Railroads, railroading and model railroading is one of my major hobbies (quickly being [almost] being replace by Geocaching). I have always been interested in trains and railroading from my youngest days. I’ve built models, taken photographs and driven thousands of miles chasing one of my heart's fondest desires (next to Shrry of course). Ask her or Buckley Boy how many hours, miles and trips across the country they’ve taken putting up with my mild obsession. LOL
As for Geocaching, while completely understandable, the prohibition of hiding caches near railroad property leaves many many hiding spots vacant. So I’m going to bring my old hobby into conjunction with my new hobby. I am going to start a series of railroad caches that deal with railroads in some fashion. I hope to impart a few tidbits of railroad history and folk lore in to the hides. I will also place these caches near existing and former rail lines. These placements will strictly conform to the rules and regulations according to Geocaching’s guidelines (Visit Link) , Federal laws (concerning trespassing - homeland security) (Visit Link) and existing railroad property rights (Visit Link). Don’t want anyone getting into trouble - on my account!.
The History
Railroads at times, are quick to adopt changes, especially if it saves or makes them money. Unfortunately, some changes come about after major disasters. One of the recent in memory is the horrific collision of a commuter train in Los Angles September 13, 2008.. One of the major improvements to come out of that incident is what is called Positive Train Control, This is where one train senses another via digital communications and if necessary slows or stops the train if the engineer is unable to do so.
Now for the fun part.
You are going to find the cache via a form of analog and digital communications. The images below are railroad signaling devices, of many shapes and sizes. Your task is to go from an analog message to a digital message. The hide is along an abandon part of the Northern Pacific's Prairie Line.
Guidelines:
Images may have one-two-three or more lit signals - If so - only count as one unit.
There may be repeats of images. This only means….I ran out of images to use – no hidden meaning.
Ignore yellow-amber or white or dark (non illuminated) signals. All we are interested in is green and red.
==================================================================================
The nearby bridge is open but there is no easy access to the trail head.
For this cache you do not have to access the walking/biking trail or bridge deck.
but you can still check it out from the SR 165. .
==================================================================================
Cache is NOT at the Coordinates listed.
Parking near by but not at the hide location.
Small and magnetic -BYOP
Check your numbers.
Congratulations on FTF
No Collusion or Nepotism!
I made him work the puzzle :-) after the pubublication.
GeoCaching . . . now a reason to go down that road!!
|
Geocache hiders sometime go through a great deal of planning to place their caches. Often the only feedback on whether a finder liked or disliked any aspect of the cache is the log. Single word, acronym, or emoticon logs may be easy when you have a lot of caches to log in finding the cache and is understandable....I do it myself sometimes.
The more feed back you provide the more likely hiders will strive to provide quality caches. Please keep this in mind when entering your log. I certainly enjoy reading your comments and is a positive reinforcement to provide different kinds of hides Thanks for your ear.
|