Robert Pence

Lancaster, Pennsylvania August 25-26, 2008 Over the past forty years or more I've been in or around Lancaster a few times. This was the first time I made an effort to look around, and although I didn't cover anywhere near all of it I was impressed. According to the 2000 census, Lancaster has about 58,000 residents. I know of cities with two or three times that many people, that would love to have Lancaster's dense urban core and downtown activity. Many have destroyed their history, but Lancaster's is to a great extent alive and well. In addition to its density and history, Lancaster's friendly, thoughtful people are among its greatest assets. The chairs are a temporary installation; local investors are working to build a streetcar line downtown, and they intend to put a streetcar on display here to build public interest. A parking garage! What better way to get an overview and get oriented? Look at all the buildings! There are surface lots here and there, but most parking is in garages and the real estate is used for buildings. Some are old, some are newer, but there's density. About halfway down the street on the right is the Pennsylvania Academy of Music, the last performance space commission executed by renowned architect Philip Johnson. Lancaster's people are justifiably proud to have this venue. The 1852 Fulton Opera House, or Fulton Theatre, presents quality professional theatre performances and draws audiences from a large area. Starving Artists Cafe offers a varied menu of good food prepared fresh daily on site. My lunch was a chicken salad sandwich on a lightly-toasted croissant, and French onion soup. The artworks on the wall are priced at $10 each. Penn Square anchors the center of downtown Lancaster and is the site of Central Market, the Heritage Center, and the city's two tallest buildings. The Lancaster County Convention Center and Marriott at Penn Square are being built within the facade of the former Watt and Shand Department Store and are scheduled for opening in Spring 2009. Central Market is America's oldest farmers' market building. The market is open Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Since the 1730s farmers have been bringing their produce to this site to sell to the public. Some families have held their Central Market stands since before 1900 The Old Courthouse is imposing both in scale and in style. Surprisingly, I haven't been able to find any information about it on the internet. An incongruous juxtaposition; modern public transit and a nineteenth century carriage step. Lancaster has frequent passenger service from trains connecting Harrisburg with the Northeast Corridor at Philadelphia. The smoke deflectors date from the steam era, and were installed to minimize soot and cinders blowing in the windows in summer. Wash me, please!

Just commenting on various things said here, because I need to take a break from Photoshop. As testament to my old-fart status, I went off to college with two suitcases, a clock radio, and a bicycle; everything fit into my parents' '57 Mercury with room for Mom and Dad, my aunt, and me. Nowadays at move-in time the campus streets are clogged with U-Hauls. The party atmosphere then wasn't near what it is now, but I had a roommate who'd get plastered regularly on weekends. It really didn't matter, because drunk or sober, he was still a dipsh!t. Re office parties, I always refrained from drinking alcohol. I had enough trouble with impulse control and a smart mouth when I was younger, anyway. I once saw a payroll manager in his 60s removed from the premises and taken home because he was heckling a corporate VP while the VP was addressing the group. Amazingly, he kept his job. Re recent grads, there are all kinds. We had some in the office who recognized the value of the opportunity to gain work experience, and conducted themselves as mature adults and contributed a lot to the mission. There were some who did otherwise. I'm thinking particularly of one case of arrested development who definitely qualified as a hunk or a heartthrob in the looks department when he hired on, and who regularly called in sick on Mondays and later bragged about how f*cked up he got on the weekend. It's been 8 years since I retired, and the last I heard, he was still there, still on the same job. The blast-furnace metabolism of his early twenties has long-since flamed out and he's a fat, jowly-faced drunk who still thinks he's a hottie and still gets trashed on weekends. He'll be stuck in his entry-level job until he gets job-eliminated or goes on disability with liver disease. College and I didn't hit it off, but as soon as I realized that wasn't going to work out, I got a job. A factory job, but a job, nonetheless. I paid board at home and bought groceries until I could get a tiny efficiency apartment, and since 19 I've been on my own. My brothers, both with a lot more education, one two years younger and the other six years younger, both have been back under the parental roof multiple times in their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties. Mom's in a nursing home now and the youngest one makes his way via fraud, scams and theft. The other one lives in Mom's paid-for house. Okay. My work here is done. Back to Photoshop.

Good shots! Cleveland does, indeed, look different from the water; that's the best, if not the only, way to get good, unobstructed downtown skyline views of the whole thing from ground level to the top of Key Tower.

