Actually Hi-Railing

I've been talking about it.  Today, I actually joined in a two-car caravan east from Columbus through Licking County riding on the rails.

Those are special rail-equipped wheels on the front of this Ford truck.  There's also hydraulic lifts and a steering-stop mechanism.  The combination makes hi-railing possible.

The truck hopped on the Panhandle Rail Line just north of I-670 in Columbus.  Among the first things we saw was the terminal on the south side of Port Columbus Airport and the terminal where the Transatlantic Transport stopped in Columbus as a midpoint between New York and Los Angeles.

That's not asphalt in front of the car at all.  We're, literally, riding the rails on the way through Licking County and on our way to see Licking County's Job Ready Site in Pataskala and the 79|Seventy Corridor.

From this vantage point, we get to see the encroachment of housing upon these industrial rail-line corridors, something that is somewhat a shame as that means fewer industrial sites in the future.  It also means homeowners who are made angry when rail traffic, something good for the economy, improves.

We have farmland preservation.  Maybe we need industrial land perservation to preserve land upon which future generations will work.