| Readers comment: "Wx4 is a little strange..." Our Rejoinder: It's not our fault! |
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Over the last ten years, we've received a good half-dozen, possibly more, much-appreciated emails complementing Wx4. Distilled down, they all pretty much say, "Love the site, but it is a little strange." Sure its strange, but for good reason. Our slippery slant on reality came as a direct result of working in the railroad industry, an inward-looking, circadian-rhythm-deprived culture so isolated from normal society that you'd swear that it has spent the last 180 years mutating in a North Korean petri dish, or alternately, a flying saucer.
Thus, on a sociological level, railroaders can't help but be out-of-step with 21st Century civilization. In fact, in terms of human interaction, things largely have progressed sideways. Railroad people tend to behave as if they are working in a 19th Century Dickensian smokestack industry, possibly because the 20th Century was not good to them: Wright Flyers and Model T's absconded with the best and the brightest, leaving the remainder to fume over losing the lead as a cutting-edge technology.
Consequently, railroaders are negative, negative, NEGATIVE!.* Do you remember the old UP slogan, We Can Handle It? We're sure that the company employed Madison Avenue to dream-up that one. A rail would have created We Can't Handle It.  Railroaders consider a piss-poor attitude to be normal and generally find upbeat people to be unnerving. Employees typically spend beans - lunch hour(s) - complaining and pontificating about management's penchant towards Satan worship. Officials (managers) spend their morning meetings adjusting their celluloid collars and hard-boiling eggs on their foreheads, when they are not biting the heads off of chickens (my best guess as a former minor union officer). Incidentally, Forbes Magazine once rated railroad manager acumen as dead last amongst major U.S. industries - even behind fast-food!. We'll bet that there were high-fives all-around at Hamburger University when the Forbes piece hit the streets! These sorts of behavior don't do much for productivity, but they do provide fertile ground for humor, as if the tracks were ballasted with bat guano. We consider it Wx4's mission to spread that bat guano around - and also do serious stuff, when the mood strikes us.
*You can tell that a rail wrote this piece, eh? Also, please note that there are thousands of normal, intelligent, delightful people - several dozen of them reportedly reside in management - who choose work in railroading for reasons unfathomable to the rest of us rails. Maybe they're closet foamers...
We recognize that there has been a paucity of recent listings on our New Arrivals page. We've been distracted by the demands of the Haolewood Tiki Bar and Whale Watchers Lounge, currently under construction in the lanai behind the Wx4 offices (see our virtual inspiration here). We're trying to complete the job before the coming summer weather drains us of all physical ambition, so it will be awhile before major new pieces - including much footnoted work on 19th / early 20th Century Bay Area railroading - appear. Likewise, the model railroading section is still on the way. In the meantime we'll slip-in some less time-consuming presentations, such as maps and photos. Stay tuned. - E.O.
Hey bra, where da kine?
 About - Willys Jeep Wagons - Help - More Help email: wx4org@yahoo.com
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