Eastern Railroad Discussion > Line between eastern and western forums?

Being faily new. I thought Michigan would be in the western forum. The news section today addressed a derailment in Farwell, MI. As of last check 70 people looked at my western post and no reply. Is there some dividing line or list of states indicating eastern or western forums?

I think at one time it was the Mississippi River, but I'm not sure if that's still the case.

I think to save some confusion maybe we could ask the good people at TO to set-up a Midwest railroad discussion page.

As I just posted on the western board, I always view the CN (former IC line) from Chicago to New Orleans as the dividing line. There will always be grey areas, but I think Michigan, at least the lower peninsula, clearly falls in the east. If you are in a grey area, if it is NS or CSX, I would go east, if BNSF, UP, or KCS, I would go west.

The derailment was on a short line named Tuscola & Saginaw and supposedly was intentional. I'm just surprised neither eastern or western forums have posted about this. There was supposedly waste materials from a nuclear power plant in the consist in Farwell, MI.

Lower Michigan has always qualified as 'East' here, and usually the Upper Peninsula does, too. A lot of people use the IC main as the dividing line, except that CSX and NS operations to St. Louis and Kansas City sometimes fall into the 'East' because they're 'Eastern' railroads.

There have been suggestions about creating a 'Midwest' board before, but I can see where there'd be problems with that, too. Where would you draw the eastern boundary of the 'Midwest'? Cleveland? Pittsburgh/Buffalo? Where would Kentucky fall? Or Mississippi? The western boundary might be easier to draw at El Paso, Belen, and Denver, but would the Powder River Basin be 'Midwest' or 'West'?

<CSX and NS operations to St. Louis and Kansas City sometimes fall into the 'East' because they're 'Eastern' railroads.>

And likewise, BNSF operations to Birmingham sometimes falls to the west.

<There have been suggestions about creating a 'Midwest' board before, but I can see where there'd be problems with that, too.>

The big issue I would see with this is that many issues that are discussed relate to whole railroads, for example when discussing CSX policies toward Ebay sales, or BNSF issuance of security cards to rail fans. Having a separate midwest board would confuse things.

LOL thats the problem with living in the midwest, both coast just think of us as a flyover.........

Wisconsin, my second favorite state, is even more of a border state than Michigan even. Very confusing when I post....will be back there this August...

toledopatch Wrote:
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> Where would
> you draw the eastern boundary of the 'Midwest'?
> Cleveland? Pittsburgh/Buffalo? Where would
> Kentucky fall? Or Mississippi? The western
> boundary might be easier to draw at El Paso,
> Belen, and Denver, but would the Powder River
> Basin be 'Midwest' or 'West'?

Very simple, how about the central time zone!! You don't neen to be a rocket scientist to figure that out! The u p of Mich. falls into the central time zone but not the larger part of Mich.

cbqfan1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> toledopatch Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Where would
> > you draw the eastern boundary of the 'Midwest'?
> > Cleveland? Pittsburgh/Buffalo? Where would
> > Kentucky fall? Or Mississippi? The western
> > boundary might be easier to draw at El Paso,
> > Belen, and Denver, but would the Powder River
> > Basin be 'Midwest' or 'West'?
>
> Very simple, how about the central time zone!! You
> don't neen to be a rocket scientist to figure
> that out! The u p of Mich. falls into the central
> time zone but not the larger part of Mich.

Sorry that fails too. Indiana and Nebraska (which I would argue is where the west really begins) are both split by the time lines....way too complicated.....

Actually , we need a Twilight Zone board, Ed

Does it matter? Is someone planning a Civil War?

East is east and west is west, the train shall never meet, lernt that in hi school.

Frivolity all.

Gonut

NH2006 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> cbqfan1 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> > Very simple, how about the central time zone!!
> You
> > don't neen to be a rocket scientist to figure
> > that out! The u p of Mich. falls into the
> central
> > time zone but not the larger part of Mich.
>
> Sorry that fails too. Indiana and Nebraska (which
> I would argue is where the west really begins) are
> both split by the time lines....way too
> complicated.....

And even the Upper Peninsula is split -- the ET/CT line drops down from somewhere west of Marquette through to a point between Escanaba and Powers.

Very soon, most of Indiana will be in the Central zone, and all of Alabama and Mississippi already are. I'd have a hard time considering those 'West'.