In some places, trespassing enforcement is undertaken with considerable zeal. I subscribe to my hometown paper (fewer than 10,000 population) and read of citations issued by police for trespassing on the rickety tracks of a short line where one train per week would be a busy time. They operate at 5mph on the high-speed sections of the line. I guess the local PD has to do something to kill the boredom. They have time to issue citations to juveniles for smoking possession of tobacco, too. Most of those violations are reported by residents who see them from the kitchen window. You'd think the three or four trailer parks with their domestic disputes, drunken fights, and kids throwing rocks at trailers would be enough. The most gratifying railroad-crossing incident I've seen took place at the NS main line crossing on Sherman Street, just a few blocks from my house, as I waited on my bike for a l-o-o-o-o-ng freight to pass on a summer afternoon. As is typical, cars had backed up for a couple of blocks waiting to cross. A shiny red top-down convertible came up behind the line, and then pulled around and drove up close to the passing train in the left lane where there's no gate, ready to make a quick diagonal dash and get the jump on the people waiting in line. Adding insult to injury, Mr. Big Jock Don't-you-wish-you-were-cool-like-me stood up, turned around, and grinned as he waved to the less fortunate. When the last car of the train cleared the crossing, the first car in line on the other side was a police car. The red and blue lights came on immediately and just as immediately, a collective cheer and honking of horns went up from those waiting in line. Drivers honked and gave a thumbs-up to the cop as they passed. Arrogant SOBs so rarely get what they have coming that it's really delightful to see it happen.

Pretty good money. From what I've heard, it comes with something of a price, especially until you've been around long enough to get off the extra board. One of my near-neighbors is a locomotive engineer on NS, but I haven't talked with him much about his work. He's something of a renaissance man, as are a few other locomotive engineers I've met over the years. He's well-read, an avid cyclist, and creates beautiful summer gardens in his back yard.

You have to be careful with it, because it scratches fairly easily. No paper towels (some have abrasive materials or even metal fibers embedded), no regular glass cleaners with ammonia or organic solvent. Just a damp soft cloth will usually do it. You can find cleaners for acrylic at the same places that sell it. I've bought most of mine from Lowe's, and use Plaskolite Plastic Cleaner on it. It's also anti-static. Most cities of any size have industrial plastic suppliers, too, but some of those have minimum-bill policies. A good on-line source for framing supplies is Light Impressions. Probably not the cheapest, but they have just about everything and will custom-cut, and quality and service are good. They have acrylic in various weights, with scratch-resistant coating on one side. Another neat thing they have is clear plastic spacer stock, 1/4 x 1/8, that you can use behind the glazing when you want to prevent direct contact between the glazing and the artwork or mat. It has peel-strip adhesive on two sides so that you can turn it for either 1/8 or 1/4 spacing.

:? :-o :oops: :roll:

Marginally relevant to the thread, but something I discovered while framing photographs. Acrylic glazing works better than glass in many respects: - It's colorless and clear. Glass, even the "picture glass" used by many framers, has a greenish cast to it that mutes colors and contrast and dulls the appearance of a poster, print or photo. Put acrylic and glass side-by-side over a print, and the difference really pops out at you. - It provides better UV protection against fading. - It's much lighter in weight. The difference is very noticeable in a 16x20 frame. You can use a smaller hanger & nail and run less risk of plaster damage and a hit on your deposit when you move out. Even lighter when you use a wood frame instead of metal. - It's unlikely to break from impact and damage the print or poster.

I was noticing that this afternoon, driving home from northern Indiana via Indiana 13 and then US 33, not exactly expressway travel. Every rinky-dink wide spot in the road, if it has nothing else, has a Speedway gas station (they do have good coffee most of the time), an American Legion post, and a Curves.

Aside from being incongruous in its location, there was something about that design that made me uneasy on a primal level from the beginning. Just now I figured out what it is. The spiral is counter-clockwise. I don't know if it affects other people the same way, but to me it's sort of like a screw or bolt with a left-hand thread. Such things exist and have their purpose; a turnbuckle has one end right-handed and the other end left-handed. It's not what we encounter in everyday use though. It's counterintuitive. Compare it with a corkscrew, for example, and you'll see that it turns the wrong way.

Excellent photos! I haven't seen Toronto in many years (>30), but I loved it then.

