Ozone Call Of Duty
Ken Reels
CFCs and other ozone-depleting chemicals have now been banned everywhere under the most successful global environmental treaty the world has ever known (so far), and humanity has already put the ozone hole on track to slowly heal itself. It would take me decades to understand how and why this miracle of environmental remediation happened.
If you have ever seen a sunbeam pass through a prism or crystal, you have seen how white light turns into a rainbow of color. These colors correspond to different wavelengths of light, with increasing energy from red to violet. Ultraviolet, a wavelength our eyes cannot see, has so much energy that it can damage life, including us.
In the early 1970s, researchers used a clever new technique to analyze air samples taken on a research ship that cruised from Britain to Antarctica. The new method, called electron capture gas chromatography, is exquisitely sensitive, and can detect the presence of gasses in amounts a million times smaller than those detected by previous approaches. Throughout the voyage, researchers measured the industrial chemical chlorofluorocarbon-11. There is no natural source for this chemical, but manufacturers loved to use it as a cheap and efficient propellant in spray cans. Its production had grown exponentially over the previous several decades.
As these images hit the TV and newspapers, the issue came alive for the public. If it proved to be due to CFCs, then it would be a scientific crisis that was perceptible to people. They realized that if anything like this ever occurred over their own heads, it would be deeply personal.
And the world would be watching, so we needed to do it fast and we needed to do it well. Yikes. But from a scientific point of view, it was the pinnacle of excitement and fun. There is nothing more fascinating to me than attacking a scientific mystery, and what could be more fantastic than one involving the coldest, remotest place on Earth?
Antarctica is also the coldest place up in the stratosphere. The stratosphere is normally too dry for cloud particles to form, but under the extreme cold of Antarctica, what are known as polar stratospheric clouds can form.
I presented the work to colleagues at a scientific meeting in that same month. I remember well the skepticism with which my presentation was met, with lots of hard questions. But hard questions are what science is all about, and they make our work stronger. It needs to be strong if people are going to make industrial decisions or base policies on it.
Preventing ozone depletion had the tremendous benefit of a powerful kickstart caused by consumer action to turn away from CFCs in spray cans in the U.S., a personal choice that destroyed the market for American CFCs and made our producers eager to look at alternatives. It was an easy thing to do, and it made people feel empowered and interested.
Can progress still happen when it depends not on personal choices but policies? Sure. Getting rid of CFCs in refrigeration and air conditioning was not something the individual consumer could do, beyond limited personal choices. But technology-steering policies under the protocol inspired the required innovation to find those solutions and make them cheap enough to be practical.
Reprinted with permission from Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do It Again by Susan Solomon, published by the University of Chicago Press. 2024 by Susan Solomon. All rights reserved.
I've vacillated and deliberated doing so off and on for a few years now, but this time, I've made like a frog and leaped. (i.e. 3-rail stuff is being purchased and flowing my way.) Don't know exactly where these 3-rails will lead me, or what kinds of turns it will take along the way, but off I go.
My hopping aboard the 3-rail train could end up taking me on wild ride akin to a "Nantucket sleigh ride"... or it could be that 3-rails can take me to Nirvana. That's unknown at this point. But this time, I think it just might be here to stay. I'm sure many of you here in this forum know this fact about 3-rail:
Sometimes you just can't shake it once you've truly "known" it.
Over the past few years, I've shared my deliberations and flirtations concerning the call of 3-rail with this fine community here at OGR. Typically, those mental shenanigans and deliberations were accompanied by a lot of diversionary discourse. There is no need to, nor should I, rehash that here. Besides, this is the 3-rail forum. Things non 3-rail are inappropriate for this forum, thus, I will not allow myself to veer off into other scales/etc in this ongoing thread over the coming days, weeks, months, or "??".
If, by some chance, you think it might be entertaining to get caught up on my ramblings of old, the last installment in what was my primary thread concerning same, can be accessed here:
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THE ABOVE SAID...
I would love for you to pull up a chair, and follow along with me as (off and on) I'll be sharing all sorts of musings in this thread about 3-rail trains, and what I hope to do with them. Of course, as I do, your input and participation would be very much encouraged.
