Robert Pence

A couple of times a year I go to the University of Chicago Medical Center for followup exams; ten years ago they saved my life after local doctors told me my cancer was beyond treatment. Usually I stay overnight at LaPorte and take the South Shore train from Michigan City to 57th Street for an early morning appointment. That works well, and doesn't cost a lot. This time I thought I'd try staying in Chicago to maybe reduce the morning commute time. The Super 8 Motel at Sheridan and Chase was a lot less expensive than anything downtown, and in a pleasant neighborhood. Well, the Red Line is down to three tracks in places, and the ride is slow and rough. From the time I got off the South Shore at Randolph until I arrived at Jarvis was almost an hour! Next morning I thought I'd save time by taking the 147 Outer Drive Express bus to the Loop. I saved time and almost lost my breakfast. I've never been car sick in my life, but those articulated buses ride like farm trucks, and when they go fast on rough streets ... Suffice it to say I learned from that experience. For my next trip to the Loop I caught the 147 north to Howard and took the Purple Line Express to the Loop (147 stops right in front of the motel). Much better ride, and fairly fast. They must sort out all the cars with flat spots on the wheels, and put them on the Red Line trains; almost every one I rode was in dire need of a trip to the wheel shop. Overall, I found it just as fast and about half the price if I continue to stay at LaPorte and commute via South Shore for my visits but it was nice being in the city, especially when I didn't have any appointments on Wednesday and could use the day to ride trains, walk around and take photos. I never get enough Chicago!

Excellent thread - very artistic! :-)

Iconic places. Chrysler Building is my favorite scraper anywhere. Those pics brought back a lot of fond memories of my good friend, Greg, now gone 14 years. We had a lot of good times there just walking around and taking it all in when I visited him.

Exciting! There's lots of energy in those crowded streets.

Magnificent! Dense, colorful and busy, and the night shots absolutely glitter!

Chicago - October 2007 - Part II There's a stretch of Devon that's interestingly multi-ethnic. Here, groups that are at each other's throats halfway around the world are coexisting, working and shopping side-by-side. Quite a few of the shops have multi-lingual signage, and some grocers sell items favored by multiple ethnic groups. To get there, transfer to the 155 Devon bus at Morse or Loyola (Red Line). You'll know when you've reached the right area by the colorful signs and spicy, savory food aromas. I think things start to get interesting around the 2000 block. I suppose Ramadan is why things were pretty quiet on Devon and a lot of shops weren't open during the afternoon. Regardless, it's still a colorful place despite the chilly, windy weather that overnight replaced sunny skies and warm weather. No matter what ethnicity or religion, we all need and share infrastructure. Some updating going on here. If I recall correctly, the Russian businesses are sort of clustered around the intersection of Devon with California. I've read that this is the only Georgian bakery in Chicago. Its products are highly regarded. Time for a bus back to Loyola and a transfer to a northbound Red Line train for some more rail touring. I prefer Loyola over Morse for the transfer, because Loyola is a nicer station with shops and restaurants around it. To be blunt, Morse is a smelly, desolate dump. Time out for a rant. I'm accustomed to rail illiteracy in news and entertainment media, where writers with no understanding of or interest in railroad history or technology write senseless stuff and refer to anything on rails, even a rotting wood-decked flatcar at the end of a weed-choked, long-abandoned siding, as a "train" or describe commuter electrics as "chugging," but I'd expect a museum or historical organization to have at least one person on board who knows and loves trains, or at least a friend who could edit stuff for them. It completely baffles me how this transit card/poster could get past anyone with even a superficial knowledge of trains. It's not an obscure or insignificant mistake. While it's true that the Golden State Limited first ran in 1902 - pulled by a steam locomotive and running with heavyweight coaches - it didn't get diesel locomotives and lightweight streamlined cars until 1947 or 1948. The first streamlined EMD diesel-electric locomotives rolled out in the late 1930s, but because of World War II, they didn't become commonplace on most railroads until the Post-WWII era. OK. I'm calm now. I didn't add any photos from my change of trains at Howard, because I already covered Howard Street in Part I. I'm on a Purple Line train headed for to Linden and back. Some of these have some blur, because the train was moving fairly fast and swaying some, and the light was poor. On the return trip to Howard, I think this is Davis. It looks like one of the more impressive CTA station structures. Back at Howard I transferred to a Yellow Line train shown here at Dempster. The Yellow Line runs express (no intermediate stops) to Dempster following the former route of the Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee Railroad, an electric interurban line that operated until the early 1960s with some trains capable of 80 - 90mph speeds. I don't know what the running speed is for the Yellow Line trains, but they move along pretty briskly. On the previous generation of cars, the wind used to whistle around the windows. Indoor bike parking! What will they come up with next? I've been delighted to see transit systems make the transition over the past several years from being outright bike-hostile to bike-embracing. A train lays over behind the fence near the bus transfer area at Dempster. A Venti Caramel Macchiato at Starbucks in the beautiful 1925 North Shore interurban station provided a welcome respite from the cold wind. The North Shore right-of-way is still very visible north of the station. Until the 1990s, I think, the CTA trains still operated under catenary north of Prairie Avenue. They left Howard running on third rail, and made the switch to pantograph at speed. Some years ago CTA fenced the right-of-way and converted the whole line to third rail, but the catenary bridges still stand. Transit ridership is growing on most sytems and people are asking for more and better service, and the elected officials still haven't gotten the message. They hold to their conviction that public transit should make a profit while competing with the streets, roads and expressways that government agencies continue to pour tax dollars into. It's crazy that while gas prices rise dramatically, some big systems are being forced to cut service and some smaller ones are shutting down altogether. I'll stop now, before this turns into another rant. Last day - done with all my stuff, I was waiting for my South Shore train to Indiana at the 57th Street Metra Electric station when a northbound freight rumbled past. One time I saw an outbound Amtrak train pass here, but it all happened too fast for me to get my camera out of my backpack. Thanks for stopping by!

