Robert Pence

Great tour, great city! The Smithfield Street Bridge is one of my favorites anywhere. I remember it when only one side carried cars, and the other side had streetcar tracks.

Great stuff!

Wow! Travelin' on the gritty side! Great photos. For a neighborhood in the shadows of heavy industry, Marktown looks relatively tidy and orderly. The houses standing shoulder-to-shoulder, right up against the sidewalk, look like Pennsylvania's old towns.

noozer, that sounds like a great idea to me.

Silly me! I need to get out more; obviously, I don't have many reference points for comparison. Anyway, the tower in Springfield reminds me more than the one in Lancaster. And to carry the silliness further, part of Bluffton lies in Lancaster Township (but not the part where the courthouse is). No missing spire; it was designed that way. I think the near side of the gable has some sort of chimera. And yes, they "modernized" the street lighting less than a year after I took that photo; a little over 40 years later, they spent a bundle to replace the cobraheads with "historically appropriate" lighting that actually looks pretty nice.

You certainly have captured the vision. Unfortunately, most people can't visualize things they haven't experienced, and it's frustrating to deal with that. "This is the way we've always done it!" and its corollary, "But ... we've never done it that way before!" are the guiding principles by which many people live. Anything outside their own immediate personal experience prompts cynicism, skepticism and even fear.

At first glance, I thought the old city hall reminded me a lot of the Wells County Courthouse in Bluffton, Indiana. When I compare the two, though, I guess it's just a similarity in material and general architectural style. This photo dates to about 1962; since then, the tank has been replaced with a pine tree that has grown to obscure much of the view of the building from this angle.

It may take some pretty good marketing and some time to overcome the stigma that midwesterners assign to buses, whether intercity or local transit. They're generally regarded as a safety net for people who can't afford a car or a plane ticket. Although it's been several years since I traveled much by Greyhound, my experience supported some of that feeling; too often, I ended up sitting beside someone who smelled like a bar and/or like they hadn't had a bath in a long time, or listening to some know-it-all hillbilly kid run his smart-ass mouth. Oh. Let's not forget the fat lady who takes up her seat plus half of mine. I realize that long-distance express service, especially if people can't just walk into a terminal and buy a ticket, won't attract a lot of that demographic, but it might be difficult for the bus line to transcend that image. A local charter operator known for quality service tried an O'Hare Express service between a downtown Fort Wayne hotel and O'Hare in Chicago, with free parking and curbside baggage checking and a fare of $40, compared with an air fare of $110. Connection time was competitive if you considered travel to the local airport, check-in, and hiking from one end of the O'Hare terminal to the other to make your connection. They ran six round trips per day, gave it a year to build ridership, advertised it well and promoted it through the travel agents, and the day I rode it there were six passengers. The driver said that was the most he had ever had on one trip. Even business travelers staying downtown chose paying for a ten-mile cab ride plus almost triple the fare for a ride in a small, noisy, smelly turboprop with frayed upholstery and fuel-stained carpet and tiny seats and no restroom over a more convenient, more comfortable bus ride.

Maybe somebody has already brought this up, but I missed it: Will peak oil, in itself, trigger increased, self-perpetuating instability in the Gulf region? The oil-producing countries support over-inflated economies with the revenue from oil exports; when their reserves are diminished and other countries develop alternative energy sources, the oil revenues will be sharply curtailed. Do the oil-producing countries have any prospects or strategies for keeping their economies from going into sharp decline? Economic collapse historically has triggered political upheaval that has spilled across international borders. It's not hard to visualize a cycle in which diminishing oil exports lead to political unrest that destabilizes govenments and sharply accelerates the decline of oil production.

... and the Harley Davidson motorcycle. Stevens was quite the Milwaukee legend. When I visited the Calatrava wing of the Milwaukee Art Museum I thought the window design overlooking the lake was reminiscent of the Hiawatha observation car tail end, and wondered if it was a subtle nod to Stevens.

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/local/14164523.htm?source=rss&channel=journalgazette_local Rail line weighs adding 1st double-decker cars Associated Press Michigan City - The managers of northern Indiana's commuter rail line are working on a $40 million plan to buy a dozen new passenger cars, including possibly some double-deckers. The additional cars are needed as the South Shore rail system saw its ridership grow by 7.3 percent last year, which has been followed by a 10.7 percent increase for the first two months of this year.

Around 1959, my brother and I bought a 1916 single-cylinder International Harvester engine, about 3 tons' worth, out of a sawmill at 6060 Geddes Road, Ypsilanti. The owner, Fred J Parker, was 93 years old and had run the sawmill and his woodworking shop until he was 90, and he was still active although he had skin cancer. Fred had made batons for the Ann Arbor PD for years, along with fine furniture, in a woodworking shop where all the equipment dated from the very early 1900s, and he and his brothers had run a stone mill on the river nearby, specializing in buckwheat flour. He told of watching a man go down the street lighting the gaslights in Ann Arbor at dusk, and of seeing the first automobile in Ann Arbor. He commented with some irony that the last time he had gone to town, he couldn't find a parking place. Fred had sold his property to someone from Detroit who wanted to build a luxury home on it, with the stipulation that Fred could occupy the property as long as he lived; the purchaser figured Fred had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. Seven years later, we got a letter from him. He had made it to 100, the skin cancer had gone away, and he was still going strong. I'll bet the purchaser of his property was about to go nuts, wondering how long Fred would live.

