Robert Pence

Interesting narrative and photos.

Beautiful photos. I'm most impressed when I look at structures like that and think about how they must have been built. There were no trucks, no cranes, no power tools. It was all done with the skills of trades and craftspeople, and the strength of workers and draft animals. Any idea how many years it took to build the abbey?

The mounted police are making sure there won't be any drunken holiday revelers skinny-dipping in the fountain! Neat photos; holiday crowds give any public space a festive feeling.

Neat stuff. I don't think the overcast day hurt your photos at all; That kind of light fills in shadows and yields denser colors.

Interesting area. That last shot is drop-dead gorgeous!

I'd say not. The house looks like late 1880s and the porch looks like 1910-1920. They did a better job of matching up the masonry than most people did when adding porches, but the overall design of the porch doesn't match the period of the house.

I like that public space. Admittedly, it's a lot more pleasant in summer though!

Excellent shots! Cleveland is a great city.

They'll probably cite you for non-conforming porch furniture, too. :x :wink:

Provincials! They just need to understand that we can't afford passenger rail. We have other priorities like spreading democracy,defending freedom and securing oil supplies to keep our gas prices low and our 5,000-pound SUVs running down the interstates at 80mph :whip:

In a lot of cases, a return of interurban 70 - 80 mph service connecting the smaller cities and towns with the major population centers would be quite adequate. If it were frequent, comfortable and on-time it could eliminate the need for a large percentage of the car traffic that now exists. It would also lead to an improvement in quality of life for the residents of the smaller cities and towns by feeding a market for local transit and taxi services that a lot of those places once had. When the interurban rail and intercity bus systems quit and visitors no longer arrived in town except by car, the market for downtown hotel rooms and local common-carrier transportation disappeared and the local providers went out of business, making even the non-traveling local residents completely car-dependent.

I don't think it's just one area or one attraction that makes Chicago what it is for me; it's the great variety in neighborhoods, and the contrast of the workaday grit and deliberate pace of some of the outlying commercial areas with the gleaming glass and stainless steel and the bustle and density of food traffic of the loop, accentuated by the audio backdrop of rumbling elevated trains. The energy there is infectious. I love it all in fair weather or foul.

Browsing the NICTD (Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District) board meeting minutes last night, I came up with the following updates: The first two bi-level gallery cars of a 14-car order are expected on the property by November 2008. It sounds like they're very similar to the new Metra Electric cars, except that they will have walk-over seats. I hope the seats will be more comfortable than the ones on the cars currently in use; they're OK for a short ride, but it's 2:20 between Millennium Park and South Bend, and they're not very good for a ride that long. The cars are being manufactured by Sumitomo in Japan and will be assembled in Milwaukee. South Shore is doing a good job rebuilding older cars in-house, and they're keeping them very clean. There's a project still in the discussion stages to realign the South Shore approach to the airport station. Now, the track follows its old alignment eastward to near the Bendix plant, turns north to follow Bendix Drive for a couple of miles before heading back west to the airport terminal building. The present route is circuitous and involves slow running and many street intersections. The proposal involves relocating the US 31/US 20 interchange and realigning a highway as well as the South Shore. It would allow the airport to increase runway capacity and provide a direct approach to the terminal from the west by trains, likely shaving 10-12 minutes off the schedule. Another topic that's been discussed is the elimination of street running in Michigan City. The two miles in 10th and 11th Streets are the most expensive part of the railroad to maintain, and traffic interference and proximity to homes and pedestrian traffic imposes speed limitations on the trains. Some previous discussions have focused on running north of downtown using the track that serves the NIPSCO power plant, but I think an aging, unreliable swing bridge on that route has been one of the major stumbling blocks. The latest that I've read is a discussion of running south of downtown on CSX right-of-way. It would involve building connections where none exist now, but is a simpler, more straightforward approach. A new station proposed for Franklin Avenue would provide high-level platforms, expediting the boarding and detraining of passengers, and more parking. There appears to be room on the existing ROW for a second track, too. The proposal is projected to save another 10-12 minutes' running time.

Pretty good photography, I'd say! Damn depressing. It was getting seedy when I caught a train there to Toledo in the early 80s, but at least it was intact and in use. I tend to have some pretty Nazi views as to what ought to be done with the vermin who wreak wanton destruction on vacant properties for lack of anything to do. Not extermination, but work camps with zero-tolerance for screw-ups.

Good stuff!

Beautiful!

I love the open farmlands. I grew up on them, and over the years, watching the seasonal changes as the crops were planted, grew, matured and were harvested, I eventually came to see the beauty in those places. Yesterday afternoon I visited the family farm for the first time since the leaves fell. The sun was low in the sky and the warm light backlit constantly-shifting winter clouds that said, "snow tonight," fringing them with oranges and golds. Here and there shafts of direct sunlight broke through and slowly swept across the landscape, highlighting fields and woodlots and clusters of farm buildings against a dark-sky backdrop. It was a splendid sight, and left me feeling more contented than any urban skyline ever could.

Pretty nice! There are some excellent vintage facades still intact and eminently restorable. Saturday mornings are usually active in small rural towns. Farm folks, after they retire, don't use their new-found freedom for sleeping in. They're accustomed to getting an early start on the day, and freed of the job of milking cows and feeding hogs, they head for the mom-and-pop restaurants for a leisurely breakfast, a couple of refills on their coffee, and socializing with their peers. It's a comfortable tradition.

The ride across New York state is quite beautiful in winter, especially if there's lots of fresh snow.

There must be some Ohioans in Florida. After years of wintering there, my parents built a house near Englewood in the late 1980s. All the streets in their subdivision were named after Ohio rust-belt towns; they lived on Steubenville Drive.

I know. I didn't intend for my remark to sound sarcastic. I've had my own encounters with city cops, transit cops and security guards, and some of those guys are pretty menacing and gung-ho. The two worst bullies from my high school during the time I attended went on to become cops. With their juvenile records, I don't know how they ever made the force, but as cops they were heavy-handed thugs. One, while working a second job as a security guard at an industry, got ambushed at night in a parking lot and beaten to death with a jack handle. They never did find out who killed him.

Very attractive town. I think that building practically cries out to be a movie theatre again. Imagine it with the neon restored.

Probably a good thing they didn't catch you with dozens of photos of buildings and infrastructure on your digital camera. You'd be on your way to Guantanamo by now.

That's the idea behind much of the rail-trail movement. The concept is known as rail banking. Much of the land in the RR rights-of-way was leased, not purchased outright, and the terms of the leases specified use for "transportation." The courts have determined that use as a bike trail fits the definition and continues the validity of the lease. Otherwise, the rights-of-way often would revert to abutting land owners. Under rail banking, access to the land is maintained in the event that economics justify the restoration of rail service. A lot of land owners, especially farmers, aren't too happy about that definition.

Beautiful photos. The place has a comfortable look of permanence about it, very pleasant.