It always takes me a couple days to
get myself back into my routine when I get back from a trip, so show trips like
WESTPEX at the end of a month wreck double havoc with meeting first of the
month deadlines. Hence, I am again tardy getting this printed and mailed out. I
did find a few good things at WESTPEX to include in the lists so I hope they are
worth the wait.
NEW ISSUES: "I have become increasingly disgusted with all the trash that
is being issued to separate train collectors from their hard earned dollars.
And not just by Third World Countries or "ill-legals" - Japan, among others,
has turned out a bunch too. Consequently, I am herewith canceling my New Issue
Service. I will no longer send new issues on approval. Doing so the past year
or more has made me feel like a pimp - I felt unclean every time I put a
shipment together for one of my loyal regular customers, particularly since I
knew they would probably keep everything I sent even if they didn't
particularly care for a few of them. But things have gotten so bad that I can
no longer send out approval selections in good conscience. I make this decision
reluctantly but feel it is in the best long term interests of my clients, my
business and our hobby. As one good long-time customer said to me over a year
ago, "I signed up to collect train STAMPS, not souvenir sheets and all this
other stuff that is being issued." I whole heartedly agree! By the same token,
I fully recognize that some of the obsessive compulsives such as myself really
DO want to see EVERYTHING that is train related. Therefore, I will continue to
order a nominal number of all train-related new issues from my various sources
and continue to list them in the ARRIVAL TRACK each month (or two) and also
include them on my web page with photos as at present. The difference will be
that you, the collector, will now have to specifically order an item, it won't
be sent automatically. And my stock of what I consider the abusive, unnecessary
or distasteful issues will be extremely limited. Therefore, you may wish to
find another source for new issues." This is the gist of the letter sent out to
all my former new issue customers with the last mailing. I have struggled with
this issue for the past year or more as many of you know. Maybe if all dealers
and collectors start limiting their purchases of this trash the flood will
stop. We have to start somewhere. As always your comments and suggestions are
solicited. There is no "ARRIVAL TRACK" new issue listing this month.
U.S. PAN-AMERICAN
INVERT SHEET: Speaking of abusive, unnecessary or distasteful issues, my regular post
office won't handle the new Pan-American Invert Sheet because it is
"Philatelic" so I made a special trip to the only area post office with a
philatelic window to buy 50, intending to use them on outgoing orders. Not only
are the three inverts (face value 7¢) not well done, but the sheet
includes four 80¢ stamps of identical unappealing design (abusive and
unnecessary!) and is over-sized so you need a Priority Mail or 9X12 envelope to
use it (and still have room for an address)! You have to pay $3.27 to get the 2¢ train stamp and can't really use
the sheet on ordinary mail. What rate does an 80¢ stamp pay? Tell me the USPS
isn't taking advantage of stamp collectors! Actually the 4¢ stamp shows a Baltimore & Ohio
RR automobile so it fits in some railway collections. That brings us up to 6¢
out of $3.27. Because of the "diamond" design of the 80¢ stamps you need
scissors to cut them from the sheet since the perforations don't reach the
sheet borders. Abusive, unnecessary, distasteful and impossible to use easily -
in other words, a total rip-off!
MAYBE THE PROBLEM IS ME?: I did a lot of soul searching between the Anaheim and
Denver train shows and concluded that the problem with shows may be me, not the
shows. For one thing, my displays have been picked over and aren't up-to-date.
They lack the pizzazz they had when I first created them a few years back. They
definitely need to be reworked. Also, my stock cases and boxes have
deteriorated over the years, getting dilapidated from all the loadings and
unloadings - they don't present the fresh, professional appearance they should.
Who wants to do business with someone whose booth looks like a junk heap? And
most importantly, my attitude! I found myself several times in Anaheim and
Denver just wishing for the show to get over - I didn't want to face another
lookylou. I've lost that drive and passion that made me eager to greet each
person walking by, trying to find something to match their interests and needs.
This latter may be the most difficult to overcome but I'm working on that too!
Successful shows in Ogden and San Francisco's Cow Palace and WESTPEX don't
mitigate or obviate the need for the above changes so I am planning to work
hard on them before my next show in July. Wish me luck. I must admit the mail
order business is much easier and less stressful.
