Ok as we're talking about the oranges, here's juicy tidbit

The oranges landed on the train when the park was renamed Minute Maid Park in 2002.

Originally, the coal car had a pile of logs on top... which had spiders. I hate spiders.

The very first oranges were something similar to dodge balls painted orange.

Any guess as to what happened to those in the middle of a hot Houston summer on the train?

Some exploded... sounded like a gun shot!!! Scared the bejezus out of me.

More after we bat....

Ok... the coal car... all the train sounds come from the coal car. We have a speaker system in there.... and that's really it.

No drinking fountains or restrooms. The beer and peanut vendors do not come up here.

Back to the oranges... the current set of oranges is the third or fourth set we've had up here.

The first versions had bigger oranges and there was a ladybug on top to bring us luck.

I haven't seen the ladybug in a couple of years.

The last time the train was hit during an official ball game was on a homer by @Evan3Longoria. He put a dent on one of the speaker holes that's covered by the Nolan Ryan Beef sign.

I'm pointing to the approximate spot.

I'll have a couple more for you after we bat

So originally the train's speed was set at about 7 mph.

In 2001 or 02, an axle on the coal car snapped during a game. It took a couplr of weeks to fabricate the part -- everything up here is custom -- and replace.

After that we lowered it to 2.75 mph.

Trying to think of more coal car tidbits for y'all.