Workers Over 50

Why does their tend to be a bias against hiring older workers? Does this bias come from the hiring companies or the agencies? We interviewed Pat Gerace a Global Talent Acquisition Director who has worked for both placement agencies and in large multi-national companies.

ec-bp: Does any sort of bias exist about hiring workers exist? Especially in Supply Chain, Electronic Commerce and EDI.

Gerace: Yes, very definitely in all areas. It is not just a bias in the hiring process. Many short sighted company’s stagnate the career growth and development of the seasoned worker.

Read more: http://www.ec-bp.com/index.php/advisors/ec-bps-bloggers/9676-edi-workers-over-age-50-and-biases#ixzz2P1qcJIX9

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Ride the Saratoga & North Creek Railroad on May 18, 2013

Ride The Saratoga & North Creek May 18th, 2013 »

On May 18th the HUB Div. NMRA (for those not familiar, they are a Boston area model railroad group http://www.hubdiv.org/) is sponsoring a special excursion on the Saratoga & North Creek Railroad….

Great Movie of New York Central and New Haven Trains in 1961

If you like trains in the New York City and Connecticut area, like New York Central Railroad, and/or like New Haven Railroad, like “old” (well, 1961 was not “old” for a lot of us; then you cannot miss this movie.

http://archive.org/details/6358_HM_NY_Central_and_NYNHH_Electric_Operations_July_1961_01_00_54_11

Above: New Haven electric locomotive on Park Avenue viaduct.

Above: New Haven MU train at Stamford (the station before the old station)

Above: New Haven “Washboard Electrics” at Stamford

Mail train (called M&E for mail and express) on the West Side Freight Line headed for the General Post Office on 8th Avenue. Motive Power is RS3’s. The old R Motors that used to haul these went to the South Shore.

Above is a NY Central “P Motor” at the 125th Street Station.. These were the BIG electrics that came from Cleveland when they took out power into/out of Cleveland Union Terminal. None of these were preserved.

Above is a NY Central S-Motor. These were the original electric motors into Grand Central. They were replaced in the 1980’s on almost their 80th birthday. Two are preserved and the third (the original/prototype) is rotting away in Glenmont NY (near Albany). By 1961, they were switchers. Looks like this one was bringing a combine coach back from Mott Haven yard.

Above is a NY Central T-Motor on the Park Avenue viaduct. There is one of these in Glenmont too. It is a former movie star.

Castleton Cutoff and Hudson River Connecting Railroad

In the 1920’s, one of the biggest projects of the NY Central of this era was the Castleton Cutoff which would replace the grades and drawbridge at Albany with a high-level river crossing several miles south of Albany. The Castleton Cutoff was not only a bridge (later named the A.H. Smith Memorial Bridge) but included the new yard at Selkirk which eventually replaced West Albany in importance. In 1924, A.H. Smith, the president of the New York Central, predicted a greater Albany. He expected Albany to grow to the Castleton Bridge. The bridge cost $25,000,000 and is 135 feet above the river. It consists of a 600 foot span and a 400 foot span. The bridge contains 23,000 tons of steel and 52,000 yards of concrete. The bridge, and 28 miles of track owned by affiliate Hudson River Connecting Railroad, connected the Boston & Albany, Hudson Division and West Shore (River Division) with the Mohawk Division. The new yard at Selkirk had 250 miles of track connected by 430 switches and served by 2 roundhouses. The opening ceremonies were attended by a large crowd including the Van Sweringen brothers who owned the Nickel Plate, W.H. Truesdale of the Lackawanna. William K. and Harold Vanderbilt, Mayor Hackett of Albany and New York Lt. Governor Lunn. Two bridges then served Albany. One bridge to the passenger station (now a bank computer center) lasted until the late 1960’s. The northern of the two bridges is the present Conrail bridge used mostly by Amtrak. At that time it was considered the “freight” bridge but also was used by those few passenger trains that didn’t stop at Albany (some sections of the 20th Century Limited and a couple of limiteds to the midwest).

