Robert Pence

Great photos!

I just stumbled across this great site featuring manymany photos of Pittsburgh's trolleys and buses, both recent and historic. The site is owned by a PAT driver. If you're a transit enthusiast, especially with an interest in Pittsburgh, be prepared to settle in for a while!

Because it simply wouldn't be a parade without fire trucks! It's a time-honored tradition. I've attended one small-town festival in northeast Indiana where the parade consists entirely of the American Legion color guard, the high school marching band, and at least twenty fire trucks of various sizes, types and colors from every township in two counties. It's definitely a plug-your-ears event.

Excellent comprehensive tour of a beautiful place! Is the town still filled with the aroma of fudge?

The museum is in Washington, PA, about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh. For all the info on the museum, click here Magyar: There's a lot of romance and nostalgia connected with streetcars, for folks of a "certain age." New Orleans' preservation of the vintage cars always pleased me, and I'm gratified to know that they survived Katrina. In 1991 I rode the St. Charles line from end to end and back during a weekday morning when people were going to work and school. I hesitate to call it rush hour, because folks didn't seem to be in much of a rush. The feeling was reinforced by the sedate pace and solid ride of the big trolleys as they traveled down the median of a tree-lined boulevard past stately homes. It's perhaps my fondest memory from that visit.

Go to Pittsburgh July 7 - 9, 2006

Gateway park idea advances Toledo Blade, 6/29/06 Oregon’s years-old proposal to create a gateway park on the northwest corner of Navarre Avenue and Wheeling Street may finally be gathering steam. Three years after the city acquired the site, members of two City Council committees — recreation and parks, and drainage, roads, buildings, and lands — agreed during a special joint meeting last week that such a park should be designed for “passive” use and feature a defining piece of art or architecture, perhaps a clock tower or a sculpture. “It should have a combination of art and landscaping,” said Sandy Bihn, the parks committee’s chairman. “It’s a really important corner, and art is something we don’t have a lot of in town.” But before settling on specifics, city officials plan to solicit public ideas about what might go in the park, and maybe consult with professional artists and architects too. They also plan to raise donated funds to pay for whatever is done there. MORE: http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060629/NEIGHBORS02/60629075

Beautiful place! I haven't been back there in many years; maybe I should do that.

Quaint and tidy!

I think granddad's root beer recipe is probably lost forever. My grandmother knew it, but I don't know if she ever wrote it down. He died in 1941 and she died in 1960, so it's not likely to turn up. There are a lot of books on wine making, home brewing and even illegal distilling, so I would imagine there are some good old-time recipes in the public domain. The old-time stuff had a little alcohol in it from the fermentation that made the fizz, and that's what gave it its bite.

Ahem! Speaking as a senior citizen ... < :speech: > Sprawl, the destruction of neighborhood businesses by suburban strip malls and big-box stores, and poor funding for public transportation in most of middle America leave people of all ages with few viable alternatives to owning and driving cars. That's been said over and over, for a long time. A lot has been said in various articles and public forums about dangerous elderly drivers, and there are some who ought not to be driving (some younger ones are hopeless, too). A lot of older drivers are still capable, and are aware of their limitations and drive accordingly. They're not dangerous themselves, but they're endangered by lack of traffic enforcement, and they end up in accidents caused by drivers who tailgate, speed and ignore traffic signals and signs with impunity. Lack of traffic enforcement combines with speed limits that in some places are too high, to make streets and roads the near-exclusive domain of aggressive drivers at the peril of older drivers who dare to venture onto them. Our streets and roads are built and maintained with taxes paid by all citizens, and traffic laws should be enacted and enforced to provide safe access for everyone who is physically and mentally able to operate a vehicle safely. </ :speech: >

Wow! The photo montage with music is some seriously fabulous stuff! Beautiful, dramatic shots and music that brings them to life make for a captivating show. I could visualize something like that about a half hour in length, running in a loop on a large kiosk screen in a visitors' center.

