#southern rail

[uomminecraftsociety]

Part 10 of shipping railway companies.

Ok, I think this one may be a long one so any relationships will be saved until next post.

GWR is enby and one of the older folk, along with LNER and Southern (about age, not gender). Like it's fellow older generation, they are not quite what they used to be.

However GWR has always been and still is the cool outsider, they were built different and they have had its own unique style which they have kept since a child.

[insidecroydon]

Southern Fail: rail commuters hit by signal and points problems

A “major signalling fault across the whole route between London and the south coast”  caused chaos for rail commuters travelling in to work this morning, and with cancellations to rail services continuing into this afternoon. Network fail: multiple systems were breaking down on the trains this morning The Gatwick Express was cancelled, with Southern announcing at lunchtime that there might be a…

[selencallisto]

BOOTHILL WANTERS WILL BE BOOTHILL HAVERS

(he's not even out yet)

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

November in northeast china: daily life of chinese college students on campus

[venusandsaturnsrings]

boothill is many things. a gunslinging outlaw, a ninety percent metal man, someone who’s attitude definitely reflects in his appearance, but most importantly; a nuisance. a thorn in your side. an ear grating bother. he knows this and he takes advantage of it, especially when your hands are tied up with plenty other business. unfortunately, things took a more literal sense.

you had been sipping a glass of something at a table in a small saloon, celebrating a coworkers birthday who you couldn’t even remember the name of but it was an excuse to get out and, besides, they said they’d pay for the first round of drinks so who were you to decline? people had been dancing in front of you and perhaps your chosen activity of observing had gotten too meticulous as you hadn’t noticed the slinking shadow drift past, nimble fingers dropping a pill of god knows what into your drink. the sweet and citrus flavour of the cocktail masking whatever taste could’ve been left as you continued drinking with your head in your hand. as you got to the bottom of the glass, your eyelids felt heavy and thus did you take the cue to get going home. after bidding a couple farewells and good wishes to the birthday person who’s face was a blur, you stepped out into the cold breeze feeling sluggish; as if you’d had ten drinks and not just one. squinting, you steadied your breath before walking, neglecting to notice that same figure sauntering up behind you. it was the smell of gunpowder and musk that alerted you, spinning around faster than you should have and nearly hitting the ground if he hadn’t caught you in time with a half-hearted chuckle. bubbles clouding your vision, you could only internally groan at the smatter of white, black, and red before you were out cold.

coming to, the first thing you noticed were the tight bindings keeping your body uncomfortably still. thick rope wrapped around your torso and wrists, forbidding you from moving even and inch. wherever he had taken you, it was dark and damp with only the sound of your breathing to keep you company up until the telltale ‘click’ of his shoes and the concurrent ‘ting’ of his spurs. a cold metal finger slid across your chin and only then did you notice how blazingly hot you felt all over. you sucked in a breath, waiting for him, boothill, to say something but he uttered no more than a low hum as his fingers drew icy patterns down your neck and chest. a shudder wracked your body and he moved in front of you, his eyes holding some sort of emotion you weren’t quite familiar with on his face; somewhere between his ‘hand it over’ greed and ‘nice shot’ dry praise. he settled between your now untied, when did he do that you wondered, legs with his metal frame pressed firm into you. never before had you considered the intricacies of his body but with him so close and a different kind of pressure against your crotch, you figured he had some sort of… attachment. fear whipping through your chest, it was then you realized what exactly this evenings plans were for him and they were punctuated with his usual tacky speech.

“c’mon, darlin’, let’s play a bit. this cowboys gotta bullet special for ya’.”

[unfortunatebrainfarts]

After working with your friendly neighborhood intergalactic space cowboy for quite some time, you've managed to become pretty damn good at understanding the gist of what he means to say

Boothill x reader

A/n: OK SO, first fanfic in like 6 years and it's for an intergalactic space cowboy

Tbh I have no idea why I wrote this, my ipad apps are constantly monitored by the teacher and I really have nothing better to do than go on my notes app and pretend I'm writing notes

HAVE AN AMAZING DAY = I HOPE YOU GET FUCKED BY THE IPC AND ROLL IN YOUR OWN DEBT AND SUFFERING (or something like that)

BLESS YOUR HEART = FUCK YOU

PRAY FOR ME = FUCK ME

LOVELY = FUCK

YOU WONDERFUL PERSON = YOU BITCH

Well ain't you just a sweetheart? = Well you're just a little bitchboy aren'tcha?