My sense of it is to draw a ragged line from Chicago to St. Louis, then continue down the Big Muddy the rest of the way, with some blurring for the CSX, BNSF and NS routes that cross over (and the KCS "Transcon" too, for that matter). That at least puts Wisconsin clearly 'West' since, for railroad purposes, it's west of Chicago, which is a traditional dividing point. In Canada, I'd draw the line at Thunder Bay.

Although it may appear the boards are geographically divided, they are not. Our intention is to have the CSX and NS with short lines and regionals in between on the eastern forum, and BNSF, UP with short lines and regionals in between on the western forum.

Todd Clark
Canyon Country, CA
Trainorders.com

webmaster Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Although it may appear the boards are
> geographically divided, they are not. Our
> intention is to have the CSX and NS with short
> lines and regionals in between on the eastern
> forum, and BNSF, UP with short lines and regionals
> in between on the western forum.

Noted, though that leaves open where the dividing point is for operations like the KCS and CN-IC that straddle the NS/CSX and BNSF/UP spheres of influence.

It would seem to make the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to be 'west' since the former WC only touched the Eastern Class I's in Chicago while it also connected with the UP and BNSF in Minneapolis and Duluth.

For me, the exact division point between east and west is academic, because I routinely visit both the Eastern and Western boards. But apparently there are some TO viewers who rarely cross that line.

toledopatch Wrote:
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> Very soon, most of Indiana will be in the Central
> zone.
Where did that come from? Indiana finally got in step with the rest of the country this year and all of the state is now on daylight time. There are a few counties in the northwest and a few in the southwest that are on Central time, but the rest of the state is on Eastern time and my feeling is that it will stay that way. In the latest shakeup with daylight time, some of the counties that requested moving to the Central time zone are now changing their minds and want to go back to Eastern time.

Kim in Indianapolis

KimHeusel Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> toledopatch Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Very soon, most of Indiana will be in the
> Central
> > zone.
> Where did that come from? Indiana finally got in
> step with the rest of the country this year and
> all of the state is now on daylight time. There
> are a few counties in the northwest and a few in
> the southwest that are on Central time, but the
> rest of the state is on Eastern time and my
> feeling is that it will stay that way. In the
> latest shakeup with daylight time, some of the
> counties that requested moving to the Central time
> zone are now changing their minds and want to go
> back to Eastern time.

Maybe I misunderstood the coverage. I was under the impression that with the adoption of Daylight Time, most of the state except for the counties near Cincinnati and Louisville was going to join the Central zone.

If they aren't, they should. It's silly enough that on the longest day of the year in northwest Ohio, sunrise is after 6 a.m. and sunset is close to 9:15 p.m. It would make far more sense for Indy to be on the same clock with Chicago than with New York and Washington.

toledopatch Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Maybe I misunderstood the coverage. I was under
> the impression that with the adoption of Daylight
> Time, most of the state except for the counties
> near Cincinnati and Louisville was going to join
> the Central zone.
>
> If they aren't, they should. It's silly enough
> that on the longest day of the year in northwest
> Ohio, sunrise is after 6 a.m. and sunset is close
> to 9:15 p.m. It would make far more sense for Indy
> to be on the same clock with Chicago than with New
> York and Washington.
Well, you're not the only one who feels that way. although I think now that we have daylight time and are on Eastern time, a lot of people like it. The whole things is kind of a long story. There was talk when we looked at moving to Daylight time that the state would also move to Central time, but there were many opposed to that prospect. We also found out that while the legislature can decide whether the state observes Daylight time, it cannot decide what time zone we are in. That falls to the Department of Transportation. And it is up to each individual county to petition the DOT if it wants to change time zones. Some counties did petition to change. SOme were approved and some denied, but like I said earlier, some of the counties that were allowed to switch now want to switch back to Eastern time. There is story in today's Indianapolis Star about the effects of the change. It's funny, but drive-in theater owners, who were adamantly opposed to the change, now admit that their attendance has actually increased. Go figure. Guess I'm a little off-topic here, so to get back on, I'll just say that I have always considered Chicago the beginning of the western region, although where the east-west line falls outside of that point is highly debatable. Since I read the passenger, east, and west boards pretty regularly, I don't miss that much.

Here's the link to the Star story in case anyone is interested.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060621/NEWS02/606210433/1006/NEWS01

Kim

cbqfan1 Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------
>
> Very simple, how about the central time zone!! You
> don't neen to be a rocket scientist to figure
> that out! The u p of Mich. falls into the central
> time zone but not the larger part of Mich.


No rocket science involved, unless you live in Indiana.

If one line(east/west)is too complicated for whatever reason, then how is adding a second line going to clarify anything???