Chicago - October 2007 - Part I I had some personal business to take care of in Chicago and expected to be there a couple of days. I ended up having to spend two more days, with one day of downtime in the middle - not a bad thing in Chicago, even when the weather takes a sudden turn toward late fall. Jarvis Beach, Rogers Park Dogs know all about unbridled enthusiasm! Following Jarvis from the beach to the Red Line station "This is a Red Line train to Howard. Transfer to Purple Line and Yellow Line trains at Howard." "This is Howard. Transfer to Purple Line and Yellow Line trains at Howard." The train in the center distance is a Yellow Line train returning from Dempster. Howard Street is the transfer point between Red Line Trains to/from downtown Chicago, Purple Line trains to/from Linden (Evanston), Yellow Line (Skokie Swift) trains to/from Dempster and several CTA and PACE bus lines. Howard is undergoing long-needed major reconstruction. Looking out the back window of a train departing Howard southbound for the Loop. The color bands on the right side of the images are the result of interaction between a tempered glass window and the polarizing filter on my camera lens.

I try to refrain from complaining :-D

Looks like the sister city to Rivage.

I thought the Land of Illusion was at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC :?

I find it intimidating. The engine shots are great, though!

Of the three in this post, the last one is a Fairbanks-Morse set, built in partnership with GE. FM built the locomotives, I believe, and probably also the diesel engines, and GE built the generators, traction motors and electric control systems. These were typically 2,000 horsepower per unit. Kansas City Southern bought some of them, but I'm not sure where this one was headed. The photo was taken at the GE Locomotive works in Erie, Pennsylvania. They built straight electrics there, too; that's why there's catenary above the tracks. Styling was by Raymond Loewy. Milwaukee Road did buy some of these. There are a bunch more photos here.

Neat shots, interesting places!

I found a stack of railroad photos that I thought had been lost forever. Rather than post all 23 of them here (I'm tired/lazy tonight), I'll just give the link to my web site where you can see the rest of them. See more

MayDay, Thanks for posting the photos of the lakers navigating the Cuyahoga. I haven't been fortunate enough to see that yet, but I'd love to. Most of all, I'd love to be on board one of them! Bowling Green has a set of four Vestas turbines at the Wood County landfill; they're much larger than the one at GLSC. The Bowling Green turbines' rotor blades are 134 feet long, and the assembled units stand about 390 feet to the top of the arc. In a 32mph wind they can produce 1.8 megawatts each, roughly equivalent to typical diesel locomotive. The nacelles that house the generators and carry the turbine blades weigh almost 70 tons each and stand 256 feet above the ground. Because they're so big and so high off the ground, the rotors don't seem be be turning fast, but at 16 rpm the blade tips are going 178 mph! Up close, the sound is amazing as the blades rip through the air. When I drive to Cleveland, I almost always stop to marvel at those beauties.

18 is my favorite. Exposures are all in a manageable range, and color and sharpness are good. I like 2 and 8 too (just about the same scene) but 18 has a definite edge.