God love him = He was fuckin' underdeveloped as a fetus wasn't he (Something along the lines of 'he's dumb as shit')

"Hm. Seems about right."

To others, your furrowed brows, tense posture, and concentrated gaze at just one singular page of your notebook may make it seem as if whatever was on that page was something life changing. And honestly, they might as well have been right since you were one step closer to understanding what the hell Boothill was spitting out more than half the time.

You recall the first time you were assigned a mission with him — "BLESS YOUR HEART YOU WONDERFUL PERSON," cue you snapping your head towards the gruff voice seeing the cowboy in all his glory easily decimating the dozens of grunts in his vicinity with a toothy grin no less, which you note are very, very sharp.

His long, flowy hair caught your attention. How was it so white and clean even with all the fights you know gets into? Does it ever get yanked? What shampoo does he use?

"Now I don' mind some ooglin', but wouldn't ya say we should keep our eyes on our enemies darlin'?"

His voice snaps you out of your trance and you come to to a shovel nearing your head. You instinctively cover your face with your hands anticipating the pain, the pain which never came since when you put them down, you see that Boohill had already left a bullet in his head.

"Spacin' out at a space cowboy? Ain't that rich."

.

Ignoring the fact that he saved you from having to get facial reconstruction surgery, the reason you almost got a face full of shovel in the first place was because of the ridiculous curse on his synesthesia beacon.

That's why you've been devoted to trying to decode the albeit hilarious, rather inconvenient in a battle things he says. You've tried asking Boothill to write them down, but his handwriting could have him assigned as a doctor in no time so you gave up on that idea quite quickly.

"Whatcha starin' at so intently darlin'?

Your train of thought was abruptly interrupted by the man of the hour mindlessly snatching your notebook right out of your hands. "Aren't you supposed to stop thieves, not act like one," you ask half heartedly. It was nothing less of what you'd expect from Boothill of all people — no, cyborgs??

"Heh, this ain't thievery 's sharin'! Er, what's that one sayin' again... share to care, care to share, sharin' to carin'? Eh whatever ya get what I mean don'tcha sugar?" He retorted, you roll your eyes mentally as he put his focus back onto the notebook. To be honest you were surprised he could even read considering his handwriting was that bad.

As Boothill read each and every one of your 'translations', his grin only grew wider and wider showing the spiky teeth you don't know how are natural but have grown accustomed to seeing. Just then, a burst of unhinged laughter randomly filled the entire lounge room you were sitting in. The weird glances and whispering were already starting but Boothill didn't care, he was Boothill.

Not wanting to be associated with the man at that very moment, you stand up to leave him comically rolling on the floor. However, you couldn't even do that because the moment you stood up, Boothill snatched your leg and dragged it so that you would fall back down. This time, onto the floor with him. "Well ain't you something sweetcheeks, ya got me alll figured out huh?"
.

.

It's been two months. Ever since Boothill realized that you had actually tried to figure out the true meaning behind his words — and actually got them relatively right — he's been using you to spew out insults overtime. Honestly it was like you had become a pokemon, you could just picture it in your head.

BOOTHILL BROUGHT OUT ____

____ USED SWEAR! IT WAS SUPER EFFECTIVE

Either way, it wasn't that bad since though you might be imagining things, it feels as if you've grown ever so slightly closer to the eccentric space cowboy.

You continue to observe boothill and add more and more onto your list of translations, but apparently you fail to notice that he no longer uses any casual pet names like 'darling' or 'sweetcheeks' anymore. At least, not for anyone but you.

[probablyasocialecologist]

[catscidr]

yall holy shit he's finally real (*꒦ິ꒳꒦ີ)

one step closer to writing fics about him agsnfgshnfs im Vibrating with excitement. give me his personality so i can write smut. immediately

[stone-cold-groove]

Southern Pacific’s new daylight route travel poster - 1937.

