an episode about Nancy Drew we did. I critiqued the fact they didn't give her a sexy Mustang.

• 2:44:39Liam McAnderson?

  Fair enough.

• 2:44:40Justin Roczniak?

  You know what else? Folks, it is Playpro, which means it's time to plug an Australian podcast, Bunta Vista. Go listen to that if you're interested in Bunta Vista. I was on there once. It's a good podcast. Okay.

• 2:44:57Liam McAnderson?

  All right. Good night, everybody.

• 2:44:59Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Good night, everyone.

• 2:45:00Speaker 02

  Good night.

• 2:45:04Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 2:45:07Justin Roczniak?

  Devin's not gonna like this one.