Daily Archives: July 19, 2005

Kellar Branch

Settlement in the works on Kellar Branch conversion

 

Pioneer Industrial Railway (PIRY) has filed a status report with the Surface Transportation Board that is very interesting.  The report (filed by Daniel LaKemper, general counsel for PIRY) starts by telling the STB what we already know:
This is to advise the Board that on July 14, 2005 Pioneer Industrial Railway Co. and the City of Peoria reached an agreement regarding the track work that the City desired to do on the Kellar Branch, thus eliminating the City’s immediate concerns as to the timely completion of their grant work.
This was reported in the paper and discussed in a previous post.  But, it then goes on to say this:
PIRY and the City are also exploring settlement options that would allow Pioneer Park shippers to retain the connections they currently have to the line-haul railroads coming into Peoria. We will keep the Board apprised of this matter.
Connections to “line-haul railroads” is what I talked about in my last post — the fact that Pioneer Park shippers currently have access to eight major shippers, and the new connection to the west gives them access to only one.  I believe this is the main obstacle for STB approval of the city’s adverse discontinuance request. 
It appears that Pioneer and the city are now trying to work out a way to solve that problem, presumably in such a way that the Kellar Branch can still be turned into an extension of the Rock Island Trail.  I’m not sure how this would be possible, but a railfan friend of mine has some ideas.  He explains it in a lot of technical jargon, but basically it could involve the city’s shipper (Central Illinois Railroad Co., or CIRY, which is owned by DOT Rail out of LaSalle) entering into some sort of haulage agreement with Union Pacific – that is, CIRY using tracks owned by UP to make deliveries to Pioneer Park via the western spur.
I’m skeptical that this would be cost effective in the long run — I would expect UP to keep raising rates for use of their tracks, thus making rail shipping progressively more expensive for anyone out in Pioneer Park.  But we’ll just have to wait and see what kind of settlement Pioneer and the city cook up.  Stay tuned!

 

Uncategorized

DTV channels just a joking matter for Tarter

On Sunday, Steve Tarter’s column was pretty weak.  It started out promising — talking about how digital television channel numbers are different from the analog numbers we’ve become accustomed to, and even mentioning Jeff Melbourne’s blog (way to go Jeff!).  Jeff had asked in his blog if TV stations will have to change how they identify themselves in the future.
 
But then, instead of trying to answer the question by, oh I don’t know, picking up the phone and calling any of the television stations in Peoria, or perhaps checking out the FCC website or any of the myriad websites on the digital television conversion, he goes off on a tangent about how local stations could market themselves under their new digital channel numbers. 
 
I’ve got three words for the rest of his comments on the topic:  waste of space.  He must have been closing in on a deadline and didn’t have time to do any actual reporting, so he just doodled a few lines and let it go at that.
 
For those who may have wanted to know the real answer to Jeff’s question, Mark DeSantis, general manager of WEEK-TV, commented on Jeff’s blog: 
Channel position is not a significant issue with regard to station identification on DTV. Currently, though broadcasting on digital channel 57, WEEK is able to send out a signal so that on a digital tuner we appear as Ch. 25. Eventually when the cable retrans deals are done, all local channels will be located in approximately the mid-700 channel positions.
How do they do that, you ask?  Well, CheckHD.com has the answer:
The FCC has assigned a digital or RF channel number to all digital stations. In addition, some local affiliates are using Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) to remap to their analog channel numbers. PSIP is data that is transmitted along with a station’s DTV signal that tells DTV receivers important information about the station and what is being broadcast (what channel to tune to for reception of the station, helps maintain current (analog) channel number branding, tells receiver whether multiple programs are being broadcast, etc.).
Television stations have quite a bit of brand equity in their analog channel numbers, and they’re not going to give them up easily.  Any of this information would have made Tarter’s column more interesting.  Come on, Steve, we don’t read your column for comedy relief — we want the straight dope on the TV/Radio scene in Peoria.

City of Peoria

Abagnale gives moral charge

Frank AbagnaleI went to CEFCU Center Stage tonight to see Frank Abagnale speak. You may remember he was portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie “Catch Me If You Can.” The event was billed as a seminar on identity theft, but other speakers talked about that subject. When Abagnale came to the lectern, he said he had spoken about identity theft earlier in the day to law enforcement officers, bank officials, and others, and tonight he was going to give a more personal talk.

He shared a lot about his life between the ages of 16 and 21 — his exploits, his crimes, his capture, and his imprisonments in France, Sweden, and the U.S. Many of the stories he shared were entertaining, and his way of impersonating airline pilots and doctors was ingenious. He even passed the bar in Louisiana and argued cases for the states attorney’s office for a year.

In spite of all his brilliance, he eschewed any praise for his street smarts. He told the crowd that people have written to him and said he was a genius. He said if he had really been a genius, he wouldn’t have had to steal money to survive. He said some people have written to him and said he really had a gift. He agrees, but says the greatest gift he had was being raised by a mother and a father for the first 16 years of his life.

He had already shared how his parents had divorced when he was 16, and how he couldn’t choose which one to live with, so he ran out of the courtroom so he wouldn’t have to choose and they parents skipped all the support payments required by the state since then. He never blamed his parents’ divorce for his life of crime, but he made it clear that it was a contributing factor, and now he reminded everyone of how devastating divorce is on children, “even though it’s not popular to say it these days.” Those who are planning to get divorced may want to consider reaching out to a divorce lawyer or a family law attorney for legal advice.

He saved his strongest moral message for the men in the audience. “There are a lot of fathers out there, but very few daddies,” he said. He told of how much he loved his dad, and how his dad tucked him into bed every night without fail, kissed him on the cheek, and told him that he loved him. Every night. Even when his brother was an adult and home on leave from the military, he still kissed him and told him how much he loved him. Contrary to the movie’s portrayal, Frank never saw his father again after he ran out of the courtroom the day his parents were divorced.

He said that some men think it takes money, cars, prestige, degrees, and all kinds of things like that to be a real man. But he had lived that life, and found it wanting. “To all you guys out there,” he charged, “a real man loves his wife. A real man stays faithful to his wife. And a real man is a daddy to his children.”

Some probably found it preachy, and maybe not what they expected from an ex-con they thought was going to talk about identity theft. But I found it refreshing. He’s right, of course. And in a nation where half of all marriages end in divorce, it doesn’t hurt for everyone to hear that message a little more these days.