Robert Pence

It would be interesting to see a life-cycle analysis comparing the experimental bridge-decking material with conventional steel and concrete. The production of both steel and concrete requires a lot of energy input and produces a lot of emissions.

It will be good if Amtrak can get the Beech Grove (Indianapolis) facility back up to operating at capacity. They had built up a world-class repair facility with a capable workforce, and their reputation had brought workers and managers from Europe to observe and be trained, when severe funding cuts reduced their effectiveness to near nothing. Beech Grove is equipped for anything related to cars and locomotives, from refurbishment and repainting to heavy wreck repair.

Quite nice, for the most part. The relentless traffic is something I've noticed about some Pennsylvania small towns. I'm guessing it's because the settlements grew up around crossroads and along transportation routes, and the topography leaves few economical alternatives for rerouting roads. The traffic keeps growing even as the communities wane.

Powerful stuff, kind of jarring to view in the morning before coffee. Strong contrasts, excellent camera work as usual.

Probably a pretty amazing downtown fifty years ago and more! It's tragic to see how some of these places have declined.

Pretty skies! It hurts to look at that and be reminded of what this place will look like in a couple of months!

I've wanted to get that shot for a long time, but recently part of the neon wasn't working. As my train from Chicago passed the station earlier I noticed that it was fixed, so I drove back to get the shot. I've seen those before, but I need to go back and get photos. It's difficult to get around those little beach communities because the folks are really territorial. Even though they can't fence off the beach, they don't want a bunch of outsiders invading what they consider their private paradise, so there's virtually no on-street or other public parking anywhere within decent walking distance and "no parking" and "no trespassing" signs are everywhere. I should put my bike in the back of my station wagon, and then park at the station and explore.

I was about to say that. Looks like a nice turnout. I appreciate high-quality restorations of cars of any era, and especially the more flamboyant models. I respect the skilled workmanship that goes into really well-done customization, but I prefer to see authentic restorations. That last house is somethin'. Somethin' indeed.

Interesting mixture. The views must be fantastic in October.

Not all that bad. Some bottom-feeder businesses and bastardized buildings, but some good stuff, too. Some fine-looking houses.

Having spent the first twenty years of my life entirely on the flatlands of northeastern Indiana, I'm still fascinated by towns that spill down hillsides. Maybe they had to put them there, because they needed all the flat spots to raise food. I've seen that fireproof tile construction a few places. Usually it includes stone quoins that help the appearance quite a lot.

Bristol has contrasts, from tattoed, gun-totin' Harley-riders to the man honored with the gazebo and memorial plaque. I never knew him, but I doubt if he hung out much at the gun shop or the tattoo parlor, and the plaque doesn't mention a loud motorcycle. Less than ten years ago Bristol's quaint little downtown had little commercial activity and was getting down-at-the-heels. I was quite surprised at the turnaround. Bristol is home turf for Mike Montagano, the young attorney who hopes to unseat Congressman Mark Souder this time around. I think I've mostly caught up with recent travels, and I'll probably take some time off from creating new threads in order to attend to maintenance on my own sites. www.robertpence.com is way overdue for some TLC. That was a new one on me, too. I thought at first that someone might have gotten inventive with vinyl, but I got up close and then zoomed in on it, and it sure looks like real wood, and somewhat worn at that. I think it's the real deal. Bristol was the wrap-up of a three-day road trip that included doctors' appointments in Chicago, and I was wearing down by then. I think there was an old church, but I just didn't get to it. There was a contemporary United Methodist Church that looked very well maintained with good landscaping, and the brick building in the photo just after the tattoo parlor is being renovated into their community-outreach center as a replacement for the boarded-up red garage building with the cross. I don't know about a town hall; it may have been in the dark red house in the first couple of photos, but I'm not sure about that. Two local cafes > Subway.

Bristol, Indiana and Bonneyville Mill Park Bristol stands at the intersection of two state highways just a stone's throw from the Indiana Toll Road. Truck traffic through the town is relentless, possibly because Indiana 120 is a favored route for truckers wanting to avoid tolls. Bristol has its charms and sweet spots and some contrasts. Have a look around, and see what you think. 1953 Masonic Temple hosts a sporting goods store on the first floor. In the 1830s Edward Bonney established a grist mill and sawmill on the Little Elkhart River, planning to grow a thriving community along what promised to become a major transportation route. The transportation didn't evolve according to his expectations, and he sold the business and became a tavern keeper. Later he was accused of counterfieting and fled the area. The mill was equipped with a turbine that allowed it to produce more power with less water flow and pressure than a vertical wheel, but the stone buhr mills were never replaced with the more efficient steel roller mills introduced in the 1880s. Bonneyville Mill still grinds flour with stone mills, and the mill and its surroundings are an Elkhart County Park. Lucid Energy Technologies, of Goshen, Indiana, has installed a generator driven by a Gorlov Helical Turbine in a duct mounted to the dam's bypass gate. The generator wasn't operating when I was there.