Other articles we have  about the Castleton Cutoff

We have other interesting articles about the Hudson River Connecting Railroad , the White Elephant Line , and Railway Express Agency .

We have maps of the Castleton Bridge area and Selkirk Yard . You can fly around the Albany area on Google Earth.

Starting with our Selkirk Photo Gallery , we have lots of interesting pictures. There is a collection of New York Central Railroad pictures , tunnels and bridges on the New York Central , the Hudson Line south of Beacon and a link to Albany County Historical Pictures .

There is a special section on The Hudson River , another on the Port of Albany , one on the Capital District .

, and a story on Transportation in Albany .

Other sections you shouldn’t miss are rumors about Selkirk , railroads East of the Hudson key to Castleton Cutoff , some questions answered , and our reference section .

What is AS2? A Common Search Landing on ECGridOS.com

What is AS2? It stands for Applicability Standard #2, an RFC, via the W3C, that came into being in the mid 2000′s. AS2 is a way to transfer EDI (or any) files securely from point to Point, with acknowledgement. AS2 is different than FTP or the secure FTP variants, because it is not interactive, like FTP, and does not allow access to host system directories – which FTP does allow unless you lock it down in any number of ways.

AS2 is attractive because it defines a strict state based transfer – certain things have to happen in a order, before an MDN acknowledgement is generated synchronously (right away) or asynchronously (not right away). As2 rides on top of http, or secure http, and the EDI MIME  file is PKI encrypted with certificates. All of this is standardized; what is not standardized are the sender and receiver port numbers to use (a glaring omission) and other conventions that should have been spelled out as best practices, which Todd has started delving into in his As2 Best Practices Articles (see link below).

See Todd’s excellent post on AS2 for an explanation. We are catching a ton of AS2 keyword traffic, so check out http://www.ld.com/as2-part-1-what-is-it/    as it never hurts to review.

Todd Gould’s Call For Input

Call for Input: Accessing Web Services in various environments. Contribute your experience.

There are many new languages that support REST (POST / GET) and ECGridOS allows this, albeit without the rich error handlers of SOAP – but there are many instances where new language enthusiasts will find themselves in a position to use ECGridOS, and the collective knowledge amassed in our developer community is invaluable.

Integration Warriors: ECGrid /OS is the Vanguard in “Programmable Comms and Trading Community“ Platform Services.

ECGridOS developers:

An increasing number of web developers that use text editors and non-IDE non Visual Studio coding environments are looking for advice on the best way to make Web Services function calls from popular web languages, such as Ruby, Python, PHP, Scala, Hasklell, I think you get the idea.

If you can contribute your favorite non Visual Studio method for importing and unwrapping the ECGridOS WSDL (.ASMX), could you please help a brother out and post your ideas on the ECGrid Developers Forum – Users of Eclipse, you could weigh in, too. There are many new languages that support REST (POST / GET) and ECGridOS for the moment allows this, albeit without the rich error handlers of SOAP – but there are many instances that a new language enthusiast will find themselves in a position to use E

For those that have not joined, the geniuses that never needed nor asked for help, Jim….I am asking you and folks like yourself, to please go to  http://forums.ecgrid.com/index.php and let us know the inner working of PHP web clients and stuff. Note: The forum is much faster now, thanks to Todd.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 20th, 2013 at 12:06 pm and is filed under ECGridOS Developers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

The Southern NY Railway

The Southern New York Railway passed through Richfield Springs. This traffic signal controlled cars on historic Route 20 for many years.

In 1901 the promoters touted it as the Leatherstocking Route (alluding to James Fenimore Cooper‘s novel) and extended 25 miles northward to Cooperstown. Finally, in 1902 they extended the line to Richfield Springs (then known as Richfield Spa) and in 1904 to Mohawk. This created a 52-mile main line from Oneonta to the banks of the Mohawk River, and left Cooperstown on a three-mile branch from Index. For several years, the D&H had an injunction preventing the electric line from crossing the steam line at the west edge of Cooperstown. Passengers were obliged to walk across the railroad between connecting electric cars.

