Trains and table tennis… not a sentence you’re used to hearing, am I right?
Granted, this combo doesn’t sound as alluring as other great double acts like peanut butter and jelly, fish, and chips (shout out to all the British peeps out there!), gin and tonic or Penn and Teller, but it offers something more substantial.
It shows you just how versatile humans are. To be specific, it shows how versatile YOU are.
Let’s get straight into it 4 transferable skills that mean you can drive a train and play ping-pong. Trust me… you will be impressed by the results.
• Anticipation
Table tennis is all about anticipating the other player’s movements as well as your own. A pro-ping-pong player will know exactly where he/she is going to place their next shot, and guess the shot that their opponent is likely to play in return. Essentially, you need to be one step ahead of your opponent. Otherwise, you’re always playing on the backfoot, and sooner or later, you’ll mess up. Similarly, as a train driver, you need to be able to anticipate bends, changes in tracks and other obstacles. A train going at top speed and with several cabins full of passengers, we’re talking about 150 mph (240 km/h) here, is going to take a while to slow down if you slam on the breaks.
• Concentration
Focus Concentration is something that every profession, sporting or not, requires. Ping-pong players obviously need to be °in the zone° whenever they are in a game or even just practicing.
They need to be committed to the game and focussed on their opponent, like a cat stalking a mouse, without the possible bloodshed of course. Train drivers are active for long periods of time. Anyone else is likely to lose concentration. But, as train drivers are responsible for hundreds of lives, they don’t have this option. People say trains are all automated these days° but this just isn’t true. Every now and again, you see a horrific train accident on the news, and it’s probably down to human error. As long as humans are in charge of trains, concentration and focus are necessities.
• Speed
Reflexes for a ping-pong player are a given… If you are faster, agiler than your opponent, you are at an obvious advantage. The same could be said for driving a train. Someone that is sluggish, slow and just generally poor at reacting to things in time, is not going to make a great driver. Even though a train takes a long time to come to make a complete stop, the driver needs to activate the breaks, sound the horn, alert a nearby station, radio the cabin crew and inform emergency services. Someone with sloth-like movements will not be able to do all this in time.
• Remain Calm In Certain Situations
An approaching train station has contacted you to highlight a hazard ahead -a large tree branch has fallen onto the tracks. Meanwhile, cabin crew rushes in to inform you of a passenger that has suffered a heart attack and requires immediate medical attention. What do you do? Remaining calm is crucial. Panic causes people to make mistakes. You’re in the final game of a worldwide table tennis tournament. First place is on the line. Do you lose your head and concede the point? No, you win the point and eventually the game.
If they want to win, ping-pong players must be disciplined, confident and remain calm at all times.
Told you would be impressed! But please remember… Seek appropriate training/go through the correct channels before swapping professions. We are NOT condoning the hijacking of trains or crashing ping-pong tournaments.
Noting that railroaders and the railroad traditions are on the verge of becoming extinct, there is a need to preserve the culture in a more serene form. To make this endeavor a reality, the government has given railroad heritage preservation an economic approach.
Features of heritage railroads:
It is an amalgamation of public and private goods. These goods are provided by the government and non-profit making institutions. Non-profit making centers are institutions which are voluntarily managed with a mission to preserve the artifacts for the coming generation. The two institutions Provide a brief comprehension of railroading in the history books of any given society.
Benefits: Helps in the conservation and re-creation of the atmosphere of a traditional railway. It ensures the provision of preferred public goods. Facilitates provision of preferred private goods such as visitor travel, social weekends and dinner outings. Avails non-preferred private goods such as shops and refresher set-ups.
Sources of funding: The government: offer grants, personnel, and security. Private sector players. Donations and other materials.
The public: offer voluntary services: Friendly societies. Such as the National Railway Museum (NRM).
Management: Government intervention: the government must take the active part in running the affairs of by
– regulation- to protect the nature and institutional framework of the project.
– direct incentives- to encourage the private sector participation
– information dissemination-creation of public awareness to build consensus towards the preservation of the railroads. The government does this by ensuring that publications, exhibits, conferences, and periodicals are provided on the website.
Non-profit making institutions normally offer oversight services as the project continues. Reasons for preference of wooden fences:
– They are super-easy to fix and maintain.
– The fences Improve in quality as they advance in age.
– The wooden fences are easy to adjust according to personal demand.
– The fences are relatively cheap to buy and install. Another thing is, there are lots of woodworking tools now that are of hybrid version that will make fencing easy.
– Flexible and can be laid anywhere.
Reasons for fencing:
– To ensure peaceful coexistence between neighborhood land users and railway users.
– Access control: to foster territoriality and increase surveillance. This ensures movement in and out of the facility is fully controlled.
– Creation of safety: the fences prevent the citizens and their animals from falling prey to ever impending danger on the railway.
– Check against vandalism: to bring peace and do away with constant quarrels with the neighbors, fences are erected around the railways.
MERITS OF PRESERVING RAILWAY HERITAGE
The project provides an avenue for preserving a rich culture of the old. The information is preserved in a chronological and contextualized manner. The researchers in the field of transport can caption the images accurately to ensure that other scholars get factual and timely information. Such projects add a professional gesture to the attempts made toward preservation of cultural resources.
Tools for preservation: The information can be stored online and with special web portals, it can be used to bridge the gap between people of different ages. The railroad arts are preserved using modern tools from where they can be retrieved easily. A special insight is brought out by Dewalt who advocates for the mixture of old traditions and modern technology. Modern equipment can be used to preserve the arts of the old generation. Everybody can contribute towards railroad heritage conservation without losing touch of their collection. An integrated approach caters for the images from the center and its partners’ contributions. It is open for public participation as one can make use of a utility plug-in included in the portal to flag in their contribution and get information simultaneously.
What is a Birthday Train? You can schedule a slot that will include use of the railroad’s station platform including the station picnic area or the park shelter, for 4 hours and 2 hours use of a private train and crew for train rides.
You can click here to open a printable copy of this form and email Bernie at monturider@msn.com
To ensure availability please call Bernie Koch at 727-271-4783
Birthday Trains began running on the CP&G in January 2008. Birthday Trains will be available each Saturday of each month. Call 727-271-4783 for information and reservations.
Ride the trains to Santa’s cabin where the children can meet the jolly old elf
Don’t forget to bring your camera to capture precious pictures of the children on Santa’s lap
Have lunch with us.
Hot dogs, Pizza, Italian Sausage, and much more
(vendors are subject to last minute substitutions)
CREWS LAKE WILDERNESS PARK
Shady Hills in Pasco County
Find us on Google Maps
Our Final Weekend:
Sat Dec 19 10am – 4pm Sun Dec 20 Noon – 4pm
Admission: $5.00 per person
Unlimited Rides
Children 12 months and under – FREE
Enjoy old fashioned
Holiday Music from the
Turn-of-the-Century
Organ “Gaviolitzer”