I think that lengthwise mark is probably a rolling seam. I doubt if that is salvaged authentic old rail, more likely reproduction. The original rail almost certainly would have been iron, and from charcoal furnaces, at that. It would have been high in carbon and brittle indeed. Higher grades of iron in that era were made in small quantities with high labor content, by highly skilled artisans. Only in the late 19th century was it possible for relatively low-skilled workers to efficiently produce large quantities of good quality iron via the Bessemer process. By the 1920s, open-hearth furnaces had replaced many of the Bessemer Converters. The very high quality and authenticity of the replica hoisting engine and locomotive at Allegheny Portage make we wonder if the National Park Service was working on recreating an operational demonstration site when someone pulled the plug on financing, possibly in the aftermath of the Contract on America. Of course, no NPS staffer who values his/her job would ever want to discuss anything like that. As nearly as I could tell, that machinery isn't a mockup. It looks like real castings and forgings, machined and assembled to work like the originals. Notice on the incline, there's strap rail -- iron straps fastened to timbers. That stuff was wicked as hell. There are accounts of snakeheads; the rolling pressure of iron wheels over the rail, deforming the wood beneath, eventually would cause the rail to break loose from the wood timbers and curl upward, and often the end would go up through the wood floor of a coach, impaling or beheading or otherwise maiming passengers. On the comparatively slow-moving application of an incline, where the car could be stopped very quickly, it was probably less of a hazard.

A couple of weeks ago in Ebensburg, PA. This guy was trying to get my attention and I tried to ignore him, but he kept insisting that I take his photo. Fun shot. On one of my early visits to Cleveland about 1979 I was taking photos inside the West Side Market Hall, when a woman from one of the vendor stalls ran up shouting in an East European accent, "No Pictures! No Pictures! I break you camera!" All the while, she was hitting me. I ducked and ran and went outside to regroup. It took me a while to get over that. In Pittsburgh's Steel Plaza subway station I took a couple of photos and suddenly found myself confronted by a large security guard who took my ID and radioed my information to the dispatch center and then held my ID and blocked my exit while he waited for a response. He told me photography was prohibited on all PAT property unless I was accompanied by someone from Media Relations. This was after I had gone to the PAT customer service office downtown and asked if there were any restrictions on photography in the stations, and was told that no one in that office knew of any. I've had similar experiences in Chicago's Union Station, except that they didn't run my ID. They just intercepted me and told me I couldn't take photos of the equipment. Most recent incident occurred last Thursday afternoon during rush hour, across the street from my house. I heard a skid and an impact - not unusual here - and looked out the window to see a motorcycle on its side against the guardrail and no one moving. I called 911 and then put the battery and memory card in my camera and headed for the site. By the time I got to my back door, a half-dozen cars had pulled over and civilians had thoroughly contaminated the scene by moving the motorcycle and possibly endangered the biker and his woman by trying to render assistance. I was taking pictures from the other side of the guardrail, on public property (river greenway), and everything I was photographing was in the public right of way. A couple of minutes after the police, EMS, and Fire Rescue people arrived, one of the cops saw me taking photos and came over the guardrail toward me, with another cop close behind him. He assumed an aggressive stance and loudly demanded that I stop taking photographs because I was intruding upon the vicitims' privacy. He said that if I continued to take photographs, it would become city property. I assumed that by "it" he meant my camera, and his and the other officer's demeanor convinced me that if I insisted that I had a right to photograph, I'd quickly end up slammed up against a patrol car and cuffed, and my camera would be seized and/or destroyed. Two things I understand; don't try to reason with an angry person, and don't argue with a cop. Here was an angry cop. I left. I'm still steaming about that incident. I was staying well back from the action, not interfering with victims or emergency responders, and not endangering myself or anyone else. I've lived here since 1972 and I've been the first to call in many wrecks. I've photographed some, and only on one other occasion have I been challenged by a cop for photographing. On that occasion, he just asked me why I was taking photos, and didn't interfere. I asked an acquaintance who is a city councilman and an attorney about it, and he said that as long as I don't interfere with or endanger anyone and don't intrude upon private or restricted property, I have a legal right to photograph anything that takes place upon the public right of way. I have enough sense to know better than to publish photos that might prove embarrassing or injurious to someone, and I can make that decision better when I look at the photos on-screen than when I'm looking through a viewfinder. You might say I shoot first, capturing everything I can, and ask questions (of myself) later. I don't know of any photojournalist or documentarian who does it any differently. I think I was deprived of my civil rights and threatened with physical harm in the process, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it, if anything. I'd like that cop to know that I document everything that goes on in my neighborhood, from wrecks to street paving to flood mitigation and snow removal, and that he doesn't need to mess with me. I don't want him to have a vendetta against me because he seems like the sort who might get even sometime when there's no one else around.

Interesting set. There's a lot of good stuff among the grit, or vice versa. It's suprising that the area around the courthouse is so rundown; being the county seat is a lot of what saves small-town downtowns, because the lawyers snap up available building stock and often do nice restorations for their offices.

