Monday Musing

And those huge engines are something else, and now about those streamlined versions of the art deco era?

No doubt about it, that's a mighty fine looking locomotive and I can tell you a little about it.  I happened to see a picture of that beauty while I was digging around for steam engines in general, and that is a Class J locomotive first built by the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1941.  There were only 14 built, the last one in 1950 and most were scrapped.  There is one engine that was still running as recently as 2016, the No. 611.  The latest versions of the Class J were considered by many to be the most powerful passenger locomotives ever built, easily pulling a train in excess of 100 mph.  YouTube has hours of the 611 rolling through the countryside and it's a stunning piece of machinery, well worth viewing.

-----

I'm glad that Mr. Beagles was able to sort out his furnace problems and won't be freezing this winter.  It surprised me to read that, according to Google, gas furnaces have a life expectancy of only twenty years; seems kind of short to me.  The cast iron boiler in my parent's basement must have been fifty years old when it was finally replaced with the smaller gas unit, freeing up a lot of floor space.

-----

Nice shout out to Chuck Berry with the song lyrics, Uncle Ken.  I barely remember the song, and the word "coolerator" threw me; I thought it was a slang term for refrigerator.  And the Old Dog is wrong again.  Coolerator was the name of an appliance manufacturer based in Duluth, Minnesota.  There is some sales literature online and it's amazing how much inflation has occurred in our lifetimes.  In 1950, Coolerator advertised a 15 cubic foot chest freezer for $459.50.  According to the inflation calculator site that I use (https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/) that converts to $4,962.60 in 2020 dollars.  Today, you can buy a 14.8 cubic foot Frigidaire chest freezer for $599.00; that's only $55.46 in 1950 dollars.  What a world we live in.

-----

Speaking of inflation, Mr. Beagles may be sitting on a good investment with his new pickup truck.  The market for used pickups is going nuts; one guy flew nearly 1600 miles to buy a 2017 Silverado 1500, the basic 2 door model.  That's a long way to go for a used truck, I think.

-----

I'll be glad when this election is over, the text messages I'm getting are driving me crazy.  Besides the messages pushing Trump and Biden, I'm getting them for poll watching, ballot initiatives, and MoveOn.org.  I keep blocking them and they keep coming.  Sometimes technology sucks.