Urban Life

The Dangers of Train Yards, Through the Eyes of Railroad Employees – Atlas Obscura

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The Dangers of Train Yards, Through the Eyes of Railroad Employees – Atlas Obscura

In 1960, looking west from the Texas and Pacific freight yard in El Paso, Texas, you’d see the lines of the rails curving off to the north, towards the city buildings and smokestacks in the distance. In the yard, after an engine gave a rail car a push on its way, workers might uncouple the car and let it roll under its own momentum down the way, or simply release a brake to start it in motion. During the day and the night, children from the neighboring houses would find their way into the yard, along with itinerant workers and drifters. Cars and trucks following Tornillo Street, a public road, across the dozen or so rails in the yard, might find heavy train cars traveling straight towards them or blocking their way.

For the men working on the trains, it felt like a dangerous situation. The photos shown here were taken by engineers and other rail workers on tracks across the country, in an effort to prove how hazardous these places could be and to show why cutting crews was a terrible idea.

Assessor Manuals

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Assessor Manuals

Assessor Manuals are published by the Office of Real Property Tax Services and distributed to local assessors in order to help them perform their duties. These manuals contain information on how to maintain assessment and tax rolls, collect information on properties in their municipality,?estimate market value and administer exemptions on qualified parcels. Updates are issued annually where appropriate.? The information contained in these manuals is intended to supplement the training that each local assessor must receive in order to retain their position. While these manuals provide information of aid to local assessment officials, they do not contain all that an assessor must know in order to fulfill their responsibilities.

Manufactured Housing is very odd the state’s assessment records

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Manufactured Housing is very odd the state’s assessment records. Some towns assessors don’t use that code at all, preferring to either leave the housing style field blank or describing such structures as Ranch style. For example, Coeymans doesn’t have a single building that is Manufactured Housing but Cario has several hundred. In some towns its inconsistent – varies widely by property – probably whoever was assessor at the time.

But then again, assessment records are riddled with errors. If you look at the City of Albany assessment records, only two buildings were built before 1850, a fact that doesn’t take long to disprove.

I often see advertisements promoting buying a home

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I often see advertisements promoting buying a home. 🏑

A lot of friends and colleagues are buying one, and indeed I think it’s a good investment if you have a family and need a larger dwelling that you plan to stay in for a long time. Paying a mortgage is a good way to be forced to build wealth, but it’s certainly not the only way – low-cost index funds, retirement funds and certificates of deposits with automatic deposits are other ways to build wealth.

While rent is an expense that is forever gone, you have to live somewhere. But lower-rent apartments can be quite affordable, allowing you to save and invest elsewhere. Plus a small rented space is going to be cheaper to heat and light, and the benefits to having access to public transit to get to work and walk-able neighborhood rather than having a car. Costs like utilities, transportation, repairs, mortgage fees and interest are non-recoverable even if you own your own house. Indeed, running my own numbers, I can’t find a way I would gain wealth faster owning a home with all the related expenses before renting.

While I concede I’ll probably stick around in New York State for a while longer, maybe a decade or so, I just can’t see setting down roots locally. Albany doesn’t feel like my home, and I’m not interested in community or local politics. I want an opportunity to reboot my life at some point, try a new community on for a change. I’m also not that interested in owning a fancy house, I’d rather have more land and not a fancy house. And I don’t want land for purposes of profit to sell it, but to use it for homesteading, hunting, and wildlife observation — any building should be just ancillary to provide housing but need not be permanent or appreciating in value.