How could Trump talk about ugly without doing something about his hair? I remember the Century when it was new. It was really something, then. The last time I was in it was maybe ten years ago, and it was quite a letdown when compared with the early memories. Amazing views from the Trump! What can I say? Great minds ... :wink: And Hayward ... Where you got them drumsticks?

South Shore & Metra Electric September 15 -16, 2008 The South Shore web site carried a notification that trains were running approximately 20 minutes late because of high water in the Gary, Indiana area following the passage of the remnants of Hurricane Ike. By late in the day on September 15th, delays cascading through the system had accumulated so that a train from Chicago was about 45 minutes late at Carroll Avenue. A freight train passed over the mainline to do some switching, and then remained in the clear until the passenger train came through. Westbound Train #20 arrives from South Bend. Train #20 proceeds westbound. Train #109, terminating at Carroll Avenue, arrives from Chicago. On Tuesday morning, allowing plenty of time in case of storm-related delays, I caught an early train to Chicago. On arrival I had plenty of time to spare, so instead of detraining at 57th Street Metra Station as usual, I rode on to Van Buren and took some photos, and then rode the Green Line back south. The rush-hour crowd hadn't yet arrived, and only a few people detrained here. Both South Shore and Metra Electric trains serve Van Buren. South Shore trains may only discharge passengers inbound from Indiana and pick up passengers outbound to Indiana. On Tuesday evening after watching the sun set over Lake Michigan from the beach at Indiana Dunes State Park, I drove a short distance to the 1929 Beverly Shores station on the South Shore. It's the last survivor of the Spanish-styled stations built in the 1920s along the Samuel Insull-owned electric interurban lines. When built, it incorprated a ticket office, waiting room, and residence for the station manager. It was in severe disrepair when restoration was undertaken in 1998. Beverly Shores is now a flag stop for both eastbound and westbound trains. I'm surprised it's still in service in any form, considering the very limited amount of parking and the movement by the railroad toward tightening schedules. On this evening I had hoped at best to get a good night shot of the depot with the blur of a train speeding by at 70mph. I was pleasantly surprised when Train #117 slowed and pulled to a stop to discharge several passengers.

Those speeds give increased significance to some numbers I heard years ago. One of my former bosses said that in the post-WWII era he frequently rode the Detroit Arrow between Fort Wayne and Detroit. The "Arrow" was a joint operation by the Wabash and PRR, meant to capture some of the lucrative traffic between Detroit and Chicago that the New York Central and Grand Trunk had pretty well sewed up. The Wabash and PRR mainlines crossed in downtown Fort Wayne with an interchange track connecting them and the respective depots just a block apart, on either side of the interchange. The "Arrow" ran between Chicago and Fort Wayne over the PRR and between Fort Wayne and Detroit over the Wabash, pausing only to load/unload passengers in Fort Wayne while engines and crews were exchanged. My former boss said that the train averaged 75mph portal-to-portal between the two endpoint cities, at the time the fastest passenger train schedule in North America over a comparable distance. That would have involved some blistering speeds through the flat, open countryside of northern Indiana and northwest Ohio.

If you'd keep your cell phone bill up-to-date you could sit on your front stoop while you eat those instead of leaving a trail all over town. I'll be back in town in December on assignment from Santa, and I'll be making last-minute updates to his list, so please make sure you clean up your leftovers before then. :laugh:

Chicago September 16, 2008 I caught South Shore Train #12 at Carroll Avenue (Michigan Cty), and after some slow running due to high water in the Gary area, arrived at Van Buren Station a little bit before 8:30 a.m.. At that hour things haven't really started to pick up in the Loop. I killed time taking photos until about 9:30 before boarding a CTA Green Line train to East 63rd Street. Green Line station at East 63rd & Cottage Grove. Lorado Taft's 1922 Fountain of Time stands in Washington Park at the western end of the Midway Plaisance, site of the midway of the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The sculpture, made from concrete, weathered badly and underwent a major restoration beginning in 2002. University of Chicago Medical Center. The Center for Advanced Medicine stands on the left. Heavy traffic on Cottage Grove at 58th Street makes it difficult to cross the street and there's no signal there, but at least there's now a guy flagging traffic. Watching him at work is a treat; he's both physical and vocal in communicating with drivers and pedestrians. Parks Department's maintenance buildings. Back in the Loop, photos from CTA's Adams/Wabash Station. What the heck! I'm in no hurry to get back to Indiana. I think I'll catch a Brown Line train and take a ride. Diversey looks like a good place to get off the train and look around. Major capital investment in CTA is beginning to show results in the upgrading of formerly run-down stations. Back to CTA at Belmont. Emerging from the subway on State Street. Back to Millennium Park Station to catch a South Shore train to Michigan City.