JAPAN RAILWAY EXPRESS
STAMPS: Dr. Anthony Goodbody of Great Britain sent the
following email concerning last month's "STAMP OF THE MONTH" which I thought
were railway but didn't have verification:
With regard to your 'Stamp of the
Month' I can perhaps shed a very little light. The stamps are indeed catalogued in a Japanese
catalogue but I only have a poor photocopy of the relevant page. This I send as
a file attachment but it is not very legible. I am sorry I cannot tell you the
name of the catalogue. You
will see that there are other railway stamps besides the one you show. I
suspect the others are scarcer. The stamps fall under the general heading 'MINISTRY OF RAILWAY' (which
title has not come out on the photocopy) and the particular heading 'Express
Co. Stamps.' Hence the
description 'Railway Express Stamps' is correct. The values are half sen grey; 1 sen brick red; 2 sen
green; 3 sen blue; 5 sen orange; 10 sen purple; 50 sen red; 100 sen blue; 500
sen bistre; 1000 sen yellow. The date in the catalogue is 1889, slightly
earlier than you had supposed. There is a remark in the catalogue that the
stamps are very rare unused. I have seven of the values (all used).
The catalogue numbers are 10 1, 10 2
..... 10 10. There are also four colour proofs in grey numbered 10 11 to 10 14,
and an error of colour 1 sen sepia numbered 10 15. I suspect that the page from the catalogue and the
stamps themselves came from a dealer in Japanese material called (and here I
quote from memory from many years ago) Frank Allard, The Nippon Nook, Carmel by
the Sea, California. (Ed: Now dba Nippon Philatelics, I've contacted him for
more info)
The catalog photocopy
(pages 48 & 49 from ???) was indeed hard to read so I won't try to
reproduce it, but it also pictured (and listed) "Special railway stamps for
newspapers and magazines" issues for the "Railway Department", "Railway
Operations Department", "Imperial Railway Agency" and "Railway Bureau" (five
series of six each); "Ordingly(Ordinary?) Railway Stamps" for the "Imperial
Railway Agency" and "Railway Bureau" (four, possibly five each); "Ordingly(?)
Railway Stamps for Korea only" (set of four) as well as the "Express Co.
Stamps". So I've asked one question which now leads to many more. A whole new
avenue of research and exploration to pursue since I haven't seen ANY of these
other series, none of which picture trains. Thanks, Tony! (Since I had eight
different, I've sent Tony the one he didn't have).
PROGRESS!: I'm "Pleased as Punch", "Proud as a Peacock", "Pumped as a
Potentate"... about my Progress on the PC - still not Perfect, but showing
Plentiful Potential and Powerful Possibilities (How's that for alliteration?).
Not only did I create all the pages for the April mailing on the PC, I also
scanned all the photos and actually uploaded the New Issues, Monthly Specials
and J List to my web page unassisted on April 11. Of course I had great
instructions. My web guru, Larry Piekenbrock (dba LJP - Stamps and Minerals,
aka collectors-mall.com), came up to my house April 10 from Canon City and
demonstrated how to convert my Newsletter, Mail Bid Sale #3 and I List from the
Microsoft Access and Word files I now create them in into the html (hyper text
markup language) used by web pages. He also provided me all the computer files
he has created over the years while developing my pages - those files are
invaluable! Based on his hands-on demonstrations plus excellent instructions
and software, I had little difficulty getting all the photos and remaining
pages uploaded the next day. We'll see how this May mailing works out since I
try to get the hard copy ready before I do the web pages. I'm still not
self-sufficient but I'm getting there fast. Thanks Larry! Thanks also to all of
you who wrote commenting so favorably on the new formats. And thanks to Whitney
McMahon who emailed me a source to download the Helvetica font (which I
obviously haven't done yet!). Also, thanks to Don Kessler and Gardner Wills for
some suggestions about working with Microsoft Access! My progress is slow but
steady.
