📚The Future of Rail 📚
While visiting the University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign, FRA Administrator David Fink, FRA Associate Administrator for Railroad Safety & Chief Safety Officer Karl Alexy, and staff from the FRA Office of Research and Development explored their Research and Innovation Laboratory (RAIL).
While touring RAIL, they saw how advanced testing drives rail safety. Highlights included the Track Loading System testing full-depth, 11-crosstie panels under 100K lb loads, and a 70-foot test track simulating diverse conditions to evaluate composite and concrete crosstie durability.
Newfoundland Dog Brumus walked 50 miles w/ owner Robert Kennedy C&O Canal Trail. National & State Parks need more Federal Funding @Interior@RapidResponse47@interiorpress47@SecKennedy challenge Americans weekly 5 mile hike and visit/enjoy/support our National/State Parks
There's a falcon the size of a robin that'll hunt your yard for free. And you can build it a house this weekend.
The American kestrel hovers over open ground and drops on grasshoppers, voles, and mice all day. It's the most widespread falcon in North America, found in nearly every state, and it's down by roughly half since the 1960s.
The reason is fixable: kestrels nest in tree holes they can't dig themselves, and we keep cutting down the dead trees that hold them. No cavity, no nest.
So give them one.
The whole box comes out of a single 8-foot 1x10. A 7¾-inch floor, a body about a foot and a half tall with a sloped roof you hinge at the top for cleaning, a 3-inch round hole up near the front, and 3 inches of wood chips in the bottom, since they bring no nesting material of their own. White pine, an afternoon, about twenty bucks.
Hang it 10 to 20 feet up on a pole or a dead tree at the edge of a field, pasture, or big open lawn, with the hole facing the open ground and pointed south or east. Put a baffle on the pole so raccoons can't climb to it.