Robert Pence

I still like to go trackside with my camera, as evidenced in many of my UO posts. I've had to master the art of being very off-putting for occasions when I'm approached by a no-life foamer, eyes bugging out with excitement at the thought seeing a train and entertaining the fantasy of becoming friends with me because we both "just love trains." :roll:

Prob'ly not. :| Aww. It looks like a place where the staff has been there forever and everybody has a story. The building with the neon sign is the 1920s South Shore station, and that's what's shown in the interior photo. There's a sparsely-furnished waiting room because the trains run on-time and regular customers know what time to arrive. The back part that used to be the station agent's residence is a sort of on-again, off-again local museum/gallery. Neat idea, though; if South Shore ever eliminates that stop (and they just might), an interurban-themed short-order grill would be a nifty use for the station. Beverly Shores is the name of the dunes/beach community that was developed in the 1920s to take advantage of easy connections to Chicago via the railroad. It's mostly high-dollar real estate. I think part of it spills over into National Park Service property.

Sort of a side note - As RPO (Railway Post Office) service dwindled with the cancellation of passenger trains, the USPS created HPOs (Highway Post Offices) using buses. They were set up with sorting bins similar to those in the RPOs, and a storage area for mail sacks in the rear. Clerks sorted mail en route on round-trip runs that generally ran a maximum of 150 miles in each direction. The first HPOs went into service during World War II, and the practice continued until the USPS reorganized with regional and sectional offices with high-speed sorting machines in the 1960s. One of the last HPO buses was saved by a USPS employee and is now in the collection of the National Postal Museum. It was on loan to the Crawford Collection at the Western Reserve Historical Museum. I don't know if it's still there. The last run of an HPO was on the Cleveland-Cincinnati route. Around then end of the 1950s when my cousin and I were finally exempt from the local curfew law and haunting the streets of Bluffton, Indiana long after respectable young men should have been home in bed, we used to see the HPO come through in the wee hours and stop at the local post office. That one was the first articulated bus I had seen, and it was too long to make the turn onto the side street or fit the PO's parking lot, so it would pull through the driveway of the Texaco station across the street, which was closed at that hour. Too bad I wasn't taking many photos in those years; I already had a beer bottle in one hand, and it took two hands to work the camera I had then. Oh. Where I was going with this was that I read somewhere that in Switzerland the postal service uses buses to transport the mail to all the small towns and villages, and the buses carry public passengers as well as mail. There's at least daily service to virtually every village with a post office.

Nice work. Those are fascinating places, and it looks like they've undergone a lot of changes over the years, before finally being abandoned.

Prob'ly not. :|

Neat stuff - reminders of a glorious time.

I'm all in favor of good relationships between professional railroaders and serious enthusiasts. Showing common sense, respect and safety-consciousness has from time to time gotten me invited into the cab for a look-around, and even a couple of cab rides on tourist roads and short lines. Rather than a security risk, responsible, observant railfans can be an extra set of eyes and ears. There shouldn't have to be a law about on-duty use of cell phones and text messaging; that's just plain common sense, and an operating crew member with any sense of professionalism should know when to cut off the outside interference and which foamers to avoid because they're likely to be obsessive nuisances. Thirty years ago or so, there was an engineer on the Conrail Fort Wayne Division who enthusiastically encouraged young railfans' interest. He got caught inspecting a restroom with a fifteen-year-old and arrested and subsequently fired.

Nice stuff!

I got this from AVG when I clicked on the Kentland IN thread in City Photos - USA/World:

Pretty interesting; that'd be a neat experience. How long until pedicabs show up in US metros? Maybe Atlanta? :wink:

If you modify an off-line object like a photo in photobucket without changing the link, it's not picked up as an edit to the post.

Excellent tour. I haven't visited that park, but it looks like I should. It's Sunday morning and I was a bit drowsy until I saw the photo of Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate on tour in Cincinnati. That must have been quite a feat of logisitics, even creating an appropriate backdrop with representations of Michigan Avenue's 'scrapers. I should go to Chicago and get a photo of the huge gap in Millennium Park.

