It is with great interest I read your [Mac A. Fleming] letter dated December 27, 1999 in response to the UTU President's comments toward BMWE's stance on railroad retirement.

This issue is, as you know, of great interest to all BMWE members, particularly those of us who have contributed to the retirement fund for many years. (I have contributed almost 32 years with approximately 10-12 to go).

With the new millennium, I would hope "new" changes would be made for the best interests of BMWE members, as well as our brothers and sisters of other crafts. I don't believe this is a tall order. The opportunity is here on our doorstep. And, it's "our money."

Look at other industries such as the auto industry, public service, teachers, police, federal employees (some of who run railroads for us) and the Teamsters union.

They all retire at a much earlier age than the rail workers, who toil in many types of weather, doing stressful, strenuous work. It takes its toll, as I'm sure you are aware. Is this fair? I don't think so.

I only hope that expedient action will transpire to make those improvements to our retirement system. With ours, not the companies' interests. The facts and numbers are there. Let them show we can do this.

If, for some lack of effort, on a certain party's willingness for improvements is evident, then I feel we should take aggressive action to restore our wages to those levels we would have had, had we not made concessions in the 1980s to the present for a strong retirement fund. I didn't give concessions so the railroads could "dip" into millions of dollars. Nor did the membership. This should and has to be a win situation for our members. Remember, we paid this money in, and deserve to share in its rewards. We've earned it.

We should expect nothing less than your sincere efforts to change our retirement system for the betterment of our members.

Our dreams of retirement are real. Help us realize those dreams.

Gordon Mossberger (32 years service)
David L. Tollers (22 years)
Rick Eklund (22 years)
Jerry Besvold (27 years)
W. A. McNair (28 years)
Superior, Wisconsin

From the Internet

HOW TO SAVE YOURSELF FROM A HEART ATTACK

Let's say it's 6:17 p.m. and you're driving home (alone of course) after an unusually hard day on the job. Not only was the workload extraordinarily heavy, you also had a disagreement with your boss, and no matter how hard you tried he just wouldn't see your side of the situation. You're really upset and the more you think about it, the more uptight you become. All of a sudden you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to radiate out into your arms and up into your jaw. You are only about five miles from the hospital nearest your home but unfortunately you don't know if you'll be able to make it that far. What can you do? You've been trained in CPR but the guy that taught the course neglected to tell you how to perform it on yourself.

Many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack. Without help a person whose heart stops beating properly begins to feel faint and has about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness. However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest. A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds without letting up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again. Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can get to a phone and, between breaths, call for help. You'll be giving yourself CPR with this technique.

This was taken from Health Cares, Rochester General Hospital via Chapter 240's newsletter AND THE BEAT GOES ON. Reprinted from The Mended Hearts, Inc. publication, Heart Response.

MILITARY STANDARDS LIVE FOREVER

Here is a look into a "standard" that is very interesting, educational, historical, completely true, and hysterical all at the same time.

The U.S. Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the U.S. railroads were built by English expatriates. Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.

So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Thus, we have the answer to the original question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back-ends of two war horses.

There's an interesting extension to this story about railroad gauges and horses' behinds. When we see a space shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over 2000 years ago by the width of a horse's ass.