[haliaiii]

Boothill

[uomminecraftsociety]

Part 16 of shipping different Train Operating Companies together, final shippings for phase 1.

Southern and Southwest Trains work hard but play harder. They work hard in their London offices and make an excellent team together, thanks to a nest egg left by their ancestors in “Clapham”.

Both do like to be beside the seaside, whether it is Poole, Brighton, beyond or inbetween, they are a couple of beach Belles.

[insidecroydon]

No rail services to or from Victoria this weekend due to works

Engineering work is taking place at Victoria Station this weekend, Saturday Novemeber 18 and Sunday November 19. There will be no Southern services to or from Victoria, and no Gatwick Express service at all. All change: you might want to review carefully any weekend travel plans via Victoria Station Replacement buses will run between Clapham Junction and East Croydon (via West Croydon). A few…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Big Train managers earn bonuses for greenlighting unsafe cars

Tomorrow (November 16) I'll be in Stratford, Ontario, appearing onstage with Vass Bednar as part of the CBC IDEAS Festival. I'm also doing an afternoon session for middle-schoolers at the Stratford Public Library.

Almost no one knows this, but last June, a 90-car train got away from its crew in Hernando, MS, rolling three miles through two public crossings, a ghost train that included 47 potentially explosive propane cars. The "bomb train" neither crashed nor derailed, which meant that Grenada Railroad/Gulf & Atantic didn't have to report it.

This is just one of many terrifying near-misses that are increasingly common in America's hyper-concentrated, private equity-dominated rail sector, where unsafe practices dominate and whistleblowers face brutal retaliation for coming forward to regulators.

These unsafe practices – and the corporate policies that deliberately gave rise to them – are documented in terrifying, eye-watering detail in a deeply reported Propublica story by Topher Sanders, Jessica Lussenhop,Dan Schwartz, Danelle Morton and Gabriel L Sandoval:

https://www.propublica.org/article/railroad-safety-union-pacific-csx-bnsf-trains-freight

It's a tale of depraved indifference to public safety, backstopped by worker intimidation. The reporting is centered on railyard maintenance inspectors, who are charged with writing up "bad orders" to prevent unsafe railcars from shipping out. As private equity firms consolidated rail into an ever-dwindling number of companies, these workers face supervisors who are increasingly hostile to these bad orders.

It got so alarming that some staffers started carrying hidden digital recorders, so they could capture audio of their bosses illegally ordering them to greenlight railcars that were too unsafe for use. The article features direct – and alarming – quotes, like supervisor Andrew Letcher, boss of the maintenance crews at Union Pacific's Kansas City yard saying, "If I was an inspector on a train I would probably let some of that nitpicky shit go."

Letcher – and fellow managers for other Tier 1 railroads quoted in the piece – aren't innately hostile to public safety. They are quite frank about why they want inspectors to "let that nitpicky shit go." As Letcher explains, "The first thing that I’m getting questioned about right now, every day, is why we’re over 200 bad orders and what we’re doing to get them down."

In other words, corporate rail owners have ordered their supervisors to reduce the amount of maintenance outages on the rail lines, but have not given them additional preventative maintenance budgets or crew. These supervisors warn their employees that high numbers of bad orders could cost them their jobs, even lead to the shutdown of the car shops where inspectors are prone to pulling dangerous cars out of service.

It's a ruthless form of winnowing. Gresham's Law holds that "bad money drives out good" – in an economy where counterfeit money circulates, people preferentially spend their fake money to get it out of their hands, until all the money in circulation is funny money. This is the rail safety equivalent: simply fire everyone who reports unsafe conditions and all your railcars will be deemed safe, with the worst railcars shipped out first. A market for lemons – except these aren't balky used sedans, they're unsafe railcars full of toxic chemicals or explosive propane.

When cataclysmic rail disasters occur – like this year's East Palestine derailment – the rail industry reassures us that this is an isolated incident, pointing to the system's excellent overall safety record. But that record is a mirage, because the near-misses don't have to be reported. Those near-misses are coming more frequently, as the culture of profit over safety incurs a mounting maintenance debt, filling America's rails with potential "bomb cars."

