Robert Pence

Michigan City is in pretty tough shape. Into the seventies it still had a fairly dense, active downtown and Marquette Mall, south of town, was something of a regional attraction. The South Shore station was still open, and passengers could wait indoors instead of standing outside. Washington Park has a nice beach, and the lighthouse is a landmark. I don't know if the zoo is still open; it was teetering on the brink financially, the last I heard. Michigan City was once a port of call for the grand luxury steamers that traversed the Great Lakes and a popular vacation destination for people in the major cities around the lakes. That was before the era of cheap (subsidized) jet travel. Lighthouse Place outlet mall and the Blue Chip Casino attract a lot of people, but I don't think much of that money filters down to the local working-class population. The city has some pretty big depressed areas for its size, and the State Penitentiary is a forbidding presence. Frequent South Shore commuter rail service to Chicago makes the surrounding area popular for residents who can make good money in Chicago and live somewhat more economically in Indiana.

Different steps. I'm sitting on the porch of the house I bought in 1972, next door to where I live now. The cast was a consquence for my need for speed - on a bicycle, yet. The guys I was riding with said that when I went over the handlebars I did a one-and-a-half in the air before I hit the pavement. Lots of road rash, but my left elbow took the worst of it. I shattered about an inch and a half of the end of the radius into seven pieces, and dislocated the ulna. It hurt some. Few helmets in those days; I'm lucky I didn't bust my head.

Flashback (1973) :roll:

Beautiful pics and interesting places! I was looking through your info on the Greenbrier Trial. There's a campground very near Cass Scenic Railroad that I don't think you have listed. It's not well-publicized, but there's a sign near the highway. It's a couple of miles up the mountain near the tracks, and has sites for both RVs and tents. It's sort of West-Virginia comfortable, surrounded by cow pasture, not fancy but adequate and in a scenic spot. The campground spills down the hillside on two or three levels, and at the lower level there's a short path that leads to trackside where there's a big enough level spot for a tripod & camera, a great spot to watch the trains labor past. It's not far downhill from the switchback. I remember sitting by my camper near sunset and listening to a variety of birdsongs, with the rhythmic exhaust of Big Six and the deep, throaty hoot of its whistle echoing in the distance.

Wow. Desolate. I could read that blurb about the new development as making the place nice by pushing the poor people out to make way for rich white people. That's not revitalization; it's gentrification, and it only defers dealing with the real issues and relegating them to the background where they build to a critical mass while nobody outside notices (until they explode).

Part of the concept of rail trails is "rail-banking," reserving abandoned/inactive rights of way in case they're needed again in the future for restoration of rail service. That ties in with long-term transportation strategy.

A Beautiful Beast On August 18 and 19 Nickel Plate locomotive 765 was on display under steam at the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society's facility east of New Haven, Indiana More photos of the event are here

Another aspect of high-yield industrial agriculture that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is field drainage. Most midwestern farmland is laced with miles of perforated plastic tubes or older porous clay tiles buried just below the frost line to carry away excess water. The older drainage systems were installed to turn wetlands into farmland, and the current systems provide earlier access to fields for spring tillage and planting and prevent standing water from damaging growing crops during times of heavy rains. The drainage tiles intercept surface water before it can be filtered by percolation and replenish aquifers, and deliver it expeditiously to rivers and tributary streams. I suspect that agricultural drainage systems contribute at least as much to falling water tables, uneven river flows and flood surges as do building roofs, paved streets and parking lots.

If you go (and make it back alive), I'd like to see views of the shell of the old New York Central station that stands across the South Shore tracks. It looks like a masonry Beaux Arts building, but it's actually poured, reinforced concrete scored to look like stone. It's been fire-gutted, and for a time served as an auto junkyard, but I've heard it's structurally solid and could be rebuilt if there were an economically viable use for it.

Indiana, Pennsylvania is a fairly thriving college town with a nice downtown and an active, well-utilized transit system. I posted a thread on it last fall; the photos on my site are here. Incidentally, the salvage business of the Kovalchik family who own the East Broad Top Railroad is headquartered here.

Amazing photos, amazing city! :clap:

Amazing mixture of shapes and textures! Beautiful!

Here it is in Indiana, PA last fall:

Good heavens! It's gorgeous!

Good heavens! You do get around, don't you!? :-o

Great pics!

Good times! I love the old-time fairgrounds and their old buildings. One of the best in Indiana is at Crown Point (Lake County), in northwestern Indiana. They have lots of big old trees to provide shade, a lake with a swimming beach and some handsome brick buildings that are impeccably maintained.

It was closed by the time I first saw it. I think they used up their quota of on-premises murders.

Some folks have been trying to make my neighborhood all uppity and high-class for years. I try to do everything in my power to counterbalance their efforts. I even had a non-running pickup truck in my driveway for a while, but I never got around to putting it up on blocks. :wink: Actually, the neighborhood association includes a pretty wide range of income levels, although it is almost all white. A lot of the property owners have put their own sweat into their restorations, doing them piece-by-piece as they can afford it. When I see an ostentatiously expensive car, it's usually parked in front of a multiple-unit rental.

Just what I was going to suggest. The procedure doesn't seem to have impaired your eye for interesting scenes. Nice job!

Gorgeous pics! I'd love it if the river could be that beautiful even when a large part of the eastern US isn't experiencing a drought. Could happen, but it'll take a big change in a lot of the practices in agriculture and industry.

Amazing architecture!

Striking image! The power of nature is both awe-inspiring and frightening at times.

Excellent photos! The area is looking good.

Exciting times!