Philadelphia had a real one about 1991. The fire started high up in the building, and went up the outside by blowing out windows. IIRC, six firefighters died. I took this photo about two days after the fire. I think the building was ultimately razed.

Neat stuff. There are at least 4 Lustron houses in Fort Wayne; a former co-worker owns one, and loves it.

Good coverage, Jeff. I think this year's show is July 6 - 9. Allow me to add some commentary; I'll try to not get carried away. Case was the leading manufacturer of steam farm power. I think they built more engines than the next four competitors combined. Their reputation for quality, durability and customer support was unequalled in the industry. Full sized reproductions of the big factory decals are available. Advance engines were another top contender for quality and widespread sales and support. The Minneapolis engine was indeed a Minneapolis-Moline predecessor. I forget the complete genealogy, but there were several engine and tractor builders in the Minneapolis-St Paul area who got folded into the companies that evolved into Minneapolis-Moline, which was absorbed into White Industries in the sixties, I think. The cart pulled by the Reeves engine is a tender; the semi-cylindrical wood-stave part is a water tank, and extra coal could be piled on top. Yep, threshing separates grain from straw and chaff. The standing grain is cut and tied into bundles by a binder, and the bundles are gathered into shocks in the field to dry. The shocks are loaded onto a wagon and taken to a threshing machine for final processing; the grain comes out an auger on the side, and the straw and chaff come out a blower pipe at the rear. The later, modern machine known as a combine was first introduced as a "combined harvester;" it performed the functions of both the binder and threshing machine, traveling across the field and cutting the standing grain, and threshing it as it went. The trailer-mounted generator is used to test horsepower of a tractor or steam engine. The generator output is fed through a variable resistor bank to dissipate the energy as heat, and the current is measured. By calculating the electric power produced, the operator can determine the horsepower of the engine. Reid two-cycle natural gas engine, probably about 25 horsepower, built around 1900. Reid engines were almost all used in oil fields to power the pumps that lifted the crude oil from the wells. They were extremely simple and reliable, and provided with a reliable cooling water supply and visited about once a day to fill lubricators, they could run in remote locations for months without being shut off. Most belts used now to run threshers and sawmills are made of rubberized canvas. Leather was more common in the early days when power requirements were lower and leather was cheap and plentiful. Tractor styling -- As the country started to climb out of the great depression in the late thirties, styling became a factor in marketing tractors. Previously, everything was purely functional and often primitive-looking. John Deere hired Henry Dreyfuss, Allis-Chalmers hired Brooks Stevens, and International Harvester (Farmall) hired Raymond Loewy. John Deere's time-honored low-speed two-cylinder engine gave it a distinctive galloping exhaust bark that carried for miles across open country. In the fifties, Minneapolis-Moline, Oliver (both later absorbed by White Industries), John Deere and Case all kicked butt for rugged construction and durability. All were expensive, too. By the end of World War II, there really weren't any bad manufacturers still around, but those four impressed me the most. Excellent show photos!

That is pathetic...are people really that lazy? 'Tis true. When I worked for Lincoln Financial, the company provided vast parking lots about a block from the office buildings. The on-street parking was always full all day with cars belonging to the earliest arrivals, who didn't want to walk a block to free parking. Instead, they'd park on the streets next to the buildings and go outside every two hours, all day long, to feed two quarters at a time to the meters. Two bucks a day, ten a week, five hundred a year to avoid walking a block to a free lot. That's typical all over town. And there are the ones who go out at lunchtime and patrol the lot to see if any spots have opened up closer to the buildings, and move their cars. To some degree, it's more about status associated with having the best parking spot. A lazy-ass intern in my office always parked his beat-up old IROC Camaro on the street, and habitually forgot to feed the meter. One morning at 3 a.m. the cops rousted him out of bed on a warrant for $600 in unpaid tickets, and his dad had to come down and pay the fine to get him out of the lockup. Next day he told about it at work as if he expected support and sympathy, and I laughed my ass off. He didn't like me after that. Metered on-street parking is 25 cents per hour, and overtime parking tickets are $5. That's way too cheap, and I think the city intends to double the meter rates and fines to get the all-day parkers into the lots and garages and free up the metered spaces for people who come downtown for short times to transact business.

I didn't realize there was that much to Brookville. Nice town!

Interesting. I wonder if that big house might have been a railroad hotel; lots of towns had them, sometimes in conjunction with a livery stable. If they eventually extend the trail into Dayton, it could breathe some life into those villages with restaurants and B&Bs and a civilized, non-overwhelming tourist trade.

Such a gem! Idyllic small-town Ohio. I'm excited to see rail-trails really getting a foothold in Ohio and Indiana, too.