Rail mergers and other forms of deregulated, anything-goes capitalism are justified by conservative economists who insist that "incentives matter," and that the profit motive provides the incentive to improve efficiency, leading to lower costs and better service. But the incentive to externalize risk, kick the can down the road, and capture regulators rarely concerns the "incentives matter" crowd.

Here's an incentive that matters. Rail managers' bonuses – as much as a fifth of their take home pay – are only paid if the trains they oversee run on time. Inspectors have recorded their managers admitting that they have quotas – a maximum number of bad orders their facility may produce, irrespective of how much unsafe rolling stock passes through the facility.

Inspectors have caught their managers removing repair order tags from cars they've flagged as unsafe. Inspectors will log orders in a database, only to have the record mysteriously deleted, or marked as serviced when no service has occurred. Some inspectors have seen the same cars in their yard with the same problems, and repeatedly flagged them without any maintenance being performed before they're shipped out again.

Former managers from Union Pacific, CSX and Norfolk Southern told Propublica that they operated in an environment where safety reports were discouraged, and that workers who filed these reports were viewed as "complainers." Workers furnished Propublica with recordings of rail managers berating them for reporting persistent unsafe conditions the Federal Railroad Administration. Other workers from BNSF said that they believed that their bosses were told when they called the company's "confidential" work-safety tipline, setting them up for retaliation by bosses who'd falsified safety reports.

Whistleblowers who seek justice at OSHA are stymied by long delays, and while switching their cases to court can win them cash settlements, these do not get recorded on the company's safety record, which allows the company to go on claiming to be a paragon of safety and prudence.

The culture of retaliation is pervasive, which explains how the 47-cars worth of propane on the "bomb train" that rolled unattended over three miles of track never made the news. There is a voluntary Close Call Reporting System (operated by NASA!) where rail companies can report these disasters. Not one of America's Class 1 rail companies participate in it.

After the East Palestine disaster, Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg pushed the rail companies to join, but a year later, none have. It's part of an overall pattern with Secretary Buttigieg, who has prodigious, far-reaching powers under USC40 Section 41712(a), which allow him to punish companies for "unfair and deceptive" practices or "unfair methods of competition":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

Buttigieg can't simply hand down orders under 41712(a) – to wield this power, he must follow administrative procedures, conducting market studies, seeking comment, and proposing a rule. Other members of the Biden administration with similar powers, like FTC chair Lina Khan, arrived in office with a ranked-priority list of bad corporate conduct and immediately set about teeing up rules to give relief to the American public.

By contrast, Buttigieg's agency has done precious little to establish the evidentiary record to punish the worst American companies under its remit. His most-touted achievement was to fine five airlines for saving money by cancelling their flights and stranding their passengers. But of the five airlines affected by Buttigieg's order, four were not US companies. The sole affected US carrier was Spirit airlines, with 2% of the market. The Big Four US airlines – who have a much worse record than the ones that were fined – were not affected at all:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/ftc-noncompete-airline-flight-cancellation-buttigieg/

Rather than directly regulating the US transportation sector, Buttigieg prefers exacting nonbinding promises from them (like the Tier 1 rail companies' broken promise to sign up to the Close Call Reporting System). Under his leadership, the Federal Railroad Agency has proposed weakening rail safety standards, rescinding an order to improve the braking systems on undermaintained, mile-long trains carrying potentially deadly freight:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

The US transportation system is accumulating a terrifying safety debt, behind a veil of corporate secrecy. It badly demands direct regulation and close oversight.

If you are interested in rail safety, I strongly recommend this episode of Well There's Your Problem, "a podcast about engineering disasters, with slides" – you will laugh your head off and then never sleep again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BMQTdYXaH8

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/15/safety-third/#all-the-livelong-day

[nyxronomicon]

Boothill calling you darlin'... that's it. that's the post

[abby-howard]

Part 2 of my 2023 hourlies; Part 1 here!

---CW family death (not sad)---