Robert Pence

If it was adjacent to downtown, it was likely either Lakeside on the East, or West Central on the West. There are some very nice old city neighborhoods.

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You entered my turf without signing in with me? It's not mandatory for forumers, but it's recommended. :-)

Beautiful photos! Makes me want some more Chicago; I'm planning to go in about a month, but I don't know if I can wait that long.

Really nice. If pumpers get any bigger, they'll need a new fire station.

Beautiful place, with an interesting history.

Carbon

Wonderful photos! I spent an afternoon in the Museum of Industry and Labor; it's a striking building (Michael Graves) and tells a sobering story. St. Columba's, just a block away, is an excellent example of Deco Catholic Churches.

You won't hear me complaining and whining! Those are seriously magnificent shots.

Sweet-looking town. That off-center courthouse always throws me, though.

Dan Burden is in Fort Wayne for a few days. He has spent a couple of days walking around town and recording his observations, and yesterday evening at Cinema Center he gave a good grass-roots presentation that drew a fair number of attendees who responded favorably to the concepts he presented in slide show. Today he's conducting a series of training sessions including one at 7:30a.m. for planning department staff. He's a very good presenter; he's energetic and dynamic and he illustrates his points well with his visual materials.

Randy, I think that trails may be the best option we have under current law for preserving the rights-of-way. Railroads abandon uneconomical lines largely because if they keep them out of service but still hold onto them, they have to pay property tax. When they don't need them any more, they often try to sell them, and failing a buyer they may walk away and stop paying the taxes; Penn Central left a bunch of counties stuck for property taxes that way in the sixties and early seventies. Probably in that circumstance the county can offer the property at a tax sale, and who knows what will happen to it then. If it gets turned into a trail, at least its locked down and out of reach of private developers or abutting land owners who might otherwise encroach upon it and then claim squatters' rights if someone wants to restore the rail line. The rails, themselves, have value, too. If they're in good condition, the railroad can remove them for use elsewhere in maintenance work, and if they're worn out, they still bring good money as scrap metal. Jeff, that equipment belongs to Indiana Transportation Museum, at Noblesville (Hamilton County, rapidly becoming North Suburban Indianapolis). They keep their stuff and display it at Forest Park in Noblesville, where they have a piece of track with catenary where they can run some of their interurban cars back and forth. They have a pretty good shop facility and skilled professionals to do restoration and maintenance. Mark, the route you rode is the one that is still in use. I'm not sure of the heritage of those tracks, but they're the ones that Indiana Transportation Museum uses to run occasional excursions between Noblesville and Indianapolis on summer weekends. That line has been discussed as a possible route for commuter rail between Hamilton County with its burgeoning population, and downtown Indianapolis. I don't think it will go away any time soon. It was probably that line that made the Monon routing redundant for freight service. By the way, the Monon Trail is a gorgeous bike ride, first class in every respect and very heavily used. There was an Ohio State Fair train for a while in the early nineties. I think it may have been part of the now-defunct Norfolk Southern Steam Program; I'm pretty sure they ran with N&W 611, the big Norfolk Southern streamlined steam locomotive that is now on display at Roanoke, VA. Whereas the Indianapolis Fairtrain is a shuttle that scoots back and forth many times a day, the Ohio one consisted of all-day trips from some more distant point, to the state fair in the morning and return in the evening. I just uploaded a bunch more train photos to my web site, including some funky stuff:

I get your point, Randy, but I don't think your comment came out right. I'd like to see trains running on all these former rights-of-way instead of bikes, strollers, families with their dogs, etc., too, but it's not as if communities evicted the railroads and ripped up the tracks to make way for trails. The lines already had been abandoned as the declining manufacturing base no longer generated enough freight traffic to justify the cost of maintaining the lines, and the passengers, whose fares were often underwritten with freight revenues anyway, especially on a lot of the regional railroads, bought automobiles to drive on the growing network of tax-supported improved highways. The rails-to-trails movement has preserved many former rail corridors against development or road-building that would certainly have encroached upon them, and has preserved many miles intact that can be returned to railroad use as escalating fuel prices force more freight from trucks back to trains. Quite a few trails have been built under guidelines that refer to rail-banking, or reserving abandoned rail routes for future return to rail service. The alternative would have been to turn over the land to abutting homeowners, farmers and commercial interests; that has happened in many cases, as in the 110-mile former Erie-Lackawanna route across Indiana from the Ohio Line to Hammond.

Before the Monon Trail - Fairtrain '83 In 1983, when the tracks were still in service, Indiana Transportation Museum, at Noblesville, operated trains between Carmel and the State Fair Grounds during the Indiana State Fair over the route that is now Indy Greenways' Monon Trail. The train had an F7A Diesel locomotive on each end so that it could travel in either direction without turning around or backing up. I liked the paint job.

Nice! Old cemeteries sometimes provide a striking contrast in an urban setting. I can't remember the name of it, but there's another beautiful very old cemetery on the east side of W 25th around Mapledale/Archwood. It has a varied topography, with some graves atop a bluff and some below.

That's an intensely kick-ass piece of gear. I'm green with envy!

Come November, I will have been using the same credit union for 50 years. Their services were pretty minimal back when I started, but they're as full-service now as any bank in town, and a lot friendlier and more eager to provide prompt, courteous service. I can't remember the last time I paid a fee for anything, and their interest rates are competitive.

Yeah. I thought I was pretty fashionable in the 70s. I don't think any photos have survived, and that's a good thing!

Don't giggle, my dear, until you've checked out the Shaker Square fashion scene:

Depressingly wonderful thread. Makes me want to get a can of spray paint and a bucket of rocks and go out and start vandalizing vacant malls and fast-food chains. It's begun. Home Depot has announced plans to start closing "underperforming" stores. Starbucks same. Those are two of the previously most aggressively growth-oriented chains.

Steamer Belle of Louisville in 1971 jmecklenborg's steamboat photos in "Picture of the Day" set me to dredging the archives again. Here's what I dug up: Belle of Louisville was built as the Idlewild in 1914 at Pittsburgh by James Rees & Sons, pioneers in the use of steel hulls on North American river steamers. She was built for the West Memphis Packet Company and worked as a passenger ferry between Memphis and West Memphis. I went along on a day cruise from Louisville to New Albany, Indiana and return in August, 1971. Old Louisville Waterworks Burned-out dredge McAlpine Lock & Dam

I love the shot of the tulips!

I'm with Obama on this one, and a lot of other people seem to be figuring it out, too. A gas tax holiday will only sustain demand, while putting a crimp on funds that are already insufficient to maintain transportation infrastructure. The problem I have with a lot of the people who oppose a gas tax holiday is that they're using a flawed example of crumbling infrastructure; several times I've read/heard someone citing the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Most recently I heard it this morning from a commentator on NPR. The investigation of that tragedy determined that the bridge collapsed because the gusset plates used in construction were only half as thick as they should have been. The report stated that impending failure could not have been detected by inspection of the structure because it was not a result of corrosion or other deterioration. If opponents of a tax holiday want their arguments to hold up under scrutiny, they should base them on relevant examples. Otherwise, they're building a case that will collapse like a badly-engineered bridge.

Happy pics!

Wonderful photos! Pittsburgh is a visual treat; although it's lost a lot of its historic architecture and in some cases, entire neighborhoods, it still has a tremendous variety and a lot of really good, old stuff. Although that area looks depressed, it doesn't have the gutted-out, vandalized look of similar neighborhoods in many old industrial cities. It's ripe for a comeback.