I sympathize. We had a signing ceremony at the University the other day driven inside due to rain. We used the atrium of our conference center- set up the podium, flags, potted palms, the works. I’m the special events guy, so ‘setting up the shot’ is my responsibility for things like this.
Ceremony goes off without a hitch. Then, as photogs get lined up for shots, one student crosses behind the podium to get to the bookstore down the hall. Not even running, or walking fast…just she just ambles across, ignoring the ‘WTF’ on the faces of the onlookers, as well as our chancellor and the VIP there for the historic signing.
My one consolation is that one of my kids, standing post on the opposite side of the the perimeter (somehow this dumbass got past my crowd control people on the other side), follows her into the bookstore, and last thing I see is her arm wrapped around the girl’s shoulders, steering her into a quiet corner out of sight. (bear in mind, none of us know who this person is)
I don’t know what happened, but when she emerged, the interloper looked properly chastened.
So, was there room on the platform behind the parents for pedestrian traffic? Or was this a case of the parents with cameras taking up the whole width of the platform by backing up to the station-house wall so they could get a nice wide angle shot? Because that fact changes the calculus of courtesy depending on how it shook out.
Ooh, ooh - I’ve got one. How about the opposite rant? When clueless tourists for some unknown reason always have to frame their shots with the shooter on one extreme edge of the walkway, and the subject on the other extreme edge, forcing everyone else to wait for them to finish before they can go anywhere? (I’m sure Bricker would never do this, of course.) And why is it that the people who block the entire path in this way also always seem either to not know how to operate a camera, or feel a need to take 5 or 10 pictures of the same thing, so it takes them forever? And it’s not NECESSARY to have that much space between the shooter and the subject anyway. These people must constantly be getting their prints back and wondering why the people always look so small in their pictures.
Bit of a no brainer – wait a couple of seconds while the train moves by so the shots can be taken with the train in the background. Common consideration is all that is asked. Walking in front of the camera when this sort of shot is being made is very rude.
I was just in Strasburg last month myself, although Thomas (one of only two steam Thomases in the world, the other 20 or so are disguised diesels) was in a carbarn with a canvas covering his face, which was weird enough. We’ve been going to that part of the country for 30 years and there are pix of 5-year-old me riding Grasshopper Level, one of the old wooden coaches.
Strasburg RR is a major operation, with two tracks alongside an asphalt plaza of shops, exhibits, and more rides, in a line between the tracks and the road. There is about 50 feet or more between tracks and stores, plenty of room to walk behind a line of people who are taking pictures. I resent tourists who expect me, when I’m walking in NYC, to stop for every single shot of their wide-butted T-shirt wearing spawn standing in front of something I have to walk by, like the Empire State Building which takes up a whole block, since the sidewalk is how we all commute and it’s a real city, not Disneyland.
But Strasburg is set up for visitors. If the parents were standing 10-15 feet away from the engine there was indeed plenty of room to walk behind them, crowded though it may have been; I’m sure it wasn’t so crowded that you couldn’t walk next to the stores.
I talked to the volunteer engineers and restorers about Thomas and they resent his gimmickry a bit, but the money his rental brings in allows them to get on with the real business of the place–restoring and keeping their old engines and coaches and barns and their top-of-the-line shop going. And if a kid starts loving engines like Thomas hopefully they’ll graduate to #89, #90, and #475.
First: can you point to any train that has actually been scrapped? Or is it a boogey-man threat designed simply to motivate trains that are not pulling their weight, so to speak?
No specific engine has been scrapped in any episode that I’ve seen; but Old Slowcoach had been relegated to a siding and was awaiting that fate. The yard workers said as much. Old Slowcoach was saved only through the begging and pleading of several engines. Also, in a Halloween episode, the title of which escapes me, Thomas and one of the female engines are dispatched to the smelter’s yard to pick up a load of iron. There, scattered about in clear view are the remains of engines and coaches that had been scrapped. Hatt has the “blood” of every one of them on his hands.
A very serious and well-taken point, Scumpup. But another question arises: are Halloween episodes actually canon, in terms of continuity? Or does Sodor have one-offs, after the manner of Springfield?