MICROSOFT BIGDAY WORKSHOP: When I noticed that Microsoft was having a FREE small
business seminar in Pueblo, CO (about 50 miles from home) on April 17 I signed
up. While most of the discussions didn't really apply to me it wasn't a total
waste of time. Since they didn't spend as much time on the Access database (my
primary interest) as the brochure implied, I was somewhat disappointed. The
presenter started the Access discussion by saying "Access is probably the most
difficult module in the Office Suite to work with and few people understand it,
including me. To use Access, you really need THREE databases: the one you work
on, a back-up, and a back-up for your back-up."(Now they tell me!) He went on
to say "And believe me you'll need all three. You are guaranteed to wipe out at
least one or two of them at some point." (How well I know, so I immediately
made a couple more backup files when I got home!). They were really promoting
the new Office XP due out the end of May (now delayed until fall) but indicated
it doesn't have a lot of new features. Since most customers only use 20% of the
existing features and over 90% of the suggestions received for new features are
for functions already in the software that the customers aren't aware of, the major
new feature in XP is "Smart Tags" which inform you of all the other neat things
you can do with the particular data you are working on (a greatly expanded HELP
function?). Sounds like I'll just stick with the software I have and not jump
into an expensive, marginally improved upgrade. I don't have to be the first
kid on my block with the trendy new toy. They did talk about some software that
may be a solution for one of my problems however. When doing shows I like to
send postcards to all the clients on my mailing list living within about 150
miles of the show site. But Zip Code directories don't provide that kind of
information. When you do a show in Chicago, for example, you don't want to mail
just to northern Illinois but you also don't want to mail to all of Indiana,
Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin. MapPoint 2001, "The Microsoft Office Mapping and
Analysis Program"(r), will supposedly let me use my customer list database to
draw a circle of any radius around any location and pull out the records
contained in the circle to make mailing lists, etc. It also locates
restaurants, churches, etc. and prints out directions. Sounds like it might be
useful. They gave out 60 day trial disks so I'll let you know how well it works
for my purposes. It also turned out to be a good train day! First, the small
Colorado Springs yard was clogged with a couple trains waiting for a large crew
of about 20 machines replacing ties on the main line along I-25. Then, I met a
NB "ROCK & RAIL" gravel train (the first I've seen!) coming from a pit west
of the Royal Gorge on the old Denver & Rio Grande with 20 loads heading for
Denver. Then I caught up with a SB BNSF manifest and passed a UP coal train
waiting to go east as I turned off into downtown Pueblo. Since I haven't spent
any time in Pueblo that I can remember, I took some time after the seminar to
check out the BNSF yard, old depot and the growing collection of equipment in
the Pueblo Railroad Museum. They had a lot more cars and locomotives on display
than I expected, but nothing particularly unique. The thing that surprised me
most was that there were considerably more locomotives at the UP service
facilities south of the depot than at the BNSF yard facilities to the north. On
the way home I met the empty SB "ROCK & RAIL" train in almost the same
location as 6 hours earlier. They obviously don't use a wye because the
trailing loco NB was now leading the three unit consist and the cars were also
still in the same North - South order. Also caught up with an empty NB coal
train as I got to Colorado Springs. A good day on all accounts!
APRIL TRAVEL: My buying trip to Denver for the WESTPHILIA show didn't add
much of interest to my inventory aside from picking up the nine boxes of
magazines I didn't have room for in March, but the train watching was good. I
wasn't in a hurry, so I took the back road through Palmer Lake and was rewarded
with a NB coal empty just south of Monument, a SB manifest waiting at Palmer
Lake and a LORAM rail-grinding train sitting on the siding there - yellow with
red trim power car, dirty gray-brown seven unit articulated grinding system,
two large tank cars and a yellow bay window caboose (the third different
grinding train I've seen recently). Both the BNSF and UP yards in Denver were
clogged coming and going, but I didn't see anything unusual. There were three
coal trains waiting to go south on the return trip. I passed a NB coal empty at
Castle Rock and decided to take the back road again to get a better look at the
rail-grinding train. I met it at Larkspur coming north on the southbound track.
I didn't see any sparks but the first part of the grinding units was spraying
water on the tracks and there was smoke and dust around the rest of the units
as it worked its way slowly toward Denver. There were three workers standing on
the rear platform of the caboose, checking the rails I presume (or just taking
a break?). That explained why the coal trains were stacked up in Denver. Passed
a NB pair of helper locos at Greenland and finally caught up with the SB coal train
they had pushed over the Palmer Divide at the North Gate of the Air Force
Academy, 15 miles later.