Although short on population, the Southern New York had connections with the Delaware & Hudson and the Ulster & Delaware at Oneonta; the Delaware Lackawanna & Western at Richfield Springs; and the New York State Railways and West Shore at Mohawk.

The company built a coal-fired steam plant at Hartwick to generate electricity. Because of the growing dependence on the profitability of power, the name of the company was changed in 1916 to Southern New York Power and Railway Company. The power business went on its own in 1926 and the line became Southern New York Railway. When the power business split off, though, so did the profits. The first casualty was Oneonta city trolley service. In 1922 there were five round trips a day between Oneonta and Mohawk. This was reduced to two by 1930 and then to one. The 1933 abandonment of the Utica and Mohawk Valley subsidiary of New York State Railways left the SNY without Herkimer access, a New York Central connection, and interurban box motor service to Utica. Passenger service was terminated and the line was cut north of the company-owned Jordanville quarry. Electric freight service lasted another seven years. The major justification for freight service was the quarry. When the quarry closed, the Southern New York then dropped back to a three-mile long diesel freight connector with the Delaware & Hudson at Oneonta.

Much of what is written about the Southern New York comes from several accounts of an October 20, 1938 fan trip.

Early into the excursion, a car ran into the trolley at an intersection. Damage was light, as the motorman quickly dumped the air. The car was owned by the mayor of Richfield Springs, who proclaimed, “There aren’t any trains on this railroad on Sunday!” He ended up joining the trip.

Also joining the trip at Index Junction was famed photographer Arthur J. “Putt” Telfer of Cooperstown. His pictures of the Southern New York portray the entire history of the line and are preserved in at least two museums, as well as in the collections of several postcard collectors. Telfer focused each print with his head beneath a black shroud over his old-fashioned (even by 1938 standards) camera with leather bellows.

The late Bob Gurley (from New Hartford, NY, where I lived once) was an acting motorman during the well-documented fantrip over the Southern New York.

See Gino’s Rail Blog for more stories.

New Tram Line 2 Delayed for Funding

The Nice Côte d’Azur Metropolis in France has been forced to delay the completion of the expensive tramway Line 2.

Residents and tourists will have to wait until 2019 to take a direct tram from the Nice Côte d’Azur Airport to the port, it has been revealed. The multi-million euro project will now be broken up into chewable pieces to limit the damage to the Metropolis’ pocket, as State funding is expected to drop over the coming years.

Passengers will be forced to change at avenue Jean Médécin in order to reach the port

In 2017, the public will be able to catch a Line 2 tram from Cadam or the airport and travel as far as avenue Jean Médécin. Here, they will have to change onto a Line 1 tram, which will take them to Place Garibaldi. If they want to reach the port, they will have to complete their journey on foot. The final underground stations of Line 2 (Durandy, Garibaldi and the port) will not be accessible until 2019.

Hurricane Sandy and South Ferry Subway Station

Sandy damaged the New York City subway worse than anything else in its 108-year history, flooding eight tunnels and shutting service for millions of commuters. Recovery efforts began even before the storm was over, and extraordinary work by New York City Transit brought lines back into service rapidly.

Yet while the subway seems back to normal for most of the 5.6 million daily riders, the damage behind the scenes remains extensive – nowhere more so than in the South Ferry electrical room.

Soon after South Ferry was pumped out and drained, crews removed hundreds of relays and tried cleaning them by hand to return them to service – a task that turned out to be futile, as seen by heavy corrosion marks visible on the banks of relays.

On Friday, March 8, 2013, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that train service will return to one loop platform of the storm-ravaged South Ferry subway station in the first week of April, making commutes easier for more than 10,000 daily riders at the southern tip of Manhattan while a full rebuilding continues.

“The MTA has a long, tough job ahead as it tackles the immense job of virtually rebuilding the new South Ferry terminal station that was flooded 80 feet deep during Superstorm Sandy,” Governor Cuomo said. “For the extended period of time it will take for this work to be completed, we are returning the old station in the complex to service, making travel easier and more convenient for Staten Islanders and others who work and visit this area.”