I don't know the greater context of that quote, but for some folks it's not a great leap from that statement to this kind of thinking: "Kill 'em all. Let God sort 'em out."

I recommend you take a look at Lancaster. It's a city that values its history and yet looks to its future, and it has frequent passenger trains to the East. I haven't posted the pics yet, but when you see them you might want to see the city. Nice, dense historic downtown with a working opera house, a city market, row houses, coffee houses and restaurants, and a local investor group working to build a downtown streetcar. The people are relaxed and friendly except when they get behind a steering wheel. Who knows? You might find true romance there.

I don't know about the turnpike, but it seems likely. Considering the terrain, there probably wasn't much duplication of effort to build canals across the state. The railway system spanned the distance between Hollidaysburg and Johnstown. Even in the 1800s new technology advanced very rapidly. Advances in metallurgical science led to the ability to produce larger quantities of higher-quality iron, and later, steel, than had been possible with early charcoal furnaces and hand methods. That led to stronger, safer boilers and more powerful, rugged engines to move longer, heavier trains on steeper grades. The advancement of steam power technology led to machines that could move earth and drill through rock much faster than large work gangs had been able to with hand tools and animal power. Once the railroads got a foothold, they were able to expand rapidly. They moved freight and passengers much more rapidly than canal boats and could operate year-around, whereas northern canals froze over for months at a time. And yes, the canal builders created water-level grades that were ideally suited for railroad construction. The line that is now the Whitewater Valley Railroad in Indiana was built on a canal towpath, and the Nickel Plate Railroad, now Norfolk Southern, traverses Fort Wayne on the former route of the Wabash-Erie Canal. There were many such instances. Some canal companies, like the Chesapeake and Ohio, saw the writing in the mud and transformed themselves into railroad companies. Some canal companies continued to operate as "hydraulic" companies after the loss of freight and passenger traffic. They sold water to run turbines that powered factories and mills along their routes. That business died off as the industries grew and installed steam engines to meet increased power demands, and the final blow to some canals came in the form of flood damage that they couldn't afford to repair.

Like most lists, this one seems subjective. It includes Carmel, Indiana but doesn't mention Indianapolis. Carmel's beautiful Monon Trail is an extension to Indianapolis' heavily-used, extensive, and still-growing Indy Greenways system, and by itself it would be a local recreational facility without much relevance as real transportation. There's no mention of Pittsburgh on the list. From what I've seen and read, Pittsburgh's trail system is large and well utilized, and work is well along to connect Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C. via Cumberland and the C&O Canal towpath. There's an interesting video on the reconstruction of the former Western Maryland Railroad's Big Savage Tunnel as part of that effort: http://www.wqed.org/ondemand/onq.php?cat=6&id=18

Good shots, and some uncommon angles. :clap:

Gettysburg National Military Park August 24, 2008 Gettysburg National Military Park has to be experienced. There's much more than I could cover in a sweltering August day, or probably several days if I tried. It's one thing to read the statistics in a history book, and quite another to walk there and see the many monuments placed years after the battle, testifying to the lasting impact that it had on states and communities and families who suffered the loss of loved ones and probably often, impoverishment from the loss of fathers and husbands who were breadwinners. Gettysburg cost the nation 51,000 killed and wounded, some lives snuffed out in an instant and some fading slowly in agony, pinned beneath the weight of the corpses of their friends and comrades. Battlefield medicine often consisted of wholesale amputations without anaesthetic. The statistics cite many "missing" too. I wonder how many of those were blown to bits and made unrecognizable by canister shot at close range, and how many, having survived a first charge or cannonade, said "**** this!" and quietly slipped away to walk home or to disappear into the countryside. It was a war where traditional military tactics involving orderly advances and open-field charges of massed troops met head-on with new weaponry designed to cut huge swaths from those ranks. As a kid I used to marvel at the artillery and other weapons as artifacts. Now when I look at them, I can only see them in terms of the ghastly carnage they were created to produce. The sights and signs are pretty much self-explanatory. This is a very small sampling of what's there. I'll shut up now. Youth group touring the battlefield. I gave one of the leaders a business card and hope he contacts me so I can send them some print files. Pennsylvania Memorial on the left

