Seen in the current Jan/Feb 2026 Funny Times. Shoulda trimmed better.

That's funny.

I thought it would be about e-bikes.

By the way, most rail hammers have a skinny head to hit the spikes close to the rail. I saw the handleless head of one on a hike in my teens along a railway, shoulda grabbed it.

I must need to get my sense of humor checked.

Right, spike maul.

Good one.

Next question, has anyone ever found one of these at the side of the road and brought it home?

Believe the guys wielding the spike mauls were called candy dancers.

Gandy dancers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandy_dancer

(Not sure why anybody with access to the internet wouldn’t just check.)

I spent my entire career working at or for a railroad. Thanks for that correction.

This section of former highway is now a sick bike path. It’s also where a portion of “The Road” was filmed. The first tunnel is about .75 miles long. The other is over a mile. Both are unlit. Fun ride.

The stretch was abandoned in the 60s because of leakage and traffic volume. The section leading to the first tunnel was repaved at some point and was used to train driving skills to law enforcement, school bus and snow plow operators.

That makes a lot of sense. Every time they repave the arterial near our house, they seem to feel that's a good training ground for the plow operators and tear it all back up.

Take a close look at the photo of the other portal. In the middle of the tunnel you can see a faint spot of light. I thought it was coming from someone riding in the other direction, so I waited for them to emerge, but they didn't seem to get any closer. I finally got tired of waiting snd started riding again. As I got closer to the light source, I realized it was coming from what I believed to be two people walking with flashlights. We met and talked for a while. I had my sunglasses on, and their lights were sort of shining towards me. We each took photos of each other then went on tour separate way.

That night in camp I started looking at the day's photo by the fire. A massive chill went up my spine when I saw this:



I had no idea there had been a third person. Notice that she didn't have a light.

It's now an official but undeveloped bike trail called Pike2Bike. (The stretch was part of the PA Turnpike.) I have ridden it twice during tours across the state. Aside from the three people pictured above, I have only seen two other walkers. Both times I rode on Mondays in September (after Labor Day). It's my understanding that there are more cyclist during summer weekends. The temperature inside the tunnels maintains a steady 55 degrees give or take much of the year. The first time I rode the stretch it was warm and humid. Standing at each portal was like standing in front of an air conditioner. I didn't want to keep riding.

They also need to put some mailboxes on that stretch so the snow plow trainees can practice plowing around them. In the twelve years I have owned my current home, I've replaced my mailbox three times after snow storms.

It's in the trailer.

Maybe I should email this to our local city politicians to give them some ideas. We have a long rail line here in my suburbs which has been out of service for almost 40 years now. I am surprised that our city hasn't converted it into a rail trail. Tons of people have already been using it for walks, why not just use our tax dollars and convert it into a rail trail ?

No one here has any idea what city you are talking about.

The reality of doing this is complicated and expensive.

If you really care about this, here is the wrong place to ask about it.

Be the change you want to see in the world. (Don’t whine about it here.)

I have seen the sausage being made.

If the real property is still owned by the railroad it generally cannot be condemned unless it has been formally abandoned, which is a legal process. The Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act federally preempts that ability. Even if the railroad only has an easement, mere non-use does not constitute abandonment of that easement or the rail line itself. Ask me how I know.

The railroads don’t necessarily want to give up the right-of-way.

I’m amazed that it can work out. It takes a lot of effort and dedication.

Thanks. I didn't get the joke until now.

Gandy to candy, I plead autocorrect. It just tried handy.

PBS documentary "From Rails to Trails" is an interesting watch.

I applauded rails-to-trails, but now with car overuse, I'd like it if those rail lines were still there and started back up with low-speed passenger rail service. We have a big r2t multiuse paved trail that predates my coming here, so decades, yeah in the dry months it's an excellent bike route for commuters. But most don't ride in the wet months. Buses get caught in the vehicle traffic.

Our progressive city and county has built an ever-expanding light-rail line that is more central than the old freight rail line that skirted the edge of the highlands to avoid steep grades, and a lot of people are using it to be car-free, especially avoiding expense and frantic search for available parking downtown.

I bike everywhere, saves on parking and good for me, and the city buses give me motion sickness bad with the constant stop-and-go. Even with the light rail, those are mostly N/S in the city so you need a bike for E/W connections, though I've yet to use the rails. Going out of the city is a new E/W line so the reverse, need bike for N/S connections. Things are slowly getting better. There's a bike route E/W (the new light rail parallels it and the freeway) from Seattle to the east side of the Cascade mountains pass (not a steady path, takes a few rides to see the small path markers where the path goes to a road or sidewalk and back), I've ridden it 20 miles east, OK on a dry day, but a real slog for over two hours in the pouring rain which was not forecast, especially with 2 flats which I thankfully found truck loading docks with roofs to fix in the dry. Some sections were pure walking uphill until I put lower gears on the bike. One area for a couple miles, just the narrow edge shoulder on blacktop and in the rain at night, the faded road edge line disappears, fortunately by that time I'd gotten a really powerful headlight to light things up. But other than that, getting better all the time for us bikers.

LOL! As a life-long roadie and a railroad fan, it's win-win for me no matter what. I love riding trails like the Sparta-Elroy Trail in Wisconsin, the first rails-to-trails path, because it still has evidence of the railroad that created the right of way in the first place... even if those days are long gone.

I can see light at the end of the tunnel.