Indiana Dunes after Ike September 15 & 16, 2008 Remnants of Hurricane Ike passed through Northeast Illinois and Northwest Indiana late Sunday through early Monday, dumping a reported ten inches of rain in a short time as it brushed across the southern tip of Lake Michigan. After checking into my motel room in La Porte, I drove to Indiana Dunes State Park to walk on the beach and enjoy the lake. I was surprised at the amount of damage brought by the storm in a relatively short time. I talked with a park employee who said that the previous night they had been sandbagging the parking lot in waist-deep water to protect the beach pavilion. The sky was heavily overcast and the wind had the lake churned up. Severe wave erosion was visible along the shore. Dune Creek drains approximately 7,000 acres of dunes, forest, and wetland. It passes beneath the beach pavilion parking lot through a large concrete culvert and reaches the lake as a slow, shallow meandering stream stained the color of strong tea by decomposing leaves and other vegetation picked up along its path. Although things had calmed down considerably by Monday evening the flow from the culvert was still pretty fierce. Before the storm, the beach tapered gradually to near water level close to the end of the concrete retaining wall. Apparently the culvert blew out from pressure beneath the parking lot, and the escaping water washed away the sand and allowed the pavement to collapse. The worker with whom I talked said that as they were sandbagging they could see the surface of the lot crumbling away. Stormy weather washes up all kinds of stuff and makes good pickings for the gulls. Always plentiful, they were out in larger-than-usual numbers. Approximately 24 hours later, the sun was shining, the lake was calm, and except for the physical damage to the parking lot and the still higher than normal flow from Dune Creek, things seemed to be returning to normal. I heard shouting and cheering, and following the sound, found a beach volleyball game just wrapping up. Chicago skyline across the lake, as sunset approaches. Northwest Indiana steel mills on the horizon at sunset.

I almost called the EMS 'cause I thought I was having a heart attack. Then, I realized that without UO, life isn't worth living anyway. :|

Isn't there an issue with train length in some cases that screws up the priority rules? I remember reading someplace that many sidings are now too short to accommodate the long freight trains that are common practice, but long enough to hold a typical passenger train, and that's why Amtrak trains sometimes end up in sidings as opposing freight trains pass. Amtrak has never liked to operate on single-track lines, but the invasion of the bean-counters has resulted in the loss of a lot of double track. The obvious remedy would be to restore the double track, but failing that, creating longer sidings and updating signal systems would bring an improvement.

I can pretty much agree with that. I'm always excited by good architecture and by the sheer mass of some of Chicago's loop buildings, but what really makes an experience for me is the street-level activity and energy. The Loop has that in spades during weekday business hours, and it's an exciting place to be. That may mean more to someone like me who comes from a country/small-town/small-city background than for someone who spent more of their youth in large cities. Outside business hours, the Loop is indeed pretty uninspiring, but that's where the near-north neighborhoods come in; they seem to be lively any time, and they are more human-scaled and promote a different sort of interaction. Regarding CTA, yes, it could be better. Mass transit has gotten little respect and even less funding until very recently, and although recently there's been more generosity from governments at various levels for capital improvements, operating funds still lag. There's a lot of work going on at a brisk pace to add capacity to CTA's rail facilities and long-needed updates to stations. I was there a couple of weeks ago and found the station work really appealing at some of the north-side stations. I'm hoping they'll find the operating funds to optimize the use of the upgraded infrastructure.

In March, 2005, there was an SSP meet in Milwaukee. March weather in Milwaukee can be -- no, wait -- is expected to be unpleasant, and the day of the meet was just above freezing with occasional drizzle and flurries. We had a fair-sized group, and partway through our tour we stopped in at Borders for a warm-up/potty break. From the looks on the faces of the store employees when this big group appeared, they thought they were about to become the beneficiaries of a flash mob event. Funny thing - a guy at one of the tables in the coffee shop happened to be browsing the SSP site on his laptop when we walked in. He had read about the meet, overheard some of our conversation, and quickly picked up on who we were.

I'm going back in December. I'll be curious to see if these are still there. CTA Green Line station at E63rd & Cottage Grove.

LOL! I just spit coffee all over my desk!