Allegheny Portage Railroad Altoona, PA - August 21, 2008 The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 gave the merchants of New York City a great competitive advantage over their counterparts in Philadelphia in reaching western markets. As a result, in 1826 the Pennsylvania legislature authorized the construction of the Main Line Canal between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. By 1831 much of the 276 miles of canal and its aqueducts, tunnels, dams and reservoirs had been completed, but in between the two cities stood the Allegheny Mountains. Water didn't flow uphill in 1831 much better than it does nowadays, and no one had yet put on paper a plausible scheme for overcoming that obstacle. In 1831 the legislature approved the construction of a system by which canal boat passengers and freight would be transferred to railroad cars and hauled by stationary steam engines up a series of five inclined planes. On the other side of the summit, the cars would descend a similar series of inclined planes and passengers and freight would be transferred back to canal boats to continue their journey. By the mid-1830s sectional packet boats had been developed that could be separated and loaded onto the railroad cars, eliminating the time-consuming transfers. At first, horses pulled the cars over the level stretches between inclines. They proved to be too slow and were replaced by steam locomotives that could travel at speeds up to 15mph. By 1840 the trip between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh had been reduced to four days from a pre-canal time of 23 days. The physical comfort of traveling had been improved substantially, too. Rail on the level portions was supported in iron chairs anchored to stone sleepers The machinery was arranged so that the hoisting cable ran in a continuous loop and there were two parallel tracks, one ascending and the other descending. Whenever possible descending cars were used to counterbalance the weight of ascending cars, reducing the strain on the machinery. In peak periods cars were hauled over the inclines every ten minutes, resulting in considerable wear on the 3 1/2-inch hemp rope, and frequent breakage. Although the cars were equipped with devices to help prevent runaways in such situations, and although the devices sometimes worked, the recoiling rope could main or kill anyone who got in its way and the delays had a serious impact on the busy system. Because the rope ran in a continuous loop, a break stopped traffic in both directions. John Roebling suggested they try the wire rope he was developing, and by 1849 all the planes were using Roebling's cable. The inclines averaged a half-mile in length, some with grades approaching ten percent. Cars averaged about 7,000 pounds each, and the hoisting engines could pull them in sets of three up the grade at about 4mph. At six trains per hour during busiest times, and considering how little exposure most people then had to technology and heavy machinery, that must have been a thrilling sight. I'd venture that I'd get chills seeing it even now. About 1832 Samuel Lemon built the structure that served as his house and business office and tavern serving meals to travelers in well-appointed, spacious, well-lighted dining rooms. In the early 1850s the state started construction on a new continuous portage railroad that would eliminate the slow, costly-to-operate inclines. Before it was ever finished, the Pennsylvania Railroad completed its line through the Alleghenies in 1854, establishing continuous rail service between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The canal and portage railroad shut down after being purchased by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1857, only 23 years after opening.

'Tis true. Every manual typewriter I ever used had monospace type; every keystroke advanced the carriage by the same amount, whether it was a "W" or a period or a spacebar. I learned to type in high school on a Remington manual typewriter, from an old-school, old maid teacher who wore her hair up in a bun and emphasized head up, back straight, shoulders back posture. We had straight-backed armless wooden office chairs. I am not making this up. I'll bet she'd break down sobbing if she saw me now, slouched in a leather chair with my keyboard on a pull-out drawer that's just high enough to clear my legs. And single-spacing after periods. And looking at the keyboard sometimes. I'm still fast and accurate, though.

Show how much I forgot. I can't even recognize gibberish when I see it. Sort of like a vast portion of the electorate.

Someone's been into the O'Reilly HTML books. I was subjected to two years of Latin in high school, and might have been able to translate that once upon a time. That was a long time ago, though, and a lot has fallen by the wayside through disuse.

I was raised on the serial comma, and only in the past couple of years have I adapted to the custom of not using it. That's the way life works; just about the time I adapt to change, someone decides maybe the old way was best, after all. Chastened by ridicule for indenting the first line of a paragraph, I switched to double-spacing with no indentation. Now, what? I fear all this regression to the old ways is an insidious plot to return America to the good old days when government was small, taxes were low, Family Values and the nuclear family ruled, and young American men were dying in droves in filthy trenches and jungles halfway around the world in politically contrived and pointless wars. Along with all that, they could at least give us back the passenger trains we had then. I graduated from high school more than fifty years ago. My education didn't stop there, but you don't get a diploma for what you learn by suffering the consequences of screwing up. </rant> Even old New York was once New Amsterdam Good Lord! That song was popular when? 1956? The first time I heard it was over the park's PA system while I was selling watermelon slices from the Junior Leaders' stand at the Wells County 4-H Fair around that time. Undoubtedly it was played from a vinyl 33 1/3 rpm record.