Robert Pence

I'd say it can't really be explained. You just have to experience it.

Me? Just an ordinary queer. Well, maybe not all that ordinary. :-D

I just read that Indiana is forming focus groups to come up with a new state slogan. I think I'll send them my suggestions: 1. Could Be Worse. 2. But ... This is the way we've always done it! and my favorite ... 3. What time is it where you live?

This is one idea from Governor Mitch Daniels that I support. Tolls will almost certainly increase, but that was in the works, anyway. Governor Daniels had already announced his attention to phase in increases that will double auto tolls and increase commercial truck tolls fourfold. If commercial users have to pay their fair share of the cost of operating the toll roads, that will help to level the playing field for the freight railroads (although it will probably still fall a little bit short). There's been discussion of making the proposed I-69 extension between Indianapolis and Evansville a toll road, and even a some whispering about making all the interstates toll roads. If the leases were structured properly, the change could be a benefit to many communities. Indiana has a state statute limiting the number of lane-miles of highway the state can maintain, and that has been maxed out for many years. Every mile of new interstate construction results in the state turning over equivalent lane-miles of former state highway to the counties to maintain. County property tax payers have been picking up all that cost. In addition, all the real estate consumed by construction of new expressways and their interchanges and related facilities disappears from the property tax rolls in the counties, and the shortfall has to be made up by businesses, farmers and homeowners. In my opinion, an appropriate lease agreement would require the lease operator to cover all maintenance and operating expense, reimburse the state for traffic enforcement and emergency services, and pay the county property taxes on the assessed value of the land and improvements. Tolls should be structured to allow the operator to recover all his costs and make an attractive return on investment.

BTW - nice neighborhood, pretty typical of midwestern small cities. Fort Wayne has several that are very similar, including the one where my Mom grew up in a house her dad built in 1923.

It's a Chevy, lightly (and tastefully; black goes with anything) customized. Without seeing the grill (assuming it's still the stock grill) I can't pin down the exact year, but that body style was used 1949-1952. It hasn't been extensively altered on the outside, but the trunk lid has been smoothed and the door handles have been removed; originally, the license plate bracket was low on the trunk lid with a chrome handle/lock/license plate light above it. I prefer original restorations, but this is a nice job. The tires appear a little larger than stock, and the stance is a little higher too. Those features combined with the dual exhausts make me think there's probably something more than the factory 216ci (3.6L) inline ohv six under the hood. My friends and I put duals on a couple of sixes, though. We'd take the manifold to a welding shop and have them split it 4-2 (four cylinders on one outlet, two on the other), and then put a stock muffler on the 4-cylinder side and a straight-thru glaspack (cherry bomb) on the 2-cylinder side. Romp on it from a stoplight and it sounded like a chainsaw crescendo. As soon as a cop heard it, it was instant muffler ordinance violation. You could hear it a mile away.

Talk about regrets for things not done! My first view of Cleveland was passing through on the way to Erie, Pennsylvania in 1961. My first view of the flats was from the Clark Avenue Viaduct (R.I.P.). All the industry was going full-blast then, and the valley was full of smoke and haze and the air smelled of sulfur. I was a passenger, the driver was an impatient person, and I never got a photo. I saw it in mid-afternoon. I'll bet it was a spectacular view at night, with all the steel mills.

Magnificent houses and buildings. That looks like it would be a delightful place in summer.

<babble><ramble> Futurliners weren't built to transport passengers. They were built as part of GM's Parade of Progress that ran until 1954, and were traveling presentation platforms. The sides hinged upward to reveal a performance stage on one side and technology displays on the other. Light bars raised up from the top to illuminate the area, and the PA system was powerful for its time. At least in some cases the driver and the person who ran the display and made the stage presentations were one and the same. They often traveled as part of a convoy of GM cars and other display items. The statement in the article that only three survive is apparently off the mark. NATMUS has located nine, with two of those beyond restoration and being cannibalized for parts. The Futurliners were powered by GMC overhead-valve inline six cylinder gasoline engines with 302 cubic inch (about 5 L) displacement that also drove a 220-volt AC generator for the lights and sound system on display. It was a rugged, reliable engine and a powerful performer for its time. The 302 six powered much of GM's heavy truck line as well as military 6x6 trucks. It was also a bolt-in replacement for the 216 Chevy in-line six used in all the passenger cars from 1937 - 1953, and swapping around with GMC factory parts, putting a hot grind on the cam and borrowing a dual-carb side-draft manifold from the 1954 six-cylinder Corvette could yield a street racer that would blow the doors off the Corvettes of the late fifties. I bought one of those engines out of a wrecked 6x6 in 1959 and was rebuilding it for installation in my 1938 Chevy 2-door, in the guise of a simple overhaul, when somebody ratted me out to my dad. He terminated the project and made me sell the engine. </ramble></babble>

The National Auto and Truck Museum of the U.S. (www.natmus.com) at Auburn, Indiana, owns one of these. It was acquired derelict and has been undergoing restoration near Zeeland, Michigan for the past few years. It is nearly complete. There are many detailed photos of the restoration process at http://www.futurliner.com/

Amazing collection of 19th-century palaces. It's amazing to see so many surviving in one place. Thanks for the tour!