All fer now!
I know what you mean. I wore out my original copy that I purchased back in '62. I kept up with it into the 70s (rubber band held it together), but alas my original got lost in one of our moves. Back in the mid-80s I was at a train meet, and lo and behold, there on the table was another copy... and for only a buck! I snatched it up, and though the binding is shot, and the pages are frayed... I still have it to this day. I love the smell of it when opened and I take a whiff of it.
I can't help but feel that through all these decades of being a "serious" modeler (primarily in HO scale), that little Bantam Book has kept me in touch with my memories of 3-rail, and in its own way, has contributed to my return to 3-rail.
I'm very much looking forward to getting my first whiff of ozone and hot grease in years via my little Marx set. AND, once I get a version of Lionel's Baldwin Hudson (2055, 2065, etc)... that smoke smell, too! I still have a third bottle of SP's!
Andre, you mention the Lionel 2065 steamer in your above post. The 2065 was my 1st engine, included in a Lionel freight set I got as a Christmas gift in 1954 when I was 3 years old. I still have that locomotive and set, all in good working order. However, they have little exterior nicks and defects cause by the rough play of a child (me), including racing it on a plywood board layout when my 2065 took a dive onto the floor a few times.
My heart nearly leaped out of my throat when I visited my LHS last week and saw another 2065 in mint condition. I bought it for a reasonable price, took it home, applied gear oil to the gears near the driving wheels, and ran it on my layout. It runs and smokes beautifully.
It fell to OGR's Marx enthusiasts to dangle the lure in front of me that caused me to go for the bait. With their help, after all these decades, I was able to learn exactly what Marx 3-rail "hand-me-down" train set I had been given as a youngster when I was 7 or 8 years of age (in 1959 or 1960): It was a Marx "25225" set.
Perhaps it was mere coincidence, or perhaps something more, but of all things, a very nice "25225" set was on the Bay that was an exact fit with my memories (or so close I don't know the difference)... so I went for it! With a point/click... the boxed set pictured below was on its way to me, complete with a Marx 50w Model 729 transformer and some track.
Alas, when received, there was not enough track that remained with the set in order to set up a loop or oval. So, I simply cleaned up the engine and cars, lubricating where needed, and fixed the transformer issue (broken wire connector). Now the little 999 engine purrs like a kitten when powered at the workbench!
When the Marx track bundle I purchased arrives, after right at 60 years, I will again see a very familiar Marx set racing around an oval of track, with it's little side rods in a blur. It will be doing exactly what Louis Marx en company designed it to do: Bring pleasure to its owner.
The other siren call for me has been Lionel Postwar. I have long admired select Lionel postwar items. I am already watching for reasonably priced items that I hope to eventually obtain. Though my most basic interest within the Postwar era are the products of Lionel and Marx (and possibly AF, Kusan, and such), in addition I will also be interested in "traditional sized" (similar to postwar) types of newer offerings, as time and opportunity afford.
Back in my Lionel collecting years (1990s), it all started with a humble little boxed Lionel 202 UP diesel set that I purchased for about $45. It was my intent to simply have a small oval of track running under the Christmas tree, for the Christmas season had arrived. I threw a white sheet down, placed the tree on it, and set up the oval of track around the base of the tree. There our the little pumpkin-colored Lionel Alco FA resumed its Christmas Tree duties that no doubt it had performed in the past. (We nicknamed the little 202 "Pumpkin"!) No sooner had "Pumpkin" made a few circles, than that magical ozone smell began to drift into our nostrils. My daughter (I think she was 12 at the time?) noticed it too.
Like an aphrodisiac intoxicating us with the desire for more, we both laid down to get an eye-level view of our little Pumpkin, and as it neared we would raise our head up from eye level and sniff that wonderful sweet smell of ozone as it passed under our noses! She loved that aroma! Of course, so did I. With each whiff of that wondrous aroma, memories of childhood times gone by wafted through my mind! (Scenes of my little Marx set from my childhood... a friend's little Marx Monon FM set... some friend's and their Lionel sets... oh my!)
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