Robert Pence

I think a lot of Americans don't realize that those speeds are available without new technology breakthroughs. The biggest needs are minimizing the opportunities for trucks and cars to try to occupy the same space concurrently with trains, and maintaining right-of-way and equipment to the highest standards. In the post-WWII era, sometimes even with steam locomotives, the major carriers were quite capable of exceeding 100 mph and doing it safely. My aunt tells of riding the Pennsy's Broadway Limited between Fort Wayne and Chicago and rarely missing the two-hour-and-ten-minute schedule. The Detroit Arrow between Detroit and Chicago via Fort Wayne was a joint venture of the Pennsylvania and Wabash. Including a stop in Fort Wayne to change crews and engines, board passengers, and switch between the railroads, the Arrow averaged 75 mph for the trip. The Nickel Plate's legendary 2-8-4 Berkshires could hustle a freight train past the farm fields of Indiana and Ohio at 70 mph in the 1950's without breaking a sweat. In 1960 I tried to pace an Erie passenger train heading west out of Decatur, Indiana where the track lay parallel with US 224. I got up to 90 mph and wasn't even close to keeping up. Local people who traveled on the Erie then said the ride was flawlessly smooth at speed.

Nice shots. The first of the random shots is a little disorienting -- what a strange juxtaposition of items! :?

What a bunch of drooling heteros! Can't you guys control your impulses? :roll: :wink:

The reform that's really needed can best be accomplished by firing Laney and the rest of the Amtrak Board and Norman Mineta, and then impeaching Bush.

I don't think personal ads are a very good way of estimating the percentage of gay people in a community. In cities where social /professional pressures keep gays closeted, or where there are comparatively few social outlets and opportunities for public interaction in groups, I think people are more likely to resort to personal ads as a way to make contact with others. In places where there are visible gay groups and businesses and gathering places, and where people don't haveas much pressure to be "discreet" about their sexual orientation, many people don't see the need to bother with personal ads. Long ago I came to the conclusion that personal ads are often the last refuge of the desperately lonely. Looking for an alternative to bars to find companionship, I tried them for a while thirty years ago or so. Mostly I met closeted married men, guys dealing with lots of unresolved issues in their relationships with the church, "very private, discreet, straight-acting professionals," and various other socially dysfunctional guys.

Did I actually read this, or was it an early-morning nightmare before I was fully awake? When David Gunn came on board, I was pleased to see that Amtrak was finally under the control of a competent manager who understood the business that Amtrak is supposed to be in. After a few weeks I began to wonder, "Will he really be allowed to do what he's capable of, or will the Bush lackeys get rid of him because he insists on telling them what they don't want to hear?" It looks like my question has been answered.

An article in the latest issue of Rails-to-Trails (railtrails.org) describes plans for an Underground Railroad Trail from the Gulf of Mexico to southern Ontario. Passing through Ohio, the proposed trail would utilize the Western Reserve Greenway and the Little Miami Scenic Trail.

Hmmm.... I get that a lot, and I'm actually quite easy-going. Maybe I need to get some photos of me wearing pink and holding kittens or playing with puppies. Where's my PR consultant? :wave:

Sounds like unsafe driving to me. Either he was going too fast or not paying attention, or both. He didn't have his vehicle under control, and that's a basic tenet of safe driving.

:-D My favorite city bike – ideal for terrain with only moderate hills, but probably not well-suited to Cincinnati's hills. It's pretty mangy-looking, but I keep it in good mechanical shape. I think the ugliness turns away would-be thieves. The chain guard got bent years ago; maybe I'll get around to fixing it one of these days. It's a Raleigh DL-1, vintage 1970, with 28-inch x 1 1/2 –inch tires, Sturmey-Archer 3-speed gears and rod-operated (roller-lever) brakes. It's typical of the standard utility bike of its era in much of Europe and Asia. A Scotsman told me that this was the model once commonly ridden by policemen and postmen in England. The large wheels, long wheelbase and low frame angles make it very stable, and it rides comfortably on rough surfaces and brick streets. That made it ideally suited for my work commute when I worked at GE. I used to ride this bike to work year-around, in my younger, bolder, perhaps more foolhardy days. I learned that Sturmey-Archer gears won't shift at -17 degrees F. They quit making these in Europe probably thirty years ago, but they're still made in India and some US bike shops import them.

The brick houses set right up against the sidewalk are indeed characteristic of some Pennsylvania places. Visit the old villages off the main highways in the Lancaster area, and you'll see whole blocks of them, set elbow-to-elbow.

