Shoo-fly

March 4th, 2010 by admin

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Posted in February 2010 | 6 comments

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6 comments on this post.

  1. Maria Emilia:

    February 17th, 2012 at 5:44 am

    It was a nice surprise to find your site. Very well written and with useful information. Thanks!

  2. Pete:

    March 31st, 2012 at 10:26 pm

    Railroaders use the term “shoo-fly track” or simply “the shoo-fly” to refer to a temporary by-pass around a washout, bridge replacement project, etc.

  3. Nick:

    May 14th, 2012 at 11:08 pm

    Having lived in eastern Pennsylvania (very close to the Amish) for most of my life; ‘shoo-fly pie’ was (is) a classic dessert. If you never have, but do get the chance to try it… make sure it’s a ‘wet bottom’ pie!

  4. Duke:

    October 26th, 2012 at 7:12 pm

    The term is commonly used for a temporary power line around a work site also.

  5. John:

    November 10th, 2012 at 12:51 am

    At last I’ve found a reference!
    Shoofly was used by pipeliners in the 50′s-70′s to denote a temporary access for equipment where the pipeline ditch was unusually inaccessible.

  6. David:

    November 26th, 2012 at 4:26 pm

    The etymology of shoofly may indicate “short fly” as a possible origin, being a short length of RR track used as a workaround. This would suggest slurred speech by uneducated railway workers and non-English speaking immigrants, both common in the 19th century railroad industry. Most common uses of the word shoofly can be imagined as referring to a “workaround”, what you do when you can’t or don’t do the usual or “correct” thing, such as making a pie from molasses, or a short-cut rocker. Workarounds can also be annoying, such as stopping work on the main fly to build temporary track in difficult terrain. In South America today a popular cocktail is the shoofly, so dubbed by 19th century American RR engineers who could not get the alcohol they wanted from the US and cobbled something together from local liquor as a temporary workaround. Shoo-fly is a common railroading term for temporary workaround and can be found on the Internet

    http://roadwaystandards.dot.wi.gov/standards/fdm/hidden/transmittals/t385/17-40.pdf

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bypass_(road)#Shoofly

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