Sounds wonderful! I used to bake bread a lot, although I always used the packaged dry yeast. I love the smell of it, and there are few activities that are more therapeutic than hand-kneading bread dough. I hear people rave about their bread machines, and I think, "What's the use of that? You're eliminating the best part of the experience!" My grandfather was a baker by trade, but he died when I was only a year old so I don't remember him. He learned his craft in the U.S. Navy during the Spanish-American War and carried it into civilian life, and he baked at home and taught my grandmother a lot of the professional tricks. She made the most wonderful coffee cakes, cinnamon rolls, and apple dumplings in the world, and at Christmas time she turned out stuff in production volume. Granddad made his own beer and root beer, too.

I drove home Sunday from Washington, PA, taking I-70 between Washington and Columbus. I hate that road because of the intensity of the traffic. There's way too much of it for the road's capacity, and many drivers are operating beyond their skill levels. I had to run 70 mph to keep from getting run over quite so much, and my non-statistical observations of speeders were about the same as on other Interstate trips. More than half the people driving 10+ mph over the speed limit are driving big, heavy, non-aerodynamic vehicles that impose a heavy penalty in fuel consumption as speed increases. Again, a non-statistical observation; I think the vehicle I most often notice for extreme speeding and for aggressive driving both on and off the interstates is the Cadillac Escalade. Maybe it's a bully mindset on the part of owners, who bought those ostentatious behemoths before the gas prices went through the roof. They can't acknowledge and deal with with the vain folly that got them into their mess, so they try to maintain their denial with counterproductive, antisocial behavior. Or maybe they're just hurrying to get to their destinations before they run out of gas. :roll:

Excellent photos! I was there about fifteen years ago, and shot up the better part of a roll of film as a barge tow locked through. It was a larger tow than would fit the lock, and they had to break it into two pieces, a lengthy complicated process. The visit was part of a trip to document Indiana courthouses, and when I got the film back from the processor, I discovered that the shutter in my camera had been malfunctioning almost the entire time. From five rolls of film, I got maybe a half-dozen usable photos. Maybe I should try again!

But ... but ... but it's on a dot-gov web site, so it has to be real. The government would never let anyone try to fool us.

Fantastic photo. I'm glad I wasn't there.

Got me all fidgety in anticipation of the meet! :-)

Excellent tour. You captured more detail of City Hall than I've seen before.

Wonderful historic homes and buildings! The Fordson tractor had a large influence in mechanizing American agriculture. The Fordson and the International 8-16 were among the first mass-produced tractors to use compact, comparatively high-speed lightweight engines in machines affordable for midwestern farmers with modest-sized farms. Prior to World War I, most successful, reliable steam traction engines and internal-combustion tractors were large, heavy (5-10 ton) machines that cost thousands of dollars and were affordable only for large-scale farmers in the plains states or for groups of midwestern farmers who shared use during harvest season. I've driven one of these; it was a beast compared with later machines but a huge improvement over what was available before. The starter is the crank on the front end, and the pistons are BIG. I could start one easily when I was twenty, but I'm not so sure I'd enjoy it now. 1920 Fordson equipped with a hay mower: (Photo linked from Don Clough's web site)

There's a lot to see in Cincinnati. Excellent photos.

Oh. I thought you might be the pigeon man, but then you showed up for a meet at the same time he was out in front of Tower City with the birds. :-D

Trains magazine is always interesting, and the August 2006 issue has more than one article related to recent topics on this forum. There's an excellent feature on the railway line into Tibet, a pair of maps comparing Ohio's railway network in 1946 and 2006, and a feature on Ohio Central, a busy and successful common-carrier short line that ran regular steam passenger tourist trains until a couple of years ago. There's also an article about South Shore's plans and projections for its operation between South Bend and Chicago, including intent to purchase a dozen more cars, increasing its fleet by 25 percent to deal with surging ridership. The South Shore is studying the addition of service to Lowell and to Valparaiso, with reinstallation of some track on the former Monon right of way and use of existing track. If instituted, the new service would use dual-mode power to run as diesel-electric on the new extensions and draw power from catenary on the existing South Shore track.

I like! Looks like it's worth a visit one day.

Summer fun - great photos!