My recent post about British storms and railroads and leaves on the line set Dan Antion off on a stream-of-consciousness adventure that is–in places, at least–related. And where it isn’t? It’s moving too fast for you to notice or care. You can find it here.
Notes from the U.K.
Exploring the spidery corners of a culture and the weird stuff that tourist brochures ignore.
Notes from the U.K. 
Older railmen have told me that there was no problem with leaves in the days of steam, when overhanging leaves were burnt off.
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I have to admit, that’s efficient. Maybe in this modern world we live in, someone could ride on top of the engine and taser the suckers.
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:)
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Thanks for the link. I hope you aren’t sharing any guilt by association :)
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Probably not. I’ve got enough of my own.
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The power of leaves. Who knew?
The entire transportation system in London came to a screeching halt…a few years back…when…Wait for it…ready? Set…Go…the wrong kind of snow fell. It was a great day for chaos in The City…and gallons of drink. Not all confined to the tea kind.
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There are actually different kinds of snow, all of them white and cold but some of them wetter than others. Having said that, I expect the problem was that this one fell on the wrong kind of transportation system.
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I’m not sure whether it’ll let me post a link, as a new commenter, but back in 2009 Tornado, the new build steam locomotive, was all over the news for coming to the rescue of a bunch of commuters stuck because the electric and diesel service trains couldn’t run.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8428097.stm
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Thanks for the comment and link. That doesn’t look like a lot of snow to cause all that mayhem.
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Kids used to put pennies on the railroad track to have the trains flatten them (I heard about this – we never lived near a railroad so I can’t speak from experience) and the railroads were always saying it could cause a derailment, Not a whole roll of pennies – just 1 or 2. I mean, it was long enough ago that no kid was gonna blow a bunch of pennies anywhere but on candy or comic books !)
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My brother (and I as a kind of tag-along) did that, and we’d also heard that it could derail a train. It didn’t.
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Glad you could confirm my suspicions !
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I admit, I did worry about it. I’m not sure if I worried more about derailing a train or being blamed for it. In my defense, I must’ve been about ten. Getting in trouble was a big deal.
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They used to do that in the UK as well, in fact we’ve got a number of flattened old pennies that apparently were used that way.
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I remember that we had a hard time getting the penny to stay on the line, and I can’t remember how we finally solved the problem.
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