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Train Whistles at MSS

Discussion in 'Downtown Hotels' started by TKO, Jun 2, 2015.

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  1. Joe

    Joe VIP Whale

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    Sorry I don't since there was copious amounts of alcohol involved.:drunk:
     
  2. Bazzito52

    Bazzito52 Low-Roller

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    Main Street Station originally opened as a Holiday Inn in 1977. It closed in the mid '80's and sat vacant for a number of years. It re-opened around 1990 as The Park Hotel.

    When real estate developer Bob Snow sold his successful Church Street Station development in Orlando in 1990 (It was the fourth most visited attraction in Florida at the time.), he hoped to duplicate the formula in downtown Las Vegas. Not being able to get eminent domain powers for a major urban renewal project, he bought the Park outright 1n 1991, re-named it Main Street Station, filled it with his huge collection of antiques and installed his popular "Rosie O'Grady's Good Time Emporium" on the property. The Mickey Finn show moved in, relocating from the Union Plaza next door.

    A year later, he'd see most of the antiques auctioned off in a public sale. Boyd took over operations in 1992 and has had the property ever since. Even after so many of the magnificent antiques were removed from the property, it still retains much of Snow's original décor.
     
  3. bighead1970

    bighead1970 High-Roller

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    You can still see the Rosie O'Grady mirror in the 777 Brewpub.
     
  4. TKO

    TKO High-Roller

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    Interesting history lesson on the MSS. Enjoyed it. Still no definitive answer about whether the train whistle still blows or not. Would have liked to have heard from someone staying there now. Just have to wait until my Sept/October visit to find out.
    You would think the hotels and casinos would assign one person to check this message board once or twice a week, while their at work, to add an insiders perspective to some of our questions. Seems like good PR to me. I have seen comments from someone working at the Plaza on numerous occasions but not many others.
     
  5. Someone

    Someone High-Roller

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    the Main Street Station is right next to a double track mainline that splits to a triple track a few feet past the property


    there are federal regulations about the length and pattern of horn blowing at all rail crossings that must be followed

    the only way to avoid that is for a city to take the responsibility/liability for any and all crossing accidents at a particular crossing and then install double gates and directed horns and then the railroad will be relieved of the responsibility of blowing the horn at that crossing

    trains can of course still blow the horn for any pedestrians, cars, animals or anything else they feel they need to alert to their presence and local noise violations do not apply to railroads they are federally regulated

    in the case of the area near the Main Street Station the crossings are all elevated/the streets are lowered so there is no need to blow the horn at them, but they still could for other reasons

    they should be blowing a lot less with the grade crossing separation in the area and all the streets being lowered under the tracks

    but still with a triple track there they could blow the horn as a signal to someone on the ground doing track maintenance or if the train is stopped or reversing or otherwise needs to signal a brakeman or someone else on the ground

    in an area like Vegas depending on the weather with dry air and cool nights you can hear the horn for miles and miles
     
  6. smartone

    smartone VIP Whale

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    Yep! The railroad tracks in that area are a well know homeless/vagrant pedestrian causeway. I used to be responsible for a warehouse that backed-up to the tracks a little further down by Charleston and it amazed me the foot traffic that went on back there, as well as the temporary, cardboard apartments set-up along the back of the buildings that could only be seen from the railroad side. Whole little city and transportation network back there!
     
  7. TKO

    TKO High-Roller

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    Again, stayed at MSS 5 nights this past April/MAY and never heard a train horn. Prior to that always heard them whenever the Train went by. They always blew them right by the hotel because you would hear the horn become muffled as it past to the freeway side of the building or become louder if it was coming from the opposite direction. The building would screen out some of the noise so you could hear a change in the intensity.
    At least that's how I remembered it. Don't know of any rail crossings with gates nearby, but I'll ask a cab driver next visit.
    Interesting about the double track splitting into the triple. I'll also check that out on next visit.
     
  8. makikiboy

    makikiboy VIP Whale

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    Best to just expect it to blow sometimes. then you won't be irritated when it goes off during your stay. As others have mentioned, there are many reasons why they would blow their horn, just consider yourself lucky if you don't hear it during your stay but don't be surprised if it does go off.

    As for casinos reading these boards, there are too many boards to count for them to go through them. This board only has a few hundred members. Not worth the time to go through all the posts just to respond about a train whistle. We are lucky that Curt at the Plaza does read some of the posts on our board and gives comments, I can't think of any hotel casino in vegas that does monitor our board and respond so Kudos to Curt for taking the time to assist us.
     
  9. TKO

    TKO High-Roller

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    Besides this site, I get some helpful information from two other Vegas Boards I visit. The "Las Vegas Travel Forum" through Trip Advisor and The "Las Vegas Advisor". Would really appreciate if you would give me 6 or more of the other Vegas forums, that you alluded to, that I could check-out. Thanks Makikiboy.
     
  10. makikiboy

    makikiboy VIP Whale

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    Nah, LVA seems more interested in politics the past few years so you have to go through the non vegas posts to find anything worthwhile or helpful.

    If you google "las vegas forums" you will find a number of other forums on vegas. From vegaswatch to las vegas topix to openvegas to the completevegassite to virtualtourist to city-data.com to vegasjonesing to lasvegas4ever (run by blond4ever) to even yelp and even USAsexguide for info on night life (ahem) and vegastripping (not vegas stripping, lol) to lasvegasdirect to everythinglv. Not to mention the alternative sites, there are many sites relating to vegas which are sometimes helpful getting information. Many of our members here are also on other sites.

    I was on a few of the sites but they never compared to this VMB site for information and civility and was well organized (I like TA but hard to go through all the postings). Openvegas has also changed, they had an obnoxious dbag running the place (gene) but he is no longer running the site, I think Rhonda (real estate agent) is one of the people running it now.

    Not sure if they allow promotion of other vegas sites here so best for you to just google and check out all the sites and find the ones that will help you out. There are more sites available but just a quick search turned up the ones I listed.
     
  11. TKO

    TKO High-Roller

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    Thanks and sorry to bother you on this . Should have just been able to google on my own. For whatever reason, thought I'd already done that way back when. Obviously not.
     
  12. Joe

    Joe VIP Whale

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    It is with a sense of pride when I tell you Gene banned me for life from Openvegas.
     
  13. makikiboy

    makikiboy VIP Whale

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    Nah, no worries. People don't really go through many of the sites so it is amazing when we find so many forums dedicated just for vegas. We find other sites by word of mouth (from other sites, lol) a lot of the time.



    I had some run ins with the guy also. Basically his attitude was that he was the boss/owner and if you don't like it go elsewhere. Most of us chose to go elsewhere. The site basically "died" so he turned the site over to other people. A lot of the problem was that he wanted to be a major contributor and commenter but also wanted to be the moderator. This caused a double standard, he could talk smack but didn't allow anyone else to do so. We mentioned that he should either be a major contributor or the moderator but not both but he didn't care since he ran the show. so most of us left. Too bad as it wasn't a bad site.

    Mods: Not sure if I am able to make these comments about other sites so please remove my comments if you feel they are offensive to VMB or against VMB policy.
     
  14. KevinF2020

    KevinF2020 Low-Roller

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    While I have enjoyed reading this thread bounce around, to answer the OP, yes there are trains and they do whistle sometimes at MSS. We stayed there last night and yesterday afternoon and this morning (8 am) there were trains whistling away. We were in room 723 on the side facing the Plaza. It wasn't too loud or obnoxious, but definitely audible.
     
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