Sandy’s storm surge sent a torrent of salt water into the South Ferry station on October 29.  Some 15 million gallons of water filled the area from the track level to the mezzanine, destroying all electrical and mechanical systems and components and rendering the station unusable. As a result, trains now terminate at Rector Street, a major inconvenience for thousands of daily commuters and sightseers.

Faced with an estimated two-year timeline for restoring the new South Ferry station, MTA New York City Transit studied the former loop station directly above it which served South Ferry until 2009. The station is on a sharp curve and requires moveable platform edge extenders to bridge gaps between the platform and the cars, and it can accommodate only five cars of a 10-car subway train.

The authority said a decommissioned station had never been reopened in its history.

“We didn’t think that was even an option,” Carmen Bianco, the authority’s senior vice president for subways, said of reviving the old station. “But you start exploring, ‘Well, what other options do we have?’ ”

As recently as January, officials said, the prospect still seemed remote. The station is not merely old — it opened in 1905 — but antiquated even by mid-20th century standards. While many stations were enlarged in the 1940s and 1950s to accommodate 10-car trains, the length and configuration of the South Ferry platform prevented any change, allowing only passengers in the first five cars to exit.

The quirk survived until 2009, when a glossy new station replaced the old one at a cost of over $500 million. The authority has estimated the new station will cost $600 million to rebuild.

Though the agency has occasionally used the old station’s loop track for work trains — and as a turnaround point for No. 1 trains since the storm — the station itself has been almost entirely ignored.

Railway Stations: Lots of pictures and information

We have one place that can link into even more railway stations.Then we have
Train stations in Connecticut  and Train Stations of the New York Central Railroad .

Some different ones we have are Ballston Spa Railroad Station on the Delaware & Hudson . Chatham, Massachusetts Station on the former New Haven RR to Cape Cod. Now a museum. Chicago: Polk Street Station
Chicago Central Terminal
Chicago Union Station in 1939
Northwestern Station
New York Central stations in Chicago .

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland Union Terminal served all the railroads. .

Denver, Colorado Union Station .

Fort Lauderdale Railroad Station on Florida’s East coast .

Fort Myers Railroad Station on Florida’s west coast .

Hamilton, New York Railroad Station ( NY, Ontario & Western) .

Hollywood Railroad Station on Florida’s east coast near Miami .

Hyde Park, New York Railroad Station in the Hudson Valley.
Hyde Park was the home of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Find out more about trains run for Presidents of the United States.
A post card from our collection.

Indianapolis, Indiana Station, serving all the major railroads in Indianapolis including the Peoria & Eastern .

Jacksonville, Florida Station, serving all the major railroads entering Florida.
Railway Station in Jacksonville .

Mechanicville, New York Railroad Station ( Delaware & Hudson and Boston & Maine) .

Montreal, Quebec Railroad Stations, including surrounding suburbs (VIA and Agence métropolitaine de transport) .

New York City:
Penn Station
Grand Central Terminal .

The Palm Beaches in Southeast Florida .

Philadelphia area: North Philadelphia station; Reading Terminal; New Hope) on the New Hope & Ivyland. .

Port Jefferson, NY Railroad Station (Long Island Railroad) .

St Joseph, Michigan Railroad Station (CSX/Pere Marquette) .

Sylvan Beach, New York Railroad Station (NY, Ontario & Western) .

Syracuse, New York, new station, old station, tracks running in the street, New York Central, Lackawanna. .

Troy, New york Station ( Troy Union Railroad Company)
Another view of the Troy Station .

Warwick, New York station on the Lehigh & Hudson River Railroad .

Waterville Railroad Station in upstate New York on the Lackawanna

Washington, DC station in the nation’s capital .

White Plains is the busiest Metro-North station (other than Grand Central) and the busiest non-terminal or transfer station on the New York Commuter Network. .