Leave it unlocked, and maybe someone will steal it. :wink:

On my first visit to Cleveland, in 1978, I got the impression that maybe it was OK there to blow through red lights, so long as you laid on the horn while doing it. :-o I thought that was better than Fort Wayne, where people see a light turn yellow a half-block ahead and floor it, ripping through the intersection against the signal without any warning. :roll: Almost everyone speeds through my neighborhood, and recent street improvements have made the situation worse. The posted limit is 35, which is too fast for a residential street where heavy trucks travel through, and I've used a radar gun to clock quite a few drivers at 45 and some at more than 50. I've seen the police enforcement reports, and there have been no speeding tickets issued in this neighborhood in the past year. The noise from fast traffic is the biggest negative against property values and quality of life here. :whip: Our mayor, who's doing a good job in many other respects, disbanded the Traffic Enforcement Division in order to apply the resources to "more important issues." I don't know if his speeding ticket (45 in a 30) had anything to do with it.

Nice pics, good memories. In my late teens, I took care of a country churchyard and cemetery about three miles from home. It was the church my paternal grandparents attended with their families in their youth, and the cemetery where four generations of my family are buried.

I have a Mersman table, probably from before 1900. It's about 3 feet square, made of maple and originally had an oak-grain finish. It has five turned legs (four corners and one in the center) and is expandable, but I don't have any extra boards for it. It was in the farmhouse south of Bluffton when my family moved there in 1947, and was our kitchen table for another forty years. It's now diassembled in my basement.

Oh! I'm so relieved! Now, I can go out and buy that Hummer after all :clap: ( :wtf:)

Beautiful neighborhood! In my early teens, I was a big fan of Zane Grey's novels.

To answer the first question, "no" and to answer the second question, "I didn't care". Public affection in public places has been photographed as long as the camera has existed. The fact that I was in gay friendly San Francisco and these chicks were having a moment in public with the Golden Gate in the background make for a no brainer photograph. For one thing, it looks like some pretty serious zoom. You certainly weren't obtrusive or intrusive in taking the photo, and they probably weren't even aware of your presence. Like I said before, it's a beautiful photo, and if anything, they probably would love to have a copy of it.

Putting all the foregoing aside, I think that's a rather classic photo. Returning to the foregoing, last Saturday night I went to Fort Wayne's annual Gay & Lesbian Dinner Dance. It's an annual event at the Grand Wayne Center (convention center) to benefit the local AIDS task force, and draws a crowd of several hundred at $40 a ticket. It's classy, and regarded as one of the premier events of the year by the Grand Wayne staff. As always happens on the rare occasions when I mingle with a large crowd of gays, it seemed that every time I saw a guy I thought was really cute, "he" turned out to be a butch lesbian. :-o Maybe I should see my doctor about getting "changed." I'd probably make a really ugly lesbian, and they're the ones who always seem to snag the cute partners. :roll:

I'd love to see this happen. The Trolleyville collection is superb, with some of the earliest wood interurban cars, the big center-door cars from the Cleveland system, later interurbans from Illinois' Chicago, Aurora and Elgin, and at least one single-truck open car. The restorations are near-perfect. The most wonderful thing I could envision would be extending the waterfront line across the lower deck of the Detroit-Superior Bridge and then down W 25th Street to the West Side Market. The antique trolleys would be perfect for weekend service on that route.

Thank you, Your Holiness. I'll try to conduct myself in a manner deserving of the honor. My Dad's ancestors did come to Indiana from Hocking County in the 1800s, and I grew up just 18 miles from the state line.

Lifelong Hoosier Born in Fort Wayne Started school in Decatur, family moved back to Fort Wayne and then to a farm near Bluffton Graduated HS in Bluffton Living in Fort Wayne now.

Nice stuff! I've never been in Hamilton except passing through on a train many years ago, and seeing the photos in the forum threads has raised my opinion quite a lot.

There's an amazing collection of machinery from the early days of the oil and gas industry, including American and European gas and oil engines going back as far as 1885, at the Coolspring Power Museum (http://www.coolspringpowermuseum.org/), near Brookville, PA. Many of the engines are restored and operable, and at their June and October shows nearly everything in the museum is operating. The museum collection is housed in a complex of buildings, many recreated in turn-of-the century style, across several acres of land in a beautiful setting. The next show is October 13 - 16. For anyone interested in early technology, especially internal combustion industrial power, this place is a must-see.

About 1961 I visited a place in western Pennsylvania where a property owner had a gas well. He had an ancient, primitive setup in a building near the well where there were three stages of compressors run by a big slow-speed single-cylinder engine. He "dried" the gas from the wellhead before selling it, by compressing it and cooling it. The condensate was what he called casinghead gasoline. He burned it in his '49 Chevy. He said it was pretty low octane and knocked under load, but the Chevy 216ci 6 cylinder engine had low enough compression that he got by OK. There were once quite a few oil and gas wells in the area around Winchester and Portland, Indiana and westward toward Montpelier, and they fueled a significant amount of local industry. There were glass factories, a steel rolling mill, and numerous brick and tile mills. Near Salem, Indiana a man who owned a gas well used it to heat his home and to power an industrial engine that ran a sawmill and wood-products mill into the 1960s. I think some of those wells still produce on a small scale and are used privately for heating and cooking by the property owners.