Any place with drivers as aggressive as Indiana's, and with as little traffic enforcement, would need physical barriers separating bike lanes from automotive traffic in order to be safe. Painted lines, diamonds and signs mean nothing to drivers who are drunk, crazy, stupid or all three, and we have a lot of them. I was nearly hit by a pickup truck on a downtown sidewalk when the driver decided to bypass stopped traffic because he was going to turn at the next corner anyway. His passenger was laughing his ass off.

I arrived in town a couple of hours early for Friday evening's Urbanohio.com get-together aboard the Goodtime III, so that I could explore and take a few photos. Actually, I could have used more time; I need to visit the Mather again and pay more attention to taking on-board photos, and I want to see the trolleys stored at the Lakeshore Trolley Museum. It was a beautiful afternoon, though, if quite windy -- just about perfect photo weather. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame The William G Mather was launched in 1925 as flagship of the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company Fleet, and worked until the end of the 1980 navigation season, transporting mostly iron ore and coal between Duluth and Cleveland. In 1954 the Mather's coal-fired boilers and reciprocating engine were replaced with a single oil-fired boiler and two-stage steam turbine, and in 1964 a Bailey automatic boiler control system and a dual-propeller bow thruster were installed. Burke Lakefront Airport (BKL) Great Lakes Science Center Maritime pigeon

Great courthouse. The town looks pretty typical for a midwestern small town, fairly tidy and not too lively.

Downtown Canton is clean and well-kept, with some good buildings but not much activity on the street when I was there on a weekday afternoon about a year ago.

Looks pleasant; some really cozy-looking residential properties.

Ah, but there's this:

Haven't been there in a while, but I've heard Akron is picking up just a little. The Civic is great on the inside -- elaborate Italianate lobby, and an atmospheric ceiling.

Excellent photography and a fascinating place! They must keep it pretty tightly secured, considering the absence of tagging and vandalism I'd expect in an industrial facility that's been inactive for so long. That set of Plymouth locomotives is remarkable. Those are a highly marketable commodity, as they're like fleas - you find them everywhere, and they're nearly indestructible. They're popular with tourist railroads because they're economical to operate and easy to maintain, and quite a few still work as industrial switchers in mining, quarrying, and heavy manufacturing. There's a side story that may be interesting to some. Plymouth was a successor corporation to Fate-Root-Heath Company. That company's predecessor, Fate Co., made a brief foray into heavy motor trucks and built one prototype automobile in the 1910s, but gave it up as the market for industrial locomotives grew. During the great depression, Fate-Root-Heath saw the locomotive business drop off sharply. Seeking a product to carry them through, they eventually came up with farm tractors. The Plymouth tractor line quickly evolved into a very solid, well-engineered product that offered quality and value and found a ready market. In the 1930s, I think, Chrysler Corporation took Fate-Root-Heath to court over the use of the name, Plymouth, on farm tractors. The one automobile built in 1910 with the Plymouth nameplate, before Chrysler Corporation even existed, gave legitimacy to Fate-Root-Heath's claim to the name, and Chrysler's lawyers were sent packing. Chrysler had to buy the rights to use the name, and Fate-Root-Heath renamed the tractor. From the beginning the company's engineers had used a silver paint that was eye-catching and rust-resistant and weathered well, and they regarded their tractor as king of its market niche, so they chose Silver King for the new name. Production of Silver King tractors continued until 1954. I had a little experience with one that my uncle owned, and it was everything the maker claimed; rugged, reliable, economical and operator-friendly. The first time I used it, I was suprised by how gutsy it was for its size. Larger, late-model Silver King. I've seen some of these in gray and some in silver, so I don't know whether there was a change or whether some restorers just got it wrong:

I remember that place! In 1973 I took a bike ride from Fort Wayne to Louisville and passed through that area. The plant stood along the highway for miles. I haven't been back to Charlestown since then, because it was such a bad experience. I stopped for lunch at a mom-and-pop restaurant and should have left without ordering. The place looked unsanitary when I walked in, I don't think the waitress could read or write, and I could tell by the smell of the hamburger that it was cut with pork, and not too fresh pork at that - smelled like pigs. The little bit that I ate before I wised up was enough to make me sick later. Mean-crazy redneck drivers around there, too. I had stuff thrown at me and had people deliberately try to run me off the road. I barely dodged getting hit by a long mirror on a pickup. Might have been nice if that plant had blown up and taken the whole town with it.