I'm not sure. If I do, they go back quite a ways. Perhaps one of these days they'll surface in the archive. I have photos of downtown going back into the sixties, and maybe a few before that; one of these days, when I have time for lots of scanning, I'll put up a page of that stuff.

The backstory: The parking garage for the Fort Wayne, Indiana, City-County Building was built on the site of the existing surface parking lot for the building with a basement-level garage beneath it. That’s the good part. To provide temporary parking for employees during construction, the county acquired the oldest remaining residential structure downtown, one of three structures that predated the Civil War, and razed it and its carriage house. That’s the other part. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- City-County garage not filling spaces By Dan Stockman www.JournalGazette.com The parking garage co-owned by Allen County and the city of Fort Wayne has seen business decline so much that the two governments will likely have to cover the bond payments this year, officials said Friday. The Plaza Parking Garage attached to the City-County Building, 1 E Main St., was at capacity in 2002 and 2003, officials said. But that was before the new Juvenile Justice Center opened on Wells Street, moving juvenile courtrooms from downtown and taking parking customers with it and before the Charles “Bud” Meeks Justice Center opened north of the garage and took more customers away. The justice center is just a half-block away, but people are parking on the street instead of in the garage. “They’d rather pay a $5 ticket than park in the parking garage and walk a block and a half,” County Commissioner Marla Irving said. [email protected] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Keep in mind that as a municipal facility, the garage doesn't pay property taxes even though it occupies valuable real estate in a commercial area. The foregone property-tax revenue should be added to the shortfall to determine the subsidy that county taxpayers are paying for parking for people who won't even use it.

No homeless or panhandlers, I don't think. Some are mentally handicapped residents from the state hospital who go out to day jobs as dishwashers, etc., and then return to the state hospital at night, and some are residents who are turned loose during the day with a bus pass to get them out from under foot of the staff, because they're non-violent and high-enough functioning to not pose a danger to themselves or others. I don't know that any of them have ever caused any problems, but the folks who drive their SUVs from their suburban sprawl-mansions to their downtown office jobs would rather not see them or run the risk (shudder) of a mentally-handicapped person smiling and saying "Hi" when they're on their way to lunch. Too, there are a lot of low-end hourlies and even a few true urban pioneers, professionals who commute by transit by choice. It carries a stigma. I know; I was one of those. Co-workers would ask me in a pitying manner if I was having trouble getting my car fixed, and one boss chided me for "putting myself at risk like that, living in that neighborhood and standing out at the bus stop alone before daylight."

Jeff, I think you'd enjoy Coolspring Power Museum, just south of Brookville, PA. It's one of the world's best collections of 19th and early 20th-century internal combustion engines, many Ohio-built, the kind of thing you expect to only see in old illustrations, or at best, broken and incomplete and gathering dust in a local historical museum where nobody knows anything authoritative about them. At Coolspring, they're complete and restored and in buildings, and they run. The engines range in size from coffee-table-sized to beasts the size of a small house. There are hot-air engines and hydrogen-burning German engines from the 1870s that use direct-flame ignition, and beautiful, ornate English-built oil engines, as well as the workaday machines that pumped oil wells and ran feed mills and small factories. The museum is open one weekend a month with some equipment in operation; the best times to go are the expo weekends in June and October, when nearly everything is in operation and there's lots of activity on the grounds.

Some wild-ass guessing here, because I wasn't able to find anything on Google about rattler rooms except another guy asking the same question. new castings come out with sand adhering, sometimes some scale, and flash, those sharp projecting ridges where some of the iron seeps into a seam in the mold. Sometimes smaller castings (no big stuff like engine blocks or transmission housings) are cleaned up by tumbling them in a cylinder something like a cement mixer, with steel shot or abrasive materials. It's a noisy process. Maybe that's what they're referring to. My brother has some history in the foundry business; I'll ask him if he knows what it is. Sort of speculating again on the linseed oil, but I can visualize something like a cider press, where the pulped apples are placed on a tray covered on both sides with cheesecloth or burlap, and then the tray is placed on a flatbed screw press that resembles Ben Franklin's printing press. The screw can be turned by gears and pawls driven from a mechanical power source, so that it slowly ratchets down, applying increasing pressure. Linseed oil, of course, is extracted from flax seed. They would probably crush or fracture the seeds first with a roller mill like the ones that replaced stone buhrs for grinding flour. Most oil-seed extraction in that era used steam, too, to provide heat to make the oil flow more freely. Hmm. A research project.

In the eighties, after Fort Wayne spent more than $2 million adding shelters, bump-outs, wider sidewalks and public art to turn two blocks of Calhoun Street that were already the long-time bus line-up zone (and before that, "transfer corner" going back to the horsecar era) into a pedestrian/transit mall, the few remaining retailers started agitating to get the "bus people" away from their front doors. The city moved the layover area off Calhoun Street to two separate off-street areas at each end of downtown. Within a year, all the complaining merchants were out of business and there were two blocks of vacant storefronts; the detested "bus people" had made up the bulk of their revenue, and they drove them away.