My WESTPEX
trip started slowly with no trains until I reached Denver. There I saw the
LORAM rail grinding train turned, waiting to go south along with a couple coal
trains plus the BNSF yard was full as I drove by. Further north I saw a lonely
Great Western geep heading west toward Loveland on one of the three seldom used
spurs which once served the now defunct sugar beet farms. It had the same
red-orange and black paint scheme as the one I've seen working the Budweiser
Brewery north of Fort Collins. Near the Owl Canyon power plant, I passed a NB
BNSF manifest waiting for the SB manifest I encountered a few miles up the
road. There were five trains (2 manifests, autorack, stackpack and grain)
waiting to get through Cheyenne EB as I made the turn from I-25 to I-80, then
nothing until Laramie. The drive from Laramie to Green River yielded the usual
complement of trains but nothing particularly noteworthy. There wasn't much
happening in the Green River yard aside from the usual yard goat working a
string of trona cars. It was a lot warmer than on my previous visit so the shop
doors were open. That enabled me to watch the replacement of a coupler on a
covered hopper car from my walkway vantage point as well as the passing parade
of trains. None of the nine locomotives near the refueling area when I left at
9:30 PM were there when I returned at 7:30 AM Wednesday morning - there were
six different locos ready for duty but not much else happening. And none of the
locos in Green River had the www.uprr.com
under the windows, as did almost all of the locos I saw in Roseville, CA on my
last trip! (Maybe it's a California thing?) Since I wasn't on a tight schedule,
I took the Westvaco Road to the Solvay Potash Plant to see if I could get a
close look at their locos. I saw them, but only from a distance of about a mile
or so - I couldn't figure out a legal way to get closer so I couldn't discern
their make or markings as I had hoped. As I approached Evanston, WY about 9:30
AM, I heard the UP dispatcher tell someone "I have a passenger special coming
thru Ogden and I don't dare let anything get in his way". No information on
time, direction, etc. so imagine my excitement about a half hour later as I was
descending a long grade toward the I-80 - I-86 split at Echo, UT, to see a
streak of Armour yellow coming around the curve toward me! I quickly pulled
over to the side so I could get a good view as the train climbed past me - E9A
#949, E9B #963, E9A #951, baggage car #208, "Portola", "Indian River", "Green
River", dome car "Walter Dean", another car and observation car, both of whose
names I missed. It was a beautiful site, gleaming in the bright sunshine as it
raced effortlessly up the grade, not even a wisp of diesel exhaust. Maybe the
most beautiful train I've ever seen - a throwback to the great passenger trains
of the 40's and 50's! I was so awestruck by the experience that I hardly noticed
the three or four freight trains I passed between there and Ogden. After a
Carl's Jr.'s lunch break watching the over-head crane load concrete ties on
flat cars in the tie yard on the southwest leg of the Ogden wye plus a couple
local movements, I headed west. There were two EB manifests waiting to get into
Salt Lake City and a stackpack at Magna waiting to head for LA plus a work
train with a front-end loader mounted on a gondola car setting out packs of a
dozen wood ties along the old Western Pacific line on the south side of the
Great Salt Lake, then nothing until just east of Wells, NV where I met a
manifest climbing EB on the former Southern Pacific line. There were a couple
trains in the Elko yard but not much moving on the mains. I noticed that they
now have a trackmobile at the Conoco Specialty Mining Lubricants bulk storage
facility built a year or so ago near Dunphy,NV but no tank cars to move on the
siding.
As I was leaving Reno Thursday morning and passed an EB manifest
near downtown, I heard the dispatcher ask an engineer how long his train was.
When the reply came back as "6828 feet", the dispatcher said, "You are too long
for the sidings at Patrick or Clark (ED: east of Sparks/Reno) and I have an
AMTRAK coming. We'll probably have to do a saw-by." (That's an operation where
the long train pulls into the siding as far as it can but leaves the rear of
its train hanging out on the mainline. The shorter train stops on the mainline
between the siding switches while the long train pulls onto the main behind the
short train, pulling through the siding and clearing the mainline in front of
the shorter train.) I assume it worked since I didn't hear of any AMTRAK
accidents. Again, not being in a hurry, I followed 4th Ave. out of
Reno instead of I-80 but didn't see any trains, just tracks. Finally met an EB
autorack at Emigrant Gap on my descent toward Sacramento and a manifest waiting
to go east as I turned off in Roseville for my yard visit. A SB manifest from
Washington state (lots of lumber cars) rolled by as I checked out the loco
repair shop where only half the stalls seemed to be occupied, not nearly as
busy as it usually is. I saw the white bay window caboose on the end of a
string of cars in the east yard as I drove by, but not much was moving. When I
got to my vantage point at Antelope, there wasn't even a hump train so I had a
clear view when AMTRAK #6, the EB CALIFORNIA ZEPHYR, rolled slowly by on
time just after noon - two Genesis locos, a baggage car, eight Superliners and
three express boxcars. It no sooner cleared and a 100 car hump train did pull
west, blocking my view for the next two hours as it slowly backed the long
string of cars over the hump about a mile east of my vantage point. I did see a
couple WB manifests and some locomotive movements before I drove off to San
Francisco. One of the WB had a clean Denver & Rio Grande GP-35 and a clean
Cotton Belt GP-35 on the point in contrast to the former Southern Pacific
locos, all of which seem to be badly in need of a paint job, some are even covered
with graffiti! Many now sport an Armour yellow patch under the windows with new
numbers and the www.uprr.com url but the same old derelict paint jobs.
