Milwaukee Road Historian Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I was part of an engineering team that examined
> whether Homestake Pass or Pipestone Pass was the
> most profitable crossing of the Rockies. One day
> I was sitting in my office - which has a view of
> an engineering consulting firm - when the
> President (of the United States) or Secretary of
> State - I don't remember which - called to ask my
> opinion on the Iran hostage crisis, when suddenly
> the phone rang.
>
> It was the president of the Burlington Northern.
>
>
> He was angry that I did not take his call, but
> later understood, given the global significance of
> my position when I explained it to him. We
> laughed about it later over drinks while flying on
> a charterted Concord from Harlowton to Butte,
> where I was to deliver a talk to the MRHA.
>
> In any case, to the point. My quantum mechanical,
> econometrical analysis of Homestake Pass line
> revealed a startling conclusion - confirmed by
> experiments on Berkeley's synchrotron laboratory -
> that the Pipestone Pass grade was the most
> profitable piece of railroad in that part of the
> United States. Well, it would have be been so, if
> not for one thing.
>
> Porpoising grain cars.
>
> In a definitive study performed in the prestigious
> University of California laboratory on railway
> car-track dynamics - performed on university time
> and hence funded by the generous citizens of
> California - it was determined that Pullman
> Standard grain hoppers jumped the tracks - indeed
> porpoised - at 24 mph, due to constructive
> interferences, Gaussian probabilities and various
> proprietary formulae, all of which can be learned
> by a public records search from UC Berkeley, which
> I have done and which you should do. Thank you
> undergraduates, for your generous tuition payments
> which funded this research (and my hobby).
>
> But where was I?
>
> Ah yes, I was telling you about me. By my
> estimates, I have knowledge equivalent to 17
> university degrees. I am virtually my own
> university. I have 53 linear feet of books in my
> basement. I am a virtual master of the universe
> and have thought about becoming a railroad
> president. I have a public library card. I am a
> trained killer and I am virtually God's gift to
> history and the railroad industry.
>
> Best Regards,
> Milwaukee Road Historian


I never thought I'd see a bigger blowhard than BOB2