At least as far back as the sixties, most of the intercity bus service outside the major metro areas depended heavily on revenue from package express to prop up routes that wouldn't have been profitable based on passenger revenues alone. In midwestern towns like the one near where I grew up, services like UPS and FedEx were unknown but it wasn't a problem. If a business needed a rush shipment of a part but didn't need it badly enough to pay air freight, they could get it pretty quickly via Greyhound or Trailways. Dad used it often; shipments from any major midwestern city could reach our small town generally within 24 hours, and often overnight. In cities where local courier services existed, the bus lines often contracted with them to make local pickups and deliveries. The service was fast enough, reliable, and economical. The package express companies managed to steal that business with anti-competitive prices by getting state and local governments to subsidize the cost of hubs and transfer facilities at municipal airports, enabling them to take advantage of already heavily subsidized commercial aviation. Without the revenue from express business, intercity bus lines went into contraction mode. The quality and frequency of service fell off rapidly and many smaller cities and towns lost service altogether. The sorry state of intercity bus service is an example of the effect of flawed public policy on our national transportation system, and it needs to be addressed. Even if we achieve a reasonable level of intercity passenger rail service, a lot of people in smaller cities and towns not on rail routes still will be stranded.

Your own personal safety may be at risk. A house collapse can be sudden and catastrophic, especially if there's other preexisting damage or structural weakness. Once things reach a certain level of instability, even a small triggering event can cause a cave-in.

No way. I'd have to go through MayDay's boot camp to become an admin.

I'm a veteran of the opening-door experience. I had no time to react, and found myself sitting on the bricks with my back against the car door and a bike with a crumpled frame and mangled wheel in my lap. On one-way streets I prefer to ride on the left to minimize the chances of reliving that experience. I still maintain a high level of vigilance for opening doors. Another parked-car danger to watch out for is dogs left in cars with windows open. I narrowly escaped being bitten by a German Shepherd that probably outweighed me. When I realized what had almost happend, I 'bout peed myself.

I shall establish myself as HGIC - Head Geezer in Charge. My mission is to indoctrinate the whippersnappers with the traditional values upon which all successful societies are built, beginning with respect for their elders. They may not like it now, but later on they'll thank me for it. :x

At first I thought this might be her vehicle: But this explains everything:

Fabulous country! Is that West Virginia? Probably beautiful in fall for color, or in spring for wildflowers. I think I see a rhododendron behind you in the last pic.

Who says there's nothing going on in Middletown on a Saturday night? :laugh:

It looks mostly structurally intact; they didn't destroy the cornices or other ornamentation and presumably the building is stable and suitable for occupancy, reducing the chance that it will deteriorate to the point of being condemned and razed. A building that age would have had wood sash, and even with normal care they would have deteriorated enough to pose a hazard from glass falling to the sidewalks below. Thermally efficient windows that big, of historically authentic appearance, could cost a few thousand dollars a pop. Had an owner or prospective buyer been faced with the prospect of spending that much, they might have just walked away. I agree it's unattractive, but it looks like it's still eminently restorable if someone should be motivated to do it. Sometimes you gotta settle in the near term for what you can get. Compare it with a vacant lot and see which you prefer; sometimes that's what the choice comes down to, for the owner. :|

I've long been impressed with Dick Lugar. I lean mostly Democrat and have for a long time, and his views on social issues are often more conservative than mine. He's a brilliant individual with a lot of experience, though, and he takes a reasoned, informed approach to dealing with public policy.

Nice to see all the construction going on. Dayton has some really good features in its river setting, environmentally-friendly trolley buses, and a great art museum. I'd love to see its downtown become lively again; the downtown residential developments should help, if they can get people to embrace them. Good photos. The Avis shot prompted my brain to pop up with "AVIS with EIFS". It struck me as funny, but maybe it's because I'm still half asleep.

I really like your work; it's visually appealing and carefully executed. Old cemeteries are fascinating places; the markers sometimes contain a little more background information than is common now, and just noting the lifespans of some of those interred there causes me to reflect on the times they lived through.

Given the roads-obsessive bias of our governor and the mindless support of his base, I'm not suprised at that. If the US had a decent geographic distribution of passenger rail service, Indianapolis would be near-perfect logistically. But we don't, and it isn't. Indiana brought itself to financial near-ruin in the mid-nineteenth century by investing in a canal when canals in the eastern states were already being driven into bankruptcy by railroads. The nicest thing about living here is that most other places seem progressive by comparison.