The set-up
for WESTPEX went smoothly, but I wasn't able to stay in the show hotel. When I
sent in my reservation card over a month before the show I was told the hotel
was full and they couldn't honor the show rate. After having a friend get me
info on some other local hotels, all of whose prices were even higher, I made
reservations ten miles south where I stayed for the Cow Palace show. The show
hotel did have a room for Thursday night @ $139.00 plus taxes and $17.00
parking, but they couldn't assure me of a room for Friday and Saturday, so I
stuck with my original plan and drove south after I got set up. That
arrangement worked out fine. Not only did I get a room for about $70.00 a night
including taxes & only $8.00 a day show parking, but I got to see four
Caltrains commuter trains while eating breakfast Friday morning. ( Actually,
probably only two - one with four cars, one with five going north and south on
a 20 minute push-pull schedule.) The traffic into and out of the city wasn't a
problem either so I'll probably make the same arrangements if I do the show
again. And I would like to since I had a good show, visiting with several mail
order customers and buying several items for the enclosed lists. Sales were 50%
better than last year thanks to my loyal customers, some of whom spent parts of
all three days with me! Bill Senkus and two of his "Alphabetilately" team (See
his web site "Alphabetilately , from A is for Advertising Cover thru Z is for
Zeppelin Post" <http://home.att.net/~wsenkus>) took me to dinner at a
good Chinese restaurant not in Chinatown and then on a grand city tour from Twin
Peaks, through Golden Gate Park and Lincoln Park to the Palace of the Legion of
Honor where we had our cookies and ice cream dessert in the parking lot, then
on thru the Presidio and under the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge, thru
the Macarthur Tunnel and back to the show hotel, pointing out all the sites and
historical spots along the way. It was a great scenic tour, that only Bay Area
natives can provide - Thanks for a memorable Saturday night! Dean Schneebeck
and his wife rode the Caltrain up from Santa Clara to see me about my new issue
letter and give me a report on their recent train travels. They had good trips
on AMTRAK over Donner Pass to Denver and back and then to Portland, OR where
they caught a special powered by a former Spokane, Portland & Seattle steam
loco. They had a fantastic trip from Portland to Spokane and back to Pasco, WA
in the dome and observation cars with a great photo run-by along the way, but
one of the cars jumped the track backing through the wye in Pasco, so the trip
ended abruptly. Thankfully, no one was injured but the car couldn't be used
again until undergoing a series of FRA inspections, even though it remained
upright and was re-railed rather quickly. In spite of the six hour delay
waiting for buses to take them back to Portland, they were still effusive about
the trip! I also had plenty of time to visit with Jerry Lindelef, my friend
with the transplanted teenage heart. He seemed to be doing great and his wife
Trish was excited as she started a collection of opera topicals, especially
Wagner. A big thank you to G. C. Gomez and his wife who continue to worry about
me and my travels - they gave me a rose-scented rosary at the Cow Palace show
to help protect me in my travels. The St. Christopher medal given me by my then
fiancé, now wife Sue, some 37 years ago has protected me thus far but with
today's traffic and road rage, the additional protection is probably needed and
is much appreciated! As I look back on it, the success of WESTPEX was much more
in the social interactions than the financial or philatelic! So thanks to all
who helped make it a social success - I don't have room to mention all of your
contributions. My dealer friend, Pat Dowling, dba 20th Century
Classics, flew out so he could inspect the auction lots while I chased trains
and brought his material, but he rode back with me so the two day drive went
quickly as we discussed everything from stamp shows to quantum electrodynamics
(he also has a Ph.D. in Physics) on the 1400 mile trip home. I saw more than
the usual complement of freight trains (no AMTRAKs) on the way back including a
BNSF manifest at Roseville but the only one of note was the SB with about 20
empty side dump cars we met between SLC and Ogden. It was evidently returning
from dumping another load of rocks in the sinkhole on the Lucien cut-off. The
UP still hasn't been able to stop the former SP mainline from slowly sinking in
spite of dumping tons of rock into the area each day since last summer. There
are rumors that they are considering rebuilding the original 1869 line around
Promontory as a less costly and more permanent solution. Stay tuned!
RAIL FACTS AND FEATS:
The principle of a railway, a track that guides vehicles
traveling along it, dates back to Babylonian times, about 2245 BC. Parallel
lines of stone blocks with grooves in the centers, with a gauge of five feet
can still be found.
RAIL THOUGHT OF THE MONTH: "You're never too old to play with
trains." Or train stamps!
STAMP OF THE MONTH: Jordan #575D contains two stamps showing damaged railway
viaducts as part of a set of 30 (six strips of five) depicting "Tragedy in the
Holy Lands". They also exist surcharged with new values. They aren't expensive
(£4)
but they are scarce and difficult to find so I was thrilled to stumble across a
couple sets at WESTPEX.
The Rail Philatelist 
