Charlie,
That's true. However, one year I saw some guys in the Silver Plume yard messing around putting something in the ground near the tracks. I went to talk with them and they said they had been commissioned to do a study of the vibration and noise effects of the railroad. In
November. I figured the results should be very favorable for the us since nothing would be operating for 7 months.
Another year we had a guy who wanted to use a fancy meter to do a stack gas analysis on one of the steam engines. I commented to him that I didn't think it would be a very good idea, but of course he went ahead and mounted a probe on the stack sticking into the exhaust. We made a couple of trips with him fiddling with his instruments when suddenly he stopped getting data. He went to check the probe and the smoke, steam and sand had obliterated it. There was nothing but a little stub of what had been the probe left. The guy turned green and started exclaiming about how much this instrument cost, what was his boss going to do, etc. I did
try to tell him.
Phil