Neat stuff! Madison looks like the kind of place I could enjoy living.

Thanks for the excellent tour. I love this stuff! Dirty and noisy and dangerous as they were, those old mills were amazing, inspiring places when they were running. I think that somewhere, a facility like this ought to be kept just as it is, protected from vandalism and theft but otherwise left open to anyone who wants to go in and explore. I was about to ask if the engines were still in place, when I came to the photo inside the engine house. Some of the old mills stayed with reciprocating steam engines to run rolling mills and pump air for the blast furnaces, right up to the end. Part of the reason was the tremendous cost of converting to electric motors, but a significant element was the huge amount of waste heat that the industry generated as a by-product. Some of it could be captured to generate steam to run the machinery at comparatively little extra cost. Some of the engines they used were gigantic.

I like the wall art in the last pano

Yep! I know who Guy Lombardo is, and I've always loathed his so-called music.

I think my 3-speed Raleigh DL-1 dates to about 1969, although it's a model that was relatively unchanged from the time it was introduced in the 1930's. My circa 1955 Raleigh Sports 3-speed was stolen from the basement garage when I lived in an apartment. I still think the landlord took it. The Raleigh DL-1 is the bike that was used by British policemen and postmen. That style was popular as a commuter bike throughout much of Europe for many years, and a knockoff is still manufactured in India. The last I knew, a bike shop in Madison sold them. It has 28 x 1 1/2 tires, and if you examine the brakes, you'll see that they're operated by rod linkages instead of the cables that are more common. The low frame angles, long wheelbase, and big wheels give it a very comfortable ride, even on bad streets. It weighs about 35 pounds, but rolls surprisingly nicely. Me, too. Survival in Fort Wayne would be difficult without a sense of humor. By tolerating the preposterous and embracing the merely ridiculous and ironic, I manage to thrive here.

You were saying ....?

Beautiful historic city!

You have to be very good. Santa said I was the best ever! :lol:

No problem. I've been thrown out of rowdier places than this :-D Kind of going off-topic for this thread, but 64-bit drivers are a challenge. It took a lot of searching and downloading, but I finally found them for everything except my scanners. Nikon says they're thinking about it, but they're pretty noncommittal. Microtek just says no. I'll probably have to run the scanners with my laptop, for now. Ditto on the mouse pad. After falling on the floor once too often, my ball mouse finally died, and I replaced it with an optical mouse and a new pad. Much better! On the new setup I have a Logitech wireless keyboard & mouse. Best yet. I'm running an Athlon 64 3700+ with 2 GB PC3200 DDR and two 10,000rpm WD SATA drives in RAID 0. It's pretty quick.

Hah! The shoes and hat have attended several forum meets, and the sweater is thirty years old. It's completely worn out but the most comfortable one I own; I had to sit so the holes wouldn't show :laugh: Here's my Christmas toy unpacked and assembled: A screenshot of my desktop - I haven't had time to customize it, yet:

Brand new installation with just a little software, not yet customized:

With my Christmas presents

The houses on St. Anne's Hill are magnificent, and every time I see Dayton's trolley buses and catenary I sort of chuckle to my self, in delight. Thanks for tackling the dreary weather.

It sounds like a very sensible move to me. Mainline steam and diesel equipment is prohibitively expensive to restore, maintain and operate, and increasing freight traffic and business pressures have caused many railroads to stop hosting mainline excursions; once a group has invested a ton of money in a locomotive, they have few opportunities to show it off doing what it was designed to do. Nothing's inexpensive in railroading, but trolleys and interurbans can be restored and maintained by well-trained and -supervised volunteers, without massive investment in heavy equipment and without sending out multi-ton parts to specialty machine and fabrication shops for thousands of dollars worth of work. Operating on museum-owned track, once the rails are in place and the catenary strung, is reasonably economical. With adequate training, a much greater number of volunteers can actually operate equipment than is the case with mainline rolling stock. That creates an opportunity for community involvement and participation. Lower operating costs and fares and more frequent operation with relatively short rides can make the museum attractive to a lot of people who wouldn't lay out $75 for a ticket and drive 100 miles to ride an all-day steam excursion.