Western Railroad Discussion > Macho Timetable cover.....

Earlier discussion on a UP timetable issued with a pink cover...SSW did it back in 1985.....

i expect SP boffins had it pulled from circulation ?







Anyone got the UP ?

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What's wrong with pink? Got a problem with it?

Pink was all the rage in album art in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with artists such as Eddie Money, the Clash and the Sex Pistols using pink extensively. No one equated them with anything, um, un-macho.

I know of some gay TO members, so you are advised to keep your homophobic "jokes" to yourself, as not all railfans or railroaders are "straight".

Frankly, a bright pink timetable cover would, I would think, be highly visible when used as a visual aid by a switchman giving the engineer signals. An excellent color, in my opinion, for such a task and I suspect that may have been the railroad's motivation for its decision.

Carl

Yes i reckon it's great for a color choice and it can be found easily if lost but i know there were a number of color timetables from SP ..red /sacramento,yellow/ oregon,blue /tuscon,green /los angeles,tan /san antonio divn's, etc......

And yes i have a friend who is a railroad switchman and is gay and he has just seen this and laughed himself out of the room


and Carl io have reworded my post in response to your response so just in case we upset anyone...!


Les.

CarlLaFong Wrote:
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>the Clash

Now, that is a very good band.

ahh The Sex Pistols speed metal punk

...would have been quite appropriate on some speedy but rickety lines back then.

Plus the SP was based in San Francisco. Don't know if the SP was still putting crews up in the YMCA by the mid-eighties. Note, there was an Indian, a cop, a construction worker, and a cowboy, but no engineer.

So lighten' up, Francis.

Diddle_E._Squat Wrote:
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> So lighten' up, Francis.

Man, I just had to go dig that movie out from the rack. I haven't seen it in ages.

Craig

Yes I have a UP "T***Y Pink Timetable". I bought it at Winterail 2 years ago for $ 15.00. Could not pass it up.

I am not too sure what a "boffin" is.

Update: I looked up "boffin" - it's a chiefly British word for scientific expert (still, I don't see how it fits in with the discussion at hand).

Hey Diddle E., you really have to get your act together. You've offended so many people by your lack of political correctness. That would have been a Native American, Law Enforcement Officer, Erection Technician, Bovine Attendant, and possibly Locomotive Operator. Although I don't think the PC enforcement brigade has quite settled on a term for the latter yet. You should be ashamed.

Some of the best things in life are pink, what makes one color so threatening to some ?
Boy oh boy, maybe you need to take a look in the mirror.


TCS - or the closet ....

The pink timetable story is an interesting one about rr mgt mentality. UP's was pink because the UP rotated cover colors as a quick way to insure you had the current tt. It was the turn for "light red", and the printer printed it that way -- until a copy landed on Vice President Jerry Davis' desk. "Pink is not a color to railroad by!", he roared (or words to that effect) and ordered all copies returned to the printer to be rebound (in white) at the printer's expense. Of course a few had been shipped out to other railroads by then.

I verified this story with J. Davis himself a few years later at a luncheon between shippers (me, then) and the railroads. When I brought up the subject, he thought I had one, and roared "if you have one, you're fired!" When he realized I was a customer, not an employee, he retorted "well, then there are two men in my office who are fired, because I told them to get all the copies back."
Macho Behaving Badly.

So I can say I was fired from the UP without actually having worked for them. A badge of honor.

fwb

FABULOUS !!!!!!!!!!!

fwbryan,
The Quote that I heard was "there ain't no way in h**l that the Union Pacific Railroad is going to have a T***Y pink timetable" Thus the popular name for this collectors edition.